Dave Smith VS Triggernometry: War, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson and the American Empire

20:56Francis Foster:Like, are the American people really prepared for the consequences of not being an empire that dominates the world? Because you've got to think, and this is kind of how the world works, and we do know this, America pulls back, that vacuum isn't going to stay there. We'd agree on that, right? Like Russia and China, whoever else can, would fill that void. We see this in Africa, right? America pulled out of Africa, the Chinese, to a lesser extent the Russians, but the Chinese especially, are basically coming in and taking over. Nature abhors a vacuum. So that's always been my argument, and I'm keen to genuinely hear your perspective on this, is like, America, you can, you know, you had Aaron Matty on the show who called it, like, the death star.

21:38That was quite funny. There were so many people who were livid in the comments. What did he call the American empire the death star?

21:45Francis Foster:You know, it's It's called trigonometry for a reason. But my point being, right, is what the choice you have actually in the real world is between an American-led world or a Chinese-led world or a Russian-led world. And then I go, which of those would I rather live in? Long before 1776, before Washington and Jefferson, there was another generation, men and women who crossed an ocean to build a new kind of civilization. They faced hunger, war, and wilderness, but they built communities, practiced self-government, and discovered that liberty and virtue had to go hand in hand. Hillsdale College's new free documentary series, Colonial America from Wilderness to Civilization, tells the remarkable story of how a century and a half of struggle and faith forged the uniquely American character we know today.

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23:10Francis Foster:Go to hillsdale.edu slash trigger to enroll for free. That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger and see how America's story really began. Well, so I think, okay, so I do agree, like generally speaking, right, that like something will fill a vacuum. But I don't think the choices between an America-led world or a China-led world or a Russia-led world, I think what ends up filling those vacuums, like, it's not inevitable that it's going to be a hegemon, that it's going to be one. In fact, the unipolar moment, which I think is kind of over at this point, but the unipolar moment is the aberration. That's like usually not the way the world has worked historically.

23:49Usually there are different competing powers and they have their spheres of influence. And then so in other words, yes, it might be true that there are there are areas where China fills the vacuum. But look, even, which was kind of interesting, I think, to see over when Donald Trump first came in, right? When he was going, we're not going to fund the war in Ukraine anymore. Then you had European countries going like, okay, well, we're going to step up. Oh, I totally agree with it.

24:12Francis Foster:Right. So in a sense, the fact that America, say, it didn't end up happening, but like, let's just say America withdrew in that instance. Well, there might be several other people who end up filling that vacuum. And you might, so like decentralization can also happen. It's not that a vacuum doesn't get filled, but it might get filled by multiple parties. America is still involved in the war, though. Right. No, I'm saying that didn't actually end up happening. I'm just saying that you didn't pull out. Right. That's my that you didn't pull out, though. You had pulled out, Ukraine would get overrun and then you've got a whole new problem.

24:46Francis Foster:And this is kind of I think where there's a genuine disagreement about the ideas of this, because I just I come from a place where we don't have political correctness in Russia. so people don't pretend that all of this shit isn't true. You know, all of this stuff American people are told about, you know, we're going out there to spread democracy or they hate us because of our freedom. I mean, with Islamism, we'll get onto that. That is partly true, but generally speaking, it's about we want to control the land. We want to control the money. We want to control the oil. We want to control the rare earth minerals.

25:20Francis Foster:Now, if we accept that, which I think we both agree on, then you go, well, do I want Americans being in charge of that? Or do I want the Chinese being in charge of that? Again, though, I mean, I think it's like, it's not strictly like, I don't think, look, we are, even though, I mean, China's a big economy and has a lot of people, but we are substantially richer than China is, you know? And we're going broke being the world empire. I don't think China is looking at what we're doing and saying, you know what we should do? We should get in on these 20 year catastrophe forever wars and really have our own, our our society crumble while we waste all these resources.

25:56And so, like, I don't, again, I don't think it's going to be a global, like, hegemon unless it's the U.S. right now. But that being said, I mean, I think empire is always a losing game. I mean, it's, I think it's good for the ruling elite, but I think it always, like, kind of ends up costing more to the nation than it ends up producing. Always? Really? Well, okay, I shouldn't, maybe that's an overstatement. I, maybe not in every single instance. In general, broadly speaking, I think that's the case. And I think Americans would be far better off if you say whatever resources we get from fighting forever wars, I think we'd be far better off to not need to have an inflationary monetary policy, an income tax, a giant, you know, like this giant burden.

26:39I think, like, if there is one lesson of America, it's that actually free markets and true capitalism is what's going to produce the most wealth in the most sustainable and ethical way.

26:51Francis Foster:No, that I totally agree with. I'm not sure what you said about empires. I mean, we had one of the greatest historians. I'm not resorting to arguments from authority. I'm just saying. You guys had Daryl Cooper on?

27:07Francis Foster:Dominic Sandbrook, part of the rest is history. I think they've got the biggest history podcast in the world. And we talked about, he talked about the fact that empires are the natural unit of history. Like if you look throughout history, that tends to be the way that the great powers of the world operate, their empires, right? So I don't know that it's fair to say that America's problems or any country's problems are about forever wars because the entire Western world, including countries that weren't involved in the foreign wars, are all making the same mistake. And I think that mistake is not foreign policy, although, as we discussed, there's been some pretty fucking big mistakes.

27:41Francis Foster:It's about entitlements and benefits. Well, that's true, too. I mean, for sure. That's where I think actually we've basically got to a situation and I can't remember whose quota it is, but we talked about this with one of our guests where the public have worked out that they can vote to get more shit from the government and punish anyone electorally who says we can't give you more free shit. And so in the UK, more people take more out of the tax, the benefit system than they put in 51 % of the public. Right. And I think that's really the death spiral that we're in. We can't reduce our spending and we can't reduce our debt and we can't reduce our deficit because we don't want to forego the free shit.

28:24Well, I think that's right. And I think this is true on a lot of different levels. Right. And certainly I know a bit more about America than than Europe. But look, I mean, the bottom line for all this is we have we have a government that's way bigger than what we can afford. Right. Just much, much bigger than what we can afford. And so you can't tax enough to get there. So you have to tax your population. Then you have to borrow a whole bunch of money. But even that's not enough. So then you've got to print the money. Right. And these are essentially the three ways government can raise money or can spend money.

28:53And so what you have now is that. Right. There are these giant entitlement programs that. Yeah, it's much more it's much more politically advantageous for Donald Trump to say, I'll never cut Social Security or Medicare because he's got to lock up that base of seniors who are Republicans. And also just the monetary system just keeps the prices of everything going up and up and up. And what it ends up creating in a weird way is a justification for socialism. I mean, you know, like when these kids say, they'll say things like profit is theft. And I think it's very easy for like guys like us to look at it and go, hey, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.

29:29Because the idea that what type of fixed pie fallacy is that? That if I go out there and I'm successful, that doesn't mean I'm taking it from you. That means I'm creating more wealth. I'm creating a bigger pie with more slices. But the thing is that under this current paradigm, they do kind of have a point. Like, I bought a house three years ago, just about exactly three years ago. And I just got, this isn't an official appraisal or anything like that, but I got a letter from my real estate agent that said the house is up 200 grand in the last three years. And that does seem, based on the listings I've seen the house is selling for, that seems about right.

30:08And you think about that in a way. You're like, wait, so what is that other than, like, essentially welfare from the system? Because I'm in the owner class, because I got into the owner class three years ago, I now get an extra 200 grand of my net worth, and the bar for young people to go buy a house is now that much higher. It's like I kind of did take that from them in a sense. But then, like, as we're starting to hit this point where the young generation is getting so left behind, you still have these entitlement programs that are transfers of wealth from the young people to the wealthier, older people.

30:44Think about how crazy that is.

30:46Francis Foster:And it's crazy, especially because there are fewer and fewer young people relative to the number of older people. But are you kind of, I think you're agreeing with me, which I appreciate, but isn't that kind of the point that while the foreign wars are bad and wrong and immoral in some cases, it's not really them that's causing all this problem, all these problems? Oh, I mean, it's a huge driver of it, too. I mean, look, if you look at the American government, at this point, it's the entitlements, the defense budget, and the interest on the debt. But the defense budget isn't about fighting all these foreign wars.

31:16Francis Foster:The defense budget is about protecting your empire, which gives you access to you basically control all of Europe. America dominates Europe. You basically decide what happens in Western Europe. You dominate parts of Asia. You get the resources that come with that. You get whatever oil you want from wherever you need it. You get to control the world. You get you have a defense budget, not because you want to invade Iraq. You have a defense budget because you're the biggest country. I know you don't like hearing this, but in the absence of a neutral world policeman, America, someone's going to be the world.

31:50Francis Foster:Someone's going to be going around kicking ass. Right. And if you want to and if you want to have the 25 percent of the world's resources, that's you. Yeah. I mean, I just I guess I don't mind hearing it. I think that is the way things are. But it's illegal under our Constitution. The American people never decided that they want this. And in fact, the American people are saying pretty loudly, we don't want this anymore. We don't want to pour money into all these different parts of the world. And I don't agree with you that we get more bang for our buck than we otherwise would. And look, it's very easy, even going into like these abstract conversations about like empire or who controls the shipping lanes or what would fill the vacuum if we didn't do that.

32:26OK, but we still blew trillions of dollars on these. I mean, it's like eight trillion dollars for the war on terrorism. We agree it was a mistake. Fine, fine. But right. And we also agree, not just a mistake, but like a horrifically catastrophic moral mistake. Immoral. But also it's eight trillion dollars. I mean, that's a huge, huge chunk of of this. So, listen, if you're arguing that entitlement programs, yes, they account for even more of the budget. And yes, they're a huge part of this whole, you know, monstrosity of big government. So I agree with you on that. But no, I think, look, at the very least, we'd be way better off had we not just fought all these stupid wars.

33:03Francis Foster:That I agree with. I was making the point about the defense budget. The defense budget isn't for invading Iraq. The defense budget is for dominating the world. Sure. But again, I think this is more to the benefit of the elite than it is to the American people. I mean, yeah, it's like the defense budget is also why all those richest counties in America are the suburbs of Washington, D.C. is the reason why we're making millionaires if you're connected to the weapons companies. And it's, you know, I mean, like this is, yeah, it's again, a huge transfer of wealth program, essentially transferring it from the working and middle class to the ultra politically connected.

33:42And so I think essentially that, and this is true for all government spending, that's the swamp. That's the essence of what the swamp is, is that you extract money from the real economy, from people who are working, and you hand it out to the politically connected. I think it's like criminal. So that being the case, moving on, let's talk about something that nobody's going to get offended by, which is the Middle East. So because your position has been very interesting on the Middle East, it's mainly been that you've been, how should, could I characterize it as being kind of pro-Palestinian in your outlook in the way that you see it, or would you put it another way?

34:22Yeah, I wouldn't say pro-Palestinian. I mean, I'm not like, I don't even know exactly what that means. Like, I'm not saying like, I'm against what's been done to them. I would, you know, I would be against that being done to, I think, just about any group of people. So no, I don't think I'm pro-Palestinian. I think I'm pro-American. But I'm certainly a critic of Israel's destruction of Gaza. So what is it in particular? Did you feel that it was disproportionate, the violence or the, I should put it another way, the Israeli response to October 7th? Did you feel that was disproportionate? Was there another way that it should have been done?

34:59Yeah. I mean, I think there's lots of other ways that it could have been done, and certainly it was disproportionate. But I think that, I mean, I think it's horrible, and I think that it's, um, that America shouldn't be involved in it. I think it does nothing but cause a headache for our country. And you can see that all over the place. Even if you're for the war, you kind of can't deny that, like, this has caused major turmoil here. It was a major problem for the Democrats politically. It's a major problem for Donald Trump politically right now. It is not good for, as it says in the preamble to the Constitution, it is not good for domestic tranquility at the very least.

35:34But also, yeah, I just don't think I don't believe that we should be involved in like this horrific. I don't even think you can call it a war. The destruction of a captive people. Because there's a lot of people would say, and I'm sympathetic to this, which is you have Iran, which are essentially funding terror cells right the way through the Middle East. Hezbollah, Hamas, amongst others, which are effectively destabilizing the region. And there's a lot of Muslim Arabic countries who despise Iran because they see them as an existential threat to their existence, which they are. They are. They're Islamist in nature.

36:09So by that, you would argue that unless you deal with the threat of Hamas, unless you deal with the threat of Hezbollah, you are essentially going to have a Middle East, which is more unstable, which is going to become a hotbed of terrorism, which eventually is going to impact the safety of nations around the Middle East, but also in the West and in the United States. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of people who are arguing if we don't take this group out or that group out, it's going to lead to instability in the Middle East. And every single time we go to make that move, it leads to more instability in the Middle East.

36:45And I just flat out reject the idea that Iran is an existential threat to any of those Sunni states in the region. But Saudi Arabia, who are we talking about? Jordan, Egypt, like UAE. I mean, if you speak

36:56Francis Foster:to people in those countries. Yeah, I'm sure they're concerned about that. Yes, of course. And there's a Sunni Shiite beef that's been going on for many, many years. And there's a lot. But the idea that like the U.S. sock puppet states over there are really threatened by Iran, I just don't think is right. They do feel that. Yeah. OK, fine. But like, I don't think they're right about that. I don't think Iran is taking over Saudi Arabia. Like, what do we mean existential threat here? They're going to take out one of these countries? Unlikely. Take out is, you know, take out is, I mean, countries don't tend to take each other out, but go to war.

37:28Francis Foster:You know, they're fighting over interest. Like, they are a threat. Yeah, they're fighting over interest. I think that's, that's more correct. But I also think that there's an interesting thing where when you go like all these, all the like Shiite terrorist groups, or, or I guess Hamas is whatever, But if you're talking about Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, like the people who Iran have been in business with. And I think of those groups, Hezbollah the most, you know what I mean? Like there's real direct connections and training and stuff there. It's a little bit different with the Houthis and with Hamas.

38:00But again, those weren't the enemies of the American people. You know, when we go back to 9-11 and it's been really fascinating how like the war on terror just like totally shifted over to being this whole other group that has nothing to do with knocking our towers down or attacking the Pentagon or any of that. Our beef was always with the Sunni radicals and the Sunni radicals are actually at war with a lot of those groups that you're talking about. So we've weirdly also done this thing now where we've picked sides, which I would say I think has a lot more to do with security concerns for Israel than it does for the United States of America.

38:35But now we're on the side of al Qaeda in Syria. We're on the side of al Qaeda. We were in Libya. We're on the side of al Qaeda in Yemen. And so, like, no, I actually don't think that's good for for, you know, if you look over the last 15 years, the people who were destabilizing the regions the most were the bin Laden headchoppers. And that was really the major problem that we had there. And so fighting on those guys side and all of these conflicts, I don't think has done anything.

39:00Francis Foster:Well, the Sunnis have changed, right? The Saudi regime, the UAE regime, they are very not extremist. The Saudis used to spread extremism throughout Europe. They're not doing it now, the people in charge, right? So the extremists and the terrorists are mostly now being funded and spread by Iran, I think is France's point. Yeah, OK. But even that, I mean, I don't know that that's exactly right. I mean, I think you're probably right in your characterization of Saudi Arabia's evolution and the UAE. But at the same time, I mean, look, again, we all agree on this. But to go, what was the huge mistake here that Iran has all this influence in the region?

39:37It was the Iraq war. It was the dumbest thing they ever did is that these neocons were convinced. You know, I was really I was watching the other day because David Worms are did this interview that was kind of like responding to me, which is just weird and surreal feeling because it's the weird world that we're all in now. But he's like talking about he's still arguing that, like, no, if the Hashemites had taken over in Iraq, then the Shiites would have had to listen to them. And then Iran would have had to be nice or Hezbollah would have had to be nice to Israel. But the obvious truth, which was predicted by many people in real time, was that obviously we had a dual containment strategy in the 90s.

40:17Right. Obviously, if you took out Saddam Hussein, it was going to hand the region to the Shiites who were much closer allied with Iran. And that was going to increase their influence in the region. So, again, this is all George W. Bush and Barack Obama's fault. And, yeah, now that being said, I don't think that means that we should go into the next war to try to, you know, push the balance back in the other direction.

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42:02Francis Foster:When you sign up, they will ask how you heard about them, so just say trigonometry. That site again is superpower.com. I think the danger was, Dave, is that with Iran, when they use rhetoric like we want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, you know that they are funding terror cells. There is the suspicion that they've got nuclear weapons. If you say those types of words and you let's say you don't get involved and something awful happens, that's going to destabilize the world. Whatever, whatever happens, that's going to start a war. Well, no one. I don't think anyone's speculating that Iran has nuclear weapons.

42:40I don't think there's any. Well, they're on the point of maybe getting a nuclear weapons, which is why the strike happened. I guess I think that I think that look they chant mean things is not good, but that's also not a justification for a war and or it's nowhere even approaching a justification for a war. And I do think it goes beyond chanting mean things. OK, but that is what you brought up. So I'm saying like there's look, I think when people look at these things like in the same way that if you were looking at a trial, you don't just look at what the prosecution says. you look at what the defense says also.

43:16Even if it's a really, really bad person, you still look at what the defense says as well. If you talk to people, I've talked to several Iranians about this, but if you ask Iran, why do they hate America? Why do they hate America? What do you think the most common answers are? Because it's very clear. There's two that are really big that come up all the time. And it's not the same reasons why the Bin Ladenites hated us. It's kind of different things. But the two big beefs they have is that we overthrew their government in 1953 and impose the Shah on them. And the other one is that we backed Saddam Hussein when he did the worst thing he's ever done, which was launch the war, the Iraq around war.

43:52He killed 500 ,000 Iranians and used chemical weapons and all types of horrible things. Yes, they chant mean things about us. We could also look at the rhetoric out of D.C. and out of Tel Aviv. Not too friendly toward Iran either. You know, we put them on the axis of evil after 9-11, invaded and destroyed the two countries that touched them, right? Iraq and Afghanistan. And they were on the axis. So it's just kind of weird to hear Americans or Brits talk about their rhetoric and what a threat they are to the Western world. It's like, hey, let's, like, there's been a lot. John McCain was singing bomb, bomb, bomb around when he was running for president.

44:28Hillary Clinton, you know, you talk about threatening to wipe them off the map. What were her exact words, if you remember? It was something, you know, when she had to, like, overcompensate being like a woman running for president. Actually, I forget her exact words, but it was something we will totally eradicate, totally decimate Iran or all of these things. Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel,

44:49Francis Foster:what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. Whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say. But those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic. And we actually have the might to do it. And we've attacked them. They haven't attacked us.

45:25So again, I would just say that zooming out to the bigger picture, yes, Iran funds groups that are a pain in the ass to Israel. That is certainly true. It's more than a pain in the ass, Dave. Let's be fair. That was a euphemism, obviously. Yeah, but October the 7th is more than a pain in the ass. Okay, fine. But I'm saying Iran has historically funded Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis. They've sold arms. And it's like, okay. But actually, Iran is zero threat to the United States of America. They do not have nuclear weapons. They do not have the capability to hit America if they did have those nuclear weapons.

46:01And the idea of launching a war of choice, a war of aggression, because you say they chant mean things. And what if we didn't do anything? And then something bad happens. I just think you're nowhere near the realm of like a just war.

46:12Francis Foster:No, no, I that I totally agree with. But that isn't remotely what's happened here. No one's launched a war on Iran, a preemptive war on Iran. What Israel in the U.S. just did. They call it the 12 day war. So what happened is, and this is why I think it's useful to come back to October 7th. October 7th happened, and then it became very clear that Iran has been funding the organizations that have been attacking Israel this entire time. Now, you may agree or disagree about Israel being an ally, should be an ally or not of the United States, but Israel is an ally of the United States. So to the extent that and, you know, we had Yossi Cohen, the former director of Mossad on the show to talk about the nuclear secrets they stole from Iran, which then they gave to the United Nations and everybody else to see for themselves.

46:59Francis Foster:I mean, it's very clear Iran would like to have a nuclear weapon. And by the way, when we asked Yossi, why do they want one? He said because it allows them to project power in the region, which is why anyone wants a nuclear weapon. Right. I think also the deterrent, you know, I mean, and it's not even clear to me that they wanted a nuclear weapon. and forgive me, I'm not taking Mossad's word for it that they do. It's not taking their word, it's the documents they stole. Well, sure, but they were, look, they were very clearly, I mean, so after 9-11, right, Bush puts the axis of evil of Iraq around North Korea.

47:30Okay, so North Korea races to get a nuke. They get nuclear weapons. We've left them alone ever since. Saddam Hussein in 2002 tells the UN, I'll allow inspections regimes to come in, kind of waving the white flag, where the Gaddafi later does the same thing. We'll get rid of our chemical weapons program. We'll get rid of our nuclear program. All of this. We go in and topple both of those guys and they get killed publicly. Iran goes the middle, you know, so like North Korea developed nuclear weapons. Those other countries got rid of all their weapons. Iran went, hey, we're going to hang out here.

48:04We're going to let the world know that we've mastered the fuel cycle. We can break out and get a weapon if we want to. But we're not doing that yet. A kind of standoff of like, don't attack us because we could make a nuke, but, you know, we don't want to make it. But, you know, this kind of this vague game, but it's a latent deterrent. That's the idea here. And then they can negotiate from there. And that's where they were sitting down to negotiate, like what level of enriched uranium they would be at. So essentially, I guess the point is that it's hard to then look at them and go, this is very suspicious that you haven't gotten rid of your entire nuclear program.

48:37It's like, well, the last guys who got rid of their nuclear program ended up sodomized to death in front of an angry crowd of people, and the country that got nukes gets left alone.

48:45Francis Foster:I totally agree with that, which is one of the reasons I actually believe that if the US and Europe doesn't help Ukraine have a peaceful solution that works, you're going to have loads of other countries pursuing nuclear weapons, because if no one else is going to protect you, you might as well get a nuke. Like, if Ukraine had nukes, it wouldn't have been invaded, right? Yeah, probably not. This is why one of my concerns about allowing these things to get out of hand is actually it helps nuclear proliferation. But the point about October 7th, which is why this is important, is ultimately you and I can agree, and Francis I'm sure does too, the war in Iraq was a mistake.

49:17Francis Foster:Lots of mistakes have been made on foreign policy. The question is what do you do when you are in the situation when October 7th has happened, right? And this is a, you know, we've had people who have different perspectives on this conflict, as you know. Bassem Yusuf was one of them. and I asked them what I think is a very legitimate question. It's like, what should Israel have done? Forget about the occupation. Let's accept all of that has already happened. Let's accept it. And I don't want to argue about it. I don't want to go into history because everyone's got their own arguments and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

49:49Francis Foster:But it's happened. What should Israel have done? And what, I mean, we were just on Rogan's show and I think Rogan agrees way more with you than he does with us about this. But he was like, yeah, if this happened to America, we'd be as bad, if not worse. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. You know, it's we could get into that. But let me just say I'll say this first and then I will very directly answer your question. But first, I will say I don't think it's like I get what Basim was saying to you about that, too. Like, I understand the argument of being like like I could say that the example I made at that Charlie Kirk event with the now infamous Charlie Kirk event.

50:22But the comments that I made was like, hey, look, if you're pro-life, it's not like incumbent on you to have a plan for the baby's education or daycare or something like that. Like, you could just say, I'm against this option because I find this morally unacceptable. And then you figure it out for the rest. So, like, my point is, like, you can just oppose what Israel did to Gaza and not have to come up with a solution. But I think it's also a fair question to ask. Well, I think it's fine to say this is morally over the line.

50:47Francis Foster:No, not really, because ultimately they have to do something. Okay, well, fine. But, no, I mean, I also, saying that, I also think it's an interesting question and kind of a thought experiment. So I can go to October 8th. I can't change anything that's happened before that. I have to inherit that world. And then what would we do after October 8th? Well, look, I mean, I do think first and foremost, I think Netanyahu should have resigned in disgrace. I mean, Netanyahu's entire political career has been very openly built around thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state. Forget about Netanyahu.

51:17No, no, no. But this isn't, you're asking me the question.

51:19Francis Foster:I'm asking what, no, I'm asking, I'm not asking what Netanyahu, I'm saying what should Israel have done? Right. Well, he's the prime minister of Israel. So this is part of it. Netanyahu resigned. Look, also just the fact that. Dave Smith is now appointed prime minister of Israel following Netanyahu's resignation. What does Dave Smith do? Well, sure, sure. But I'm just saying, I mean, also the fact that it was his whole plan to prop up Hamas and keep them in power. That should be enough that you get out of the way now. Fine. First off, there should be a real investigation, man. And this is, I mean, this is something that still to this day, I know, of course, look, obviously there's a million clips of Charlie Kirk saying how much he loves Israel.

51:52And then there's other clips that they're all circulating. but his first reaction on the Patrick David podcast, which he did read, you know, he said that again later at speeches and stuff, um, was like this, it is kind of bizarre that, and I've, I've talked to like, uh, military experts who have said the exact same thing. They've been like, look, there is something, and I'm not alleging anything. I don't know. You know, I'm not saying it was a false flag or something like that. I don't think that's the case.

52:15Francis Foster:So what do you think it is? What is it that you think an investigation will? Well, I mean the massive intelligence, failure, how the most surveilled area of the world got into the biggest fortress in the world, and there was such a long delay in areas of a response. I mean, that really should... But what do you think that likely points to? I really don't know. Because everyone we've spoken to goes... You know, we've spoken to former soldiers, people who've served in the IDF, all kinds of people like that, and they basically say, look, we messed up on a whole set of levels. the intelligence people like Yossi blame the IDF, the IDF blame someone else.

52:54Francis Foster:And that tends to be how these things go down, really. But I also, with all respect, do get the sense that quite a lot of people that talk about, well, why did it take them six hours to do this and that? I mean, we've had former British paratrooper on the show goes, well, look, in the UK, we've got, I don't remember the exact stats, but we've got like X thousand soldiers who are like on prime active duty. but that's a 24-hour call-up situation. Right, right. We don't have, you know, thousands of people on a one-hour response time where they're in the barracks, they just pick up a rifle and head to the front line.

53:27Francis Foster:So I think there's some pretty reasonable explanations for how that could have happened. No, no, quite possibly. But what I get, with all respect, is that quite a lot of people who ask the question seem to be implying something, but they never say what it is that they're implying. No, I mean, well, Charlie asked the question, was there a stand-down order? I don't know. I mean, I, you know, I don't know. But it does seem, it does seem to me something really worthy of investigation. And really getting to the bottom of that. But Netanyahu did say this when we interviewed him, right? What? The investigation is super necessary once the war is over.

53:58Yeah, right. Once the war is over. Okay, fine.

54:00Francis Foster:But you can't have an investigation in the middle of a war. I guess. Especially to your point with the person who oversaw the disaster. I'm not sure exactly why can't you have an investigation while they're bombing Gaza? Why do the bombs have to stop dropping before we can look into that? Because they're running a war effort. Imagine being investigated while you're trying to manage a war. That doesn't work. I guess. I don't exactly understand that. But maybe. Do you not? Well, I don't know. No, I mean, I think you can still investigate. Okay, well, imagine you run a podcast, which is a lot easier than running a war, right?

54:27Francis Foster:Well, sometimes it feels like it. Right. But imagine you were under the greatest scrutiny in America, being investigated by every fucking department. This is actually how I feel when I'm running my podcast. You're not far off. Well, you've got to stop smoking weed then, because it's not that bad. But imagine you are being investigated by every department, and if you are found to have been responsible for a mistake that you made on your podcast, or someone that works for you made a mistake that then you have to cop the blame for, you get the electric chair. Would that affect your ability to run a podcast?

55:03Francis Foster:I would say yes. Yeah, I guess so, but then at the same time, it's also an awfully convenient thing to be able to say, I'll prosecute this war. And as soon as I'm done prosecuting the war, then you can start investigating. I don't think there's an incentive there to keep the thing going. I don't think anyone who is in any way blameable for October 7th is desperate for that investigation to come as quickly as possible. Sure. I totally agree. Of course. But let's so come back. So back to the who's resigned in disgrace. Dave Smith is prime minister of Israel. Well, look, I would I would say that I think there are, again, like, you know, even with, like, what you're talking about with Rogan, and where I think people go, like, well, imagine Mexico attacked America in this way.

55:44Like, what would we do to Mexico? But I also do think that, like, there is, there's a really fundamental difference between Gazans attacking Israel and Mexico attacking America. Because Mexico, although obviously there's a huge power discrepancy between our two governments, They are a government with the military and some degree of sovereignty. And it the it's much more it's much more like a Native American reservation. But but a Native American reservation where we never gave the Native American citizenship. And it's not a Native American reservation the way American Native American reservations are where they can come and go as freely as they please.

56:25And it's like it's just not, you know, we never gave the Native American citizenship. We still hold them on these reservations. We've had a blockade around this reservation and an occupation going back 60 years. No, in that scenario, I would not find it justified for the American military to start carpet bombing the reservation. No, in fact, I think you would have a responsibility to make this a police action like you have to arrest these people. And before Netanyahu, I mean, there was a terrorism problem since the creation of the state of Israel, partially the Zionists and partially the Arabs.

56:58But there was but throughout the entire history of Israel, it was only Netanyahu who ever treated the terrorism problem as like a problem for the regular old military. It was always targeted assassinations, special operations. Again, Gaza is the most surveilled area in the world. They can wait these guys out. They can touch them. They can target them. Now, again, it might put IDF soldiers at more risk than sometimes. that's a thing that all modern armies accept, that we will increase the risk to our own guys to fight wars in more moral ways than we have in the past. But I think that it should have been there was just a way to do it that would have, I mean, short of like, right on October 8th, right away, where they cut the electricity, cut the water, cut all that, just essentially announcing that we're at war with the civilian population.

57:50I mean, look, dude, I know, listen, And I know me and you, like, see, like, we don't see eye to eye on this. I know we're on different sides of this. But just even saying, like, did you see, like, a few weeks ago when the ceasefire deal first starts, right? I'm going to ask you guys genuinely. So Hamas at one point, or Israel accuses Hamas. Let's just say they're right. Hamas is slow rolling, returning the dead remains of some of the hostages. All the living hostages have been returned. But there are remains of dead hide. And Israel accuses them of slow rolling. Let's even say they were. And so as a response to that, they go, we're having the aid, halving, cutting in half the aid that's getting into Gaza.

58:25As a response to Hamas, slow rolling dead remains. Not saying that doesn't mean anything, but like dead people are a little bit different than alive people. You're going to cut off the aid to women and children because of like that's it's war. Doesn't that like on some human level, don't you guys go? Yeah, that's wrong. Like you shouldn't you shouldn't punish the civilian population like that. Well, when we launched our first bit of Trigonometry merch, we learned very quickly how important five-star reviews are. We found out the hard way how shipping is so often just as important as a product itself.

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59:57Francis Foster:The issue is that the police action thing is really what this is all about, right? Because if you see this as a war, I mean, historically speaking, no country at war is required to provide aid to enemy civilians. This has never happened. Well, it's not a matter of being required to provide it. It's a matter of blocking the aid that international organizations are trying to get through. But whenever any country has been at war, this really hasn't been a concern of theirs ever. And Israel is doing way more than any country at war has done on this front. But it doesn't matter. I don't defend Israel.

1:00:27Francis Foster:I don't say that everything they've done is right. I don't think they've done it the way that I would have done it. You are really not going to like the way I would have done it. And I, but what I'm trying to find out from you is you say police action and that's, we had this debate, but not face to face where we exchanged videos on this, right? And we talked about Native American reservation and you say police, police action. You've got 50 ,000. So, you've got, can we say, you know, you're not going to be a jihadi terrorist, jihadi as in willing to die for the cause. Is that fair? You shake your head.

1:00:59Francis Foster:Maybe. I mean, I don't know. I think, I don't think any of us really know for sure. But yeah, I think the Israeli government was claiming something like that. Are you disputing the numbers or the jihadism? I just don't know. I don't know what the number of jihadists who are willing to die. I just don't know. It's the number you're unsure about. Yeah. Okay. So it's not the jihadi part. No, there are jihadists, obviously. They are prepared to die? Yes, yes, there are. So you've got, can we say just so that we do agree, like 40 to 50? Maybe, maybe for the sake of argument. 40 to 50 ,000 people in a highly geographically concentrated area.

1:01:34Francis Foster:Tiny area, right? Tiny, tiny area. 50 ,000 people with pretty sophisticated weaponry, actually. IEDs everywhere, booby traps everywhere, anti-tanker missiles, sniper rifles. This is a militarized terrorist organization. Can you really, do you really think you can deal with that in a police action? Well, I think you can certainly deal with it with targeted assassinations, special operations, the way Israel's dealt with their terrorism problem for their entire existence. But the point again about this is that I think that when you've, look, if you occupy, occupying a country, you know, let's say like after a war, you occupy a country for six months or for a couple of years or something like that.

1:02:16Israel has been occupying the West Bank and Gaza for longer than the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe. It's a 60-year... And at a certain point, you're like, you know, like there was this big thing where they just voted to annex the West Bank when J.D. Vance was there just to be disrespectful to America. Even though they're our welfare country, they can still disrespect our most... Let's just think about the most basic of asks from America. Like, could you just not... Could you just not annex? But look, the truth is, it's already been annexed. All of this is Israel. You know, Israel's had, and yes, I do think there's an obligation at that point that these people are your people, whether you acknowledge that or not, when you've had control of them for 60 years, you're the sovereign in these areas.

1:03:00Then like, yeah, I think.

1:03:01Francis Foster:But how do you police 50 ,000 armed jihadis? How do you, how do you deal with that as a police action? Imagine you had the native Americans. They were, they were pretty bad ass boys when you, you know, when you guys first came here, imagine you had 50 ,000 of them in a, in a, in Manhattan, right? And they just went on a slaughtering and raping and rampage, right? And then you're going, let's send in the cops. I don't know that there's anyone who thinks that's realistic. All right. Well, I mean, I don't know. But tell me how that's realistic. I'm open to it. Well, I'm just saying that, well, look, as I just said, Israel has a long history of targeted assassinations and special options.

1:03:38But it's different.

1:03:39Francis Foster:Because October 7th is a different level of threat to anything that's ever happened before. You kept these people occupied for over 60 years. You never gave them citizenship. But we already baked all of that in. Yeah, I know. But I'm just making the point that whether you think it's logistically difficult to do or not, the truth is that they just destroyed the entire strip. And Hamas hasn't been eradicated anyway. But that's I agree with. But what I'm saying is it's not logistically difficult. I just think it's wishful thinking to imagine that a threat. So here's how I see it. And you tell me where you think I'm wrong.

1:04:13Francis Foster:October 7th happens. If you're the prime minister of Israel, you shit yourself. You go, fuck, we're being invaded. Our people are being slaughtered. You might also be worried about the blowback on you. You were in charge. I hear all the things that I think you might say. And then you go, we can't live with this. That's what any president or prime minister of a country that had been invaded in that way would say, we cannot have this on our doorstep. I don't care about history. I don't care who's right, who's wrong. We can't have this, right? The people who did this, the people who funded this, the people who orchestrated this, the people who participated in this, they need to hand themselves in for justice or we're going to kill them all.

1:04:50Francis Foster:That's what America would do, right? I think that's a fair claim. I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean, look, I mean - So then they go in and they are trying to eliminate Hamas. They're not trying to go in with special forces and take out Sinwar. They're not trying to take out this guy or the commander of this. They're trying to destroy Hamas. That's what they're trying to do. Now, if you think that's not the right reaction, I understand. I think most people would say, if this has happened to your country, America, Britain, that's what the overwhelming majority of people would demand of their government.

1:05:26Francis Foster:If the Native Americans had done this, that that would be the nature of the response. I don't believe it's credible to say that can be addressed on a policing basis. That's a large scale military operation and there's no other way to do it. But what can be accomplished? Destroying Hamas? Degrading Hamas to the point where he just can't come back. Yeah. Now, I don't think that's been done, but okay. I mean, so look, I mean, I guess in, in your, in your view, it wouldn't be, I wouldn't be able to degrade Hamas through police action or special ops or something like that. And in my view, it's like, you're also not able to degrade Hamas, but my view comes with the bonus added of not slaughtering a hundred thousand people.

1:06:07So that's kind of the difference. But let me just say, can I just, to your point, because I get what you're saying. And I do think there is something. They have degraded Hamas though, Dave. It's like. They've killed a whole lot of them and probably created another generation of Hamas that will, that they will be fighting for years to come. And we'll see how this. I'm getting very interrupted.

1:06:21Francis Foster:I get excited. No, it's fine. I'm guilty of the same thing. But I will say that, like, I do think there's this tendency for for people to say, like, well, look, if you want to put yourself in the in the and me and Coleman talked about this a bit. But like, if you want to put yourself in the Israeli shoes, like, I'm fine with that. I think then we should also put ourselves in the Palestinian shoes and then we should put ourselves in the American shoes. Well, that's the British shoes, for that matter, because that's what I really am concerned with. So I would say, first of all, I think it was Aaron Matei actually who had the line, which I really liked a lot, where he said in order to buy Israel's justification for this, you have to accept the premise that nothing can justify October 7th.

1:07:01But that October 7th can justify anything. And there is something where you go like, look, OK, I'm sure Israel could look at October 7th and say we find this to be intolerable and we are entitled to a violent response. And if some innocent people get killed in that violent response, well, I'm sorry, but this just happened to us and we have a right to do that. You could get there from the Palestinian perspective, too. It's different, though. I can tell you why. There are differences.

1:07:25Francis Foster:But the differences are what matters here. OK, well, I don't know. I'm not sure they are, but go ahead. Here's the difference. The difference with, say, you mentioned, for example, the Soviet Union occupying Eastern Europe. When Eastern Europe wanted to break away from the Soviet Union, they didn't invade Moscow and rape women. They didn't take hostages. the difference is that armed resistance, look, man, we're men. If people came to our place and started putting us in chains, we'd rise up, we'd pick up a rifle, we'd engage in armed resistance. But when you deliberately target civilians, it's not the same.

1:08:02Francis Foster:It's not the same as dropping bombs on terrorist houses who deliberately put their families in those houses. It's not the same. And that's the difference. Yeah. See, I just, I guess if it wasn't for all of the reports over the last two years than like maybe I would, you know, I don't know. Is it that different than IDF soldiers taking target practice at kids as multiple doctors in Gaza have reported? Is it that much different than the, what was it called? The where's daddy AI scheme where they were following the terrorists back to their homes to take out their families too? I mean, like, no, I don't.

1:08:33Francis Foster:Do you think Israel is deliberately killing civilians? By definition, yes. By what definition? Well, in the sense that if you take an action that you know is going to result in civilians being killed, then it's deliberate. But the rules of war say that that is what you should do. The rules of war are a construct. I mean, listen. Sure, sure. We're talking about morality or logic here. It's like, look. Let's talk about logic. Well, you take it. Look, you're, again, like, again, all the reports, I mean, which you could go through. You go read Dave DeCamp's reporting for the last two years. And every single day there's been an article about another atrocity that was being committed against them.

1:09:10Now, there certainly is a difference between, like, the primitive nature of Hamas's attack and the barbaric nature of Hamas's attack. But at the same time, the end result of it is innocent people being slaughtered. I know it is. But there is a difference between Nazi Germany attacking Poland and the Western allies responding.

1:09:39Francis Foster:Would you agree? There is a difference. They both result in people being killed, but there is a difference. Because it's about the conduct and who initiates that particular phase of it. Right? Is that fair? Yeah. But I think that... So this is the difference with October the 7th. This is why it's a different category of violence, in my opinion, because you've got a situation where a band of terrorists deliberately invade another place and they don't attack. I mean, sure, they attack some idea. They kill the bunch of idea. They attack some idea facilities. But really, it's about taking Israelis hostage, raping them, killing women, killing children, dragging them off to the dungeons and holding them there for power.

1:10:22Francis Foster:That's not the same as what the IDF is doing. Would you accept that? No, I don't really think that's right. I mean, again, I think there's if it makes sense, I just like to use like an example. It's almost like, you know, you could say like, you know, like Eastern European countries, as you know, well, right. Where there's a lot of corruption and there'll be like low level primitive corruption type stuff. Like you could if you're in, I don't know if you there's countries in your if you're in Romania, it's kind of like a known thing, which is true. I think in Mexico, too. Like if you get pulled over by the cops, you could slip them some money and get out of it.

1:10:50Now, that's very low level corruption. Right. In the United States of America. good luck doing that. You know, if you if you get pulled over for a DUI and you try to slip a cop a couple hundred bucks, I can I mean, maybe one time it'll work. I can assure you that is not a good idea. And you're just going to get another charge. We don't have low level primitive corruption like that. What we have is the prison guards union lobbies for mandatory minimums for marijuana. We have corruption on a much more sophisticated. But in a sense, it is still corruption. Right. So in the sense that, yes, Israel, it's very, when it's, when you're having a fighter pilot bomb a building and you say it's collateral damage, I understand where that is not, it doesn't get as visceral reaction.

1:11:30It's not as barbaric and primitive as like Hamas breaking into Israel and just kind of killing everything that moves and then dragging as many people back to hold in captivity. But again, Israel, just in this, when they did the swap just a couple weeks ago after the ceasefire, Israel released 1 ,700 Gazans that they've been holding without charges of anything. They've been doing this, by the way, since well before this latest conflict in Gaza.

1:11:54Francis Foster:But you can't compare those two things either. Well, I mean - Hold on. Hold on. You can't compare those - You can compare them. Well, you can't. Maybe you can't equate them. You certainly can compare them. Okay, fine. You can't equate them, which is what I'm really saying. You can't compare people, many of whom are violent terrorists. And many maybe aren't. And many aren't. and people who've been taking hostage by a war party of Hamas crossing into Israel while they butcher and rape. It's not the same thing. Again, I'm not saying it's the same thing. Well, you kind of are. No, I'm not. I'm not.

1:12:25I'm saying that, like, they are awfully similar. You know, like, if I don't think, like, if you, as you said, we're men, and we're men with families and stuff like that. I think that, like, yes, if a Hamas militant broke into your house and grabbed your kid and brought him back over there, I don't know that that actually is that much different than someone in an IDF uniform breaking into your house, grabbing your kid, and going to hold them. By the way, there's been reports going back decades and decades of torture in these Israeli detentions. They hold Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

1:12:55In fact, I think it was 1999 when they outlawed, finally, what they called moderate interrogation practices. Moderate interrogation, including tying them up and binding them and blasting loud music, things that we would consider torture. So like, yes, it's much more systematized. It's much more sophisticated. It's not as primitive. But in the same way that I went, like, the prison guard union lobbying for mandatory minimums really is that it is as much corruption as just paying off a cop when you're drunk behind the wheel. It's just at a much larger scale. And the point is that those the people, right, like the woman who you hear wailing as she hears her one-year-old screaming for her from underneath a building of rubble, who's literally being tortured to death, you know, just his bones crushing and screaming for his mother.

1:13:44She's feeling the same thing that those is like she's as much of a human being. She's the exact same thing that those Israeli parents felt when their kids got slaughtered at that festival. The same thing me and you would be feeling if it was our kids in that situation. And so the point is that, look, obviously, I'm not equating it. I'm not saying they're the same things because, look, I'd be much more comfortable being next door neighbors with a drone operator, you know what I mean, who is drone bombing weddings in Yemen or something like that, than I would being next door neighbors with a Hamas terrorist, you know what I mean?

1:14:17Because there is a difference in the way more sophisticated, civilized men can compartmentalize things like that in their life. But I do think that, like, if you're talking about this conflict and you're going, put yourself in their perspective, put yourself in their perspective, the end result is that they're going through that at a much larger scale than the Israelis ever have. Of course.

1:14:34Francis Foster:But that's what happens when you start a war with a much bigger force, right? It's very debatable who started what here. Everyone claims they're reacting to the other one. I know. But October 7th is a sugeneres thing. It's a one of a kind thing, right? You shouldn't have to rearrange your life to deal with hair loss. With HIMSS, expert care is right there when you need it. Simple, online and personalized. HIMSS provides access to prescription hair loss treatments with clinically proven ingredients like finasteride and minoxidil. These treatments can stop hair loss and regrow hair in as little as three to six months.

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1:16:38Francis Foster:But October 7th is a sugeneres thing. It's a one of a kind thing, right? And the reason this really matters is, you know, I think you paint a very important picture. I don't think enough people, particularly on the pro-Israel side, get the scale of the suffering in Gaza, right? But if I were that father, I would be going, why are we here? How has this happened? And what I'd be saying is, why did you have to go and do October 7th? Why did you make me put a weapon cache in my house? Why is Hamas doing this to me? We were living in relative peace. The Israelis had left. I'm not saying it was great.

1:17:15Francis Foster:I'm not saying it was the greatest place to live in the world, right? But we were living in relative peace. The Israelis had left. I could go and work across the border, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now I've got IDF bombs on my head because you went and raped people. Oh, well, I mean, look, I don't disagree with that. If you're saying the people of Gaza should be upset with Hamas for October 7th, absolutely. And in fact, there were actually protests against Hamas. Now, which also is a very different thing than like protesting in Israel. You know what I mean? That takes real balls to do. And so, yeah, absolutely.

1:17:45But I also would probably think the same thing on the Israeli side, that you, after October 7th, How would you not sit there and go Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history? His whole thing was to deny the Palestinians a state by propping up Hamas so that we would never have to. How would you not have that same reaction if you're an Israeli? Well, you did this to us, Bibi.

1:18:04Francis Foster:I think a lot of Israelis do feel that way. And yeah, they should. They both should. Listen, everyone should hate the government they live on. That is my central point. We probably agree on that. And I think a lot of Israel Israelis do feel that way. And I'm pretty certain that when the war is over, I don't think Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to be reelected. We can agree on that, yeah. The reason I bring this up, though, Dave, and I think this is really important for us to clarify, is the scale of the suffering is something not enough people, as I say on the pro-Israel side, give due credence to.

1:18:35Francis Foster:But I also think that a lot of people who are anti-Israel, they use the scale of the suffering to confuse the issue of who bears ultimate responsibility for that suffering. And that is really the area of disagreement, right? Because we can all agree that what's happened... Look, man, I'm a father. When I see what's happening in Gaza, it makes me sick. And it should, and it should make everyone sick. But the reason we disagree is that I believe the people who are responsible for that are the people who did October the 7th. And I'm on the record of saying this. if Hamas had attacked IDF installations, I was totally undecided about Israel and Gaza until this war broke out.

1:19:18Francis Foster:I didn't, you know, we had Melanie Phillips on the show in like 2019. And I was like, oh, Melanie, you tell this great story about the creation of the state of Israel. I think it's a little murk. Like, I was undecided, right? When October the 7th happened, I was like, the people who are responsible for what comes after this is the people who did this. Because any leader of any country would react in something like this way, or probably worse. Yeah, I mean, I guess I just think that the same exact logic could be applied in the reverse. And to say, listen, 60 years of brutal occupation, man, whatever comes after this, you're responsible for that.

1:19:54Now, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. But that isn't true, though. Well, it's as true as what you said.

1:20:00Francis Foster:No, it's not, because I'm not saying... See, take another example, Russia, Ukraine, right? Like, you know, I have Ukrainian family, I have Russian family too, and it's a tragic conflict. They're engaged in a brutal war, and it's a much more parity war, therefore it's much more brutal, actually, right? There's way more people, men on both sides being killed. If Ukrainians, who I support, went on a rampage in western parts of Russia and started raping women and taking children hostage, I would be like, there is no fucking way this is justified. There is no oppression, killing, butcher, murdering in Ukraine that Russian soldiers have done that justifies this.

1:20:39Francis Foster:This is an outrage that is completely unacceptable. It's a different type of thing to the conflict you've been engaging in. And if you do this and the Russians then go ham, you cause this is how I feel about it. And that's the difference. Yeah, I guess I just don't. So certainly what I would agree with is that right, like no matter what. and I think this almost just comes down to individualism versus collectivism. You don't have a right to just kill innocent people, no matter how much you've been suffering. It doesn't matter. Even if the Israeli government... It depends what happened. Well, I'm saying that, say, in the example of Hamas, or in the example you just used with Ukraine, it doesn't matter how brutal the Israeli government's been to you, you still can't just go kill teenagers at a festival.

1:21:23It's not just a justified response. So I completely agree with you on that. But then also, as I said before, cutting off aid to the civilian population who's war-torn after two years.

1:21:35Francis Foster:How much aid is Russia providing to Ukraine? Hold on, let me just finish my point here. Cutting off that aid is also not a legitimate response to, like, Hamas slow-rolling the dead remains of civilians. Okay, so how much... But is, like, this is what I'm saying to you. Russia's not providing any aid to Ukraine. Yeah, but it also doesn't have a blockade around Ukraine. As much as it can, it does. They deliberately... Ukraine has been getting... There's been no shortage of aid that's been getting into Ukraine. Because we're trying to help. But the Russians have done everything possible to cut off rail tracks and the supplies and everything.

1:22:05Francis Foster:They're bombing logistical infrastructure in rural... I 100 % think that if Russia... Russia's not providing any aid. No, no, I agree. And no one's saying, oh, why aren't they providing aid? Because they're two countries. Nobody's defending what Russia's doing. Nobody here is saying like... Well, okay, maybe not nobody. Have you been to Austin? Okay, fair enough. To Washington? To D.C.? They're defending... Okay, fair enough. Well, look, even that, Washington, D.C., has been funding Ukraine to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars over the last few years. But that's not my point. My point is no one is criticizing Russia for not providing aid to Ukraine.

1:22:39Francis Foster:No one is criticizing Russia. I think people have all over the civil rights for invading. But they're not criticizing for not providing aid. No one says they have a duty to feed Ukrainian civilians. Well, it's also because the Ukrainian civilians aren't food insecure. They don't need that. I mean, it's like, look, like you said, there's more parity in that conflict. It's been much more military deaths on military deaths. And so it's just not the same dynamic. But yes, look, if Russia had Ukraine under a full blockade and then they invaded Ukraine and they weren't letting food in from the international community, absolutely.

1:23:09You would say you have an obligation to allow this aid. But they wouldn't.

1:23:13Francis Foster:Sure, sure. Okay, fine. And no other country would either. Well, I don't know about that. I don't think no other country would. When the U.S. was fighting in Iraq, they cut off electricity and water to the cities that they were sieging. It's what everyone does. Yes, to certain states. It is. Okay, but yeah, but also... It's how you fight a war. Yeah, but also, okay, you would... That's why war is terrible, by the way. But also, yeah, I agree with that. But so also, you didn't have George W. Bush going to the army and calling them Amalek. You also didn't have, like, people in the highest levels of the U.S.

1:23:44government floating out plans of ethnically cleansing all of Iraq and then taking it over for ourselves. And there's just many different things in this conflict. But yes, we're all in agreement that the war in Iraq was sure terrible. So that's not really the moral standard. I've been hugging the mic for like an hour. Sorry, Francis. No, it's all good. So, you know, the great thing about our conversation is I think it shows new media at its very best in that we're having a conversation. It's respectful. No one's trying to misrepresent you know things get a little bit passionate at times yeah as they would just like sex yeah exactly not the way i do it but all in all i think this displays the very best in new media people on different sides good faith having a disagreement finding common ground in certain instances disagreeing on others but ultimately with the moment we walk away we're going to be like actually you know what that was brilliant yeah we enjoyed it i think everybody watches or listen to it is going to have a blast.

1:24:39The issue comes with new media is that there is real issues or I have real issues. And let's explore what you think in particular about this kind of this new medium where you have people interviewing certain people who have ideas that I personally think are dangerous, you know, Holocaust and whatever else. And look, you can bring whoever you want on your show. For instance, we've invited Nick Fuentes on the show. He hasn't responded. We'd love to have Nick on to have a full robust conversation and actually challenge some of his views and some of the things he says, which I personally find despicable and highly dangerous.

1:25:15Where do you sit on that whole conversation and that whole debate? Well, I certainly agree with what the first part of that, you know, and that I think there's also something where I just I just think like with the three of us, I think that's kind of just our personality. Anyway, it's like we're interested in these ideas. We want to talk about them. We want to debate them at some point. But And I'm just like, yeah, we'd go grab a beer after this. And part of that is just, well, it's just kind of, what else are we going to do? I mean, like, what's the alternative to that? You know what I mean? And anytime you're talking about a political issue, almost anytime when you're talking about an important one, it is a matter of life and death or close to that.

1:25:53I mean, you know, if you're having a conversation with Bernie Sanders about health care, you know, from my perspective, Bernie Sanders' health care proposals is going to lead to like serious suffering and deaths and all. But man, I mean, what are we going to do? Just all go to war with each other always and all hate anyone? Particularly also, like I'm a Jewish guy who's very critical of Israel. So like, you know, I got tons of family who have the exact opposite. What am I going to hate my family now? I got to hate my, you know, democratic cousin or something like that. Like, it's just, it just seems crazy.

1:26:23And so I think like the only path forward is for us to have these conversations. And, you know, like, so to your point of like, are there dangerous ideas? I mean, I think there's dangerous ideas all around us. And I think, I think socialism's a dangerous idea. I think fascism is a dangerous idea. I think, you know, wars of choice are dangerous ideas, but right. We just got to be able to talk about these things. And I think that that's one of the best things about the new media. Then with, with Fuentes specifically, like in this case, and I've always been against all types of cancel culture, even when it's just like, you know, even if the even if the government wasn't involved the way they were with the big tech companies, I'd still be against big tech companies kicking people off because like that just isn't good.

1:27:05It's not the right path. But with Fuentes specifically in this case, I think as you guys know part of the reason why you're saying you wanted him to come on the show. He's just gotten so huge that it's almost we're at a point where like we need to have this conversation. It makes absolutely no sense anymore for like, you know, hearing, um, hearing Mark Levin call to cancel Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and kick him off social media, kick him out of these things, de-platform him off. It just kind of reminds me of like a couple of years ago when Brian Stelter was calling to cancel Joe Rogan.

1:27:38And you're just like, who are you? Who do you think you are in the rankings of this thing? Like, and I just, I don't mean, I'm not, I'm not saying like popularity makes you right, but popularity does make you relevant. It does make you a relevant part of the discussion. And I think that the best thing that could happen with Fuentes, the rise of Nick Fuentes, is that he does a bunch more of these shows. And I think there should be more debates, more conversations. But I would also say, I think with the same attitude that we have right now, we're just like, hey, let's talk about what we disagree with, but do it in a respect of like, let's talk about this like civilized men.

1:28:19Look, I'm fully in agreement with you, Dave, where cancelling people, kicking people off platforms, it doesn't work. It drives ideas underground. It's only going to go to a platform where these ideas aren't going to be challenged. It's going to give them a certain amount of, you know, dangerousness, sexiness that they simply don't deserve. My issue comes with people when they interview the Nick Fuentes of the world and they do not give an appropriate pushback on ideas. That's where I think it gets dangerous because then you just have people saying what the saying the horrific ideas and you go, where's the pushback?

1:28:55Where's the challenge? Because if you don't push back on people's ideas, in my opinion, you're effectively endorsing them. I don't agree with that. I just don't. I don't agree that if you don't push back on someone's ideas, you're endorsing it. I mean, I was talking about this the other day on some show. But I just, the example that just came to my mind was this guy, Ben Burgess, who I like. He's a nice guy. He's a democratic socialist. And he wrote this book. And I believe the title of the book was, it was called Canceling Comedians While the World Burns. And this was back like a few years ago.

1:29:26And it was like, I don't know, 2018, 2019. Or maybe it was around that time. But he was talking about how like, you know, you got all these left-wing activists and they're canceling Louis C.K. Or they're going after this guy. Meanwhile, we still don't have universal healthcare, or universal housing or universal childcare. I just thought that was a really interesting book and an interesting take that I kind of agreed with. And so I interviewed him. We just talked about the book and kind of talked about that. Now, I never pushed back or argued with him, but I don't think you can deduce from that, that like, therefore I'm endorsing democratic socialism.

1:29:55Francis Foster:His ideas are not that extreme, Dave. Yeah, but - If you have a Holocaust denier who says Hitler was very cool on your show and you don't push back, that's a different thing. Well, so I guess my point would be that I'm not so sure I agree with the idea that like being pro-socialist should be viewed as that far different from being pro-Nazi or something like that. Like these are the great evil ideologies of the 20th century and they're both responsible for a lot of horror and deaths and all of that. It's been very conventional thinking for a long time that communism is kind of misguided, but fascism is kind of evil.

1:30:28And I don't, I don't think any of us actually agree with everything about it. You don't need to

1:30:31Francis Foster:persuade me about that, but your example isn't quite fair. For example, we had, uh, this will go out before the episode I'm about to mention, but we interviewed Hassan Piker, right? He basically says in the episode, he doesn't say it in terms, but he's like, I've, I sort of say, well, people call you a communist. Isn't that? And he's like, yeah, I've got no problem. Like when we interviewed him, we pushed back on stuff he said, because communism is a horrific ideology. And we talked about our family's experiences and whatever. So my point is comparing him to a kind of soft socialist who says, you know, we shouldn't cancel comedians.

1:31:00Francis Foster:We should focus on healthcare. No, but he's not a soft socialist. I mean, he's a hardcore, like, he's, I mean, I would consider him a communist. He literally argues that private businesses should be abolished and that it should all be, you know, every business should be run democratically. But does he admire Stalin? Does he said what we need is Stalin policies in America? Probably not. So that's the difference, right? Okay, fair enough. You, the trigonometry audience, understand how vital free speech is. That's why we're proud to reintroduce you to our longstanding partners, Give, Send, Go. We caught up with their founders at Jordan Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference this year, and it was clear they are not just running a crowdfunding site, they're defending a principle.

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1:32:21That's givesendgo.com. The platform that doesn't just talk about free speech. It protects it. But, okay, so again, I'm not equating the things. I'm saying the logic of saying that when you don't push back, you are therefore endorsing, I think, is faulty logic. So that's the only point I was making. But it depends on the extreme, is my point. No, but I'm saying that logic still remains no matter how extreme the person is. If you have a conversation with somebody who has the worst views in the world, and you just talked about cars, and you agreed on that, it doesn't therefore logically follow that you agree with the other stuff.

1:32:56Francis Foster:Yes, but what if you had someone on your show who says we should kill black people? Or, you know, black people are genetically inferior and therefore we should structure society in such a way that, you know, they get mistreated. Or, you know, someone who says, you know, who encourages his followers to say, I will kill, rape and die in my name, as Nick does. Are we talking Fuentes here? Yeah, yeah. I missed that one. Oh, you didn't see that one? So, and then you have that person on. And you don't talk about any of this. Right. Well, I don't know. That's kind of a problem, isn't it? Well, I mean, the thing about it.

1:33:31OK, there's a couple of things here. First of all, it's it's a unique situation. Like the Tucker having Nick Fuentes on. And I also had Nick on a couple of weeks before. That's why we're talking. It was a big deal until Tucker had him on. And now no one cares about that anymore. Tucker eclipsed me again. But like, look, there's just there's there's it's a situational and there's certain dynamics that are going on here now. So, like, I do think there's this weird, there's, to me, a little bit of a disconnect between what that interview actually was and the way that a lot of people are perceiving it, where they're saying that, like, okay, yes, it's true that Tucker, or myself for that matter, didn't go, hey, we've got you here.

1:34:09I think you're a terrible person, and here are all the awful things that you've said, and I want to fight with you for three hours about all these awful things you've said here. But I also think that Nick Foyntz is a unique thing. You know, he came up in the dark. Like, his whole brand is that he's saying the most, you know, toxic things. And he's intentionally, obviously, I mean, if you ever watch The Kid, he's doing, like, a right-wing shock jock thing. Like, there's a lot of humor involved in it. There's a lot of trolling involved in it. And there's a lot of kind of, like, getting off on I'm saying the wildest, edgiest thing.

1:34:43And in that environment, no, I actually don't think it's good. Well, let me just finish this. In that environment, I don't think the right move is to like go like, I'm appalled by what you said. To me, at least, it seemed more like the right move was to go like, all right, hey, let's talk about this. Like, look, do we actually believe this? You know, and what was interesting to me is when he talked to me, at least I know he did condemn racial hatred. He was like, yes, we shouldn't hate people just because of the race that they are. I brought up the Holocaust and I was like, you seem to be implying pretty heavily here that you don't think this happened.

1:35:13So let's argue about this because I'm pretty darn sure it happened. And he really just kind of conceded. He was like, he was like, yeah, I think it might be exaggerated. I was like, I don't really think it is because like, look at these numbers and look at this. He kind of conceded that on Tucker's show. Tucker literally said to him that it is. Listen, he goes, we are Christians and it is against my religion to hate a group of people based on being in that group. And again, he did kind of seem to concede that. Now, I don't know. Does this mean that Nick is moderating his views? Does it mean that he's trying to pull the wool over everybody's eyes and he still believes all of that stuff?

1:35:47Is he maybe a 26-year-old kid who kind of doesn't himself know whether, you know, he made a name for himself as being the edgiest, most shocking guy. Now he's become ultra huge. Now Charlie Kirk gets murdered in front of all of us. And I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world if he was moderating his views and wanted to get a little bit better. And so while I agree with you on this, I think there should be more debates. I think Ben Shapiro should debate Nick Fuentes. Honestly, I think like there's I think there should be big debates that happen. But I didn't think also in the Tucker thing and with me, too, in the context of it, they had been feuding.

1:36:19I mean, Nick had been attacking me a little while ago. And then with Tucker and him, I mean, they were like in a white hot feud where Tucker also took a swipe at him and kind of took a swing and missed by calling him a Fed without really being able to back that up or whatever, which is in this business, like, almost like the worst thing you could call someone. And so I don't know. It was like a standoff in a weird way. And I don't know. I don't I don't think that's bad. I'm still I still err on the side of it. We're not saying it's bad. We're not saying it's bad. So come back. So I guess when you were saying like attacking someone and going, I'm outraged, I'm disgusted.

1:36:55I agree. I think that's all performative nonsense. And we've had it. We've been accused of, you know, going soft on people and not showing appropriate levels of outrage. When we interview a mainstream politician like Nigel Farage, I find it childish. I'm going to be honest with you and performative. But what I do think it's a responsibility of anyone sitting in the chair is if this person is saying outrageous things is for you to get to the bottom of it. Does he genuinely believe it? Is he being like a kind of comedic edgelord? Is he saying it purely in a cynical way just to get money, clicks and attention?

1:37:30Is it a combination of all three or is he just a kid who's just somehow found himself after, you know, starting off in his mom's basement to use a hack concept of, you know, the Internet? And all of a sudden he's got this kind of huge global audience. What is it? That is that is the responsibility of the interviewer. And also as well, when Nick says the words Jews are not assimilable in society and Tucker just lets that go. We've got to be honest, Dave. We really.

1:38:01Francis Foster:I love Stalin and lets that go. You know, he said we'll come back to that. But he did. Yeah, but also. But OK, but also like that happens sometimes, as you guys know, in interviews like that would never happen with us. OK, fine. But things happen where you're like, oh, I wanted to get to this point. I wanted to debate this, too. I guarantee in this interview right now, there's views I have that you guys both think are wrong that we don't get to. Sure. Yeah. Look, I don't agree with you that broccoli is brilliant, if that's what you believe. But if you said I love Stalin, we might come back to it.

1:38:32Francis Foster:Fair enough. Especially if you are the voice of conservative America and someone comes on your show and says they love the greatest mass murderer in the ideology of your opposition, communism in history. I'm just saying people are always leaving the goat out of a conversation. It's just not fair. I have some dispute about how much of that was intentional and how much of that was not... Then there's a whole other argument of does that even really matter at a certain point? I think your correction is true. The second greatest. I'm Russian so I'm a bit biased. Fair enough. Trying to build up the numbers, right?

1:39:11Francis Foster:Those jokes could go out of context and wrong. that's a different category. And if someone, if I was the voice of conservative America and someone praised Hitler and then came on my show and also praised Stalin, I think I might sort of, I might be like, what? Sure. And isn't it reasonable to say that like, okay, I understand there's going to be people who praise Hitler and people who praise Stalin, but you can't praise both, man. Like you gotta be good. You gotta be good on the other one. I'm just saying, if someone loves Adolf Hitler, The one thing I can count on is that they're good on hating Joseph Stalin and vice versa.

1:39:46So anyway, there's that. So that gets into the question. But I think like, look, this is how I feel kind of more broadly about the thing with Nick Fuentes himself. Right. And I don't know him super well, but you know, like we hung out a little bit after we did the show. And I don't look, I feel like and I think I think I've seen you yourself talk about this and maybe even I can't remember the exact thing you said, but you might have even said that it was the most dangerous part of wokeism on the left. And I certainly know I've been on record predicting this, Jordan Peterson, and all these people have said for so many years.

1:40:19Like, our whole thing to the woke left was, you'd go, now, I don't know if I would quite put it as the worst part of it, but you'd be like, you be careful. You have no idea what you're stirring up here. 100%. And essentially, now, there's many things going on. That's one of the dynamics. But that's a big part of it, right? So now we see that emerging. We see that reaction emerging.

1:40:38Francis Foster:But you shit on white men long enough, they're going to go, well, OK, we're white and we're men and fuck you. Yeah, that's right. And right. And it's the natural response that I think young people in general would have. So my thing is that there's a whole young audience of people who listen to this guy. And I don't wish to berate them with like I want to open up the conversation and allow them to see that, like there there is legitimacy to their grievances. But there is also a very dark path that they can go down with those those grievances. right? So like, that's a big part of it. And then the other thing is like, I do think we kind of, you know, like I said this when I was interviewing Nick, where, you know, which I know, guys our age, we've all had this thought before where we're like, thank God there wasn't all this stuff around when I was a kid.

1:41:26Because my God, and I remember one of the examples that I really thought, and I'm not, I wasn't like the toughest kid, but we were like a little group of hooligans. We probably thought we were tougher than we actually were. But I remember when the, You remember when Sandman, Nicholas Sandman, I believe was his name, the Catholic kid. Sandman. Sandman, who was just smiling at the Native American. And then when the full video came out, you were like, I mean, he actually could not have handled it better. You would be so proud of your kid if your kid was in that situation and handled it that way. But I remember thinking, like, what would me and my group of friends have said when the black Israelites came over and they started going to these kids and they go, you're a bunch of rapists and colonizers and you ruin this.

1:42:04I mean, me and my friends, dude, when I was 19 or whatever, we would have been like, that's right, bitch. That's why you got raped. I mean, we would have said the most hard just because that's how we were as little kids. And so anyway, I guess my point is just now we have young people who have essentially grown up online. And I don't it's like I would like there to be room for someone even who has had the worst takes ever to like not be buried by what they said at 22. And then one quick point. I make this real quick. I also think that, like, you know, as I watched this, whatever, the event that Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham and all these guys, it was like the Jewish Republican thing through an event.

1:42:45But I listen to, like, Mark Levin, and it seems to me like he's doing Nick Fuentes, too. It's almost the same thing. It's like Mark Levin is, like, discussing ideas. He's going, listen, you little cockroach, you think you're going to come through me? I'll squash you like a bug, you Nazi scum. and you're like, you're basically doing the same thing, dude. Like, you're just doing it from a different angle. All types of calls for flattening Gaza. It's like, I don't know, man. I don't like that stuff on any side. But it does seem to be that, like...

1:43:13Francis Foster:But I think this is the point, though, Dave, is I think if you had Mark Levin on your show, you'd have a very different style of conversation with him as you did with Nick. Agreed. Right? And this is the same thing. And by the way, I think it's very important to say we're not saying that if you have someone on your show, you've got to berate them. We haven't berated you. We haven't berated Bassem Youssef. We haven't berated Norman Finkelstein. We haven't berated, we didn't berate Hassan Paik. We don't berate people with whom we disagree. But what's interesting about this, and I'm not calling for anyone to do that, and Tucker and you and anyone else can have anyone they want on their show and should, right, if they choose to.

1:43:52Francis Foster:But the difference is when Tucker has Ted Cruz on, he goes hard in the paint. Ted Cruz is a state senator in this country, which is one of the reasons that you go hard at him. Right. But on the other hand, this is a guy who's, you know, he is a serious guy. On the other hand, he has Nick Fuentes on who says, I love Stalin. And he doesn't push back on him at all. And this is where people see the discrepancy. I just think this is a very weak comparison. And I mean, really, to have a sitting U.S. senator on your show who's calling for regime change, regime change warring around, which is what the whole fight was over.

1:44:32That is just a very different thing than talking to a 26 year old streamer. But you can't have both.

1:44:38Francis Foster:If you can't say he's just a 26 year old streamer while saying he's got a massive audience. Because he is. He's both of those things. But you're saying it's a diminisher stature in the comparison. No, I'm just describing what he is. That is different than a sitting U.S. senator calling for a regime change war. He, like us, is someone who influences a lot of people. Sure. With that influence comes a level of scrutiny that's appropriate, right? He's not someone who's inconsequential, and he's someone who's saying things like, I love Hitler, I love Stalin. Okay, but that is different than a sitting senator who's advocating for a war.

1:45:11It's just different. Also, I will say, as you know with these things, right, and, like, Tucker kind of said this when he was on my show recently, But like with all of these like this conversation right now, right where we're disagreeing about stuff But we're doing it in a civil tone, but all of us have the option to shift that gear Yeah, like I could make this a confrontational interview or you could make this a car You could make like we there's there's a dance to that and if you actually go watch the the Ted Cruz thing It kind of starts pretty civil and I think Cruz was the one who kind of like escalated it to being like more confrontational But Fuentes could have dealt done that but he didn't you know and or Tucker could have done that with Nick and he didn't.

1:45:49So, but again, I just think that like all these things are situationals. It's, it's different. You know, obviously there is, I guess, and maybe this is part of my own bias, but yes, if you're somebody say like Mark Levin, who has been, um, one of the biggest right wing, you know, talk show hosts for my entire life, um, probably less relevant now than then. But there was a time when he was like in the big three, probably it was probably like Limbaugh Hannity. and I think he was pretty close to them, who's been advocated for, like, several wars that have been absolutely catastrophic, who's now advocating for more.

1:46:22Yeah, I have a different tone with that than I do with something that I perceive to be more edgelord streaming.

1:46:33Francis Foster:So, you know, I just... So you don't think Nick likes Hitler? You don't think he likes Stalin? You know, honestly, I don't know. I just don't know. Did you ask him? You know, I think, yeah, I mean, I won't, I'm not going to publicly say what we said privately, but like, I've, you know, I'm actually not sure he likes me too much, to be honest, but, but. You are Jewish. Yeah, well, I don't think that's his issue. I got the impression that he was feeling the weight of the moment, that feeling the weight of the moment of Charlie Kirk getting killed. And I thought his, I actually thought his stream after that, which I publicly gave him credit for.

1:47:12The initial one. The initial one after that. I was like, I did just appreciate anyone who had that tone. And particularly this guy as the biggest leader of the biggest, farthest to the right, you know, constituents. Like, that's good to be calling for de-escalation and Christianity. Like, I thought that was really good. I got the impression that, and again, I don't want to say what he views, but I got the impression that he was a person who was thinking about the weight of the moment that he was in, thinking about all of that, and also having been kind of, having painted himself and been painted by others into this corner, and I kind of felt like, let's, let's like leave a door open and maybe he'll move a little bit to being not as bad.

1:47:54That being said, I don't know that that's going to happen. You know, I think it's quite possible that that won't be the case. But do you think he's a Nazi? I don't know. You know, I don't know what that means exactly. Is he a Nazi? He's said favorable things about the Nazis. He seems to believe in some type of like Catholic theocracy or something like that. I don't I don't know. I don't think I think that to me it's like the Nazi thing is it's devil worshiping of today you know what I mean it's like that it's the most outrageous thing that you can say it's the biggest taboo and so I think there's something about like I don't know you know in the same way that like when you'd see almost like a you know a goth kid who's like dad isn't around and who hates him is he really a goth or it's like I don't know he's rebelling sure well he's rebelling and I think Nick has been on record set like I think there's a clear decision to go, if this is the thing that's off limits, if this is the button I'm not allowed to push, I will be pushing that as hard as I possibly can.

1:48:59Francis Foster:Why is your managed retirement account still using strategies that haven't changed in over five decades? Most IRAs, 401ks, and TSPs are still using the default 60-40 strategy because it benefits corporations, not you. If you have over$50 ,000 in retirement savings, get instant access to a free two-minute report from Augusta Precious Metals that reveals how to take control of your financial future in one step. Visit TriggerGold.com or text Trigger to 35052 today. You know, but also as well, look, I think you made a very good point about the whole redemption aspect. The fact that if you remove redemption from people, it doesn't matter who they are, they will think to themselves, either consciously or subconsciously, you know what, fuck this.

1:49:44There's no room but root back for me, so I might as well double down. What else is there open to me? But I think there comes two strategies that you have to implement for these people. Number one, you have to put in a golden bridge where, like, if you roll this back, you know, there is going to be hope for you on the other side. Because if you remove that hope, then effectively, what else is left for them but doubling down and becoming even more radical? but also as well and particularly for with young men and somebody who's worked however long with young people when I was teaching it's like you need to hold them accountable if people are not held accountable for their actions or their points of view then they're going to think this isn't fine or acceptable to say this particularly if the clicks and notoriety and the money is coming through because you can say to yourself hey it's just banter hey this doesn't matter hey this is cool but there are going to be people watching it who are like oh maybe the Holocaust didn't happen.

1:50:38Maybe, you know, Jews aren't assimilable. Maybe Jews X, maybe Jews Y. And then before you know it, you see all of these people propagating on the Internet. And look, we've got Jewish family. I've got Jewish family. Constantine's got Jewish family. We've got Jewish friends. I'm not Jewish. I was raised Catholic. But I have Jewish people and friends coming to me going, Francis, we're really worried. Yeah. We were with somebody last night and we were having dinner and he got quite emotional and I thought what's going on here? I looked in his eyes Dave there was genuine fear and he said to me this is the most worried I've ever been and this is a guy who is not a young guy and that that really strikes it worries me because that people shouldn't have to live like that and I don't think it's an exaggeration you know when people go racism's everywhere I go yeah come on let's all calm down but you look at this stuff and you go this is the almost vile, toxic stuff.

1:51:34And that must worry you. I think, yeah, I don't like, I certainly, like, there's definitely been, look, there's been a huge, enormous rise in anti-Israel views. And with that, there has come a big rise in just anti-Jewish views in general. And sure, I mean, there's, I know that there's a lot of fear, particularly in this city right now, there's a lot of fear amongst Jewish people. There's armed security around all types of Jewish schools and synagogues and stuff like that. And sure, I think, I think that's terrible. You don't want anybody to be in fear of their safety. And that being said, it's not exactly clear to me.

1:52:09I mean, I don't know. It's not exactly clear to me, like how real that threat is. Like if there wasn't armed security there, would people be bursting into it? It's kind of hard. It's hard to decipher. What is the Twitter comments actually mean in real life? Like, I don't know what happened in Washington. Look what happened in Washington. Well, sure, sure. But But at the same time, like this is, again, for people who have been using the term woke right a lot. Like I was just saying, like, you can't you can't borrow the methodology of the woke left here and say that if people feel scared or if that you can point to one example in a country of 350 million people that therefore you can deduce from that that, you know, like this is what they used to do with hate crimes and stuff like that.

1:52:48Like if there was one example that would prove that everybody's right. And then they would also use fear, you know, in this. that's a fair point but let's come back to what we were talking about the rhetoric the things being used online i don't think it's unreasonable for a jewish person to see clips of nick fuentes where you go sit down jew boy and go holy fuck that's like something out of like mississippi's burning what the hell is this i i'm not saying that a jewish person shouldn't be offended by stuff that nick said you know i know i agree with you i'm not saying it's offensive i'm not i don't really care about offense, Dave, like offense, offense.

1:53:23I'm talking about like, that would really worry you. If I was Jewish and I had kids, I'd be like, is this the start of something? Because it sometimes feels like it. I'm going to be honest with you.

1:53:33Francis Foster:Because the difference is, you know, your point actually I think is totally valid, which is like, you know, people exaggerate threats and then they go because of this, now this. But I don't think during the summer of 2020 when BLM went nuts, there were people streaming on platforms saying the type of things that they're saying about Jews. By the way, he's also saying about black people, right? Around blacks never relax is a favorite catchphrase of Nick, as far as I can tell, right? Like, that wasn't happening. People were not talking about, you know, like Nick, about the black power in society, and we've got to, when we come to power, we're going to execute the perfidious Jews.

1:54:13Why is that that wasn't happening during the Black Lives Matter? Yeah. Like, I'm sorry, I'm just not following. The Black Lives Matter?

1:54:18Francis Foster:The people who were anti-BLM. Oh, okay, okay. We're not saying the type of things that Nick is saying. So it's not quite the case that, you know, work left, work right. We can argue about the terminology. I don't actually give a shit about the term work right. I care about the phenomenon, which I think is real, which is what we're actually talking about. But so that's kind of the point, right? We're not saying, oh, look, a Jewish person got offended by a tweet. And now we have to restructure society to make. It's just like I think what Francis is saying is there's a real threat. And you've got to remember as well, we come from the UK where attacks against Jews are happening on a daily basis now.

1:54:53Francis Foster:Are they? Yeah, I just don't know enough about that. I mean, there was just an attack outside a synagogue in which a number of people were killed. And it's a regular thing now. Yeah, I mean, look, that stuff is sure it's definitely not good. And I think that there's, you know, there's there's like a like a feedback loop or a weird like symbiotic relationship between kind of like there's like there's there's a well-deserved. paranoia that Jews have about like society turning on them right and this is something like as a Jewish person I mean you you really cannot overstate this there's like a major cultural thing amongst Jews particularly like my parents generation it's not quite at the same with my generation and younger people but where they really were like raised on in many cases more than the religion itself like the religion that they were raised on was that Europeans tried to exterminate you and they will do it again.

1:55:45Like this could happen at any moment and that you have to like, you know, and, and that not for the state of Israel existing that, you know, that probably would happen or something. And so, yes, when they see things like that, then it's just complete confirmation to them that of course, this is all real. That's part of the reason why I think it's very unhelpful for Nick to say those things, you know? But I also do think that, and I guess I, I, I agree with your point. No, it's not exactly the same as some of these other phenomenons. I guess I would just make the point that it's like, you almost want to like...

1:56:17And I'm going to calm all of that down and rationally assess, like, what really is the threat level to Jews, you know, in this country? Because because broadly speaking, Jews are two percent of the population in America. They are wildly successful. Like they're not exactly a victim group, although historically. Well, you can be both.

1:56:34Francis Foster:You can be economically successful and have influence, perhaps disproportionately. So as many successful minorities do, it's not just right. Sure, sure. You can also be at the same time the target of violence. And actually, often those two things go hand in hand. That's a fair point. They go hand in hand together. Amy Chua's book on that was actually really great, where it's like the market dominant minorities end up. Thomas Sowell has some really interesting writing about middlemen minorities. Yeah, that's a fair point. Yeah. You know, I think I think this one thing I would like people to take away from this conversation, which is what we are talking about is not who should be platformed or not platformed or any of this bullshit, but rather about if you're going to have people with extreme views.

1:57:17Francis Foster:we feel you have a responsibility that comes with the audience that you have i have francis has tucker has in a much bigger way all of us to make sure that if if there are people who are coming with really abhorrent views you could definitely and maybe should have a conversation with them in the way you said and i don't think berating them is necessarily the answer but you gotta you can't people say this stuff like you know kevin roberts tried to pull this off and he's a very slick political operator. Does that heritage? He was like, look, the answer, the answer to terrible ideas is to engage with the terrible ideas.

1:57:51Francis Foster:And then Lush goes, so would you have him on heritage? No. Right. So he handled that in the worst possible way at every inch of it. Like there, he, because first he came out with a real bold statement. Like I got Tucker's back and screw all you guys who are trying to smear him. And then it's like, hey, once you say that, dude, then you have to lay the gauntlet down and defend that to make that statement and then just totally back. It was just horrible. It's almost like he's a politician. Oh, God. The thing that got leaked where they're all like the struggle session about all of it. Oh, my God.

1:58:30It was horrible.

1:58:31Francis Foster:Heritage is a big organization. And clearly a lot of people feel differently about it within the business, within the non-profit, whatever it is. I don't know. I mean, in a large organization, particularly a non-profit one where it's like, look, I'll be honest with you, if trigonometry staff came to me and Francis and were like, we don't like the direction of the show, I'd be like, fuck you, find a new job. You hear that, fellas? I mean, they're also younger and stronger than us. That's true. They probably have a power. The story is just, the team beats the crowd. And you're like, oh my god, these kids can run for days.

1:59:06Francis Foster:And also, they're a lot better looking, so the quality of the show, at least on the visual front, would improve. Yeah. But in a large organization that's a nonprofit with appointees, if half your organization thinks you made a terrible mistake and they're going to say it at an all-staff meeting, that's perfectly legitimate. They're entitled to express. It's not a struggle session. It's people saying, you took our thing that we're all part of. Some of us have worked here 10 times as long as you in a direction that we hate. Yeah. To me. But anyway, I don't want to share on Kevin or whatever. My point is something else.

1:59:37Francis Foster:Let's just say one thing that's important to say, which is we're not calling for anyone to be no-platformed or censored or whatever, or cancelled, by the way, right? Like, I don't follow Mark Levin's comments very closely. If he's calling for people to be banned off social media, I don't agree with that. Oh, yeah, he explicitly said cancel them, de-platform them. By no means, no one here is calling for that. Even if you believe that instinctively, I think we tried that, and we see that it doesn't work. Well, also, and I would also say that, and I think this is one of the things, like, that's interesting to me about the Nick Fuentes phenomenon, but all of this stuff, because I've really never, and I've been around some pretty influential people, and I have never seen anybody stretch the Overton window the way this guy has, and rise to the level of prominence with views that all of us would have assumed would be like, oh, that's a non-starter, you'll never get popular taking that opinion or whatever.

2:00:31But one of the things that's kind of interesting is it's like, from my perspective, also like for Mark Levin to be calling for deplatforming of anyone. It's like as we started with like, dude, you cheerlead the Iraq war. I just don't understand. And this was a thing that's very interesting to me, too. And it was kind of a dynamic when I debated Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan's show and with Mark Levin and all these guys. It's just the nerve of somebody to have cheerlead the war in Iraq and then turn around and say, now I'm going to dictate who should be allowed to be in this conversation or who should be marginalized or who should be taken.

2:01:06Like, I don't know. And maybe this is because I am a radical libertarian. And so fundamentally, even as we were talking about in Gaza, I believe that state action is every bit as evil as private action if it's the same action. But like you cheerlead a war that got a million people killed and you were wrong about everything. Now, if you're going to argue that you still get to be a commentator, you don't have to go away forever. Fine. But I really don't think you should be lecturing anyone on who else ought to be deplatformed. And then in addition to just agreeing with what you said, that it's also just not productive.

2:01:38Francis Foster:Yeah, I don't think it worked. But I was going to go to something else, which is I do think there's been also a kind of weird and I don't think accurate defense. of Tucker and what he did and the broader conversation, which is like, stop trying to cancel Tucker. And mainly it's directed at people who are just saying, I don't like the way he conducted that interview. Right. So and then it comes to this thing about, oh, you know, these people are trying to split the right or whatever. And what we need to do is just let everybody, you know, come together and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. But like you're a libertarian.

2:02:13Francis Foster:I imagine that if someone came to the Libertarian Party or the Libertarian movement and was like, hey guys, I think the best libertarianism is big government. You'd be like, well, you're entitled to that opinion, but you're not in this movement here, right? Yeah, if you love socialism and gun control, you probably can't be in the Libertarian movement. Just like if you love Stalin and Hitler, maybe you are not part of the right-wing conservative movement. So when people say - And that's what the debate is about. Right now, there are some people who say, well, if you try to have that debate, you're trying to cancel people and you're trying to split the movement.

2:02:57Francis Foster:I'm not on the right, nor am I, you know, in any of these conversations. But I look at it from an outside perspective and I go, isn't that a movement trying to work out whether it believes in as a libertarian movement in big government? Are these ideas that Nick is talking about, do they belong in this family of views or do they stay outside of it because they don't belong? In the same way that I don't think Tucker Carlson would have Dylan Mulvaney on, the trans influencer, and be like, hmm, tell me your views about how to chop your dick off. and then every conservative would be like, oh yeah, Tucker's entitled to have, well, he is entitled to have whoever he wants, but that doesn't fit within the conversation of the broader political wing of America.

2:03:40Francis Foster:Is that a fair assessment? Well, look, I mean, like I said before, I think there should be more debates and more conversations and all of this stuff. So I agree with you. And I also think the whole argument, which has been made on both sides of like you're splitting the MAGA coalition, It's always like, yeah, but so are you. I mean, we're all split. Like, yeah, that's the whole problem with you on that. Like, we're figuring out what we. Which ideas belong in which. Right, right. But what's kind of interesting, right, like about just, again, not so hard. And I think you're also right that there certainly have been people, probably yourself included, who have like been like, hey, I want to debate Nick Fuentes.

2:04:17Or I think Tucker should have been, you know, more aggressive in debating him. And then they go, you're engaging in council culture. And that's silly. but also at the same time Mark Levin is up there but the thing that was interesting about Mark Levin's call for cancel culture like I was saying before is that he's calling for Tucker, Candace and Nick Fuentes to be cancelled which like at this point are probably the three biggest right wing political commentators in the country and so yes it is certainly true that this MAGA coalition is going to have to figure out what their identity is going to be going forward after Donald Trump.

2:04:54And I think that's what a lot of this fight is over right now. But I think what's, like, there's again, like I said before, there's, because there's so many different aspects to this, but there's the stuff we said before about how the left-wing racialism was always destined to trigger a reactionary racialism on the right wing. Then there's the fact that so many of these young people grew up without fathers and on drugs. I did a whole video about it. You know, I mean, it's just like, like, there's a lot of these factors and then, of course, there's the factors that we all know, which is like the war on terrorism and what a disaster this has been for the entire country.

2:05:25And of course, Donald Trump, even in 2016, was really a rejection of the Bush neoconservatism. He said it right to his brother's face that your brother lied us into a war about the most aggressive thing you could say to somebody else, you know? And I think what's happening right now is that there's been like the non-interventionist, the anti-war right wing, And that that ranges from non interventionists like myself who believe in liberty and are not identitarian all the way over to like very identitarian non interventionists are getting a bigger and bigger portion of the right wing in this country.

2:06:03And there's a new power imbalance here where like a lot of the old guard neocon types, interestingly, who were the never Trumpers themselves. I think it was Dinesh when he was on your show was bringing that up. I believe it was it might have been. Which point specifically? Well, I think what he said, you know, I watched the interview with Dinesh on this show, and then I watched the interview with him on, like, it was like the Jewish network channel, and I might be mixing up which happened in yours and which happened in that one. But at one point... That's quite anti-Semitic. Yeah. Well, there you go.

2:06:31There you go. I can tell you this is not the Jewish channel. It was all a bunch of Indians talking to Jews as far as I'm concerned. Same thing, right? But he was saying at one point that he was like, he was mentioning, like, he was like, this is where the neoconservatives lost all their influence is because they jumped on the never

2:06:47Francis Foster:trump in the reagan era in conservatism there was a certain i would call it the intellectual guardians of the tribe people like william f buckley uh reagan to a certain degree but there were others erving crystal and the idea here was that um if you came in with like the poison of anti-Semitism, blatant racism. You know, criticism of affirmative action? Yes. Calling blacks monkeys? No. So if you did that, you were basically asked to leave the room. And you were abolished from the... You wouldn't be invited to conservative conferences. You certainly wouldn't be a speaker. It would basically be the end of you as a public figure.

2:07:36Francis Foster:So that's gone. And it's gone why? Partly because we don't have a conservative intellectual class that performs that task. And why don't we have that? Well, partly because the mainstream of that class went never Trump. And so when I look around for like if I were to make a list of, let's say, 30 of my colleagues from the Reagan days, I would say that probably about 25 of them went anti-Trump. And they went to anti-Trump in different places. John Bolton is a little different place than, say, Bill Kristol. But nevertheless, they're by and large excluded from MAGA. And what happened is, partly as a result of a cultural shift, MAGA produces a new type of pundit.

2:08:28He did kind of yada, yada, yada over the war on terrorism. That didn't also have a huge thing to do with how they lost their influence. Like it was also the swimming pool of blood of innocent babies that you're standing in. But it is actually but there's something very interesting to me where and I've noticed this dynamic a lot. Right. So this was Ben Shapiro, like did several segments on me over the years, but he never said my name. It became kind of a running joke amongst my audience that he would break. But it wasn't even like he'd play clips of when I was on Rogan. Like he'd play a clip on my podcast and still got some comedian who, you know, you've you clearly saw it.

2:09:03And it's the easiest name to remember. But so the first time he ever said my name was when I came out for against Donald Trump over the 12 day war. And I called for him to be impeached over it and all this stuff. You know, I was I was pretty dramatic about it. But so then he called me out by name. And then, you know, I've had, you know, Josh Hammer. This is what he tried to debate me on at that event with Charlie, where it was like, oh, look what this guy's saying about Donald Trump. And then Stephen Crowder just recently, it was like, look what you said about Donald Trump. But it's like, guys, we all remember that you were the never Trumpers.

2:09:35Like, we all remember, like, the National Review piece. We all remember... Was Bannon never Trump? Never Trumper said under no circumstances would he ever vote for Donald Trump. Same with Stephen Crowder, same with Mark Levin. Mark Levin urged his whole audience to know that you will never get me to support Donald Trump. I mean, J.D.

2:09:50Francis Foster:Barnes was a never Trumper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I'm just saying, but for anyone who was a never Trumper to, like, start using that against you just seems like a very weird thing. But so there were the... Obviously, there's the Warhawks who were totally against Donald Trump. They then all became Trumpers or became Democrats. Some of them just went and built crystal in them. But and now there is just this big fight about, like, what's next? Well, I think the fight is good. I agree. I think we got it. I think it's necessary. I just don't like this idea that if you say, I think these ideas like the example I gave you, a big government and a libertarian movement, these ideas should be outside of the 10.

2:10:27Francis Foster:A lot of people go, that's engaging. That's not cancel culture. That's people arguing about what it means to be a conservative or right winger. Sure, sure. 100%. And I'll say this, as I've been saying pretty consistently, is that I just oppose all of this racialism. I mean, on all sides. I mean, it's just like it's again, I'm not saying like identity doesn't matter or there aren't any differences between groups. I'm not an egalitarian. I thought Charles Murray's book was totally reasonable. Like, I'm not like you can't mention that there are differences between media and IQs or something like that.

2:10:59Like there's there's obviously differences between racial groups and cultures and all of these things. But the only way, just like we were saying before about, like, the only way to go forward is for us to have a conversation and be reasonable, because otherwise we just got to always fight. The only way to go forward in a multiracial, multicultural society is to have a strong level of individualism and not. And I will say that I think, you know, they're like Josh Hammer had multiple tweets. He didn't say it once, like multiple posts where he said that Jew hatred is is in the DNA of Europeans. And like, I think that's also like all the anti-white racism.

2:11:40It's unhelpful. Yes. All the anti-white racism of the world.

2:11:43Francis Foster:But this is something my I'm I'm sort of slowly becoming Christian, I think. and I was raised as a Christian, but I have one of my grandparents. My grandfather was an atheist Jew. So maybe I'm allowed to say this. Progressive Jews are the worst people in the fucking world. I mean, I'd go for pedophiles. In the political realm. Well, there's some overlap. Right. And this is kind of the problem, I think, for Jews in general, is because Jews are disproportionately successful, we can get into the reasons for why that is. And I don't think, you know, I think it's anyway, let's not get into that longer conversation.

2:12:23Francis Foster:They are overrepresented in everything. And so if you are on the far right and you want to prove that Jews are responsible for all the left wing craziness. there they are there's a bunch of progressive jews who did all the retarded shit they've got us to where we are now right with the woke left stuff if you want to if you're on the left and you uh left-wing anti-sema and you want to prove that jews are the reason for ice red you know there's steven miller right there in the white house doing all this and so no the war on terrorism communism i mean yeah there's a whole bunch of things you could look because jews are over represented and particularly in intellectual endeavors well it's in my my field of uh My view of libertarianism, I mean, it's totally like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises and just Jews all around.

2:13:07Francis Foster:So and the same with other groups is if you really racialize a nation and you get everyone to think about their identity, I just don't think that ends well for anybody. Well, it also, no, I agree with you. It doesn't end well for anybody. It's also it it's corrosive to your own soul and your own mind. Like, I've just seen it in people. I've seen people who get, like, and both, like, on, like, all different types of racialism. Like, I've seen it during, on woke leftists, where, like, they just got, and somehow racialism, it's like catnip for the plebs. People love it. They get so into it. So, yeah, it, like, really does play on that tribal thing, and it leads to sloppy thinking.

2:13:46Like, I've just seen this all over the place, where you're like, no, dude, like, you're starting with your conclusion here and not thinking clearly. And this is one of the problems of collectivism in general is that like it's not actually accurate. Did you have this? We're individual.

2:14:00Francis Foster:This is not a gotcha in any way. I'm just curious because I didn't watch all your interview with Nick. Did you have this debate with him about identitarianism? Yeah, we got into. Yeah, I mean, we got into just like the idea of collectivism versus individualism and the idea of like, you know, like harboring resentment toward anybody because of their race. And then I mean, I we kind of had the argument of like, is your is your beef with the Israel lobby and the government of Israel or is your beef with the Jews? And I made the point to him that which I think is a really sound point, is that there's really no question that like the Israel lobby was pushing for the war in Iraq, whether it's the neoconservatives, AIPAC, the UAE, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, like all these groups were openly for the war in Iraq.

2:14:47but American Jews were the strongest in opposition to the war right now. Part of that is because they're liberal, but whatever, still on that issue, they were good on that issue. And so I was just making the argument that like, well, no, actually I'm much more accurate when I'm saying the Israel lobby rather than saying the Jews. And then I think at one point I was like, like Barry, the dentist down the street has nothing to do with what's happening in Gaza. And he seemed to kind of agree with that. But, you know, the thing is, I thought we might argue a little bit more on the show. But every time I kind of brought up a topic that was like the thing I thought we were going to argue about, she didn't really disagree with what I was saying.

2:15:25And maybe I should have done, maybe I should have been tougher. But again, also, it's like, you know, none of these things are ever a perfect interview. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't be opposed. I said this on a show the other day, but I wouldn't be opposed to doing like a more like, like structured debate with Nick Fuentes about these issues. I did a debate with him once a few years ago. But yeah, but look, I mean, I just think that there's going to have to be a thing. I also think part of this, which is like a kind of a broader question, is like, so I was born in 1983, right? The Civil Rights Act in the United States was in 1964.

2:16:00Now, as a kid, you feel like that's ancient history, you know? But like, as you get older, you're like, oh, I was born 19 years after the Civil Rights Act. And now we are 60 plus years after the Civil Rights Act. And I think perhaps that it's kind of appropriate, and I'm not even talking about law. I'm just talking about, like, culture. But I think it's kind of appropriate to have a different dynamic 60 years after something versus 19 years after something. And I think that the fact that essentially the rules of polite society have been for quite a while that everyone's allowed to be collectivist.

2:16:37Everyone's allowed to have their own racial identity except for straight white men. And that is just we've got to find a way to go like, no, it just it can't be. It's not going to work going.

2:16:49Francis Foster:But that's why we've been against. Well, I know. Well, look, the first thing I ever saw you on, as I'm sure most people or not most, but a lot of people found you on that. Oxford speech that went super viable. And I thought that was I thought it was brilliant, man. Like you were totally breaking it down. This is not this. First of all, we're so many years removed from this that it's just unreasonable to say that, like, these people are the victimized class. Also, with a mass immigration, like half the people who are on the lower rungs of society weren't here to be oppressed by any of this stuff.

2:17:17They just got welcomed into a very nice society that's been built for them. So they really don't have like a grievance with the they think they do, but they don't. And so I do just think there's something, there's a signal of Nick Fuentes being so big that all of us should really think about, you know, like really grapple with this. It's like there are young, straight, white men, and that's not exclusively his audience, but I think it is majority, who are not playing this game anymore. And I understand it. You know, I understand, I saw one clip again the other day. It was someone, I think it was someone at the Mamdani victory party.

2:17:54I don't know if you saw this, but at his victory, where they were like, white people don't have culture. You know, that whole woke thing that they go off on.

2:18:00Francis Foster:In those circles, everybody needs some spice to color in their lives. Life's a lot better. That's the coolest thing about Americans. Americans have no culture except for multiculturalism. Well said. And we need to teach people how to embrace that. These crusty white people need to learn how to embrace it. Because they do when they think they're entertaining. Yes. And then you said what they start thinking. It's funny you said that. There's like a certain point where you just hear that and you're like, we don't, like, white people don't have culture? Are you out of your mind? Like, what are we, and we've just got to find a way to, like, move forward where it's like, we're not doing that anymore on all sides.

2:18:41Right. Yeah, and that is a perfect place to end the interview. Dave, look, one of the things I love about America is that people are so much more willing to come on this show, to come on shows where people disagree and have good faith discussions, disagreements, debates. So really, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure. The final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Well, oh man, there's a few.

2:19:10Francis Foster:Do you mind if we don't wrap up just yet? Because we've got a bit of time and there's one or two other things I wanted to ask. Okay, yeah, yeah, cool, cool, cool, cool. but I have forgotten what I wanted to ask. That's unfortunate. Before you leave. Before you leave I've got all these questions that I've forgotten. You guys are too young but you have a... Can we get some water and I'll remember it? When we were kids there used to be like cop shows that were real big. There was a big one in America called Columbo and it would always go it would always be the same thing like it would be like he's asking the guy things and then the guy's like no I was here I was here at this time.

2:19:42And then he'd go okay we have no further questions and then he'd walk and he'd go But there is just one thing. And that would always be the moment where they're like, they got, it'd be like, I wasn't there on Tuesday. And they're like, no one said Tuesday. So I thought Constantine was about to do that to me. That's what's going to happen. I was like, all right, I survived this. We got through it. And then Constantine went, there is just one more thing. I have a screenshot here.

2:20:04Francis Foster:There is just one more thing. And it's not a screenshot, but it is actually a question. And I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but here's something I think about a lot, right? we're all creatures of the internet. You are, we are, everybody in our game is on the internet. And there's a hell of a lot of the country that's not on the internet. Like we shit on the mainstream media with very good justification. But if you look at the numbers, TV in aggregate is way bigger than us, right? They might be going this way and we're going that way. But there are way, way, way more people in this country who are not engaging in debates about Israel on Twitter.

2:20:45Francis Foster:Sure, sure. Then there are who are, right? And so I thought that obviously you just had the midterm, not the midterms, but you had the elections here in the US. The Democrats crushed. Very good night for the Democrats. Very good night for the Democrats. And, you know, there's some reasons for that, which we can get into. But I did see a tweet from you that made me kind of go, is Dave a little bit too online here? because you said, you know, this is all about Israel. It's sort of how I read it. It might be unfair. No, no, no. You know, I did a whole podcast on that, and that was like the tweet I put out that day.

2:21:21But I probably could have worded that better or at least been a little clearer on what I was saying, which I think I was clearer on the podcast. But I did say at one point in the tweet, like, it's all about Israel. And I didn't... My point is not exactly that. And in fact, I don't think that's even what... Because it's about economics. Much, much more so. Yeah, but the thing is this, right? But it's like, so first of all, let me just say it first. It really, because I've seen some like Republicans here trying to downplay it. Like whatever. These were, these were Democrat strongholds anyway. But like that is just not right.

2:21:50And this should be a huge wake up call for the Republican Party because you, after the absolute destruction of the party, the collapse of Biden and Kamala Harris and this party being, and I mean like we've, in my lifetime, there's never been a party that was more damaged than where the Democrats were, coming in with a 24 % approval rating that even when Trump's approval rating dipped, didn't bump up at all. Like, they just... They were... And the fact that... Okay, in... Take New York City out of it, because Trump endorsed Cuomo, so the Republican getting 7%, even though it's pretty pathetic, is a little bit of an asterisk.

2:22:26But in Jersey, it was a much closer race for the governor, the gubernatorial race, last time than this time. And Virginia should be competitive after 2024. So the fact that they got blown out by 20 points and then blown out in New Jersey worse than they did two years ago, that's a really bad sign. And when I say that it's all, I mean, look, Kamala Harris didn't lose solely because of Israel, but it definitely like totally divided her base. and they, you know, the left-wing activists were calling the president genocide Joe for a full year, like leading up to the election. And those left-wing activists were the people they needed to be out there as their attack dogs against Donald Trump.

2:23:16And they weren't doing it. They weren't protesting him. They were protesting the genocide as they see it. That was the current administration was conducting. And now likewise with Donald Trump, you know, you have this dynamic where he can say, I gave Israel every weapon they needed so that they could destroy all of Gaza, and then we're going to spend money to rebuild it and do all this. And I bombed the Houthis, and I bombed the nuclear sites in Iran and all this. But that's actually not what's winning any of the votes. What people care about, and what all three of these Democrats ran on, is the unaffordability crisis.

2:23:50In other words, inflation. In other words, the debasement of the currency. And so my broader point is like what we started with to begin with, that it's like if you want to do what Donald Trump's doing, which is essentially saying I want an even bigger defense budget. I want to have the first trillion dollar defense budget and I won't touch entitlement programs and all of this. Well, then the only way to maintain that is to continue debasing the currency. And but the problem here is that what they go, look, inflation's not as bad as under Joe Biden. It was only three and a half percent year to date.

2:24:22But that just means for everybody else, it's worse than it was under Joe Biden.

2:24:26Francis Foster:Well, but this is why I'm asking you, because with all respect, we disagree about Israel, but that's not why I'm saying it. I just think, like, for example, when wokeness was at its peak, I would say that was my lens to see pretty much everything. And so I would probably over index the impact of wokeness on things. it just when I saw that tweet from you, I just thought, like, you've massively over-indexed this one issue. Yeah, yeah. No, I might have been a little bit guilty of that, and I probably could have worded that tweet better. But I do also think that we shouldn't understate, I mean, look, this huge divide on the right wing right now is all about this.

2:25:03I mean, it's all about foreign policy and Israel. But note to your point, that's in the commentator class. Whereas I do agree with you that for broadly speaking for the rest of the country, things like, look, I mean, through all of 2024, every single poll that was, I mean, maybe there's one I missed, but every single poll that was done on it, it's like the two issues were the economy and immigration. That's what people care. Right. But of course, of course that makes sense. Right. But I also think that like the economy and immigration are also, you know, they're, they're related to all of these policies.

2:25:35I mean, immigration, not as much for us, I think much more so in Europe, that immigration is not unrelated to the fact that we fought wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, like all the, is that a big factor? No, you don't think toppling of Gaddafi yet was a big factor in the migrant crisis?

2:25:51Francis Foster:I think the fact that people wanted to leave was partly caused by the conflicts, of course. Whether we had to let them in. No, I agree with, I certainly agree with that. You still don't have to let them in. Right. So if you're going to have a lax, yes, it is the worst of both worlds to have a lax immigration policy and then start funding civil wars in all of the southern what i'm getting at though and forgive me for honing in on this and you've already said you know i should have been with her i i just wonder whether there is when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back into you and i just wonder because your focus has been on the things that you believe israel has done wrong whether that's kind of so over indexed now that you just like when something happens, you just go, well, this is about Israel.

2:26:38Francis Foster:And by the way, you challenge people as well on this, to be fair to you, right? Like when someone said Israel killed Charlie Kirk, you were like, what's the evidence for this? Yeah. Right. But I also just wonder whether, you know, you're over indexing it. Yeah. Look, I mean, I'm sure we're all guilty of that at times. And perhaps, although I don't, I do think that like, no, there's a major, I mean, this is, this is like a big thing that's happening in the country. And the relationship between the US and Israel is, I think, viewed in a drastically different way that would have been, like, unthinkable a generation ago.

2:27:09And I think that particularly with young people, and that's going to be, you know, that's going to have a big impact going forward. No, I mean, I think that there's, you know, it's like people could say, like, Twitter's not real life. And it's like, it is and it isn't. It becomes eventually. It is and it isn't. You know what I mean? Like, it kind of is and it kind of isn't.

2:27:28Francis Foster:But you can't blame the election results on it, is what I'm saying. I think that the fact that Donald Trump is pursuing the foreign policy that he's pursued, I think is also related to why he buried the Epstein thing, which really got a lot of his base, got a lot of the enthusiasm, like, calmed down. I think it really damaged him. And I think we'll see that in the future, like looking back at it, that that really did damage him. But I do agree with you that I think I think the I think covid and immigration and the money, the inflation is the thing that most people are really feeling. I mean, and that just most people, what they really care about is like the kind of basic things that people care about.

2:28:16It's like being able to afford a decent home, being able to send their kids to a decent school, having decent health coverage, you know, things like that. So I do agree with you, but I also think that, like, essentially, like, the foreign policy and the entitlement programs are very related to those phenomenons. Dave, what a pleasure. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

2:28:39Francis Foster:Before Dave answers the final question, at the end of the interview, go to triggerpod.co.uk where we ask him your questions. What would you say are the key differences between the IDF and Hamas? so do i think that hamas will relinquish power yes um i mean and if they don't what would be the appropriate response from israel oh man you guys are making me steal man douglas murray this isn't fair well i mean you know at the the risk of sounding boring um it really is the debt i mean like there's you know there's just so many conversations in in politics and you know you have these moments like we had the the tea party uh here in america where hey we were really talking about the debt and deficit and that's what all the Republicans are going to run on is we're going to be deficit hawks.

2:29:25None of that materialized into anything. It materialized into Donald Trump. Well, I mean, I guess this is before Donald Trump was president, but Barack Obama just kept raising spending every year. Trump came in, raised the spending from the levels that Obama had in. Then, you know, during 2020, his last year, breaks all the records with the highest spending year ever. Joe Biden comes in and increases the spending from Donald Trump. Donald Trump comes in again, increases the spend. We can't even go back to pre-COVID levels. And then, of course, there was this big thing about Doge was going to find$2 trillion in the budget and cut that.

2:30:02We had these super tech geniuses who were going to do it, and they were going to figure it all out. Complete failure, led to no cuts whatsoever. And we're at a point now where the interest on the debt is over a trillion dollars a year. I think it's going to be 1.3 or 1.4 trillion this year. And going up, it's now becoming the number. Just think about this. If we were to balance the budget, which is impossible to even imagine under current situations, we still run trillion dollar deficits every single year. This is like a cataclysmic shift that is coming. And it threatens the dollar is the world reserve currency.

2:30:42It threatens the whole standing of America in the global order. And yet, there's just no political will, as we were talking about before, to deal with any of the things that we can't afford.

2:30:53Francis Foster:But this is why people don't talk about it, man, because in the paradigm that we exist in, there's nothing you can do. And that's why I think what Trump is trying to do is trying to grow fast enough that you outrun that problem. and maybe if AI doesn't kill us all, that's the way that robotics and AI maybe creates enough wealth creation over a rapid period of time that we can sort that. Even with drastic spending cuts though, you would need rapid growth just to overcome this. So the idea that you can do it without drastic spending cuts is really a problem. But then I would also point out that this is the thing I guess that's frustrating.

2:31:33So I agree with you, but then I think the whole role is to break that paradigm, just like, you know, intellectually, like, talking about these things. But the point is that, look, the whole lesson of the 20th century about economic systems is so obvious. Like, central planning fails, and laissez-faire free markets produces prosperity. Like, unbelievable. I mean, look, think about the experiments run in North and South Korea, or East and West Germany, where you have the same race, the same culture, the same, like, everything. just one is an economic socialist and one is reasonably free market. And so you're like, oh, what's the problem that we have to shrink the size of government and make that much smaller?

2:32:13It's like, yeah, that's what leads to prosperity. We could have a ton of it, but we would have to really get serious about that now.

2:32:19Francis Foster:But think about this though, man. I mean, we just talked about the election results, which are all about affordability. To cut entitlements and spending, you're going to have to hurt a lot of people. Yeah, no, everything is trade-offs. And those people don't. They are not going to vote for somebody who does that. Look, this is the truth. It's a flaw in democracy. Yeah. Right. And I'm not saying that that's an argument for anything other than democracy, but it certainly is a flaw in democracy. And there's there's flaws in monarchy. There's flaws in, you know, all types of different systems. But one of the major flaws in democracy is just like with anything else.

2:32:53the you know if if we're in the car and the car breaks down and there happens to be a mechanic who's in the car with us we don't vote over what we think the solution should be we go well you know this so you tell us what it should be and now i'm not saying you want a dictator or something like that but when you have democracy when everyone gets an equal vote whether they're a net taxpayer or a net tax recipient whether they're 18 whether they're 60 what any of these things it just always makes sense to number one play to the low information voters there's always a lot more of them than there are high information voters.

2:33:25And then number two, to promise free stuff to people. It's always more, listen, I'm going to cut your taxes and give you free stuff is always a better sell than we're going to cut your program or we're going to, you know, and, but the short term pain that would be felt by cutting a lot of these programs is far preferable to the long term pain of a real debt crisis which we're facing and the possibility of like real hyperinflation, which seems to be long term, the most reasonable answer to all of this is that eventually you just, what they call monetize the debt, right? You just eventually you got to say, OK, well, the only way we can actually pay this money back is if we pay it in dollars that really aren't worth that much.

2:34:07Dave, thank you so much for coming on the show. Follow us over on Substack where we continue the conversation.

2:34:16Francis Foster:There's a genocide happening in Sudan right now. Under your non-interventionist foreign policy, we do nothing and let it happen. How many people would have to die before non-interventionism becomes immoral and complicity?