Trump and Netanyahu Reunite; Nick Fuentes on Trump and Israel; Dasha Nekrasova on "Brat" and Kamala
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Trump-Bibi Bromance (1:26)
Interview with Nick Fuentes (37:16)
Interview with Dasha Nekrasova (1:15:20)
Outro (1:36:24)
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Welcome to a brand spanking new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Glenn is still away on his luxurious vacation, so you're stuck with me.
I'm Michael Tracy.
Tonight, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had a joyous reunion.
We'll discuss Trump's fascinating record on Israel.
Then, Nicolas J. Fuentes on his relationship with Trump.
Does he still regard Trump as the glorious leader of the America First movement?
Finally, Dasha Nekrasova on Kamala Harris, also known as Mamala, and the very fun musical memes fueling Kamala's sudden rise to power.
Before that, a few programming notes.
System Update is available in podcast form on Spotify and every other podcast platform.
If you would like to support System Update, you can sign up to Glenn Greenwald's Locals Community at greenwald.locals.com.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting now.
So Donald J. Trump, you may have heard of him. - Yeah.
Had a glorious reunion today with Benjamin Netanyahu, who's been touring the United States after delivering his rousing address to Congress that received so many standing ovations that I don't even think our most advanced mathematicians have been able to compute the total number of them.
So let's take a look at Trump and Bibi reuniting.
It's so wonderful.
It's so heartwarming.
Here they are.
Trump and Bibi down at Mar-a-Lago, shaking hands.
Wow.
It really brings joy to my heart.
You may recall that Trump at least professed to have bad blood for a while.
With Benjamin Netanyahu, not on any policy level, meaning not because Trump had any objection to anything Netanyahu was actually doing governmentally or politically or in any other real important fashion, but because Trump was annoyed that Bibi sent a note of congratulations to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.
So that was the grudge that Trump had allegedly been nursing for all this time, but apparently they buried the hatchet officially today.
And you can see them clasping hands and rubbing up against each other.
And was there a smooch involved?
We don't know.
We'll have to wait for the leaks that may emerge from the waitstaff at Mar-a-Lago.
Now, I'm a very peculiar person, so I am a subscriber to the official Prime Minister's office press release list from Israel, and they sent some additional photos for us all to gaze at with wonder.
So here's another one from today's meeting that I found fascinating.
That's Netanyahu, I guess, telling Trump a bedtime story, reading from a book.
And this meeting took place in the morning, so maybe it was an early bedtime for Trump today, maybe for a nap, or maybe he didn't sleep at all.
Maybe Trump has the stamina that he could withstand BB reading aloud to him without dozing off.
But if you look a little closely at that book, By golly, I think I recognize it!
That is B.B.
The book is titled B.B.
and it's Benjamin Netanyahu's memoir.
Wow!
Now again, because I'm very peculiar, I fully admit that, Internet, I've actually read significant portions of the memoir B.B.
because I do all my diligent research for the edification of you, the viewer at home.
And there's a really fascinating passage in the BB memoir that I couldn't help but revert back to in my own mind as I was pondering the significance of this event.
So here's what Netanyahu reveals Trump, quote, blurting out.
around the time that they first met in Israel in 2017.
If you recall, after Trump assumed office in 2017, his first major international trip was to Saudi Arabia and then Israel, so two of our most magnificent allies.
So apparently, as per Netanyahu's recollection, I guess this was relayed to him second hand, Trump blurted something out that maybe had a small kernel of truth to it, which is that Bibi doesn't want peace, meaning with the Palestinians.
And it's hard to contest that one.
I don't even think Bibi's staunchest supporters would dispute that Bibi is not terribly interested in forging some kind of settlement with the Palestinians.
Rather, they cheer because Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep that conflict going for as long as possible for political and geo-strategic and perhaps even religious reasons.
So, what happened after Trump was said to have blurted that out is, again, terribly fascinating.
Netanyahu showed Trump a video of Mahmoud Abbas, who is the head of the Palestinian Authority, basically a powerless figurehead who represents the pittance of what constitutes Palestinian representative government, at least in the West Bank.
And he showed him the video.
And Trump said, wow.
Trump was appalled that what was portrayed on that video contradicted what Trump had gathered from having met Abbas in Washington.
Trump said, quote, he seemed like such a sweet and peaceful guy.
Now, this video was a fabrication.
According to Rex Tillerson, who was then Trump's Secretary of State.
Remember, Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, was appointed Secretary of State by Trump in the early part of his first administration.
He would go on to be fired by tweet by Trump and then replaced with Mike Pompeo.
Who is one of the very few top administration officials that Trump seemed to get along perfectly fine with.
Most of the rest of them, Trump had this petulant falling out where they were bickering with one another and Trump would unceremoniously fire them, including Tillerson by tweet, but Pompeo not so much.
Now, Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a fabricated video to Trump in order to change Trump's mind on the feasibility of some kind of diplomatic settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And Netanyahu came up with a conclusion from that encounter, at least per his memoir that was released a couple of years ago and which I very peculiarly read.
Netanyahu says Trump didn't like being taken for a fool.
I hope the video will mitigate further bonding during his scheduled meeting with Abbas in Bethlehem on the final day of the trip.
So Netanyahu is trying to undermine whatever good rapport Trump might develop or continue with Abbas on a later segment of his trip.
Let's go to the next part of this excerpt from the book.
Netanyahu recounts that he was able to soundly convince Trump of his own position being the right one because he likened the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to golf.
Netanyahu said, peace with the Emiratis is a five-foot putt.
Peace with the Saudis is a 30-foot putt, and peace with the Palestinians is a hole-in-one through a brick wall.
So Netanyahu was really pleased with himself for likening the Middle East conflict to golf.
Netanyahu determined that that's an analogy that really resonated with Trump, and he was probably correct on that score.
And here's the best part.
This one tickles me to this day.
Following this meeting between Bibi and Trump at the King David Hotel, by the way, site of what could only be described, if you want to use the word terrorist attack to describe anything, the King David Hotel was bombed by ardent Zionist militia groups
In the run-up to the founding of Israel, when these ardent militia groups were trying to expel the British, who at that point ran the British Mandate of Palestine, which later became Israel once the self-proclaimed Zionist, declared independence.
So Netanyahu recounts that after this meeting at the King David Hotel, Trump went immediately to the Western Wall, the first American president to do so.
Now, other presidents had of course visited the Western Wall, But Trump evidently was the first president to do so while in office, and isn't that a beautiful photo?
That's Trump with his yarmulke fastened safely on his head, and he is definitely in a state of contemplation.
Trump, we're told, is a very religious man, so I'm sure this was a moving experience for him, placing his fingers ever so gently and intently on that wall.
That's a really wonderful anecdote, and I'm so happy I get to share it with all you people because I want you to remember it for as long as you're alive.
I'll probably remember it even in death.
I'm not a particularly spiritual person myself.
I'm not sure about the afterlife, but I hope if there is one, I will remember this anecdote above any others.
Now, the ritual of American politicians going and placing their hands on the Western Wall is a well-established one.
J.D.
Vance Newly named Trump Vice President.
As he was gearing up his Ohio Senate candidacy in 2022, J.D.
Vance evidently calculated that one of his primary stops on the campaign trail would have to be in Jerusalem.
Where he went and also donned the customary yarmulke and lowered his head in solemn So that's J.D.
Vance, and that was clearly the politically correct thing for him to do.
Politically astute, I should say, because it apparently fueled his ascendance first to the Ohio Senate seat when he obtained Trump's endorsement to win the Republican primary.
In Ohio over a slate of other Republican candidates and then won the general election over a Democratic candidate, Tim Ryan, and now has been named the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party at age 39.
And as the youngest vice presidential nominee, I believe, I actually discussed this with Newt Gingrich at the Republican National Convention last week, because Newt Gingrich was telling me about how he had worked with Richard Nixon in Richard Nixon's post-presidency.
They strategized with one another about how the Republicans would try to win back the House of Representatives, which they had been out of power in for decades.
And then finally, Newt Gingrich Unleashed his contract with America in 1994, and he won a majority in the House for the Republicans, and Newt told me that that was partially thanks to the guidance that was lovingly bestowed to him by Richard Nixon.
But Richard Nixon ran in 1952 as Vice President with Dwight Eisenhower, and he was also 39 or 40 at the time, so was quite young himself.
Now, that's just another kind of random historical aside from me that isn't really part of the narrative that I was trying to relate to you, but hey, you're stuck with me and all my oddball sensibilities for the time being.
Now, I personally visited Israel for the first time in November of 2023, right after October 7th.
I figured, hey, what better time to go voyage to the Holy Land?
So I did some reporting, but I also said to myself, you know what?
I'm here.
I'm ready to go.
I'm raring for a really fruitful visit.
So I'm going to go visit the Western Wall.
And so I did so.
I went and sat at the Western Wall.
In the old city of Jerusalem they have white plastic lawn chairs that you can sit in and you can just gaze at the wall and you can also read various holy books.
So I picked up a English language translation of the Torah.
I read for a while.
You know, I didn't feel very much.
I didn't feel like I was lifted by some supernatural spirit.
I didn't feel like I was connecting to anything in particular.
It was just a moderately interesting I guess landmark or point of interest to have visited.
And I also didn't bring a photographer with me.
So unlike J.D.
Vance and unlike Trump and unlike all the other endless politicians who make that trek to the Western Wall, I didn't have the capacity to record my experience for posterity in case I have any political aspirations, so that tells you all you need to know about whether I'm ever going to get elected office.
I always tell people I couldn't get elected dog catcher because I didn't even have the presence of mind to take a photographer with me to the Western Wall, although I guess I could have asked people to just take my iPhone and snap a photo of me as they were praying, but that seemed like it might have been a little bit uncouth So, missed opportunity.
Now, another thing that I did, just to prove that I actually was there, there's me with my outrageous hair.
Thankfully, I have been treated to the services of a stylist while I've been here in Brazil guest hosting for Glenn.
So they did do some adjustments to my hair that makes me look, I guess, slightly more presentable.
But there was me with a member of the Knesset who actually invited me to come to Israel.
Moshe Roth, he's a self-described ultra-Orthodox member of the Knesset.
And we had an interesting discussion about the Orthodox Jews' positions in the current Israeli government.
And that's us in the Knesset, right there.
You can see the hostage posters that are plastered everywhere in Israel and also lots of places, or at least they were, in the United States and Europe.
And so forth.
So I just want to prove to you that I was in fact in Israel and I wasn't just making that up.
Although maybe I could have just made it up and that would have also been funny.
Trump's meeting with Netanyahu is notable today because Trump has been testing this political line for the 2024 campaign that he is demanding for American Jews to switch their allegiance to Republicans so that he can be re-empowered and have a phenomenal second term in the White House.
And one of the things that Trump has been doing, and I mentioned this a couple of days ago on the show, but I only paraphrased it.
Thankfully, now we have the video.
Let's go to the videotape.
This is Trump in May.
He's outside the courthouse in Manhattan where he had his famous porn star payoff trial where he was convicted.
I'm not going to relitigate that trial right now.
But what's amusing for our purposes at the moment is that Trump gave one of his little press availabilities.
At the exterior of the courthouse there, and here's what he said.
That means it's Biden.
That means it's election interference by Sleeping Joe, our dumb as a rock president, who's destroying our country with the borders, and destroying our country with the worst economy, worst inflation, who allowed Russia to go into attacking Britain.
So there you have it.
And Jewish people that vote for Biden and the Democrats, they should have their head examined.
Thank you very much. - - So there you have it.
Jewish people who vote for Biden and the Democrats should have their head examined.
Now, what kind of examination is Trump proposing there?
Because what Biden has done in office, who's still allegedly the president, has presided over the U.S.
Government's response to October 7th and the subsequent Israeli pulverization campaign in Gaza and potentially even a forthcoming offensive that Israel may or may not launch, at least to a greater extent than it has so far, against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
That could be in the offing and Biden has provided more armaments To Israel in service of an ongoing war effort than any president ever.
And I'm going to clap my hands for emphasis because I'm a little bit weird, but hey, you have to deal with it.
And yet Trump and the Republicans, they've been all in on this idea that Biden and the Democrats are abandoning Israel.
They're kowtowing to anti-Semites.
They're embracing the so-called pro-Hamas faction of the Democratic Party, which we're told exists, but I think that's also questionable.
So to distill that political talking point into one line, Trump says, effectively, and I'm paraphrasing here, I hope Trump does say this verbatim at some point because it would really make me rejoice.
If you don't vote for Republicans, you ain't Jewish.
So what does that remind you of?
Let's also go to this next videotape.
Listen, you gotta come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden.
I will.
It's a long way until November.
We got more questions.
You got more questions.
I tell you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump and you ain't black.
It don't have nothing to do with Trump.
It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.
Okay, so there's Biden infamously saying in May of 2020, if you don't vote for me, if you don't vote for old Joe, You ain't black.
So black people who might be Republicans or might have reservations about Joe Biden, they ain't black if they don't vote for him and if they vote for Trump.
And Trump's just going with a variation on that theme, but with respect to American Jews, because although Biden has ceaselessly funded and armed and advocated to the greatest extent humanly possible, so far as I can ascertain, for Israel in the past nine months.
It's just not enough for Trump and the Republicans, so they're even going so far as to say that Jews, I guess, renounce their Jewishness if they vote for Trump.
So let's look at the Trump-Vance official press release that came out of today's joyous meeting.
Here's Trump in Vance, beautiful new logo, really concentrates the mind on their desire to get back there in the Oval Office, and they also say this toward the end.
They go through all the incredible achievements that Donald Trump had in office for Israel, and the Trump campaign says that Trump expressed his solidarity with Israel.
Gee, that was an open question, whether Trump would reaffirm his support for Israel.
So a mystery solved there.
They say that Trump pledged that when he returns to the White House, he will make every effort to bring peace to the Middle East.
Gee, isn't that heartwarming?
I guess we don't have to know any more specifics about what that would actually entail.
We can just rely on those handful of words and be comforted in the assurance that Trump will indeed bring peace to the Middle East. - And Trump also says he'll combat antisemitism from spreading throughout college campuses all across the United States.
That's one of the greatest threats to America's national security as we've established over the past couple months when college students decided to protest on campus because they were objecting to U.S.
foreign policy and subsidizing and arming Israel and its pulverization campaign against Gaza.
And Trump says when he gets in charge, he'll make sure to stamp out that expression of discontent toward U.S.
foreign policy.
Remember, those protesters are protesting against Biden.
Right?
Biden's the one who's been running the policy portfolio, at least we're told, with regard to Israel.
But Trump says we got to stamp out those anti-Biden protesters, which is interesting.
But if you look at that statement from today's meeting, it says another thing that I want to call your attention to.
One of the great highlights that Netanyahu thanked Trump for from when Trump was in office is eliminating Qasem Soleimani.
That was the top general of Iran who Trump drone assassinated while Soleimani was on what was billed as a peace and reconciliation mission in Iraq.
So Trump, Pompeo, and that whole crew They orchestrated the drone assassination of one of the most preeminent figures in Iran, the leading military figure for sure in Iran, and they just offed him with one fell swoop of a drone strike.
So I guess that was one of Trump's many anti-interventionist and peaceful military moves and shows how Against the military-industrial complex he is, when he drone-bombed Soleimani, that really bolstered that point.
And I want to remind you of something that I thought at the time didn't get nearly enough attention, and it's clearly now been forgotten because J.D.
Vance and Trump and all these other Republican surrogates for Trump, they love to herald Trump's drone assassination of Soleimani as one of his great achievements in apparently bringing stability to the Middle East.
I mean, they forget that Iran actually retaliated.
Against the U.S.
or at least, you know, Iran-connected militia groups in the region retaliated against the United States force presences there.
Gave lots of U.S.
troops traumatic brain injuries through those retaliatory strikes.
But, you know, Trump ushered in an era of peace and tranquility and stability to the Middle East.
I guess if you discount that whole episode and lots of others.
But here is how the U.S.
Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Explained the justification for that January 2nd, 2020 drone strike assassination by Trump of Soleimani.
They put out this whole memo, much of which was conveniently redacted.
But in this second section here, they say something that is really incredible.
They say that Trump relied on the 2002 AUMF.
For his drone strike assassination against Soleimani.
Now what is that?
The acronym AUMF doesn't mean oomph.
It means Authorization for Use of Military Force.
And there are several of these that have provided purportedly justification for U.S.
Presidents to conduct warfare basically all around the world unhindered.
There was the 2001 AUMF that was enacted almost universally after September 11th, but then this 2002 AUMF was separate.
That was the authorization for use of military force in Iraq.
That was the pre-Iraq war, 2003 invasion, the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, to topple Saddam Hussein under George W. Bush, bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That was the resolution that authorized that military campaign, at least, as Bush and the Senate and the House would have had it at the time.
And Trump's administration reached back into the archives, 18 years, and said, you know what gives Trump authorization to drone bomb the top Iranian general?
And just kill him in an assassination?
The Iraq War Resolution.
So, you know, the next time you hear one of these Republicans waxing poetic about how restrained Trump was in his conduct of foreign policy and how he ushered in this amazing era of stability and peace and tranquility and everybody's singing Kumbaya throughout the Middle East and he and Jared Kushner
Advise the Israelis and the Palestinians on how to get along and everything would have been great if he hadn't been forced out of office in 2020 by narrow margins in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
I don't know, remind them maybe that, I mean you can pull up this clip if you want or I'll send you the link to the Office of Legal Counsel advisory opinion that Trump
We're still making use of the legal architecture around the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to launch deadly assassination drone strikes against hugely consequential figures in the Middle East as of 2020 and he still brags about it to this day!
So that's yet another conundrum for us all to ponder.
Now today Trump said something, or yesterday rather, Trump did another one of his blurting out of something or other on Truth Social.
I guess I'm a user of Truth Social now because I have to consult it semi-frequently just to read whatever Trump is railing about on any given day and I only follow one person and you can probably guess who that is.
I don't know if there's really many others who are worth following on that site.
For better or worse I guess I'm a I'm an incorrigible partisan of Twitter slash X, and I know that's a mouthful, but I'm still not ready to totally abandon the Twitter title.
I guess it's just kind of embedded in my psyche.
For better or worse, largely worse.
But here's what Trump said on Truth Social yesterday.
And this is bizarre.
I still don't quite know what to make of this, so let me know if you have any suggestions.
Trump says if they do, quote-unquote, assassinate President Trump, which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran.
Wipes it off the face of the earth.
If that does not happen, American leaders will be considered gutless cowards.
And he has a little clip there of his good pal, Bibi, addressing the joint session of Congress earlier this week.
Now, I guess that speaks for itself as to what Trump's designs are for a second term as relates to Iran.
We've got these fairly dubious leaks about an assassination plot against Trump.
By some Iranian-backed forces that, as far as I know, haven't been corroborated by anything that any of us can journalistically or empirically verify.
It's just these anonymous intelligence officials who whisper and leak things.
And they had also claimed that there were similar assassination attempts or plots against John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, and Mike Pompeo, Who are hardline anti-Iran zealots and had their agenda jointly enacted by Trump on that score.
Now, I do want to review a lot of Trump foreign policy stuff on this show given the priceless opportunity available for me.
And I want to just, before we get to our first guest, I want to go through something that I think is connected just in terms of how under Examined it is, or how little recognized it is, in terms of Trump and Afghanistan.
So, Central Asia sort of connected in a thematic sense to U.S.
interventions in that part of the world since 9-11.
Remember, Trump had claimed that he wanted to get out of Afghanistan.
But here's what he said on something called the Will Cain Show, a Fox News podcast, Of sorts.
In June of this year.
Let's hear that.
You know, we were going to leave, but we're going to keep Bagram, which is one of the biggest airbases in the world.
It cost us billions and billions of dollars to build many years ago.
But we were going to leave because of China, because it's one hour away from where China makes its — forget about Afghanistan.
It's exactly right next to China.
It's exactly one hour away from where they made their nuclear — make their nuclear weapons.
Isn't that a great thing?
We're going to keep it.
Going to leave 4,000 people and keep it.
And keep it strong, right?
They gave it up.
They gave up everything.
So that's Trump criticizing Joe Biden for not just the way that Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, which you could have, I guess, logistical qualms with.
That's Trump saying he was never going to withdraw from Afghanistan at all.
He says he was going to leave 4,000 troops in Afghanistan, basically as a permanent occupying force.
Now, do Democrats ever Can you criticize Trump on that?
Do the America First Republicans ever point that stuff out?
Trump exists in this kind of vacuum where the actual stuff that he says and does, from when he wielded power and when he's campaigning now, That is kind of rooted in reality?
He never has to really answer for.
People just have these fantastical visions of Trump that they criticize him for.
So the liberals want to screech that he's going to destroy democracy and because a bunch of yahoos mobbed the Capitol on January 6th, that means Trump is going to be a dictator and he's going to defy the 22nd Amendment and I guess stay in power for two or three or four more terms into his 90s, maybe even 100s.
And likewise, the America First Republicans, you can't even get them to talk about this stuff hardly.
They just wanna tell you that Trump was just great in every respect, and yeah, he's America first, and America first can mean anything.
I mean, I never heard of a term that has a more fluid definition than America first now, which includes, you know, like not withdrawing from Afghanistan, being even more aggressively supportive of Israel, arming Ukraine, which Trump also did.
And take a look at this figure from, this is from the Department of Defense.
This is the number of airstrikes That the U.S.
and its proxy force, the Afghanistan government, conducted from 2014 to 2021 in Afghanistan.
Look at the far right totals there.
Trump.
That's Trump.
2017 through 2021.
And I'm doing my little highlight thing because that's fun.
Trump.
radically escalated U.S.
and U.S.-backed airstrikes in Afghanistan under his tenure, more than Obama, as you could see, at least in the previous several years.
And I don't know, is this even in the domain of public knowledge?
This is not some crazy, obscure statistic.
I got this from the Pentagon's own data.
It's not that hard to find.
But the average kind of America First Republican will say, oh yeah, Trump, he wanted to wind down U.S.
presence abroad and he's against the endless wars.
He escalated them!
Look at the data!
Don't take my word for it!
And Trump reiterated this at the Republican convention, which again, nobody seemed to notice other than me.
I was sitting there watching politely.
I sang, proud to be an American, parentheses, God bless the USA with all the other attendees because it's a great anthem.
And I've kind of unwillingly memorized the words.
So that was fun.
But here's something that maybe more people should have noticed.
And then we had that horrible day where soldiers were killed.
I was not there because of a ridiculous election.
But we had that horrible attack.
And they also gave up Bagram, one of the biggest bases anywhere in the world, air bases anywhere in the world, the longest runways, most powerful, hardened, thickened runways.
We gave it up.
And I liked it not because of Afghanistan.
I liked it because of China.
It's one hour away from where China makes their nuclear weapons.
And you know who has it now?
China has it now.
We were keeping that.
And now China is likewise circling Taiwan, and Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off the coast in Cuba.
Do you know that?
The press refuses to write about it.
If that were me running this country and we had nuclear submarines in Cuba, I will tell you that the headlines every day would be, what's wrong with our president?
You don't even hear this.
You're not hearing about this.
Russia has nuclear submarines and warships 60 miles away, Mr. Congressman.
From Miami, by the way, happens to be here.
Correct?
In Cuba.
And that would not be stood for if it were somebody else.
They don't want to mention it, but now maybe they will.
Okay, so there's Trump.
Number one, saying he would have kept a permanent occupation in Afghanistan.
And people boo, not because they're booing the concept of a permanent U.S.
occupation of Afghanistan.
They're booing that Joe Biden withdrew from the Bagram Air Base.
Now, I'm no stan of Joe Biden.
I think that's probably well established, but...
Biden did withdraw from Afghanistan, okay?
And Trump is saying he wouldn't have done that.
He would have kept the four presidents, I guess permanently, at the Bagram Air Base because he wants to deter China, and he wants to have forces right near China's nuclear arsenal, or at least a part of it.
And nobody picks up on this.
Not the liberal media, not the conservative media.
I guess it falls to little old me.
And then Trump is also ranting about Russian warships in Cuba, and he's alluding to some tough action, I guess.
He would take on Russia to stop them from transiting various of their military hardware to Cuba.
Which kind of is what precipitated an earlier Cuban Missile Crisis back in the 1960s.
So this is just kind of stuff that to me is maddening because it just gets almost no attention in either left or right wing media or even the so-called mainstream media because it doesn't really fit with certain narratives that people want to mindlessly push about Trump.
So with that I want to get to our first guest.
He is Nick Fuentes.
Nick Fuentes, I'm not even sure what his title is, but I'm glad that he joined us.
I know he's involved in some America First endeavor.
So, Nick Fuentes, how are you, sir?
I'm good.
How are you doing, Michael?
I'm okay.
So this is going to be seen as edgy and controversial that we're interviewing you here tonight, but last night we had Cenk Uygur, and we had people across the political spectrum, and I see nothing wrong.
In fact, I see it as a positive to engage with lots of people, even those who I don't agree with.
Isn't that the purpose of having shows like this?
Absolutely.
So we're in agreement on that, good.
And I also want to say that you guys, your group had some kind of function in Detroit not too long ago and ended up getting shut down through some developments that I don't fully understand.
But either way, I think that in the United States, Political groups ought to be able to hold events largely without hindrance, because that's pretty foundational to the Free Association Clause of the First Amendment.
So I'm with you on that as well.
So I want to start out by establishing some common ground.
Let's go to something that you said on May 31st.
Here is a tweet of yours that I want to ask you about.
Can we pull up that tweet?
There you go.
You say, you love Donald Trump.
But you don't trust the people he has surrounded himself with, such as Tim Scott, and you refer to Lindsey Graham and Rick Grenell in some unflattering terms, and you also don't like Nikki Haley and former never-Trumper J.D.
Vance in his administration.
Well, J.D.
Vance is now the vice presidential nominee, so your ominous omen came true there.
But I just want to ask you, why do you love Donald Trump so much?
I mean, why do you preface any criticism of Donald Trump With a proclamation that you love him.
I mean, why love a politician at all?
Donald Trump is a three-time presidential candidate, arguably even a five-time presidential candidate if you count his toying with running for the Republican nomination in 2012.
And then in 2000, he ran as a Reform Party primary candidate against Pat Buchanan.
So he's now a career politician, essentially.
And I don't know, I'm not inclined to declare my undying love for any politician, so I'm just curious why it is that you tend to precede any critique you might have of Trump with this reaffirmation of your love for him.
Well, I think you have to consider that Trump is a pretty unique figure in American politics, and I actually probably tend to agree more with you lately.
I know we had a pretty strong disagreement on Twitter earlier this year, but I'm certainly closer to your camp at this point.
But I would say that I always preface any criticism of Trump, I mean, first of all, it's a political reality.
that he is the most popular Republican in the United States.
And so I think just from a purely tactical point of view for somebody like myself, I don't necessarily want to alienate myself as a right wing commentator from most of the Trump supporters.
That is a big part of it.
Let's just be honest.
But more than that, Donald Trump is who initially inspired me to actually become an America first nationalist or America first patriot.
My show, you said, you don't know what my title is, I host a show on Rumble called America First, and I got the name from when he used that expression in his campaign and in his inaugural address.
He said, a new vision will govern our land, it'll be only America First.
And so this is where I think there's a little bit more complexity Maybe then some people are willing to admit, where before Donald Trump came into the party, conservatives said that America First was a KKK slogan because of the historical roots, of course, of that phrase, which Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford and others, they said it's an anti-Semitic slogan to even say that.
And I think that when you look at over time what Trump has done as president and what he promises to do in a future term, you're absolutely right.
And I've said as much on my show, there's a major contradiction.
His first term did not live up to that standard.
His policies now don't live up to that standard.
But if it weren't for that initial campaign in 2016, this contradiction would not be forced.
And so now America First has been set as the standard.
And that was not the case before he came into office.
Before, during, and now even after his presidency, you see that the Republican consensus or status quo is neoconservatism.
And you see people like DeSantis and Haley, you can even draw a distinction between what they say versus what he says.
And you're right, it's not 100% America first.
I have my criticisms also.
But it's not the kind of insane rhetoric from people like Haley that say, when it comes to Israel, we just need to say what do they want, when do they want it, no questions asked.
Biden has effectively done that also.
Trump would probably be doing that as well.
But certainly it's a different standard being applied.
And so I think there's like a dialectical argument to be made that, you know, again, even if the practical application was not lived up to at all, it has given a lot of young people, and I think a new generation of Republicans, the kind of ideological tools or dialectical tools to say, are we living up even to America first?
So I think that that was a really important thing that happened regardless.
OK, so I want to go to an image.
This is Sheldon and Miriam Adelson in February of 2020.
So let's just pull up that image for our viewers reference.
OK, so there's Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate and his wife, who has now inherited his fortune and his political project.
And this is in 2020.
OK, so in 2016, Adelson funded Trump to the tune of approximately $25 million, giving to a super PAC.
In the 2018 midterms, Adelson, whose singular issue is pro-Israel, okay?
He cares about nothing else, at least in terms of his political giving.
Even when he was divorced as a younger man, he told his associates that he wanted them to find him an Israeli woman for him to remarry, and he did that call and found him one, and he's even now buried in the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem.
That's Sheldon Adelson's political project, okay?
So then in 2018, he gave to Trump in 2016, he gave to the Republicans in 2018 in the midterms, one of the top funders of the entire Republican Party, and of the Trump coordination with congressional Republicans, and then in 2020, he again became one of Trump's chief funders.
So, I raise that because after the 2020 election, you, led something called the Stop the Steal Movement, or at least you were a galvanizer or a rallier for the Stop the Steal Movement because you were just so desperate to keep Trump in power after 2020.
There's you and Ali Akbar, also known as Ali Alexander, who were some of the main organizers of that effort.
And this is after Trump took all these millions From the chief funders of the cause that you now say you object to, which is orienting US foreign policy inextricably with Israel, and Trump even says That he did this at the behest of Adelson.
Trump was addressing a Republican-Jewish coalition gathering.
Last November, you say his rhetoric is different from DeSantis and Haley.
I mean, not really.
Trump said at this Republican-Jewish coalition donor gala, he pointed to Miriam Adelson and said, your husband was so great, we moved the embassy to Jerusalem because he really wanted it.
So, I guess my question to you is, I understand that you have these criticisms of Trump now, but all this was evident while Trump was actually in power, and yet you were putting your, I guess, reputation on the line via this Stop the Steal.
I think it was kind of a sham, no offense.
Where did all that money go that was given to Stop the Steal?
I mean, Trump fundraised out the wazoo for Stop the Steal.
Desperate Republican voters were filling his coffers with money on the idea that he could, like, switch the delegate slate in Georgia or something.
And I don't know, I guess, are you having an epiphany now that you now repudiate what you were doing in 2020 to keep Trump in power?
Or do you see the contradiction that I'm trying to highlight here?
Yeah, well, and like I said earlier, I think it's a bit more complicated than you're letting on, and I would say that the rhetoric is different, and I'll address that first very quickly.
After the October 7th invasion, Trump used it as an opportunity to criticize Netanyahu, and he said actually that Hezbollah was smart for their attacks on Israel.
That doesn't sound like DeSantis and Haley, and I don't think that's a negligible Difference.
So I'll just put that out there in the first place.
I'm getting a little echo in my ear if we could.
There we go.
So that's the first thing I would say.
It's a not negligible difference for Trump to say, well, it's really bad public relations.
They got to wrap it up as soon as possible.
Netanyahu should be investigated.
And of course, there were reports that in private, he was very vengeful about Netanyahu's acknowledgement that Biden won the illegitimate election in 2020.
So there was public and private statements, I think, that were Not insignificantly different than the others.
That's in the first place.
In the second place, I think I and many others were under the illusion after the first term that Trump primarily had a personnel problem.
Because you're right that Trump, I think, got in office and did not want to let go of Afghanistan for those reasons, like about pivoting against China or something.
But Trump did order a drawdown in Syria twice, and the generals basically ignored him.
So I don't think you're being totally fair.
One of the first things that Trump did when he got in office was ended the regime change policy against Syria, April 2017.
And he bombed Syria twice.
And there were some symbolic strikes.
He bombed Syria twice as well.
I know that.
April 2017 and April 2018.
He bombed Syria the first time a week, a week after they officially changed the policy and said we no longer seek regime change against Assad.
By the way, do you remember this?
He bombed Syria the first time, reportedly, because Ivanka Showed Trump these heart-rending images of victims of one of the chemical attacks that were attributed to Assad, and Trump said, sure, let's go ahead, bombs away.
That was supposedly the impetus for why Trump bombed Syria, but that's just an aside.
Supposedly, but we could also see that the first strikes came during Xi Jinping's formal state visit to the United States, and he was sleeping in a bedroom at Mar-a-Lago.
And if you recall, the first thing that Obama told them to do was negotiate with North Korea on denuclearization.
He was pursuing what I believe was the madman doctrine, a deal with North Korea by threatening fire and fury and Deploying aircraft carriers into the Pacific.
And so if you look at the context of where those strikes came from, one, they were telegraphed in advance.
There were no casualties.
The airfield that they struck in Homs was operational within 24 hours.
So I mean, we could relitigate that whole strike.
I believe that was a symbolic show of force to reestablish deterrence with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago to leverage that with trying to get him to assist on North Korea.
But that's besides the point.
So he ended the regime change policy in Syria.
He ordered them to draw down twice.
And the first time, the Pentagon slow walked it and were lying to him about the troop totals.
Second time, they ignored it altogether.
And then, if you'll recall, in 2020, John McEntee came into the personnel office.
And this is what I was trying to get at here.
Many of us were under the illusion that Trump wanted an America first foreign policy, but that the personnel was interfering.
The generals, the Pentagon, DOD, you know, potentially people like John Bolton, who clashed with Trump.
I think that also had to do with North Korea, but whatever.
And so McEntee comes in in 2020 to the personnel office.
They totally clean house.
They're hiring and firing a lot of people.
I think that's why a lot of things started to turn around.
Not everything, but some things in 2020.
And there's also a big story, which you leave, you know, these are key details you're leaving out.
The generals ignored the order to draw down.
They ended regime change.
And then shortly before or during the lame duck period, After the election, McEntee was distributing a direct order from the President to withdraw troops not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from Germany and South Korea as well.
That was something that was widely reported about this big shakeup that McEntee led.
So, you know, there was kind of like a different mindset back then.
Now I'm a lot more cynical.
about Donald Trump himself.
And I believe that the, you know, the problem might belong more to him than a lot of us realized at that time we said, and I think not without basis that he was being sabotaged by the deep state and they're slow walking things or ignoring him.
Now I think it's clear he's far more of a willing participant than was maybe clear at that point.
So stop the steal.
One, I think we were a lot more optimistic about Trump himself, but two, there were other issues going on as well.
And, and, you know, it's fair game.
People say, well, you're a huge critic of Israel.
Trump is the most pro-Israel president.
How do you square these things?
But, you know, I've always said there's multiple issues.
And the big concern back during Stop the Steal was forced vaccine mandate, vaccine passports, rolling out of digital ID.
And you know, and Glenn knows, that's a pretty big deal.
And it's something that's resurfacing now.
With Vice President Palantir in this tier in the United Kingdom, they're huge advocates of this global ID stuff.
So that was a big concern with Biden coming in.
That's number one.
And I know that Trump was somewhat of a participant, too.
Number two, the big concern was social media censorship.
And there was a last ditch effort in 2020 to change out some of the guys on the FCC to reinterpret Section 230.
You got to remember, before Rumble and before Elon acquired X, We were cooked.
It was over on social media for free speech.
And we thought the only remedy would come from government.
And that would only come from a Republican administration.
So those are really my two major imperatives.
OK, I do think it's notable that you now are at least more willing to concede that the primary problem, such as there is a problem, may actually lie with Trump himself and not these personnel who lots of right-wingers who are America first or MAGA or what have you would always kind of conjure up a narrative about how these interlopers were sabotaging Trump or tricking him or manipulating him.
You saw this recently even when Trump gave his blessing to the passage of the National Security Supplemental In April, which included the largest ever disbursement of monies to Ukraine and also $26 billion to Israel, the same line was...
Rehearsed, even by Steve Bannon, Jack Posobiec, all these people were saying, oh gee whiz, once again Trump has been snookered by Speaker Mike Johnson.
The blame never seems to get allocated to Trump, the principal, it's always somebody else.
But you're sort of breaking the mold there and saying that you do have a critique of Trump individually.
And on the point of how Trump was lied to about the troop totals in Syria by the military brass, I agree that report did come out, but look, I mean, it's nothing new for the military brass to fudge statistics as they send them up the chain of command.
William Westmoreland, the chief general in Vietnam, lied out of his ears about casualty figures and the progress in Vietnam to Lyndon Johnson.
David Petraeus gave a massive slant to the figures that were being sent to Barack Obama about that first surge in Afghanistan, the first...
Obama administration.
So, the idea of having a competent chief executive is that you have to navigate all these pressures that are coming at you, have a bit of discipline, have a bit of principle, and then you can buck whatever deceptions may be emanating out of your subordinates.
But Trump clearly didn't have the interest in doing that, so the idea that Trump is absolved of all culpability because some, like, no-name apparatchik Might have tried to mislead some superior on Syria figures, I think is a bit of a deflection, but I otherwise acknowledge your point.
I do want to bring up a video here and have you react to it.
This is Trump at his estate in Bedminster, New Jersey in July of 2023.
Let's roll that.
We mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple that happened thousands of years ago.
Jewish people around the world Still mourn this great loss and every year during the three weeks, we mourn and when it comes the big day of Tisha B'Av, we cry and we have the great beliefs that very soon we will be, we will all see the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem very soon.
And we honor Our President Trump for what he has done for Jerusalem and for the Jewish people.
So when we sit here today we are helping and sending out the message to the entire world knowing that Jerusalem is a place that has to be secure for Jews And we should very soon be able to see the building of the third temple living with coming of Mashiach Zedkeinu b'mheya v'yameinu amain.
We all have great gratitude to this person.
This is a person that doesn't care only for himself but cares for the entire world and especially for the people in Israel and for the Jews in America.
My blessings is, may the blessings from Israel come upon the President, his family, and all his friends.
May God give a long life, a healthy life, a sweet life to our dear President, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
Thank you, Rabbi.
I'm glad I told him to do that.
He did a very good job.
You've done that before, Rabbi, I guess.
A couple of times, huh?
Thank you very much.
Okay, let's leave it there.
Trump goes on to receive an award from one of these genuinely extreme religious Zionist organizations.
And I'm not even saying Zionist as a term of derision.
This is how they self-describe, obviously.
And they're heaping praise on Trump because they view him as integral To bringing forth a process whereby the Jews will be able to reconstruct the Third Temple in Jerusalem.
And I want to next bring up a, this is a screen grab from Trump at the Theodore Herzl, receiving the Theodore Herzl Gold Medallion at the Zionist Organization of America 125th Anniversary Gala in New York City in 2022.
There's Trump.
Full of good spirit, good cheer, receiving the Theodore Herzl gold medallion.
And that's the, you know, basically the intellectual founder of Zionism.
So this is all before the 2024 campaign.
This is long before Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis were challenging Trump.
So, my surmise from this is that Trump is actually empowering.
Maybe he doesn't rhetorically resort to some of these more flamboyant statements of pro-Israel zeal as others just because he's not really practiced in it, but he's elevating some of the most extreme elements of pro-Israel fervor, including these hyper-religious elements.
I was in Jerusalem myself after October 7th, and you can go and buy a commemorative shekel With Trump's visage on it transposed over the biblical King Cyrus, because that's how consequential some of these more hardcore religious Jews view Trump in saving the Jewish homeland.
So I guess, look, I take the, I mean, I'm not going to doubt your sincerity in your criticism of Israel.
I think we would probably disagree on the basis for our criticisms of Israel.
Like I'm not somebody Who is denouncing Israel because they don't accept Christ as king and that kind of thing.
But whatever the source of our criticisms, I just don't see why this determination to twist yourself into knots and say, oh, Trump is different from the other Republicans.
No, his record is that he's the most extreme.
Again, maybe not in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of who he's empowered, who he's elevated, and what he actually did when he's in office, and what he's pledging to do again.
So what am I missing?
Well, I don't think it is twisting myself into knots for Trump's sake, because it would be far easier for me to say in a very one-dimensional way, I'm the anti-Israel guy, Trump is the pro-Israel guy, I'm anti-Trump.
But I think the legacy is a bit more complicated, like I said.
And you're right, you could pull up a lot of unfortunate clips that, you know, I don't really care for when he's got the Chabad Lubavitchers running all over the White House and this kind of stuff.
Of course, I don't care for that.
But let's be very clear, when Trump ran in 2016, in the middle of the Syrian Civil War, in which we were involved in, of course, Syrian Civil War is part of that Clean Break Report.
It's part of that Clean Break Doctrine of taking out Iraq, then Syria, then Iran, and it's all about securing that northern border.
Ultimately, probably with the intention of eventually annexing Gaza and the West Bank, realizing the ambitions of the revisionist Zionists so that they can rebuild the Third Temple.
But Trump came in in 2016 and changed the orthodoxy.
He came in and said, you can't fight two wars at once.
We have to bomb ISIS.
As we know, Israeli intelligence is all over ISIS.
ISIS apologized for striking Israel one time.
They never attacked Israel.
Israel said we'd prefer ISIS on our border instead of Iran's proxies, which, of course, is the situation now.
And Trump came in, and in that first year, he drew down the regime change policy that They tried to get him back in with another fake chemical attack like they did with Obama.
He didn't go in like we talked about.
The Syria strike was really not as consequential as people make it out to be.
At that time, I remember guys like Posobiec were saying, June 1st, 2017, 100,000 troops in Syria.
Let's just be honest.
Those people turned out to be wrong.
So he reoriented American policy away from regime change against Assad and to instead bombing ISIS.
Was that good or bad for Israel?
I think that was probably worse for Israel.
Israel preferred ISIS.
Trump helped to bolster Assad's control over Syria, which is Israel's mortal enemy.
They're still technically in a state of conflict.
Is that better or worse for Israel?
I think it's probably worse.
And so the way that I looked at it and justified it for a long time is that Trump, of course, because it's national politics, has to make a deal with some faction of the Jewish elite.
We know that there's a left-wing faction.
We know there's a right-wing Zionist faction.
They often collaborate, and they're often on the same side.
But, you know, we understand that there's some degree of factionalism.
And so we knew that Trump was going to have to in some way show some fealty to the Zionists.
For me, the question was, is this a deal?
To get the money to get elected and then in actual policy, he wouldn't be delivering another Iraq war, for example, or wouldn't be doing another Libyan intervention or something like that.
And in exchange for that, we get a border wall, we can drain the swamp, we get whatever.
And so I guess where I started to change my viewpoint over time is realizing that We weren't getting anything on our side of the deal.
Immigration was not restricted.
The wall was not built.
The Supreme Court justices suck.
I'm saying this as like a very right-wing conservative.
And, you know, we could go down the list.
But over time, I began to realize it's a very lopsided deal.
Very conservative Republicans aren't getting anything.
Trump didn't really live up to his promises on the three key issues, which were Trade, immigration, drawing down the troop presence in the Middle East.
And on the other hand, Israel was getting more and more, and the same neocons were being brought back in, and the same, what I thought at one time, were oversights or, you know, mistakes.
People were being brought back, like you showed in that tweet.
People like Haley and Grinnell, and, you know, I heard a tip that Vance was in contention for the VP.
When it became clear that he was going to be the guy, that was kind of it for me, where I realized, Like we said earlier, it's not bad advice.
It's not that he's being misled.
He seems to be a willful participant.
And the reason why for so long I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt is that he truly was an unknown quantity.
He was a political outsider.
His rhetoric was very different and extreme in 16.
He came in without infrastructure.
As you know, the personnel was selected by Reince Priebus and Chris Christie and a number of others.
And so I was sort of willing to give him a chance, give him some time.
One man against the whole system cannot change it overnight.
But we're now eight years on.
The rhetoric has gotten worse.
The personnel has gotten worse.
And so I'm just sort of sitting here thinking over the past few months, what is it that we're actually fighting for?
What is it really about?
That's sort of been my evolving position on it.
It has a lot to do with the fact that, you know, when Trump ran, I was 18 and so I didn't really even know anybody and I didn't really get my bearings.
So personal evolution over time, seeing the Trump record, seeing him make the same errors constantly.
That's sort of what led me into this far more critical position now, but I think you do have, you know, I find myself when I'm with Trump supporters, I'm the most critical and they're calling, you know, Laura Loomer's calling me a never-Trumper.
When I'm with somebody like yourself, you say I'm twisting myself into knots.
I'm like Bill Mitchell, how he used to be in 2017, apologizing for everything he does.
But I'm really just trying to strike a fair balance and give him credit for changing the orthodoxy, at least in a dialectical way, saying the standards should be America first, failing to live up to it for various reasons.
Although I don't think the failure is as deep or as one-sided as maybe people like yourself make it out to be, as evidenced by, for example, the policy in Syria.
But I do agree with you about...
So let's go to another thing that Trump did in office.
This is Donald Trump with Pastor John Hagee in the White House.
You may be familiar with this gentleman.
Let's go to that image of Trump with John Hagee.
It's really a beautiful image for us all to gaze upon.
So there's Trump and Pastor John Hagee.
We're using my tweet as a reference point.
And there they are.
So Hagee was a frequent visitor to the Trump White House now.
I don't think anybody would mistake Trump for being a fire-breathing Protestant Christian Zionist who thinks that the U.S.
needs to support Israel because we have to hasten the second coming of Christ and, you know, rebuild the temple and all this and then have all the believers raptured into heaven.
That is Hagee's view.
Hagee is actually an accelerationist in the sense that he wants this apocalyptic war as foretold in the book of Revelation to break out in The Middle East and he views Trump as a useful tool for achieving that outcome.
And then let's go to the video of Hagee performing an important opening benediction.
This is at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which Trump again boasts that he moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018.
So let's play that.
Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for those stirring words.
To now offer a closing benediction, I'd like to call upon Pastor John Hagee, founder and senior pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas.
Pastor Hayden.
Our most gracious heavenly father, Bye.
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The God who calls the stars by name and measures space with the span of his hand.
The God who is the king of the universe.
So Nick, you get the idea.
For one of Trump's signature achievements that he continues to relentlessly tout to this day, and I had lots of Republican members of Congress touting this to me when I was at the Republican convention last week, he chose to Name John Hagee, who, I mean, I don't know how you could get more extreme and frankly bonkers, theologically, than John Hagee.
Again, he's trying to accelerate military conflict in the Middle East, views Trump as a vessel to do so, in order to hasten the second coming of Christ, which he then believes will lead to the salvation of humankind.
That's his theology.
I'm not exaggerating, I don't think.
And, so, Forget the Jewish elements of this pro-Israel lobbying class.
The Republican Party is basically dominated by people who may not be quite as extreme as Hagee, but they're not too far off in terms of the basics of what they profess to believe, theologically.
You had a rapturous reception, and I use the word rapture deliberately, rapturous reception among Republican members of Congress for Netanyahu's joint address earlier this week.
Netanyahu was just in Mar-a-Lago today meeting with Trump.
So I guess, I wonder, what would it take for you... Now, I grant, Israel's not the only issue, foreign policy's not the only issue, but if this is high up on your issue matrix...
As it seems to be for you, what would it take to not just kind of beat around the bush but actually declare opposition to Trump, right?
Or is it just commercially unfeasible for you because it means that a lot of the more right-wing audience that you have would flee?
I mean, could you do it if you wanted to and still have a viable business model?
I guess that's my question.
Well, my supporters are more loyal to me than Trump, so that's not a concern at all.
And that's why I've been able to be pro-Trump at times and critical of Trump at other times, because the people that follow me follow me even more so than they follow Trump.
So that's not really the prime consideration.
And if you've seen my content or watched my show, I've been extremely oppositional to Trump in the past few weeks, and on every point that you just mentioned, on the visit with Netanyahu, and on the, like you said, the speech in Congress on Wednesday, and a lot of these things at the RNC when they brought a Democrat named Shabbos Kestenbaum at the Republican convention, who's suing Harvard for anti-Semitism.
So I've been as critical as anybody, and even more so, I would think, than most, almost any conservative on this matter.
But again, you know, When it comes to my criticism of Trump, it always has to deal with the real-world application.
You're showing speeches of, you know, here's an evangelical.
There are a lot of evangelical Christians that comprise the Republican base that have this dispensationalist theology.
That is, unfortunately, what they believe.
I'm Catholic, so I don't believe in that theology, and I'm America First, so I don't believe that we should be blessing Israel based on, you know, this dubious interpretation of the Bible.
So, I mean, you know, granted.
And what's more, I don't support these Hasidic Jews.
I don't support rabbinical Judaism and the guy that you played before in their plan to rebuild the Third Temple.
But these are speeches, and this is rhetoric.
And we know that if you go to CPAC any year, even before Trump, you'd see a lot of Chabadniks.
You'd see a lot of Hasidic Jews.
And you know that if you went to any conference past 20 years with Republicans, You'd get evangelical, dispensationalist Christians.
So I always saw that as just, that's rhetoric, that's part of the noise.
I could play you a clip from December 2015 when Trump spoke before the Republican-Jewish coalition and said, you're not going to support me because I'm not going to take your money and that means you can't tell me what to do.
And then he took their money!
And then he took their money!
I know, I know.
But, but, you know, we do have to consider that Trump at that time was an unknown And that's why we have to look at the actual policy rather than just what people are saying at a given time.
You don't seem to be acknowledging, because I've made the case over and over, the major conflagration that was escalating back in 2017 was the Syrian civil war.
And they were looking for regime change against Assad, just like Obama delivered in Libya, just like Bush delivered in Iraq.
They were trying to do that against Assad, and Trump held the line, to his credit.
He tried to withdraw.
They didn't let him.
He formally ended the policy against the wishes of Ambassador Nikki Haley.
So, you know, you've got to give the credit where it's due.
I'll give Trump credit for imposing unprecedented sanctions on Syria, causing a massive humanitarian crisis there.
If what you want to give Trump credit for is creating lots of strife and suffering around the world, I acknowledge the regime change thing.
Obviously, he departed from his predecessors in ending the CIA-led program to try to more Forcefully oust Assad.
So I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge the full spectrum of Trump's record.
I guess just in totality, it seems like, you know, you're kind of missing the forest for the trees there.
But Nick, I want to wrap up with one final question for you.
You famously, or maybe infamously, were said to have met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November of 2022, along with Kanye West, or Ye.
And that caused a huge frenzy at the time.
I guess maybe that contributes to why you often profess that you love him.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
But it seems like you probably couldn't get a meeting now with Trump if you sought one.
That's my impression.
Am I correct in that?
And what does that tell you about the current status of the Trump movement and what his kind of political incentives are now?
Yes, you're definitely right about that.
And honestly, I probably wouldn't have gotten a meeting with Trump in the first place.
I was only there because I was part of Ye's entourage at that time.
And, you know, a lot of people accuse me and Ye and everyone involved of setting Trump up.
We had no expectation that I would even be at the dinner.
You know, I was fully planning on being at a hotel.
That's why I was in a hoodie.
I would never wear a hoodie to meet the president, especially knowing President Trump.
He's always wearing the suit and all that.
So anyway, I don't think I would have gotten a meeting in the first place.
But it says that just like in 2017, we're reliving 2017.
The people that actually ideologically believe in America first, the people that are actually personally loyal, are the least welcome around Trump.
And the people that are the least ideologically aligned, and the people that are least loyal, like Vance, Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, Nikki Haley, they're the ones that seem to be closest to him.
So, you know, if that's a clean way to wrap it up, that is a big part of why I'm feeling, It's not me personally.
I know I'm a very radical guy, but for a lot of other people like Project 2025, it's very clear in 2024 that, you know, for a long time we thought Trump made mistakes.
It's clear that Trump doesn't see it that way.
He believes the first term was a great success, and he believes those people that, you know, were around then and betrayed him later are good people.
That's part of the problem, and I think a lot of Trump supporters need to have a much more sober assessment, you know, and I think we love the man.
We think he's a good man.
All right, very well, the closing statement of Nick Fuentes.
always a bit more messy than the personal story.
People need to get sober about what the real legacy is and who the real flesh and blood people are they're going to be in this next administration.
It's not going to be America first.
And for that reason, I'm not going to be voting in this election.
So that's my closing statement, I suppose.
All right.
Very well.
The closing statement of Nick Fuentes.
I think this conversation was fairly illuminating, maybe more than people might have expected.
I thought it would be just because any conversation that I'm in is going to be inherently illuminating.
But I hope you found it a useful use of your time.
Useful use.
I hope you felt it was time well spent and the viewers got something out of it.
So, Nick Fuentes, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Great conversation.
Okay, next, we are joined by Dasha Nekrasova of the Red Scare Podcast and other endeavors.
I could name them all, but it would probably sound way too flattering to her, and I want to maintain some emotional distance as I conduct this discussion.
So let's go to Dasha.
Hello, how are you?
I don't have Dasha's audio at the moment.
We'll hopefully get that resolved Okay, Dasha, your microphone might be muted.
This is very in character for you, so.
She's still muted.
Okay, I'm told I have to stall a little bit and they're gonna troubleshoot with Dasha.
You know what, that's kind of a cute intro, I think, anyway.
So I'm kind of glad that that happened.
I'm sure that will get resolved momentarily.
We're going to talk to Dasha about lots of pop-cultural ephemera that have been circulating around Kamala Harris as she rises to power as a pop-cultural juggernaut, at least in terms of the artifice that's been foisted upon us by the DNC.
Okay, Dasha, are you there?
Can you hear me?
Hi, can you hear me now?
Yes, I can hear you now.
Thank God, glory, glory, hallelujah.
It wasn't my fault.
Nothing is ever your fault.
How's it going?
Okay, so, sorry, I guess I need a moment to kind of like get my composure after the Nick Fuentes interview.
Did you hear any of that?
What did you make of it?
I did.
I was listening to it.
I mean, do you think I could get a meeting with Donald Trump?
I think you might be more likely than Fuentes.
You just have to wink.
Really?
Um, I don't know.
I mean, there might be some based guy floating in the orbit around Mar-a-Lago who would be receptive.
I don't know.
I'm just spitballing, but maybe not.
Probably not.
I think you're underestimating me.
I think they're, you know, much like they're trying to make Kamala into this, like, ditzy, low-IQ wine mom, I think.
She's maybe more powerful than you're giving her credit for.
Maybe so.
I mean, I don't know whether to overestimate you or underestimate you.
And I don't think I don't know whether I should be overestimated or underestimated either.
So we're all kind of floating in this ether of uncertainty together.
I think it's a good zone to be in.
Yeah.
What was that?
Was that a Holocaust movie?
The zone of something that reason that was actually really good.
Did you see that?
The Zone of Interest.
I didn't see it because I kind of got the gist, you know, the banality of evil.
Yeah, I mean, banality of evil can be very cliched and like they're just trying to force feed Hannah Arendt down our throats or something, but it actually was...
Surprisingly, surprisingly, I don't know what the word is.
I'm not a good movie critic, but I enjoyed it.
I thought it wasn't too overt.
You know, it was subtle.
It wasn't just like, oh, let's recite the banality of evil as though it's like a New York Times op-ed or something.
I got something out of it, but let's not get derailed here.
Even though this whole conversation is kind of meant to be a derailment.
Right.
Yeah, I'm here to lighten things up after the, all the negative, the Trumpian negativity.
Yeah, sorry about that.
I apologize to our viewers at home.
It's okay.
I wish I could vape and drink with you right now.
I guess I could, but I just felt like it would be uncouth on camera, but maybe I'll fix that for next episode.
Sorry, I'll stop.
No, continue, please.
It's great for the mood.
Yeah, it's Friday.
We're winding down.
The producer just said in my ear that he endorses you vaping and drinking because it's Friday.
But you can do it any day of the week, too.
I mean, do it on Monday.
What the hell?
So, Dasha, I want to play for you.
So apparently we're all now being inundated with this idea that Kamala Harris is this pop culture juggernaut.
She is appealing to all the kiddos with memes and fun music.
And everybody forgets, and our memory holing at rapid speed, that Joe Biden had been adamantly insistent that he was never, under any circumstances, going to withdraw from the race because it would be an affront to democracy.
We did a whole segment on that last night.
Joe Biden said, how can we as Democrats declare our fidelity to preserving the democratic order if we don't even uphold it within our own party?
Meaning if Joe Biden capitulates to donor demands to withdraw and then he withdraws and now everybody forgets about it because they're all focused on Kamala's memes and Mamala.
And so I want to show you, I guess, the origin of a lot of this meme stuff that's been floating around, which is Charli XCX, who, I have to say, I enjoy musically.
How much I enjoy her politically, I think, is yet to be seen.
But let's have you get your reaction to this clip.
Here we go.
Charlie XCX, who I do know, quote Brat, you're just that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, end quote.
So it's the idea that we're all kind of Brad and Vice President Harris is Brad?
I don't know if you're Brad.
I think you aspire to be Brad.
You don't have to become Brad.
You don't have to try.
You can work at it.
I will aspire to be Brad.
So, Dasha, tell me what I should think about that, please.
I mean, I think... Sorry, Trump's texting me.
I think, you know, Charlie's...
An incredible artist.
The meme cycle she's been able to generate with Brat has been, you know, very powerful.
Obviously, I don't think she's like a political operative, really.
She's like from the UK.
A big part of the Brat discourse and what I feel like they're trying to generate with Kamala.
Kamala?
I always, like, I can't even say her name.
Kamala, I guess, is the way the Republicans pronounce it to be rude.
That's my understanding.
So just go with Kamala.
Go with the rude Republican pronunciation.
Well, I saw she also was like palling around with like RuPaul and like drag race people.
And, you know, they're trying to make her the Obama's endorsed her and set for her good sense of humor and her like lightheartedness.
Like they're really trying to spin her as yeah, like a ditzy, like low IQ.
Wine mom, like a Betty Boop or something.
But I don't feel like it has real traction with Zoom.
I mean, like Charlie's my age, like where I'm like a peak millennial and like big LGBT is also kind of catering, I feel like, to millennials who is also really rallying around Kamala.
I mean, obviously her husband is a entertainment lawyer.
I think we can expect to see more of like Yeah, so I listened for the first time today to the Brat album, which was only released last month, and I do have to say, it is a banger.
It is a really good album.
I was dancing around here in Rio like an idiot, and everybody was looking at me.
Like I'm a peculiar person, which is how they look at me anyway, regardless of what music I may or may not be listening to.
So I want to show, let's play a clip from the Charlie XCX video 360.
*Music*
*Music* When you're in the mirror, do you like what you see?
When you're in the mirror, you're just looking at me.
I'm everywhere, I'm so Julia.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
When you're in the party, bop, bop, bop, and that beat.
666 or the Princess Street.
So I guess that captures the essence of Kamala Harris. - I mean, I wouldn't take I would take Charlie at face value when she identifies.
A brat archetypally as a kind of girl who sort of says whatever.
I don't think she's necessarily in anyone's pocket any more than anyone else who's like beholden to the demands of the entertainment industry and like a massive gay fan base.
I think, you know, she's an artist.
She's free to like You know, she felt something in the moment and said... she felt something and said something.
I'm not... just to be clear, Dasha, I am not criticizing Charli XCX.
I genuinely enjoyed her album and I like the videos and stuff.
I'm pointing to the Democratic mainstream instant, like, appropriation of her to give Kamala this appearance of, like, pop culture or memefied relevance.
That's more what I'm wary of.
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
It's really disturbing.
But I think amongst, like, the actual, like, youth demographic that this is, I mean, that clip you showed from CNN or whatever was a farcical, you know, it's like, I think actual young people can feel when a meme cycle is, like, inauthentic and they react accordingly.
But it remains to be seen, I guess, how much real political... My instincts, I know I'm here, you know, because of my amazing political instincts, I think it's going to be a flop.
I don't think...
People are really going to buy it.
And they definitely won't be able to sustain like, you know, through the election, this kind of, you know, eventually she's going to have to like debate Donald Trump.
And I think the fact that they like Biden was like dying and wouldn't step down means there's something probably really, really wrong with Kamala that like we might not even realize.
Yeah, I think the key to what's wrong with Kamala lies with Doug Emhoff.
I think Doug is really the answer in terms of the malice that undergirds the Kamala phenomenon.
Now I'm just making stuff up myself.
I'm in my Friday mood.
Did you watch any of the Republican convention?
Did you watch Trump almost get assassinated?
The cliche that a lot of people have been reciting recently, but it does feel kind of true for once, is that there's that old adage that there are some years where nothing happens and then some weeks where years happen.
That really does feel kind of true recently.
So how are you processing it?
And yes, I do rely on you for political insights, so don't sell yourself short.
But I want to know what you make of just recent events in general.
Yeah, it's a super spicy election cycle and, you know, for Cultural political commentators such as ourselves.
It's very exciting.
I think it's in general.
It's all really I mean you were asking Fuentes why he loved Trump.
And I actually found what he said to be really like when he said that it's just like a political reality that he's popular.
So he like has to co-sign him.
I mean I don't feel like that.
I but I genuinely do love Donald Trump for like The way he makes me feel.
I did watch some of the RNC.
I found it pretty electrifying, you know, I think in terms of like, yeah, just like images that I like to see and like, I just love, yeah, I love Donald Trump.
I love him because he's funny.
I mean, I love him in that sense.
I mean, nobody can deny, really, that Trump is hilarious.
I think anybody who does deny that has to deny to themselves a certain reality because maybe they have other political criticisms of Trump, and so they conflate various things and don't allow themselves to acknowledge what clearly is the truth, which is that he's probably the funniest political figure ever to have But on the American political scene, I always find myself laughing at just his little colloquialisms or turns of phrase or just the way that he, you know, handles himself.
So, yeah, I mean, I enjoy Trump and am entertained by him on that level.
I guess the difference for me is that, like, there are levels beyond American politics other than pure entertainment.
But on that level, Trump is the undisputed champion.
Yeah, and I think, like, if there were actual, like, authentic sort of... Sorry, there's a lot of crime.
If there was, like... He does have a lot of, like, organic, actual, like, meme-able, obviously, power.
He's, like, truly Warholian and, like, actually much more of, like, a gay icon than they're trying to make Kamala into.
Yeah.
Warholian.
You should have been advising the art director of the Republican National Convention and maybe told them to go with that Warholian aesthetic a little bit more full-throatedly.
Although, I mean, the aesthetic was, I mean, it was interesting.
Amber Rose.
I interviewed one of the Trump rappers who did the play on Ice Ice Baby, Trump Trump Baby.
I got him to give me his definition of conservatism, so that was fun.
And yeah, I mean, it's just more, there's something lighter about it and just more, I don't know exactly what the right word is, but the Democrats are always, and I guess they're trying to break free of this now, but they have been so serious and they're so like always in this dire, dour frenzy about the existential threat of Trump that it makes them seem just annoying and unrelatable.
And I guess that's in part what they're trying to break free from with this kind of artificial introduction of meme culture to bolster Kamala.
But yeah, it's sort of an interesting cultural dynamic that I'm not sure I have a fully developed thesis for yet, which is part of why I invited you on.
Well, isn't that what they did with Yang and like, wasn't like when Bloomberg was like a Republican candidate, there was like, they were actually like making me like trying to meme him into some kind of viability and they were all like falling flat.
But Kamala already is in like a position of power.
I mean, she basically, I mean, she is basically a Democratic nominee, right?
We're told.
I mean, she's had to go and win zero votes from actual voters.
She hasn't even had to go petition delegates in the standard way that nominees have done it for decades.
And the media is not even covering this.
I mean, it drives me crazy.
It makes me flail my arms around like a madman.
And people on the Internet, the commenters, criticize me for it.
But what can I say?
People, I get enthused about this because it genuinely is insane.
That Kamala Harris has just been privately coronated?
A major party nominee without doing a single scintilla of public campaigning.
And yet we're all supposed to believe that the Democrats are these heroic defenders of democracy, and the media's not even covering it.
What they are covering is, oh, Kamala or Mamala has this meme magic.
So that's what we're all supposed to be fixated on, and I guess I'm guilty of it, too, because I just did a mini-album review of Brat by Charli XCX, but it was a good album.
What can I tell you?
And I guess, yeah, I mean, I guess that's why that's so brat of her to just take the stage like that after the, uh, I mean, don't you think Biden's dead?
I know he like made those weird, creepy appearances, but like, I'm not convinced.
Well, he gave an Oval Office address.
Yeah, but come on, with all the AI going on?
My point on that was that it was supposed to be an explanation of why it is that he just suddenly withdrew from the race after aggressively insisting that he would never do so, and he actually didn't give an explanation.
Actually, on that note, let's go to the Obama endorsement video.
This is interesting.
Barack and Michelle endorsed Kamala today, so let's watch that.
Kamala!
Hi!
Hey there!
Aww, hi!
You're both together!
Oh, it's good to hear you both.
I can't have this phone call without saying to my girl Kamala, I am proud of you.
This is going to be historic.
We called to say Michelle and I couldn't be prouder to endorse you and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office.
Oh my goodness.
Michelle Brock, this means so much to me.
I'm looking forward to doing this with the two of you, Doug and I both, and getting out there, being on the road.
But most of all, I just want to tell you the words you have spoken and the friendship that you have given over all these years mean more than I can express.
So thank you both.
It means so much.
And we're going to have some fun with this too, aren't we?
So they're going to have some fun with it.
Look at that.
You know you're having fun when you have to go out of your way to state that you're having fun.
Um, so yeah, I know my heart was crazy.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
The crazy thing about that video is how produced it is.
Like they're clearly not speaking to each other.
It looks, it seems completely ADR.
Like they don't, you know, they couldn't even be bothered to stage a conversation.
It seems like just completely, Produced, yeah.
And then Michelle Obama tweeted that she is excited to endorse her because of her positivity, sense of humor, and ability to bring light and hope to people all across the country.
But she's running for president!
We don't need to endorse her for her positivity and sense of humor!
That is like, that's crazy!
Nobody who's endorsed Kamala so far seems to mention a single thing that she would actually do in terms of governance, like running the country.
It's all about these ethereal vibes, I guess, that they're so relieved that she will Treat us to.
And maybe they're trying to take a page out of the Trump playbook because he's operating so much on like a vibey wavelength that people are responding to.
But.
Yeah, it's just all hitting very much the wrong note, I feel.
Well, I'm also hitting lots of wrong notes, so maybe that will compel me to support Kamala Harris.
Well, Dasha, we appreciate you joining us and guiding us through these tumultuous political times.
There's no better guide as far as I'm concerned.
So, thanks a lot for coming.
Thank you, Michael.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Likewise.
OK, that was Dasha.
And you could follow her on the Red Scare Protest and some other pursuits that she does.
And I wanna say what now?
Thank you for watching another episode of System Update.
That's right, hosted by me, Michael Tracy.
You're stuck with me, and you're gonna be stuck with me for another couple of days.
So if you don't enjoy me, too bad.
Because there's no other option.
Nope, just little old me.
We'll be back Monday with more, and we're doing a locals thing, aren't we?
Should I promote that or not?
Well... Oh, okay, so we're not doing it today, but we'll be doing it at some point.
So, stay tuned for that if you want, and we'll see you on Monday.
