DEBATE: MAGA vs Democrats, Trump's Agenda vs Biden's Legacy w/ Myron Gaines, Andrew Wilson, Luke Beasley, & Jessiah of Pondering Politics
BUY CAST BREW COFFEE TO SUPPORT THE SHOW - https://castbrew.com/ Become A Member And Protect Our Work at http://www.timcast.com Host: Tim Pool @Timcast (everywhere) Guests: Myron Gaines @FreshFitMiami (YouTube) Andrew Wilson @The_Crucible (YouTube) Luke Beasley @LukeBeasley (YouTube) Jessiah @ponderingpolitics (YouTube) My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL
We're a couple days away from Donald Trump entering the office as the president.
The inauguration will be on Monday.
So let's take this opportunity to debate Joe Biden's legacy, Donald Trump's legacy.
And we have an eclectic bunch with us who are going to give their ideas on whether or not, I don't know, Trump's a fascist or women should even be voting in the first place.
So you can tell it's going to get wild in this room.
Political analyst, political satirist, and blood sport debater.
Happy to be here.
Thanks, Tim.
unidentified
Yeah, Josiah with Pondering Politics, liberal commentator.
Looking forward to this conversation because this is like some of the biggest MAGA influencers I've ever encountered and I'm looking forward to understanding a bit more.
Semantics are super important to a debate for a reason.
It's so that we have clarity in what we're actually talking about.
So when you go, Trump's a fascist, yeah, it's very important that you clarify exactly what that means, why it means that, what the historic standard is that you're providing against that.
You're talking about the thing that is within congressional rules, which is you can object to the account.
That's different than assembling from different states people who aren't the lawful electors and then trying to get them counted by your vice president as the real one.
In these cases, there were certifications by each state and then verified by the governor, then sent to Washington, and those were the ones Trump wanted to get counted.
And I'm using Wikipedia, which I'm not a big fan of because it is oversimplified.
Often wrong.
but it says that Hawaii official results showed Nixon winning by a small margin.
Hawaii's three electoral votes were cast for Nixon.
Acting Governor James Kilioua certified the Republican electors, and they cast Hawaii's three electors for Nixon.
However, clear discrepancies existed, blah, blah, blah.
The court challenge was still ongoing at the time of the electoral count's safe harbor deadline, but Democratic electors still convened on the constitutionally mandated date of December 19th and cast their votes for Kennedy.
Would you consider those to be illegitimate votes because it had already been certified for the Republican?
The recount completed before Christmas resulted in Kennedy being declared the winner by 115 votes.
On December 30th, the circuit court ruled that Hawaii's three electoral votes should go to Kennedy.
It was decided that a new certificate was necessary with only two days remaining before Congress convened to count and certify the Electoral College votes.
A letter to Congress saying a certificate was on the way was rushed out by registered airmail.
Both Democratic and Republican electoral votes from Hawaii were presented for counting on January 6th.
And Vice President Nixon, who presided over the certification, graciously said, without the intent of establishing a precedent and requested unanimous consent that Democratic votes for Kennedy be counted.
So the clarification here, let's make sure it's very clear.
They were intending to certify, but because the deadline was approaching, they submitted false documents, as you described it, before certification was done.
unidentified
No, because the circuit court ruled that the electoral vote should go to Kennedy.
Trump's case, he got all seven states after this whole process had been concluded.
It wasn't close enough for the recount to flip it.
The recounts had concluded, and he was trying to get, not let's have two standing by because we don't know how this recount's going to go, but from seven states that we know the outcome of, but I'm making false claims of fraud on them, I'm going to get...
Yeah, because you're comparing apples and oranges thing as far as I'm concerned.
unidentified
I was silly.
Yeah, like if a court decided in one of the five or seven states that Trump tried to peddle the false elector scheme, that if a court contested the Democratic slate of electors, then I think you would have an apples-to-apples comparison.
One of the key tenets of, again, I know you'll get really triggered, so I'm trying to stay away from that particular term, but we can say fascism, authoritarianism, anti-democracy.
What I want to see, so as Spergly over here keeps on losing his mind, he doesn't want to get into hyper-specific semantics because that would cause what we'd like to call clarification.
The reason I want to get specific about this, about what fascism is, about whether or not Trump is actually a fascist, whether or not Trump actually enacted fascist policy, all of these things is because you guys, you can't sit on your shows and say, this guy's a fascist, he's an authoritarian, he's a dictator, he's a threat to democracy.
And then give us nothing.
Just like, oh, he used some hyperbole about the media.
Well, I still haven't gotten an explanation of how it's acceptable.
To try to block the peaceful transfer of power from Andrew, which is what I keep saying.
You brought up the fashionism word.
I said, hey, I get that people get real bogged down, which is why I've had hours of discussions about that particular term.
I came here interested to see if MAGA figures could defend the actual actions.
Not the label, but the actions.
And I'm yet to hear you walk through any of them.
We're getting a little bit to the specifics of the media, so I appreciate that.
So to answer your question, him trying to induce a feeling of fear among the media as it's working with his rhetoric, with clear intentions, some of which he didn't actually get done the last time, but he wanted...
Dominion voting systems, vote counting observers, late night ballot dumps, ballot harvesting, double voting, foreign interference, improper voter registration practices, manipulation by poll workers, geolocation data, surveillance footage, whistleblowers, vulnerabilities in election laws, suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop.
I mean, what else?
I mean, I think anyone with any common sense would understand because we're talking about the fascism and he challenged the election and all this other stuff.
No, it was an actual hearing where the judge said that the Constitution of Pennsylvania was violated by the implementation of universal mail-in voting.
unidentified
Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here.
It's a new year, and you know what that means.
No, not the diet.
Resolutions.
A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year.
And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get.
Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.
$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month.
The reason this is a terrible argument is because if I say, okay, well then who got prosecuted for insurrection?
You'll say, well, just because they weren't prosecuted for insurrection doesn't mean it wasn't an insurrection.
It's like, oh, okay, great.
Hang on, hang on, Luke.
Well, just because he wasn't able to demonstrate that the election was stolen in a court because they threw most of it out on standing doesn't mean it wasn't stolen.
It just means that we had a bunch of judges.
Who went after it on standing.
But we have – there is a lot of evidence here that should be looked at.
I'm not saying it was stolen.
It's not my position, okay?
But I am saying that – Do you have a position?
I think it should be investigated, and it never properly was.
When Trump is in office, I think he should actually run a real investigation into it.
But I think that the idea that – well, Trump – so Biden takes the White House, that there was a legitimate investigation done by the Biden administration for the guy he could have lost to.
I think that that's ridiculous.
unidentified
But doesn't that motive work the opposite way too?
Go ahead.
No, seriously.
But doesn't that motive work the opposite way?
Because Trump's position was, before the election, it's stolen.
And I think you bring up a valid point, but I think when you have a Justice Department, you can instruct your Justice Department how to prioritize different situations.
I think it's fine for Trump to say, listen, I still think that there was foul play in this election.
And even if there wasn't, let's just decide it once and for all.
Let's get it figured out once and for all.
And instruct his Justice Department to begin investigating whether or not there was some type of foul play going on.
This is what you're going to do until the end of time is say there's never been enough investigations or you could admit that all of the available evidence doesn't prove it.
You have to admit that of the investigations that have been done and all the evidence that we've gathered— That's the last thing I want to add on this, too.
unidentified
To me, it's like, what about the standard?
Did you call for investigations into 2016?
What about 2024?
Should Democrats, the next time they're in power, like forensically audit the 2024 election, would you be satisfied with that?
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan podcast and said that he was getting phone calls from the Biden administration screaming and cursing at him and that they were effectively pressured into censoring information.
One of these stories in particular, Mark Zuckerberg said that the feds went to him and said there will be information on Hunter Biden.
This will be Russian disinformation.
Knowing that they were pressuring and screaming at them, Facebook ultimately removed this story, which, according to a few pollsters, they believe, did swing the election by a few or swing public public opinion on Trump by a few points.
I'm curious your guys' thoughts on that story.
unidentified
I was just going to say, if there's any evidence of the Biden administration threatened Facebook to censor disinformation, that's fucked up, and I would condemn that wholeheartedly, 100%.
So number one, I think Zuckerberg was asked about this by – was it Rogan who was like, do you have any evidence of that or any recordings?
He was like, no, unfortunately.
And to me, the other thing I really want to emphasize here, every administration, including Trump's, engaged with social media.
To like the intelligence agencies to like say, hey, this might be a potential terroristic threat.
This might be a violation of national security.
This might violate your own TOS, number one.
And number two, I recall during the Twitter files congressional hearing, we found out that even on petty shit that the Trump administration reached out to Twitter to ask them to remove a tweet by Chrissy Teigen, John Legend's wife, because she called him a pussy-ass bitch.
There's never like a perfectly demarcated line, but I expect that there's going to be engagement between social media and the intelligence agencies of every administration.
But when you're asking people to take down tweets because you referred to the president as a pussy-ass bitch, that's weak shit.
I think you make some valid points, but there's some there that aren't really valid.
So yeah, sure.
So let's say someone in the Trump administration or even Trump himself is like, hey, can you take this tweet down?
I don't like it.
It hurts my feelings, right?
Fine.
You can condemn it.
You can say, ah, it's an abuse of power or something like this.
Seems like a kind of vague abuse of power.
But there's a distinction when...
Facebook is being contacted by the Biden administration to tell them to censor all anti-COVID vaccination information, period.
To take those things down, to throw people off who are disseminating this information, this and that.
He says, this is now narrative building.
This is, I want you, this giant, enormous media outlet to build the narrative that my administration wants.
And I'm going to use the coercive power of my office to do it.
There's a distinction, I think, between that and I don't like this tweet.
Take it down.
unidentified
So, again...
If that's exactly what happened, I'd probably be inclined to agree, but there's no evidence of that.
The number one, it was just – What I mean is – so again, it depends very much on the nature of the engagement between the government and Facebook.
Again, if they threaten Facebook, if you don't take this down, there will be consequences or something like that besides just requests or even strong requests.
There's also a public health emergency.
So even if you disagree with what the federal government under Donald Trump, by the way, because a lot of this happened in 2020, and under the Biden administration, if you disagree with why they were pressuring it, to me, because that line is not perfectly demarcated, it's more understandable why the federal government would be urging social media companies it's more understandable why the federal government would be urging social media companies to crack down on disinformation they believe Well, just let me finish.
As opposed to the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, pressuring a social media company because a celebrity insulted him.
So anyway, look, this will be the last thing, okay, Luke?
And then we'll take it over to you.
Anyway, this is called rational discussion.
I know it's hard for you, but anyway, I think it's fine.
I think it's fine to make the criticism.
I don't want the president to call and ask to take down a tweet.
Fine.
Again, though, when you're talking about narrative building from the Justice Department, contacting Facebook itself, trying to construct a narrative, how much more fascistic can you get?
Authoritarianism can you get?
Then there's a counter narrative out here about COVID. There's a counter narrative here about some of the therapeutics.
And by the way, Zuckerberg has since said some of the things that they were saying on the counter side.
We're true.
And they were asking us to take these things down.
Personally, don't care for either story, COVID vaccine stuff.
It's big, I get it.
And targeting someone because they're personally mean to you is actually kind of worrying.
The more concerning thing to me that often is missed was the censorship of Eric Charamella, which just by saying that name, YouTube might delete the stream.
When an employee of the CIA, I believe it was an employee, but when someone working with the CIA released information that resulted in the impeachment of Donald Trump and the real clear investigations released the report that the individual had been identified as Eric Charmella, every major social media platform, I think Twitter did not do this at the time, would censor any information with that name without warning, without a strike, just simply remove it.
So I think when we look at the censorship of big tech...
We can talk about public information like COVID vaccines.
It is particularly worrying to me that Facebook, in all of this, especially with the story they had a portal made for the feds to report quote-unquote misinformation, were actively censoring stories of deep political merit, and they still have never accounted for it or answered for it.
As Josiah and I mentioned, we're not really interested in being blindly partisan, as some folks are.
And so if you have an example of the Biden administration crossing a line, we'll just denounce it.
Strange that you wouldn't do the same with Trump, which is part of what I'm trying to flesh out here.
But whenever the case was brought to the Supreme Court relating to some of this with Facebook, you might remember, and they ended up ruling against the plaintiffs who were saying they were unfairly censored because of the government being involved.
And one of the things they found out was that the...
The social media platforms, long before government was asking anything on COVID misinfo, already was implementing a term of service stuff on that.
And you can have an issue with that.
And in this new world where we have these platforms, all this power, we're going to be grappling over what the right term of service, probably not no term of service, but certain rules.
But we can all disagree on how that's structured.
But whether or not it's like a violation of the First Amendment relating to the government getting involved, it got slapped down by the Supreme Court because there's just not the evidence that the platforms felt coerced.
Because you will look at the percentages, even in...
What we're talking about now, this is new stuff which is coming out.
Zuckerberg whistleblowing about a bunch of stuff we did not previously know.
You're referencing stuff that has come out, what, multiple years ago.
What I'm saying to you specifically here is that there's no way for you to say, If you're going to say Trump is an authoritarian, he's evil, he's there to curtail the media, you know, this type of thing.
If the Biden administration's working in tandem, their Justice Department...
Trying to be coercive to Mark Zuckerberg to censor off information, specifically from conservatives, by the way.
They were the ones who were mostly trying to give a counter-narrative on the COVID-19 stuff, different political stuff, the J6 stuff.
He said he was approached by the DOJ on all of these different things, and so was Facebook.
It sounds like they're trying to create a narrative within one of the largest social media company platforms which is out there, which benefits their administration.
How much more authoritarian can you get than that?
Yeah, so you have a couple of problems here, which is what would his motivation actually be to do this?
So to be fair, do I trust Zuckerberg?
No, of course not.
I don't trust any of these tech giants.
That includes Elon Musk.
I don't trust him either.
But here's the thing, right?
People do have motivations for the things they do.
What would Zuckerberg's motivation be in expressing – and by the way, he began expressing this before he knew what the outcome of the new election was going to be even.
He was expressing this before that.
Yeah, but he didn't drop any of these sort of – So the thing is, is like – What is his motivation here for explaining that the Department of Justice is reaching out and trying to censor various conservative content except that he wants to be freed from the yoke of governments approaching Facebook and doing this because it creates all sorts of problems for him in his market, right?
He actually has more of an incentive to tell the truth about this than he does to lie.
unidentified
I don't know if he's lying.
I'm just saying like there seems to be even on the MAGA side an understanding that he has a credibility issue, number one.
Number two, as far as I know, he's not corroborated any of these claims, which perhaps he will in the future.
And number three, I think that he would have an incentive to say these things certainly after the election given that Trump won but even before when the outcome is in doubt in order to – you actually said it yourself.
Yeah, but his incentive then would be to tell the truth about this.
There could be, for instance, a guy like Zuckerberg has such a high profile.
It would not surprise me if he was called in for congressional hearings, if they were running investigations into various forms of interference, things like this.
He would need to actually have his story straight.
unidentified
He would need.
But that specific example, this big headline explosive event where they called me on the phone and they were cursing us out, Rogan said, those recordings would be sick.
And he's like, no, we don't have any recordings.
So he's almost making claims specifically that as of this moment, he can't possibly corroborate.
He's doing this in line with donating, you know, meta-donating a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund and also speaking more positively about Trump and also hiring Dana White and doing a lot of things that will make Trump like him more.
Trump goes, on video, yeah, I think this is in response to my threats.
And so my point about bringing up that case was I think he's just blowing it out of proportion because every time— No, surely you give a shit about that.
But they're just overinflated versions of what they were saying before, which they can't prove because in reality, unless something crazy comes out, that's, Yeah.
Have demonstrated on our own shows constantly that we can criticize the Biden administration.
We can address this because there's a perspective issue.
I think you make a good point that saying if someone's guilty of crimes behind this view that there's a fear Trump will levy false crimes is a legitimate concern.
The issue with the perspective is people do not believe Trump is legitimately guilty of crimes.
And so the argument is that Trump is saying Legitimately guilty of crimes and the crimes that Trump has been charged with are illegitimate.
That's the perspective.
unidentified
So we're saying the people he chooses to say that about are people he has political differences.
But any person who unjustly imprisons people says that.
And so we're saying of the people Trump chooses to say they should be put in prison.
Or say they should be locked up or say that they should be targeted by the government.
It's a very...
This specific set of people he chooses, which is when someone wrongs him politically, all of a sudden now, he randomly mentions, if you're guilty of crimes, you should go to prison.
When they're not accused of crimes, there's no reason to believe they've committed crimes.
He'll just throw it out.
Obviously, that would be his justification.
Zuckerberg committed crimes.
But he's just saying that to scare him because there's no reason...
I perceive that he's politically targeting people because instead of you're guilty of crimes, you're going to jail.
I'll just, again, throw you a bone here because maybe there's something out there that I miss.
I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of Biden's – every statement he's made.
If he ever adopted the same sort of posture that Trump did of like – Fox News.
Fox News is a great example.
They had to pay $787 million in the biggest defamation settlement in American history because it was very possible that they would lose that case against Dominion.
We've never seen anything like that in liberal media.
Biden could have, by Trump's own logic, said, you know what?
Fox just had to pay nearly a billion dollars in a loyalty tithe to Donald Trump.
We never sent MSNBC or CNS. You know what?
I'm ordering my DOJ to investigate Fox News.
And if Fox News executives are guilty of these things, we're going to throw them away for life or imprison them for life.
When Joe Biden first got in, he did two major things.
He shut down Keystone and he banned fracking on public land.
Trump wants to reverse these things.
So I'm curious your guys' thoughts.
unidentified
Well, being soy liberals who believe in climate change, I mean, I would love to see a more at least diverse energy portfolio where we, you know, try to embrace renewable energy as much as possible.
I will just say that energy production under Biden achieved the highest levels in recorded history even compared to Trump's.
I mean my god at the end of his I think first year he was producing or he was signing lease and permits for drilling and fracking at a rate that was higher than under Trump.
He was just trying to quell like new.
I love it.
Because there was a huge backlog.
Got it.
So yeah, energy production is great under Biden compared to even Trump.
I don't know what it is about these particular EOs.
It's going to be so difficult for Trump to undo with a stroke of a pen because my understanding is if the president signs it with an EO, it can be revoked pretty easily with an EO. Oh, Biden was invoking like an old law, which is why – however, that was mechanically – Oh, so it wasn't – okay.
Yeah, I think Biden – Biden should get a lot of credit with that.
The crazy thing is, as Trump was going out, a part of the deal that he was making with Saudi Arabia and Russia, we can pull up the specifics, it's been a long time since we've reviewed them, but was to reduce oil production because of the collapse.
So a lot of the recovery to get back to the energy production we were before was pandemic-related, in part deals that Trump was making to try to help the oil industry.
Some made sense because of the collapse of the oil industry.
But I will say Biden's doing a good job of both trying to progress.
Green energy initiatives while not...
Rocking the system too much energy-wise, and that's why oil production is still so high.
But we're getting green energy incentivized so that as we transition off, it's the least economically painful, but we can get there.
Whether you believe in global warming, you don't believe in global warming...
Doesn't really matter because both sides can agree on the fact that nuclear energy is the best way forward and it will reduce the greenhouse emissions so that you latte soy fuckers can be happy, right?
Does relate to – he actually has a really strong economic record.
I would love to talk about that.
Some of it is out of his hands.
Like I think the Fed did a really good job of managing interest rates and getting us out of – We agree that the Federal Reserve should be – Controlled by Trump.
But there was a really successful – which is why I think Harris lost.
Well, I mean, you could discharge the chairman of the Federal Reserve for cause, but I just don't think that they should be like a political appointee.
I think that's fair.
Think about during times of, you know, the reason that people thought that Biden would— Wait, would you want us soy liberals like just like firing casually?
No, I think that Congress should be in charge of the distribution of money in the United States, not a private banking institution where you can have a single guy who can raise or deflate the currency at will.
That gives— We're good to go.
Here's this lever.
We increase the money supply and inflate it, or we decrease it so that we can deflate it.
No, what Trump wanted, the reason that Trump wanted interest rates low is because his economic advisors were telling him something which is true.
The Midwest is starving for credit.
This had Democrat governors everywhere, all over the place, and they have been...
Putting the squeeze on manufacturing there with business taxes, everything else, they can't get access to credit.
What happens when the interest rates go low?
Hang on.
Hang on.
What happens when the interest rates go low?
Everyone borrows money.
The credit is there.
And so what he was doing is he said, not only are we going to cut business taxes by 30% for corporations, But we're going to give them an incentive to borrow money to expand, right?
But if we want to give them incentives to borrow money, we've got to have a lower interest rate.
His entire economic team told him that.
By the way, it makes sense.
And by the way, they borrowed a shitload of money.
I just want to, will y'all then, regardless of that, because that's the whole thing, the stance on the Fed, I shouldn't have thrown that in there.
I'm just saying.
Will you acknowledge that, whether it was Biden or his team or whatever, of the power they had, did a really good job managing the recovery out of the pandemic?
So the thing is, is like, yes, it's faith based when you involve us in different wars, things like that.
It shakes people's confidence.
When we're not involved in foreign affairs, we're not involved in foreign wars.
Man, people feel way more comfortable when it comes to their spending habits, when it comes to expansion, when it comes to things like this, because they have that sense of certainty.
unidentified
My understanding is that consumer spending habits have been proven.
Pretty, like, incongruous with, like, the public's opinion on the economy.
But we've seen, like, in almost every single economic metric.
A miracle coming out of the pandemic, including purchasing power, getting back to what it was pre-pandemic, which is stunning given the price increases that were happening.
I think the economics— It's not a miracle, dude.
I think the economic— What happened— I've been really trying.
And so in Western country after Western country, you've seen sort of an anti-incumbent bias because of price increases, which makes sense because people don't know what all the exact data points are.
Understandably, they're just going, they're buying things, and they're mad that the prices have gone up.
up but that doesn't mean that the management of the economy was uh bad it means that there's been a effective messaging campaign to convince people the reason prices went up was because of biden when it was really no you can't put it on phenomenon that he can't put it on propaganda you can't say the people were just propagandized into believing well i think you meant at the economy that the economy acknowledge any of the points i mean at all i'm acknowledging Deal with any of them.
I don't know how to send this to you, but I would love to.
I don't know.
That is like the opposite of every single source I'm pulling up here that is seeing we've gotten back to inflation-adjusted wages higher than they've ever been.
So that being like the exact wonky, I think might be a...
unidentified
But again, I just want to say I'm not contesting what the perception of the economy is.
Where I do agree with Luke, though, is it seems like when you compare us to other nations, how we recovered the soft landing from the pandemic, the fact that we avoided a recession, jobs, not only the bounce-back jobs, but also the rate of jobs that increased per month under Biden were even higher than they were under Trump.
I was saying we would never be like, let's compare Biden non-COVID to Trump COVID. Obviously, when you look at end of Obama to Trump, a lot of times he'll do those comparisons because Trump just kind of inherited the economy that was...
The conflict with Ukraine and Russia, that actually drove up the cost of food significantly.
No one talks about that for obvious reasons because Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe.
If you strain food in one area, it's going to strain resources in other areas and the price goes up.
So I find it interesting because Kamala campaigned on, oh yeah, I'm going to go after the grocery stores for price gouging, etc.
But the Democrats created that problem with bad foreign policy allowing conflict to happen, not keeping Russia in its place.
I think the issue here is – I see where you're saying like, hey, the economy wasn't as bad given the circumstances.
OK, I can see your perspective on that.
But we also got to look at other things like foreign policy that we're talking about where conflicts absolutely play into the price of food, the price of goods.
The inflation-adjusted median income of U.S. households rebounded last year to roughly its 2019 level, overcoming the biggest price spike in four decades to restore most Americans' purchasing power.
So, just since we put that other one up on the screen, I want to make sure we add that to it.
The two main ones being Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I think deserve two separate discussions.
The Russia one, I'm not compelled at all by the Trump-initiated piece because we saw – I mean we've seen sort of a trajectory of Putin's activity that, of course, he would wait to see how much Trump could damage our international – I don't know.
But in terms of how much we spend to be geopolitically, militarily competitive and prepared national security-wise against Russia, generally we're spending trillions and trillions and trillions over the course of decades for that purpose.
This is a much more direct way to send what is relatively a small amount of money compared to what we're normally spending on the same cause to oppose the aggression of Russia that I think is destabilizing to the world.
Okay, but you do realize when you guys say we don't want a hot war in Russia, that if you're trading and supporting and funding the enemy of Russia that they're in a war with, that drastically increases the chances that you get attacked by that nation trying to cut off the supply, the endless supply of funding to the nation they're fighting with.
That's just common war doctrine.
Of course that increases the chances of a hot war.
Okay?
It's silly.
The containment method is not good.
And ultimately, Russia is going to beat the Ukraine.
unidentified
Does appeasement work, though?
Because to me, it's like there are two major camps, right?
Intervention at this point would actually probably be better to negotiate this settlement rather than the lives continue to get lost until Russia gets it anyway.
Now, if the Ukraine wants to fight to the last, there's not much anybody can do about it.
But Zelensky has, I think, somewhat signaled that he's...
I mean, I agree that if Ukraine were to say, all right, we're not in it for this, we don't want it, then I'm not saying push them to keep going.
But as long as they're saying, we're going to fight, I'd rather them have a better shot to do more damage than— Then the war goes on, but they're just getting crushed.
In the beginning of this, there was also the belief that there was an inevitability to two weeks or a month or whatever, all of Ukraine is done.
And we've seen that hasn't been the case.
unidentified
That is true.
And again, on my channel, I talk U.S. domestic politics, so maybe I'm missing something.
But my understanding was during the initial invasion, everyone from far-right experts to I believe Hassan Piker was like, this is going to be over in like a week.
What do we get from our riches, and are we sacrificing lives in vain for our riches?
That's what I want to know.
And so the answer to this is like, you don't know.
And you don't know.
And so the thing is, is like, if it is the case that all of our generals project the chances that this region is going to go to Russia anyway, and we can save thousands or tens of thousands of lives in this conflict, it seems wiser to me to just back away from funding this whole nightmare.
And the mainstream media did everything to not tell Americans the truth that they were losing.
This is why, like, you look at, like, someone, like, people that were reporting, right, that were saying, look, Russia's going to win this, like, Gonzalo Lear or Jackson Ingle, etc.
When they first invaded in early 2022, I remember watching Gonzalo talk about this.
He was like, yeah, they're going to win, etc.
They're winning.
And he was getting shadow banned.
The American media wasn't reporting it because they didn't want the American public to know that, look, we're funding this war and we're fucking losing.
It took years for the American public to finally figure out they're losing.
And then it was like, whoa, Ukraine, now years they've been able to- Yeah, but they were holding back the figures and not being honest about them losing.
And then other European countries feel threatened by Russia doing this.
And they're going to be supporting Ukraine somewhat already.
And Ukraine's going to be fighting.
Regardless of if we send aid, I'd rather them have our aid and do more damage to Russia and maybe hold back some Russian aggression further than standing back.
It was the U.S. that sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
You can say a Ukraine pulled the trigger, but Russia doesn't see it that way.
It can be the perspective of the narrative in the United States that the U.S. is not involved.
Russia does not see it that way.
The U.S. provided missiles, like attackums, provided the training and the equipment, and then asked the guy standing next to them, special forces in Ukraine, press that button to blow up the Russian flagship.
In no courtroom, would you be able to claim that you were not involved in the murder of a person when you handed the gun to the guy, asked him to do it, and told him to pull the trigger?
I think it's very naive on your part to pretend that there's not American special forces who are in Ukraine right now doing all sorts of sabotage mission, training ops, all sorts of things.
It's totally naive to believe that in every other theater that we're involved in, where we're training people in advisory roles.
I think foreign wars in general, like, are a big waste of money.
It's not a W for us.
It's an L. Let's just be honest here.
This whole situation with Russia and aggression containing it, it's a fun military-industrial complex.
We need to be able to rationalize and justify our armament.
So we need to go ahead and have this conflict with Russia when in reality we need to, you know, figure out some type of diplomatic middle ground with them versus having an issue with a nuclear armed power.
Yeah, capable of- I think peace is the way to go.
But, you know, we want to sit here and substantiate our military-industrial complex, which is problematic.
Like, there was no – Before they invaded, Ukraine specifically said, we're not going to be – like, we're not entering NATO, and the United States was like, yeah, it's not happening, and Russia's still invaded.
The issue wasn't NATO. The issue was the European Union.
And so Vladimir Putin went to Ukraine and said, if you open up your borders to trade with – The issue was Ukraine largely was like, You mean we get access to the Schengen zone and European trade, but we lose Russia?
Russia got pissed and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We need Sevastopol.
We need Crimea.
We can't lose that to the West.
Now you can make the arguments about what you think happened with the ousting of Yanukovych.
A lot of people believe that it was USAID and the CIA that went in to help foment these groups that ultimately stormed his mansion and ousted the guy forcing him to flee to Russia.
But this bubbling conflict in the country and political destabilization was definitely both Russia and NATO Western forces vying through political means to gain control of Ukraine.
This should not be the primary motivator, and I'm not sure that it is.
They have been weakened as a consequence of this.
Now, you can say that they're going to win, and certainly they have still the stronger military, but they are not in a better position now than they were prior to the war, number one.
Number two, we consider Ukraine an ally.
We consider them somebody that we have diplomatic and economic incentives for them to succeed.
Also, by definition, the European Union as well.
So it seems like we have diplomatic and economic reasons and to try to weaken Russia, number one.
But I just want to be clear, at least for me, and I'm sure Luke would agree, if Ukraine did not want to fight – I don't think we should be forcing or coercing Ukraine to fight it.
If they decide, like, you know what?
Fuck it.
We just – we've resisted.
Let's have either a settlement or just wave the white flag all the way around.
I mean I think it would suck that we were empowering and rewarding Putin.
But at that point, yes, the aid should be cut off.
But my understanding is they still want to fight, and they just need help.
Let's just say the government of a small group of people, do you guys believe that the small government, this limited amount of people, have a right to force the people of Ukraine through conscription to go fight a war?
I'm making a point about the structure of the government.
That's why I asked the question.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the general story is that you've got these Soviet factories, for instance.
They run up the chain of command through the Communist Party.
That's how the Soviet Union ran.
When the Soviet Union collapses and Ukraine effectively becomes its own state, where does this factory answer to now that the party has been shattered?
What happens was, there's one story of a guy, one of the oligarchs, got a couple of his buddies with some guns, walked into the factory and said, who's in charge?
And I'm the foreman.
I say, okay, we're going to take care of everything for you.
We're the bosses.
This is our factory now.
And they say, well, what does that mean?
It means all the supplies you need to come in and make the factory work, we will take care of, but you answer to me.
And the worker said...
That sounds great to us, actually, because we don't know who we're supposed to answer to.
This created a massive wealth gap in Ukraine for decades where you had a very small group of ultra-wealthy individuals.
One of the most interesting things I found about Kiev is that the price of a condo or a house was comparable to a house or a condo in the United States, despite the fact that these people were making about 400 bucks a month.
So with the government being largely oligarchic, the question of whether or not Ukraine wants to fight this war is an interesting one, and I'm curious what you guys think.
If there was an overwhelming opposition within Ukraine among Ukrainian citizens for continuing this war, then I think that they should resolve it because democracy.
unidentified
Yeah.
I mean, again, this is not something I focus on on my channel.
So for all I know, there's compelling evidence that the public sentiment is, fuck it.
Let's just, again, either negotiate a settlement or concede the land.
This brings up a more compelling question I'd like you to answer to, Luke, which is this.
Do you think, ultimately, That Russia likely is going to win the conflict with Ukraine and get at least a large portion of Ukrainian land.
Do you think ultimately that's going to happen?
Then the entailment actually of your position is this, when you say weaken Russia, that you want the United States to fund an oligarchical government which will continue to draft the citizenry of the Ukraine to go die to weaken people you don't like.
Like, he's saying— You're saying you want American treasure to prop this up in order to assist these warfighters for your interest to go die on behalf of an oligarchical nation, which is drafting their own citizenry.
You want to pay for that because it weakens a geopolitical rival of yours.
unidentified
I think—you correct me if I'm wrong because I know this is my position.
I think the position is we should be— Continuing to support an ally as long as they want to resist a foreign invader, which incidentally also benefits us directly because it weakens a foreign adversary, that same invader.
For me, the calculus changes tremendously if it turns out that Zelensky is forcing the Ukrainian people to resist.
They can institute a draft against the minority who can fight, which is going to be kids, mostly young men, right?
That's going to be your warfighter age, 18 to 25. Obviously, they're going to be outnumbered by other people.
So they can compel their citizenry to go fight even because they don't have to, right?
But, ordinarily, they would not be able to do this, nor do this compelling service, unless they were enabled by the treasury of a large First World nation, which is supporting it.
So it seems like you have a moral quagmire here, a big problem.
No, I think as far as Israel, again, I'll totally concede that this is a very morally ambiguous conflict that you pointed out that even if a majority of Ukrainian citizens want to resist Russia in the sense that they don't want Russia to come take over.
I think any draft or conscription at the bare minimum, and I'm not a debate philosopher like you are, but is morally ambiguous to say the last.
60 years old.
I just think that as long – my understanding is Ukraine wants to resist Russia, and I don't have any issue with the United States continuing to supply the means by which – If the premise is wrong, I would be happy to revisit that.
Another reason I agree – Public support is dropping.
It's kind of complicated for what they support, what type of peace deal they support, what's being taken, all that.
And I have the same stances from when we started based on public sentiment, and I understand what you're saying.
I'll note that I also think for leverage to get a better deal for Ukraine, it's important that the United States stands like we're going to support them to infinity and beyond so that Russia doesn't feel like, wait, if we just wait out...
American support for Ukraine.
We can take even more, right?
unidentified
So that they believe, gosh, we're stopping up at this line.
That's why I'm saying the conflict in Ukraine is a waste of time.
But yeah, when it comes to Israel, I don't see any strategic advantages the United States enjoys from supporting Israel.
There's virtually none.
Oh, we have our eyes and ears in the Middle East.
Well, the Middle East wouldn't hate us if we did not support Israel.
Yeah, I think when it comes to Israel and our support of them, the only reason we do is because we have very rich lobbyists that make sure that we do, and our support of Israel needs to drop off.
For us, it's obviously silly to not acknowledge at all the months of negotiations and the deal that's been constructed under the Biden administration.
Biden's still the president.
So if you're giving credit, that would – some would lie there.
But I acknowledge that the bipartisan presence in these negotiations adding to, hey, it's not just us.
You can't wait out the clock on Biden, Netanyahu, and Hamas.
Trump is also – Saying the same united voice about what we're going to – what's going to happen here.
And that united front I do think was powerful, and with all my feelings that you've heard throughout this show about Trump, I'd give him or his envoy Steve Witkoff – is that him?
unidentified
Yeah, real estate guy.
No, 100 percent.
Like I don't want to put the cart before the horse because, again, foreign policy, not my area of expertise to the extent I have any.
My understanding was there have been like… Even experts get it wrong constantly.
Well, but haven't there been, like, ceasefires negotiated or talks?
We got a ceasefire, and then it didn't happen?
Yeah.
So I'm with Luke.
Like, you got to wait and see.
But I am happy to give Trump a lot of the credit here, some of the credit here, because it was bipartisan effort.
It was Biden's deal, my understanding of the framework of the deal, and Trump left them no safe harbor.
He was like, you take this deal because you're not getting...
I think in general, throughout the conflict, there's lots of times and reasons to be supporting Israel.
I think what we're learning a little bit through the end of this process is Biden should have done a lot more leveraging, thus threatening, withdrawing and potentially withdrawing aid to get a better resolution earlier.
And the fact that that didn't happen, I think, is a stain.
unidentified
I'm uncomfortable.
I was just going to say as a general proposition, and I'm not sure there's any nation this applies to except Israel.
I'm uncomfortable with the notion of unconditional support to any ally.
And I feel like...
Even more than the United Kingdom or even Ukraine, I feel like Israel gets a blank check from the United States.
So, you know, I think this is why the ADL is rallying so hard, like, we need to stop this, blah, blah, blah.
Jonathan Greenblatt was literally in Israel talking about we need some type of sophisticated situation where we stop these dissenters of Israel like we did with the Hezbollah Pager attack.
And I'm like, holy shit, this guy's over there.
He's an American citizen, right?
Allegedly.
In a foreign land talking about how we need to police language in the United States.
I think that elections have consequences, of which one was not directly.
With this structure of the Supreme Court, it seems likely that we're going to see a massive cultural shift.
I think it's probable that we do have a case, I believe that's going through now, I forgot which one it is, that could see gender identity removed as a protected class.
I also think the Supreme Court may likely, if challenged, or I should say if a challenge is presented, overturn gay marriage.
And I'm curious what our non-liberal friends think, because...
Largely, conservatives aren't going out there and making a principal issue that gay marriage should be ended, but I think they'd probably support the end of gay marriage.
I'll go first on this, Andrea, because I know you have more nuance.
Mine is very simple.
Gays should be able to have civil unions, not gay marriage.
It's a religious sacrimony.
Obviously, we all know the Abrahamic religions forbid homosexuality, so I don't think that they should have the ability to marry, but they should have all the civil liberties and protections that come from marriage, but the title itself needs to be changed.
I also think that gay marriage is kind of a slippery slope that's allowed a lot of sexual degeneracy to kind of flourish, right?
Whether it's the 99 genders, all the other problems that we have with the drag queens, etc.
Yeah, the only way that the state would become involved, and necessarily it would have to, would be for some things which could be custodial, things like that.
So, you mentioned, yeah, I know some of yours is detaching from, because you're saying even marriage in general is tarnished now, but to Tim's question, marriage isn't religious when the state is the one bolstering it, right?
We have the separation of church and state, so it has to be a secular concept.
But you brought up that marriage is believed to be a – No, I wasn't wrong.
Same-sex marriage, because you were saying the concept is believed to be by people between a man and woman, which is not what the polling shows.
And then you talked about it being for reproduction, so I would ask any restrictions you would implement for same-sex couples, would you implement for infertile couples?
Okay, so let's back up, and yes, I'll answer your question, but I'm going to take these one at a time.
Okay, so let's start with what I actually said.
I literally said, Luke, that it's the perception of the religious, these aren't valid.
They're not saying you can't do them, because they just consider them to be invalid.
And when you dig into the data, that's what you find.
That's one.
The second thing is the government's job, when the state gets involved for marriage, it's supposed to be for the promotion of the health and welfare of the state.
That would be the family unit.
Now, we can look at birth rates in the United States and we can see marriage has not done us any favors when it comes to reproduction.
It has not done us any favors when it comes to intact family units, more single moms than ever, more single fathers than ever.
There's almost no virgins who get married.
I mean, it's basically that ship has sailed.
The institution of marriage itself is cheap.
And you also go on to say, what about child tax credits?
You get those even if you're not married, Luke.
You get the earned income credit even if you're not married, Luke.
No, I said, I believe that marriage as a state concept, because you asked, why should the state do it?
I said, well, because I actually do think people building wealth together, building a life together, same sex or not, is a better structure for a society.
And so incentivizing that through honoring it by the state is good, just like how we incentivize other things, like having children through child tax credit.
And Andrew, you said a component of marriage is reproduction.
Remember, this is a component of marriage, not the entire purpose of it.
In my view, the purpose of marriage is that the man is representing the Christ head, the woman, the body of the church.
That's what the purpose of marriage is from the religious standpoint.
That aside, from the secular standpoint, when you're talking about women who get married and they cannot reproduce, there's still a set standard for what is called normalcy.
If you are promoting the normalcy of men and women together reproducing, even the few who cannot reproduce, it still sets the standard for reproduction.
In other words, it's still a reflection of reproduction itself because it's a man and a woman.
And we have a different, I guess, obviously moral framework because I'm saying I think the normalcy that should be exhibited, the behavior that should be encouraged through this institution is...
Committed relationships to one another and because I... I'm fine with gay couples adopting.
Or is it actually true that you don't care if people have polygamous marriages?
That you don't care if people have orgies in their marriage?
That you don't care if they open their marriages up?
And that you don't give a shit about they're not sanctified to you in any way, shape, or form?
Do you actually care if gays have big-ass sex parties, gay husbands, they open their marriage up?
Is there any concern for any of those things as you're talking about, well, wait, I do believe that it's good for society to have this healthy normal standard.
Yeah, this is what I was mentioning earlier with the tone.
I don't know why I can explain it.
I agree that...
Whether or not I care about what other people are doing in their lives, I do acknowledge when things are societally advantageous.
And I think it's societally advantageous to legally, contractually, by the state, support people's commitment to one another and bonding of their lives, finances, etc.
What happens outside of that, just like in straight, man-woman relationships, crazy stuff happens too.
And we can say, alright, I'm not going to hate on you for that, but I might have a stance that something else should be an affirmative good that we promote.
Yeah, so when we're talking about normalization, the reason that you think that marriage is advantageous is because there's a normalization aspect of society.
I agree.
But just telling two people, well, you can commit through the state via contract.
For what, though, Luke?
For what?
What is the purpose?
The purpose would be...
Reproduction, the purpose would be a family unit.
The purpose would be intact family homes.
The purpose of it would not be for, like, orgy sex or for opening the marriage up or for things like that.
unidentified
You would have to have a family unit with two dads or two moms.
I think that it is societal good if people are starting families together, even if it's not with kids, but they have this commitment, which is good for them.
Good for wealth generation, good for life stability, which then all...
Makes the community prosper more and I think leads to better outcomes.
I don't want to cut you off, but we are kind of going in a circle here, and I know that you want to throw something in there.
unidentified
Well, you mentioned something interesting in the very beginning, which is like the legal implications of this because Obergefell was a 5-4 decision, and Clarence Thomas did say in the Dobbs decision in his concurring opinion that perhaps we should – now having overturned Roe v.
Wade, we should use the same standard to potentially overturn Obergefell.
I do think that that's very possible.
Given the current composition of the court and, of course, more religiously conservative legal activists would love the opportunity to overturn a burger fail.
What will be interesting is in 2022 after the Dobbs decision – and I'm blanking on the name.
It was either Defense of Marriage or Respect for Marriage Act.
I think it was Respect for Marriage.
That was signed into law by President Biden.
So in theory, the Supreme Court could overturn that as well because it's just federal statute.
But a lot of gay marriage protections have been codified, not quite at the level of a Burger Bell, but by the Respect for Marriage Act.
One of the arguments made back in 2008, you had Prop 8 in California.
Seven years later, you get Obergefell.
One of the arguments made by conservatives was that this is a slippery slope where they begin teaching children about gay adult activities.
Liberals largely said that'll never happen.
And I know because I actually campaigned for the human rights campaign in California using those arguments to get people to give money.
Sure enough, here we are.
And I am arguing against these books showing graphic adult content, including anal sex to children in schools.
It happened.
And the argument maintained by the left, one of the principal arguments is, if a teacher is gay and a child asks about the gay marriage, they should teach it.
As it pertains to sex education, the argument presented by many liberals is that it would be discriminatory to only have heterosexual sex education.
If you have sex education in schools, it must be for all protected classes, of which...
Orientation and identity are protected.
Thus, these books are in grade schools, and the liberals have defended children seeing fetish content.
My thing is, good luck going to California and asking the police to actually enforce the actions against what they're doing in public because they are on video.
Yeah, all sorts of crazy things in a country this size happen, including in the school I went to, some crazy stuff being taught that's way to the right.
So, like, inappropriate things happen.
And we can get into that discussion, but first let me answer your question, which was about books.
I have seen examples of books.
Straight content or gay cut doesn't matter.
If it's overly sexual for a young person, of course you don't want them to have that.
That doesn't really cross over into then that becoming the justification for banning all sorts of books that aren't offensive at all and all sorts of topics, and that's what we oppose.
But then on sex education, I don't think it's bad when at parents' homes they're teaching sort of the more foundational moral framework to a kid, and that's up to them.
At school, not...
Too young, wherever we as a society have drawn the line of when sex education is the correct time, you actually find that people end up being safer and don't have a teen pregnancy, etc.
Whenever you have comprehensive sex education, which will include, because this might apply to some of the people, teaching about the risks of STDs across all different people.
And I don't know why you converge those two.
Inappropriate books, gay or straight, shouldn't be there.
But what we define as inappropriate might be, but like pornographic, obviously, out.
But then on sex education, teaching about the concept of certain types of sexes, which isn't really making a moral statement about it, but instead is teaching all the things so that when they go out in the world, they're prepared to operate as an adult.
Yeah, so to lay out the exact presentation I think a teacher should give in whatever grade it is, I obviously want to go look at sort of the curriculum and all that, but I can tell you that the sex education goes beyond just, here's your reproductive organs, and I think that's important, and when I've seen research about this, it's actually, like how?
To y'all's interest, making people safer and less likely to end up getting hurt because of things related to sex.
So as I mentioned, having sex...
Because this is something that happens whether you want it to or not.
Right.
Even if it's between same-sex people, you probably want to inform people of all different orientations of the practices that you can take.
I would have to look at what the research has shown is the most, not research, but like educational professionals have laid out is the most appropriate because I really haven't, until right now, not thought about sex education.
You might know that I sent, so that we could have a thoughtful discussion, a list of topics.
This wasn't on it.
And so if you want to come back, and I can do all the research to understand exactly what sex education happens at this grade and that grade and what's most common, we can do it.
But I do not know the rates of teen pregnancy in 1920 at the top of my head.
But when gay sex education wasn't taught in like the 50s, let's say, or the 40s, or things like this, and you say, well, necessarily, we teach these things because it reduces teen pregnancy, it reduces X, Y, and Z. Shouldn't we see those high rates back then when they weren't teaching it?
But even like sex education, I do know this for sure, but we could pull up a study to get the exact numbers on this.
It doesn't matter how I know, but my mom works in a space where there's a big emphasis of making sure people are being educated properly because even assault and knowing how to prevent sexual assault and knowing how to go to the proper authorities and understanding what assault is and when someone, a teacher or something is crossing a line, whenever you're just depending on a parent who may not do it comprehensively or students to tell them about all these things, They end up being put in a more dangerous situation.
I want to agree with this, but I do have a caveat.
There are, like, religious nutcases who exist who will...
They won't give their kids any treatment for anything, not a broken bone, not a, you know, they have a, you know, like a terrible infection, they won't allow them to have antibiotics, they just like prey over them, right, and this type of thing.
I do support some sort of intervention on behalf of those children so that they get the treatment they need so they don't die of these like horrible infections or, you know, something like this from a broken bone.
I think within...
The confines of reason this should be ascertained.
But generally speaking, of course, parents should have the right over the medical decisions of their kids.
We do have to go, but the reason why I'm going to ask and kind of go quick with it is that in blue states, if a child is distressed and the doctor prescribes gender transition, the parents say no, the state intervenes and says you do not have the right to decide for your child.
In red states, it's inverted.
In red states, it's inverted.
If the parent says my kid should get a transition, the state intervenes and says no, you can't.
So, I bring this up because there is this principle that people like to bring up that the parents should ultimately decide, but the reality is, based on the moral worldview, people will easily break from that principle.
Well, I think it's because we all agree that the framework should be if you're not yet able to decide for yourself because you're not a legal adult, then you have to decide in accordance with your guardians.
It's just a matter of where do we draw the line of when sort of you lose guardianship because you're...
What's so bizarre is I feel like the right is often distorted.
I feel like the Christian right is the only ones who are consistent on this.
We would say the same thing.
If you're taking your two-year-old and getting full-body tattoos for the two-year-old, you take your two-year-old to the tattoo parlor and give him full-body tattoos, we would be like, no.
Yeah, I know, but other moral positions are not consistent to their principle on this.
I'm arguing, I think, that the Christian position is consistent in its moral principles on that issue.
I think it is actually consistent.
I don't think that the harm reductionists or the utilitarians, things like this, I don't think they're consistent.
Because I think that if you're trying to do harm reduction as your principal, that you can clearly see that this is not a reduction of harm to a child to put them on puberty blockers and things like this, though they argue it is.
They can't really make that declaration correctly.
I think that they're not consistent.
I think that the Christian principle is actually consistent.
