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July 11, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:21
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #954
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Time Text
Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
I don't know why I'm saying it like that, but... Thank God that you started before I did, because I forgot that you're hosting, so I was about to start doing it myself.
You can say it as well if you want, if you're feeling missed out.
Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
Yes, we're a tag team today.
It's just us two.
It's like back to the good old days.
Yeah, we need to get the old wooden desk out.
John needs to be slurping some disgusting food right next to our ears.
I miss it so much!
I still love you, John, don't worry.
So, yes, podcast 954.
It is the 11th of July, 2024, in case you've become senile.
Like, funnily enough, Joe Biden, which we are going to be talking about today.
And also I'm going to be talking about who will Trump pick as his VP.
Basically just going to run through who's being speculated about.
I'm not going to tell you who he's going to pick because we don't know.
It's Joe Biden!
Yeah, it's going to be Joe Biden.
But, you know, I'm going to give you the information, who people are saying, the pros and cons for each, and who is a long shot, that sort of thing.
And then you're going to be talking about the potential destruction of InfoWars.
Yes, a sad day if it does happen.
Fs in the chat for InfoWars.
Also, yes... Fs in the chat for frogs.
The gay frogs.
And France, for their soon-to-be-destroyed country.
France is already full of gay frogs.
Although Paris is full of rats.
That's true.
Very astute of you, well done.
Yes.
And also, Rumble Rants, if you're watching on Rumble, you can send us some money, and we're going to try and read them out in between the comments.
And also leave lots of time for the comments on the website as well.
As well as video comments and all that stuff.
Which we didn't do yesterday, but thankfully this time we don't have any third parties disrupting us.
That's alright.
It's the power team today.
There you go.
That empty chair, they're not going to do anything to stop us.
We've subbed in, the two MVPs are in the room.
Let me on coach, let me on!
Anyway, how is Joe holding up?
Well, terribly.
Terribly.
So, everybody knows that last week there was a certain debate.
Was it last week or the week before?
Time has just been flying by.
It's a flat circle.
Alright, Rust.
Was it last week?
Oh my god, I'm completely blanking on this.
Great way to start.
I'm so sorry everybody.
Either way... At some point in time, there was a debate.
At some indeterminate time recently, the debate went on between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in which the regime completely overplayed its hand by rigging the debate what they thought would be in favour of Joe Biden, so there was no audience to laugh and jeer when he would have a senior moment.
And so that they could mute Donald Trump's microphone whenever they wanted to, in case he decided to start interrupting Joe.
Turns out they should have let him continually interrupt Joe the entire time, because then Joe wouldn't have had chance to finish his sentences.
Not that he did finish a sentence the entire way through.
If he didn't say a single word in that debate, it would have come off better.
Yeah, if he'd just stood there licking an ice cream, occasionally smiling, then maybe he would have retained some credibility.
He didn't.
He didn't.
He stumbled, he lost his way in the middle of sentences, and the RNC put out a little compilation video of it happening.
Honestly, I found that quite depressing, because I've seen elderly family members kind of go that way, and while I do think that Joe Biden is an unrepentant and evil person... Wait, don't say that about the first black woman president.
Well, maybe he thinks so.
I didn't feel sorry for him per se.
It reminded me of people I've seen go through that, which was quite depressing.
But since then, there's been the media spin.
We all saw immediately after All of the media in unison come out and say, Joe Biden needs to go, Joe Biden needs to go, Joe Biden needs to go, which was an interesting flip, especially seeing as they decided that they were going with the, how could Joe Biden's team keep this from us the whole time?
You are Joe Biden's team.
If you're the New York Times or the Atlantic or any other big publication in America, you are Joe Biden's team.
You've been trying to cover it up for years at this point.
We've been talking about it for years, and people like us have been smeared and called conspiracy theorists and said, oh, you're just, you know, it's just political point scoring.
He's perfectly cognizant.
You know, you had all these puff pieces saying, oh, he's amazing.
He's at the top of his game.
There were actually people saying he's at his best.
Interestingly, I went back in preparation for this and watched one of the speeches that he gave in 2012 after Obama had won the election, and it was night and day, the difference, which is obviously going to happen.
It was 12 years ago now, but it was just remarkable how much he's deteriorated since then.
Well it's not unheard of because Ronald Reagan He had sort of dementia at the end of his presidency, sort of at the tail end, and you could see a difference there as well.
So it's not necessarily a partisan attack, it's just one of the things that you need to bear in mind when you have old people assuming the most powerful office in the land.
I mean it is interesting again though that he was already like this in 2020 when he was campaigning.
They did everything they could to try and hide it.
He's been this way for a very long time at this point.
And only now, after it was clear to everybody, have they said, OK, we need to change tactic.
We need to say, actually, he needs to leave office.
But who are we going to replace him with?
How are we going to handle this?
Maybe we don't need him to leave office, actually.
But in the week since then, there's been a range of reports.
And there's also been a range of reactions.
Because as well, Joe Biden will not be stepping down.
He has said himself.
We'll see if that carries on to November.
But there's an increasingly small window of time where if they do replace him with another candidate, that that candidate will have to actually campaign for anything.
I think that my sort of intuition I mean anything can happen particularly for American presidential elections so you know don't take my word here but my sort of suspicion is that they're gonna stick with Biden and then at some point if he does become president then Camilla Harris is going to take over and then they'll have a new VP who they're going to call as the next big leader of Democrats.
Potentially, because as I understand it, the problem that they have right now is if they decide to go for another nominee, Biden himself would have to agree to it.
Um, and Biden both in his cogent moments seems to have a bit of an ego about him where he doesn't want to step down and also he has his family behind him who seems to be behind the scenes from reports I've seen pushing him into it, making him continue, and if he did step down then they would have to get Kamala Harris to step down as well, bypass her.
It's almost like there's some sort of incentive for Biden, say presidential immunity, that might make him want to stay in office.
Perhaps.
But we'll take a look at what's been going on since that debate, the reactions, how he's been handling it.
But first I'd like to remind everybody that while he is in his dementia-ridden senile state, clearly not in charge of anything, this is what his administration is doing right now, where Biden Biden personally is going to give legal status to 500,000 undocumented spouses.
So these are illegal immigrants who've come into the country and then married somebody who is a citizen.
Of course, if you're an American citizen, that doesn't mean that you are of traditional American stock.
It could be a Mexican show up.
Who's illegal, gets married to another Mexican, who showed up legally in the country five minutes ago, and apparently this is enough!
This is enough, but let me go through the details here.
So, President Biden announced a new policy that will protect hundreds of thousands of undocumented spouses of US citizens from deportation, according to administration officials.
The new policy will apply to those who have been in the country for at least 10 years, so at least not five minutes ago.
and will allow them to work in the US legally.
The White House believes that more than 500,000 spouses will be eligible.
So as with all kind of amnesty legislation like this, what it's telling people coming into the country is if you get away with it long enough, you win a prize, you win citizenship if we don't catch you by then.
It's like the world's best hide-and-seek game.
If you can hide for 10 years in America, and you reach that point, you can become a citizen.
And you manage to get married to someone at the same time.
Win-win, right, well... There you go!
Depends on the terms of your marriage.
What makes it easier is, in all likelihood, the administration isn't even looking for you in the first place.
So it's rigged in your favor.
In fact, they're probably actively hiding you.
Yeah.
So remember that even if Biden is on his way out, because it's questionable whether he would even win as he stands, and it's questionable whether he'll be able to continue standing as we get closer to the election, his administration is still doing everything that they can to make your life worse and to make America a worse place.
So that's Just a reminder that they hate you.
But the media reactions again since the debate are interesting because one of my favorites was The Economist, who wrote an article, an editorial, saying why Biden must withdraw.
And it was the front page story of that issue.
And here is the image.
This was blazoned on the front cover of The Economist when I was going into newsagents and anywhere that would sell it.
This is what you saw.
The President's personalised Zimmer frame.
If Trump released that, that would be like a brilliant piece of political propaganda.
But this is from The Economist.
I know, which is one of my least favourite outlets going.
They are absolutely insufferable.
Don't know anything about economics either.
Well, yeah, they can be.
I will say they occasionally put out decent graphs.
Like the one about all of the people in, I think it was Denmark, all of the immigrants and how much they put into the system in a lifetime and found that if you were Menapt, Middle East, North Africa, Pakistani and Turkish, there was no point in your entire life where you were anything other than a net drain to the system.
So we can at least thank The Economist for ones like that.
Thank you for vindicating what we already knew by having eyes.
Yes, but it's nice to have data to point to.
But this is interesting because it comes out and just says it.
The presidential debate was awful for Joe Biden, but the cover-up has been worse.
Ah, the cover-up!
Hmm, who might have been involved in that cover-up?
It was agony to watch a befuddled old man struggling to recall words and facts.
His inability to land an argument against a weak opponent was dispiriting.
But the operation by his campaign to deny what tens of millions of Americans saw with their own eyes is more toxic than ever- than either because it's dishonesty provokes contempt.
Again, you have been part of the contemptible media campaign to try not to- to try not to make this obvious to everybody.
Pretending and talking as though it was something that people have only just noticed out of the bay.
I mean, come on.
Come on.
Mr Biden, it goes on to say, deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments and his decency, rather than his decline.
His decency, like when in the 90s he said that the, uh, Branch Davidians killed themselves!
Killed themselves.
That's on the Senate branch.
Davidians did not kill themselves.
I'll say it on record.
So it's right.
The first senior Democrats have begun to call openly for him to step aside.
So there's an establishment publication, The Economist, saying that it should that he should step down.
This is broadly speaking, the establishment line right now is that you should step down, Mr. President.
One of my favorites was this opinion piece from The New York Times asking the question, does America need a president?
No, it needs a king, clearly.
Come back.
Come back to us.
Has it really worked out?
Has it really worked out in the long run?
Well, it's still doing better than us, but... Now, I do need to point out, funny as the title is, this article is making the point that an executive decision maker, like a president, is still needed.
You can't just have the pure deep state running it.
But this does tie into my segment from last week where I was talking about how the deep state is going to I think increasingly come out into the public and admit that it exists and say, try and sell itself to the public.
Surely the existence of Joe Biden as president is evidence that the deep state exists.
Well, that's my point.
You know, he can't even articulate a sentence, let alone run a country.
He can't stand up for long periods of time.
He has to go to bed before 8 p.m.
It doesn't make sense.
And he seems like he's got something like Parkinson's or dementia or something like that.
But seeing as the Economist spoke about his accomplishments and achievements, we do have to commend him for finally beating Medicare.
Anyway, so here's the point where it talks about the deep state.
So they say, you could take the relatively mild position that one lesson of both the Biden years and the Trump's first term is that the executive branch can often work around a president who isn't quite up to the demands of the job.
So again, this is a very major publication saying, yes, there is an entrenched bureaucracy that some would call the deep state.
Yes, it does work independent of the executive a lot and can actually work against him in most cases.
Well, it's effectively so.
It's entirely uncontroversial.
There are lots of real world examples of this happening.
You know, Trump could probably name about 10 off the top of his head quite easily when he was president of people in his administration not doing what they're told.
Some of whom went into the media and admitted that that's what they were doing.
Yeah, when people admit that they did something, normally it's a good idea that, yeah, that may be true.
And here's, again, the open admission.
The mild position clearly has some truth to it.
The everyday functioning of the executive branch does seem more independent of the president's capacities than it appeared to be before January 2017.
Now that's not saying that all of a sudden it is.
It's appeared to be.
Everybody knows that if you've got a dementia riddled president, obviously he's not in charge of anything.
So who is in charge of it?
Well, it clearly has to be the bureaucrats, the permanent employees, the deep state.
And then again, it's saying, well, that's a good thing.
Yeah, we need somebody to come to decisions at the end of the day.
Um, if there's a sort of bureaucratic gridlock, but beyond that, really you kind of don't need anybody because the system works by its own inertia.
It's that formula again, isn't it, of it's not happening, it is happening, and it's a good thing.
I know there's a step in the middle, I forgot how it goes.
So why do you care?
Yeah, there's a deep state, but you've got a dementia-riddled president who doesn't know what day it is, so why do you care, bro?
We're on the why do you care part.
Yeah.
And then it goes on to respond to Curtis Yarvin, of all people.
What, the New York Times?
Yes.
The person who wrote this seems to have read through a recent Substack article that he wrote.
So that's very interesting how much Curtis Yarvin has penetrated the mainstream.
So, fair play.
But again, it seems that there's a battle going on.
One side, a lot in the media sphere want Biden to step down.
Probably the Democratic convention as well want him to step down.
And on the other, which is mainly Biden and the rest of his family, want it to appear like he's okay.
And in pursuit of that, what they did was on ABC, He had an interview, a full interview, one-on-one with President Biden, with George Stephanopoulos, who is, of course, a very regime-friendly insider who was only going to throw softball questions at him.
And it's quite incredible.
Let me see if I can just play a little bit of this for everybody.
Have we got audio?
There we go.
The epic music is such a juxtaposition.
The epic music is such a juxtaposition.
Joe Biden.
Good evening from Madison, Wisconsin for a special edition of This Week, the first broadcast interview with President Biden since last week's debate.
Earlier this afternoon, we taped the 22 minute interview.
There are no cuts, no edits.
We have not touched it at this pivotal moment in the presidential.
So did you catch that?
Yes.
22 minutes.
And we had to not edit it so that you're absolutely sure that we didn't cut out all the parts where he stumbles.
But that's what Biden can stand, is a 22 minute interview.
And I imagine it didn't exactly come off well.
I haven't actually watched it myself.
Well let's watch on and see what he says.
Just to the first few questions we can watch a minute or two of this.
It's a campaign.
Here it is.
Mr. President, thank you for doing this.
Thank you for having me.
Let's start with a debate.
You and your team have said you had a bad night, but your friend Nancy Pelosi actually framed the question that I think is on the minds of millions of Americans.
Was this a bad episode or the sign of a more serious condition?
It was a bad episode.
No indication of any serious condition.
I was exhausted.
I didn't listen to my instincts in terms of preparing.
It was a bad night.
You say you were exhausted, and I know you've said that before as well, but you came, and you did have a tough month, but you came home from Europe about 11 or 12 days before the debate, spent six days in Camp David.
Why wasn't that enough rest time, enough recovery time?
Because I was sick.
I was feeling terrible.
Matter of fact, the docs with me, I asked if they did a COVID test, because they were trying to figure out what was wrong.
They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus.
I didn't.
I just had a really bad cold.
And did you ever watch the debate afterwards?
I don't think I did, no.
What I want to get at is, what were you experiencing as you were going through the debate?
Did you know how badly it was going?
Yeah, look.
The whole way I prepared, nobody's fault, mine.
Nobody's fault but mine.
I prepared what I usually would do sitting down, as I did come back with foreign leaders or the National Security Council, for explicit detail.
And I realized about partway through that, you know, although I get quoted the New York Times had me down at 10 points before the debate, nine now or whatever the hell it is.
The fact of the matter is that what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times.
I couldn't I mean, the way the debate ran, not my fault, no one else's fault.
No one else's fault.
But it seemed like you were having trouble from the first- I think that's enough of that, right.
So, did you notice that at first he was giving the short, direct answers, and the second that he was expected to give more than a single sentence, it fell apart?
Yeah, I mean, he was slurring his speech.
You know, it is better than I'm used to from Biden, but it's still not good enough for, you know, any sort of high office, let alone the presidency.
And one thing I did notice is the tone of voice that the guy interviewing him used, where he used the tone of voice that you would use to talk to an elderly grandparent, just like, So, are you okay?
Are you doing alright health-wise?
You're sort of skirting around the fact that you're talking to a very old person.
and you feel like... - Hospital or at the home or something.
- Yeah.
It's sort of this...
There's a little bit of sort of sad deference in there.
- It is sad.
I have to admit, again, I've seen it happen to my own family members when they've got to extreme ages, and it is always very sad.
But, what was- tell me, that last statement he made where he said, it's nobody's fault but mine, I'll tell you how I prepare, Donald Trump was 10 points ahead, 9 points ahead now, I was doing it for deta- nobody's fault but my- what was the cogent point that was made through that sentence?
That he was taking responsibility for it, which I think was interesting.
I don't think there was a cogent point in that sentence.
He addressed four or five different things at the same time and never completed a thought.
That's true.
It wasn't particularly articulate, but what I got from that was that he was trying to suggest, hey, it was all me.
Everything that's gone wrong is me.
He's trying to be a fool guy, basically, is what I got from that.
Well, that's what he's been briefed and been told to say.
I feel like, yeah, he was trying to come across mature by taking responsibility, but also that, like you say, he was probably briefed with, Three or four talking points you need to hit on that you were sick, that you didn't get a chance to prepare properly, that Donald Trump was ahead but was slightly less far ahead right now, and also that he lied.
And those thoughts, those points were floating around in his mind, but all he could really do rather than forming them into a coherent statement was able to grasp at them.
very very blindly grasp at them throw out them randomly so you never get a complete thought and it's sad to see it's clearly the signs of a man who's not in control of his own yeah i mean if it were a normal person i would feel sad but it is joe biden
and as far as i'm concerned you know i i reserve this sort of condemnation for very few people in the world but he is a truly horrible man from a moral perspective and what he's done with his political career is further enrich himself and his family at the expense of the american people and i don't think that he necessarily deserves any sympathy although it it is obviously the initial reaction
right in that i i felt the same thing of you know you see someone who's struggling you know my grandparents um had dementia and it's sort of it's it's a bit um Harrowing to see it, I suppose.
Yeah, and I have to highlight as well that after the interview is done, because again, it's a very very short interview, they have a team of panellists analysing what's going on.
They all trash him.
They all absolutely bury Joe Biden.
I mean, look at how concerned all of these people look!
They look like they're off to a firing squad.
I know, and this woman's thinking to herself, maybe I'm not black because I don't feel like voting for that man.
My goodness.
I know, exactly.
There are going to be a lot of Michael Jacksons in the world.
But anyway, after that he's come out in the public for MSNBC, rang into them, said that he's not going anywhere.
This is again about an 18 minute clip.
He's rambling the whole way through.
You can't really tell what he's trying to say, other than that, yes, he is running.
He released this public statement on his Twitter account, which presumably was written by an aide, because you're not going to get all of that out of him.
No.
But I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally, I wouldn't be running again if I did not absolutely believe that I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.
The only thing running, I think, this year is going to be excreta down Joe Biden's leg.
I was hoping that wasn't where you were going with that, alright, as I'm drinking from my coffee as well.
Sorry!
But yep, by all accounts, by the looks of it, they're gonna run him.
They're gonna run him.
And look at what we have here in the responses.
We have right-wing or centrist or non-democrat accounts saying, you do it Joe!
You show the haters wrong!
Quartering!
Never back down!
You're our democratic nominee!
Do it Joe!
You can do it!
I for one do support Joe Biden as the democratic candidate for presidency as well.
Formally.
Absolutely.
And then there's been some other reports as well that Joe Biden's doctor has said that he gave him a neurological exam earlier on this year and everything was fine.
Really?
I guess they come cheap now, eh?
So, according to the New York Times, White House visitor logs show that Dr. Kevin Canard, a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on Parkinson's, visited the White House eight times from last summer through to the spring of this year.
However, Mr. Biden's personal doctor, Kevin O'Connor, released a letter that insisted President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical.
I mean, one of those is lying.
The results of this year's exam were detailed on the 28th of February.
An extremely detailed neurological exam was, again, reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorders.
Cerebellar, is that?
Or was it the cerebellum brain area?
Cerebellar.
C-E-R-E-B-E-L-L-A-R.
Okay.
Okay, did I get it right?
Yes.
Okay, good.
I just, I've never heard that before, that's all.
Just wanted to make sure, uh, other neurological disorders such as strokes, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson's, etc, etc.
So, I don't believe that for a second.
There's something going, because Joe Biden's been old for quite some time, you can't just say, oh well, you know, sometimes he gets old, because there has been a noticeable decline from about, you know, From when he was giving speeches, as you say, in 2012, and say 2020 to 2024, Joe Biden, there's obviously a difference.
Oh, you look at him in the 80s or 90s.
He's different from 2016 to 2020, after he left office with Obama when Trump came in, and then when he's on the campaign trail in 2019, 2020.
He seems like a completely different person.
So if you're telling me, nothing wrong, nothing to see here, don't look at the man behind the curtain pulling levers, everything is fine, come on.
Come on.
So that's how Joe Biden's doing, not well.
So from one American politician to another.
I'm going to be talking about who will be Trump's VP.
And so there's been lots of speculation in the news.
In fact, it's one of the main things people have been talking about other than Biden's well-being and his ability to be a president.
And if Jason Miller, who is a Trump advisor and CEO of Getter, who we've actually had on the podcast, is to be believed, which I think... Nice guy?
Yeah, he's a nice guy.
If he's to be believed, it's going to be announced on Monday.
And so it's worth mentioning as well, any political commentator, if they're being completely honest, doesn't really know who the candidate is going to be.
And so I'm not going to be telling you who it's going to be, I'm just going to be looking at who people are speculating about.
And also the pros and cons of each, the sort of things in favour and disfavour of why Trump might pick them.
As well as some of the favourites, Bookie's favourites and things like that.
And this is important for two different reasons.
Obviously it sets the tone and intention of a Trump presidency, who he picks as VP, as well as who's going to carry on Trump's legacy when he no longer runs for president.
Because of course whoever is vice president is then set up more or less to take over rule of the party aren't they yeah so it is actually quite an important thing although um i imagine they might not have the most important role in the actual presidency when in office you know if they win of course um i know it's on the screen here you've got a selection of names would you like to run down them sure
so these are the most popular bets because whenever i look at this sort of thing i don't like to listen to political commentators necessarily i'm I like to follow the money because I think money talks more than, you know, more truth about what people are thinking than their actual mouths which is not really too hard to go wrong with.
So a lot of people putting money on Vivek Ramaswamy and he himself has admitted that he is not being considered.
So yeah, whoever's put money on that, well done.
If he does end up being picked, this is going to be really embarrassing for me.
Maybe Vivek's been putting money on himself and that's what's going on.
I don't know if that's libelous or anything, so that was a joke.
I'm sure he's not.
So yes, I think he was the favourite because he had quite a good campaign, didn't he?
And he's sort of deferred to Trump now, now he's dropped out for the race for president.
I need to say, Conor told me that Rudy Giuliani was going to be the pick, and I don't see his name anywhere.
Yeah, he's not even being considered.
Oh, well there you go.
I've got a very long list of people being considered.
He's not on there.
Giuliani's not on there?
No.
Oh, alright.
Tim Scott, he is a South Carolina senator and a moderate.
He could potentially alienate core Trump supporters because he is a moderate.
But he is a black man which could win the minority vote if Trump is being quite cynical.
He's also, you know, potentially a bit more of a peacemaker candidate.
It's gonna seem like Trump's actually not this dangerous guy.
Sorry, I'm so stupid.
I kept saying Rudy Giuliani.
Connor keeps saying Marco Rubio.
I'll be getting to that.
Yeah, because I keep forgetting that Italian names all sound the same to me.
That's the way.
Save face with a little bit of stereo, I think.
There you go.
Also, Tulsi Gabbard.
She's a Democrat.
I think we're going to be talking a little bit about her later because she is one of the names that keeps on coming up.
So I'm going to do a little bit more on her in a second.
Doug Bergum.
I'm going to talk a bit more about him as well.
I think that actually he might well be One of the favourites at the minute from people's speculation at least.
And then Christy Noem as well, who we're also going to be talking about.
But there are also some other names here that some of the money men have been looking at.
And if we scroll down there, JD Vance, he's tied favourite at the minute with the bookies.
With Doug Burgum who, you know, we're going to talk about both of those.
Marco Rubio, as you say, who is Conor's favourite to win.
I personally think he's a bit too establishment for Trump to consider and Trump has personally mocked him on numerous occasions where he said, called him little Marco and a con man.
So if you picked a VP who you have called a con man, It's going to be very easy for the media to dig up a clip of President Trump saying he's a conman, well he might not have been president at the time, and just say he picked him as a VP, he called him a conman, can you trust this man?
And to be fair, that would be a good argument.
That would be good propaganda for the Democrats.
It would be a bad thing to pick him.
So yes, I don't think it's going to happen.
Then you've got Ben Carson there.
He's been very loyal to Trump.
He's another black man.
He also wants a national abortion ban, which is different to Trump.
I was going to say, as much as I would personally support that, I understand that in American, especially blue states, that's a very difficult sell.
Yes, and I think that the worry would be that it would scare off potential swing voters, and Trump's personal position I think is that he wants to leave it up to the states to decide for themselves, so a sort of states' rights position, which I think, that being one of the sticking points of the election, is not potentially a good pick, but he's still someone worth considering, maybe they can overcome those differences there.
So there's also a very large list here of pretty much all the people you can bet on that are in the running.
And I'm going to go through some of the picks because there are loads here, right?
But I picked out some of the names that I think are interesting.
Mike Pence.
Why are people putting money on that?
Of course, it's not going to be Mike Pence.
Mike Pence literally stabbed him in the back.
Yeah.
I mean, not literally, but metaphorically stabbed him in the back.
Come on.
He literally metaphorically stabbed him in the back.
Uh, Robert Kennedy Jr.
I can't see that happening.
He's talked about reparations for black people in America.
And extensive gun control as well.
Yeah, I don't think that's palatable whatsoever for any Republican voter and I personally don't want to see him anywhere near the White House.
Trump is very proud of Operation Warp Speed, which Kennedy is very critical of, so that would be a major sticking point between them.
It might pull over some of those people in Trump's base who boo him every time he mentions Operation Warp Speed when he's giving speeches, but that would be way too contentious.
Another one that features quite prominently is Tucker Carlson.
My thoughts on this, I don't know whether you agree, this is just my opinion, is that Tucker's got a very good thing going at the minute, and he actually might be more useful in his current role to President Trump, future President Trump, than he would be as a Vice President.
And also, I don't think it's a very attractive prospect to then be dragged directly into the swamp when he's, you know, making a lot of money, to then be on a Vice President salary.
Yeah, well I agree that right now Carlson is far more useful than he could be as VP.
I mean, Carlson is giving very high profile platforms and giving interviews with people like Steve Saylor.
Yes.
And so he's far more useful as a tool for getting those sorts of people out there than he would be as Vice President where he wouldn't be able to do that.
Out of the ballpark point for me on Tucker Carlson would be that he might potentially upstage Trump and we know that that won't be very appealing to Trump because he is a big name in his own right and he can stand on his own two feet.
He doesn't necessarily need Trump and so I think that will put Trump off because of course part of the reason he picked Mike Pence for his VP is that he was quite mild-mannered and understated and uncontroversial in sort of a He's got a personal demeanour perspective and so he's everything that Trump is not.
And you know, Trump isn't stupid.
He knows that that sort of person is your ideal sort of second in command.
He doesn't want someone who is going to be showing him up or potentially upstaging him by being better than him, which I think Tucker has the potential of doing.
I probably agree ideologically on far more things with Tucker than I do Trump, as much as I like Trump.
Another person that people are considering is Ron DeSantis, which I think, again, is someone who Trump criticized pretty heavily.
Also, I think that his inability to speak publicly and his terrible PR while he was campaigning for president might prevent him, even though he has been a good governor of Florida.
That's undeniable.
He's actually quite good to have down in Florida as an asset, and so taking him away would potentially be damaging and not help the country.
Then there's Marjorie Taylor Greene the representative for Georgia I think that it might help Exacerbate how polarizing Trump is seen as by having Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I'm not entirely sure, but I don't see it necessarily happening.
Then there's Ted Cruz, which again he ran for president and got criticized by Trump.
I don't see him leaving Texas, although I also don't know whether he would even accept a VP nomination, but he's being discussed.
Ivanka Trump's even been discussed, Trump's daughter.
Glenn Youngking, the Governor of Virginia, has been considered.
Chris Christie, the former Governor of New Jersey, has been considered.
Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House, has been considered.
I don't see that happening personally.
Lindsey Graham, the Senator for South Carolina, I don't see that happening either.
Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, he did quite a good job, I feel.
Although I imagine that he's probably not going to be VP.
Eric Trump, Trump's son, has been considered.
Matt Goetz, representative of Florida.
He's, you know, one of the senior figures in the Republican Party, sure.
But I don't think he's quite right for Trump, necessarily.
Steve Bannon, of course, the former White House chief strategist.
Bannon's in prison right now, isn't he?
Yeah.
So that's going to be difficult.
A bit difficult, yeah.
I don't see it happening.
Also, for some reason, people are speculating that Mitt Romney, the Senator for Utah, who also lost to Obama in 2012, I think everyone knows who he is.
Who also is a never-Trumper.
He is, yeah.
So I don't see that happening whatsoever.
I don't even know why he's being considered.
Josh Hawley, Senator for Missouri, is being considered, which is possible.
You know, he's up and coming, I think.
He's got good credentials behind him.
And then two candidates that are on the betting slips, but I don't think they're going to get it.
Candace Owens and also Kanye West.
And I've grouped them together because I don't think they're going to be accepted for one reason.
And that is Trump's opinion on Israel, which both of them not big fans.
Also, Candice has been getting very spicy on Twitter recently.
So that's not good.
And let's not forget Kanye West did go on InfoWars and explicitly say that he...
In a moment of absolute insanity that made Alex Jones cringe and go straight to commercial, said that he loves Hitler.
So I think when Trump's constantly battling the OMG he's the American Hitler narrative, neither of those picks would be great.
I like that they're on the ballot though, why not?
Why not put them on the slip for betting?
I don't know what's got into people's heads.
If you want to throw money away.
Have a great time enriching the betters.
Your betters.
Your mental betters for even considering that.
So let's talk about some of the sort of favourites at the minute.
So the first I'm going to talk about is J.D.
Vance.
So he's the Senator for Ohio and some of the sort of things in favour for him is he's a fresh face and a bit of an outsider, much like Trump was in 2016, at least in the realm of politics.
Obviously, Trump had name recognition, but also I don't think he's necessarily looking for that in a VP.
He just wants someone who can get stuff done and isn't going to cause too many problems, which I think is fair to say, and maybe be a good counterbalance to his questionable aspects of his personality.
Trump, I mean.
He also wrote the book The Hillbilly Elegy, which is a memoir about his family life.
This was turned into a Netflix original film in 2020 and the film actually did very well.
I believe Glenn Close's performance led to nominations at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
And you can even still get Hillbilly Elegy from mainstream bookshops.
You can, yeah.
Which is shocking to me.
Hillbilly Energy.
And also the final thing I wanted to mention is he has significant financial backing from a number of wealthy benefactors such as Peter Thiel.
So that might help, I imagine.
So he does have some drawbacks as well.
He only assumed political office in the Senate in January of 2023, which, you know, you want someone with a bit more experience like, say, Pence, right?
He's been in the Senate for a while.
He's an older gentleman.
He's still quite young.
And he's also been criticised for his delayed response to the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
You remember that story, right, with the chemical leak?
Yeah, you threw me off with East Palestine, Ohio.
Yeah, you didn't know that happened?
The Palestinians, they've taken over Ohio.
I should have known.
First Israel, then America.
It's like how you have Birmingham or Athens in America.
It throws off Europeans.
It really does.
I think there's a Paris, Texas as well.
I mean, there are even rural Devonshire towns that have towns in America.
And I'm just like, that's so weird.
And the towns are bigger than the original.
Anyway, tangent.
He also did put through a bipartisan bill to prevent further train derailments from happening, so he might have scraped some of his dignity back there.
But he did work for CNN as a contributor in 2017, which might be a black mark against his name.
Obviously Trump voters don't like CNN, my goodness, I don't need to tell you that.
And also, some of Trump's financial backers don't like him, which might be, you know, he might be overlooked as a sort of business decision more than anything else to make, you know, the money work, because obviously Trump's losing money being in the campaign, so he does need some financial backers.
But moving on to the next person, who I think is one of the leading favorites really, is Doug Begum, who, it's not really a big name, is he?
Have you heard of Doug Begum before?
Nope.
E-bar gum.
I knew that was coming.
There we go.
But he is the governor of North Dakota.
Made right into your hands.
He did.
Too predictable, Harry.
And he announced in January of 2024 that he would not run for governor again.
And he also has expressed interest in running for president.
So his interests seem to be aligned here with Trump's in that if he were VP, then he would be the favorite to take over from Trump afterwards, right?
it.
I know it's only in your notes, but I'm sure it's $100 million, but you've got his estimated net worth as $100.
He is worth more than $100, but that was just to jog my memory, alright?
I know it's $100 million, I prepared this yesterday.
But yes, his estimated net worth is $100 million.
Not $100, as Harry seems to think.
He spent his last pennies on that suit!
But this is from his tech and venture capital companies, and so this might be potential evidence to suggest that he's harder to buy.
Of course, this is not a guarantee, but it might be promising.
This is one of the appeals of Trump, is that he was already a billionaire.
He doesn't necessarily need to bend over backwards for all the money men, because he can fund himself.
The government agrees with Trump's position on abortion that it's up to states to decide.
He's very pro-gun rights, which is, you know, positive for Republicans, right?
He also deployed the Texas National Guard to the border with Mexico a number of times to assist Texas in preventing the illegals crossing, which is obviously good, and it shows that he's a sort of team player.
He's not just out for himself.
And also, since dropping his presidential aspirations, he's endorsed Trump and has been campaigning for him, which probably helps.
And he's pretty mild-mannered and low-key, which would not steal away attention from Trump, which I feel like is quite similar to Pence.
And this, I think, is why he's probably one of the favourites, because he seems like a similar sort of candidate.
And Trump has said he's going to be an important member of the next administration.
He just hasn't said what position.
And also in an interview, Trump later said he would be very good as vice president.
So he's got a ringing endorsement from the guy himself.
Yes.
Which is probably why he's considered one of the favorites.
Makes sense to me.
However, there are some cons.
He set a goal for North Dakota to be carbon neutral by 2030.
Of course, 2030 is a very significant year.
If you know anything about the World Economic Forum.
As well as carbon neutrality associated with that number.
That might raise some red flags.
With some people.
However, he wants to keep the fossil fuel industry going, but he just wants to develop carbon capture infrastructure.
But that's obviously not going to be popular with the Republican base, and I also think it's a bit silly.
It shows that he perhaps doesn't know what he's doing.
He has described Republican platforms on LGBT issues as divisive and divisional, which is the same word said two different ways.
However, he did sign a bill banning so-called gender-affirmative care for minors.
Okay, so...
If I give the benefit of the doubt there, if he's somebody who's going to come out with moderate rhetoric but actually do what needs to be done with the legislative, then that's one thing.
But I hate the, oh it's divisive.
These people who want to pervert your children, you need to be moderate with them because you don't want to be divisive as if they're not the ones being divisive.
It's like George Bush coming out and saying, actually I do negotiate with terrorists, some of them are good people.
Which Jeremy Corbyn did say in the UK.
But anyway, that is Doug Begum.
And then let's have a look at Tulsi Gabbard, who I personally don't think is going to be considered.
She is the former representative for Hawaii.
She is a woman and an ethnic minority, if that matters to you.
And that might expand Trump's voter base because people vote along those lines.
Also attracts horny dads.
That's true.
She has both military and foreign policy experience, which probably helps.
And also her breaking from the Democrats might appeal to those disillusioned with party politics more generally, perhaps.
But I think that that's a bit of a stretch.
I've seen that argument being banded around.
Cons, she was a Democrat.
That's pretty simple.
She endorsed Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden in 2020.
Yeah, I don't see this going down well.
And also, if she was picked for her experience, there are more experienced Republicans without that track record of endorsing your opponents.
So I don't see it happening personally.
It'd be a bit of a curveball.
It could still happen.
I do have to say I believe that she's come out and at least withdrawn her old endorsement of Biden.
She said that was a mistake.
I don't know if she said the same about Sanders, but she said that the Democrat Party and Joe Biden are not anything that she supports now.
I don't think people change too much in four years, but at least she's retracted it, I suppose.
So yes, that's her.
And then Kristi Noem is the final one I wanted to do a bit of a spotlight on.
Governor of South Dakota.
Pros, she has a long history of supporting Trump, that much is undeniable.
And her handling of the pandemic has been praised by many Republicans.
She resisted mask mandates and lots of things like that.
She was one of the state governors that did a lot.
Also, she's in her 50s and look at her.
That's going to get the dads going.
She looks kind of scary, if I'm honest.
She looks like an apparition in a haunted mansion.
That's very mean.
It is very mean, but I'm telling it how I see it.
But some consider her easy on the ice.
Cons are that her support comes from a very similar place as Trump, sort of in the American populace, and so if he wants to expand his voter base there's so much overlap there that might not happen with her as a VP pick.
She also got criticized for admitting she shot her 14-month-old dog because it was aggressive and couldn't be trained in a recent book, which she got a lot of flack for.
People like dogs, and even though I understand, you know, I know farmers, I know, you know, like, farm dogs and things like that, I understand why she did it.
It's gonna- Making excuses for dog shooters now.
I personally wouldn't have shot a dog, by the way.
To be clear, But it's obviously going to put a lot of people off because people like dogs.
People don't like shooting dogs.
And if people look at her and think she killed a dog, what's she going to do to us?
What's this haunted lady going to do to me?
Is she going to phase through my wall and strangle me in her sleep?
My sleep, I should say.
She's dreaming of you, Harry.
Dreaming of killing you.
Well, if she killed a dog, maybe she is.
She hates you in particular.
But here are the candidates.
That's all of them, pretty much, that I think are in consideration.
It's probably going to be one of the people I've mentioned today.
I don't know which one.
It's for you to make up your mind and speculate about.
I don't know what you're thinking, Harry.
Insightful as ever.
But yes, I think it's going to be a very very important thing actually and because we know that Trump is not going to run another term after this, that this is going to set the tone and tenor of American politics for a considerable amount of time and so all eyes are going to be watching who Trump picks.
You know what, I'm gonna... I changed my mind.
Yeah, we'll go through some rumble ramps.
I'm just gonna say, I endorse the meme pic.
Do it.
Get Kanye in.
Get Kanye in Trump.
Do it.
Do it!
It'd be funny.
He could rap your public announcements.
He could be the opening set to your speeches.
It would be amazing.
Don't do that.
Let's read through some of these.
Sure.
So Neo Unrealist says, I have a suspicion Trump may ruthlessly choose Marco Rubio as VP as he'd make winning Hispanic vote likely, something Trump seems to want to be able to claim.
He was very praising of Rubio on Tuesday.
Sorry, I've got hiccups now.
That's alright, that's alright.
The Shadowban says carbon capture combined with nuclear is the only realistic solution to climate change.
Leftists want to cut down forests and strip mine lithium for soda panels plus windmills.
Yeah, I feel like nuclear power is an obvious renewable win because, you know, it doesn't take up that much land as opposed to lots of other things.
Also, you know, things involved in oil and gas.
It does destroy the environment actually harvesting it to some extent, perhaps less so than nuclear unless, of course, you have, you know, a Chernobyl thing.
But you know, the technology is there now that it's not nearly as likely as it was.
Nitricyc?
Before I make a bizarre Charlie Brown shirt with Harry Mugg design, does the shape mean anything?
Uh, yeah, if you watch our Twin Peaks video that Josh and I did, you'll know that it's related to that.
It's something I got off Etsy, a Twin Peaks mug.
This is the design that you find in the Black Lodge, which is the supernatural realm found in that TV show.
And it's always a very striking design, so I like to get things on it.
So, yeah, watch that video, watch that series, and if you're gonna make a Charlie Brown shirt with it, just be aware that that's what you're doing.
EC was here, fun fact, Paris, Texas is named after Paris, Tennessee.
I wonder what Paris, Tennessee was named after.
Hercules, I assume.
Yeah, I imagine so.
It's American states all the way down.
Hercules.
Tulsi would lock in the win, paraphrasing Styx.
I'm not convinced personally, but... Well, Styx is American, so he probably has a more insider view than we do, but... It's possible.
Yeah.
Never say never.
Tulsi is popular and never, never count out the horny dad vote.
That's true.
If you can count on anything.
Anyway, let's talk about Alex Jones.
So, Alex Jones is still in trouble, constantly in trouble, always in trouble with the media and the court system and with anybody who isn't a consistent Alex Jones viewer, to be perfectly honest.
He's very, very entertaining, but this is related to the Sandy Hook school shootings, which he reported on back in the day.
He stopped reporting on them for a long time.
Now, I do not personally have any reason to believe that Sandy Hook was anything other than a tragic school shooting, as was reported by the media at the time, and I didn't watch Alex Jones' coverage at the time either, so I can't say explicitly what it was he said about it, other than that I have seen one or two clips that do seem to show him saying outright that it was a false flag where it was all crisis actors and no children actually died in it.
He has since then come out and said that he maintains that at the time his coverage that he was covering other people's reporting on it and what other people were saying about it and that included the conspiracy angle of it and since then he has come out shook hands with some of the parents of the children who died and said that he believes that it was real he knows that it was real now.
Since then, people are still trying to make it sound as though he's continually saying that the whole thing was fake, because he has said that the media coverage, the smear jobs, and the legal action that's been taken against him since then is so obviously overblown, so obviously vindictive, not just for the sake of settling defamation against him, but to try and put him out of business, that the whole thing stinks of the deep state, according to him, So, I have a couple of things to say here.
People take those quotes out of context and try and make it sound like he's still saying the whole thing was a fake.
That's not what he's saying anymore, but I can't speak to what he was saying in the past.
So I have a couple of things to say here.
First and foremost, I think that what he said should be covered under the First Amendment. - Yep.
It was an event that was of national concern.
It was an event that will inform political policy.
And if you start punishing people with potentially ridiculous sums of money for talking about these things, then you stifle national debate and you weaken your country.
And that's something I'm not willing to flinch on.
I mean, even if, you know, The thing was genuine.
It would be distasteful, it would be insensitive, it would be kicking the parents when they were down, which I wouldn't approve of, but I fully support people's right to say these sorts of things even if they're not, you know, if you can't have distasteful speech then you can't have any speech at all because everything is distasteful to someone.
And this is, I think, obviously a show trial.
It's to say, look, you can't say anything that the state doesn't approve of.
We're going to destroy this man to make an example to the rest of you.
And I think it's vile.
I think it's disgusting.
And I think that obviously people are out for blood and money.
And also, to speak of the government reaction to it, he is absolutely right that the government in America, especially the more democratic governments as it was at the time, it was Obama's government, his administration, do take advantage of situations like this to try and push for more gun control.
And if you're going to talk about how Alex Jones was distasteful, kicking the parents when they're down, of course you could make the same argument about the government Taking a situation like that and using it for political purposes to try and push their own agenda.
You want to talk about dancing on the graves of children, the government does that whenever anything like this happens.
You can't convince me that there isn't a part of the US administration, the US deep state, that isn't on some level happy, at least for media purposes, when something like this happens.
I mean, come on!
It's the principle of never let a good crisis go to waste, isn't it?
Exactly.
And again, what's going on is defamation.
The suits that have been put forward against him have been for defamation.
The Sandy Hook family's claim that because of the conspiracies that he was spreading back when it happened, that led to...
Harassment, death threats, rape threats from random strangers who recognize them from the news coverage and threaten them on the street.
What I would say, because I agree with you that it needs to be something that's protected under the First Amendment, especially when really at the root of what Jones was saying was a criticism of the government and the tactics that they use to try and pass legislation, is if anybody needed to have legal charges brought against them, it was the people harassing those families.
Well, because of course that's disgusting.
Yeah, well Alex Jones isn't responsible for the actions of other people.
No.
Alex Jones is responsible for the actions of Alex Jones and no one else.
And you can be critical of him for that but it's so clearly just been a political persecution ever since then of what's going on and that's why you can tell just because of the fact that you can see in reports like this from when the trial was still going on 22nd of October 2022 In fact, the trial wasn't even really a trial because the court said that he hadn't been able to put in the proper documents and hadn't given them the proper documents.
So they only brought a jury in because they wanted to settle the amount of money that should already been given.
So the trial was a show trial because the judge already told them, well, deliberate like you already know he's guilty.
How much money should we give these people?
And you don't need to be a psychologist to know that if you frame something in that way, the natural human inclination is to be like, well, he's guilty then, isn't he?
And what else are you supposed to say?
Then what's the point in the trial?
Exactly.
And this is meme numbers being thrown.
This is a report from The Independent.
Sandy Hook families want Alex Jones to pay up to $2.75 trillion.
2.75 trillion dollars.
Did it wrong.
You need to...
2.75 trillion dollars. - Yes.
Yes, thank you very much.
Sorry, they get triostin powers.
That's alright.
I've got to say, your Dr. Evil needs work.
But thank you anyway.
Not too much hair.
So that's a meme number.
Realistically, at the time in 2022, I think that was slightly more than the GDP of all of Africa.
So they're asking, so they were asking as an upper limit, to be clear this was an upper limit, so it was the plaintiff's filings, they said one calculation among many was 2.75 trillion dollars.
So they're asking him to hand Africa.
Give me Africa.
Why are they supportive of colonialism?
This is terrible.
I know, it's terrible.
It's horribly racist.
But this figure was reached by multiplying the state's law up to $5,000 per violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones' audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts over three years after the school shooting.
During the trial, as I mentioned, the victim's relatives said that in testimony they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones' show.
Now, of course, that's terrible.
That's terrible.
No innocent person, especially after you've experienced a tragedy, should experience something like that on top of it.
But again, the people you should be going after, if you haven't already, Are the people who harassed you, are the people who threatened you, not the guy who made some absurd claims back in the day and has now taken all of that back and was explicit saying do not harass these people.
And then as a result of this, because the figure that it was brought down to, because I think it was two trials at the same time, one in Connecticut where the shooting took place and then one in Texas where family members were as well, the number that they settled on between those two was about 1.5 billion dollars.
Which is absurd.
1.5 billion dollars.
Let's throw that out there.
Billion dollars, okay?
And they said that he filed for bankruptcy following that because it could be used to wipe out debts, but not if they result from willful or malicious injury caused by the debtor.
Jones' lies, they say in Reuters, appear to meet that standard, said Susan Block-Leib, a professor of bankruptcy law at Fordham University School of Law.
So this was an attempt to try and Potentially get out of paying for this, but it's not going to work.
It wasn't going to work.
And so they've been haggling ever since.
And it seemed clear as to why they're haggling.
They say, well, instead of $1.5 billion, you can pay $85 million, $8.5 million per year over the course of 10 years.
And there'd been numerous looks into his finances during the whole trial that found that he probably wouldn't actually be able to pay that.
Yeah, I'm not surprised.
Yeah, he wouldn't be able to pay that.
So they put a meme number out first, and then they go, don't worry, it will be more reasonable.
Here's a slightly less big meme number that you also aren't able to pay.
So what's the alternative?
He can't pay, he can't file for bankruptcy properly to get out of all this, although bankruptcy is still something that he and I think it's a What's the name of it?
Free Speech Technology or Free Speech Solutions.
The name of the company, the parent company that owns InfoWars.
Both Alex Jones personally and that company are both filing for bankruptcy at the moment and they're going through litigation on how to sort all of that out.
But what's the alternative?
If you can't, you can reorganize... Free Speech Systems is the name of it.
They say the offer was made in Jones' personal bankruptcy case in Houston.
In a legal filing, lawyers for the family said that they believed the proposal was a viable way to help resolve the bankruptcy reorganization cases of both Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.
Now, how would you imagine the reorganization is going to look?
It's going to be gutted.
They're going to destroy it, aren't they?
Yes, that's seemingly what they're aiming for, is they go, here's this unreasonable number, here's this other unreasonable number, oh can't pay up, well we're going to have to take all of your assets from you, that includes your company, and we get to do whatever we want with it.
And people say the government isn't a mafia, eh?
Yes, so in a new bankruptcy plan, Free Speech Systems said it could afford to pay creditors about $4 million per year, down from an earlier estimate of $7 million to $10 million annually.
The company said it expected to make about $19.2 million next year from selling dietary supplements, clothing and other merchandising that Jones promotes on his shows, while operating expenses, including salaries, would total about $14.3 million, despite being such a heavily censored platform.
Infowars does good business, by the sounds of it, mainly from all of those dietary supplements.
If you go on the website, it's actually quite a professional-looking website.
His whole setup's very professional.
So yeah, he makes good money from it, but not good enough money to really be able to expend that.
And after this, after you're offered meme offers, where it's just turning around to basically say, through various mechanisms, we'll have to take your company, you get other media smears going on, which is a documentary
An HBO documentary being made about the situation called, I think it's The Truth vs Alex Jones, made by Leaving Neverland, that was the Michael Jackson 2019 smear documentary, by Dan Reed, who spent four years following the circus created by Alex Jones after he claimed blah blah blah.
So you know that if HBO are making a documentary about something that's going to be perfectly neutral?
And not swing to one side, not smear, not spin the whole situation in one direction.
Tries to smear him the whole way through as being somebody who's willfully lying, willfully distorting the truth purely so that he can sell his supplements.
There might be some truth to that, but I'm not going to trust this guy in HBO to tell me the truth about- Well yeah, we do also know that HBO have told their fair share of lies in their history, to say the least.
Yeah, they certainly have.
So what happens next?
Well, the judge ordered liquidation of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' personal assets.
So this was a federal judge in Texas, and this is last month, June 2024, ordered the liquidation of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' personal assets and was still deciding on his company's separate bankruptcy case.
The decision could determine the future of his right-wing and conspiracy theory-laden InfoWars media platform, as he owes still $1.5 billion.
So the case for his bankruptcy from what I read in other articles said that it was dismissed by the federal courts so it's gone to the state courts instead who are still after the money and they're still going to have to seize his assets and one of the ways that they're going to seize his assets is they're trying to seize his social media accounts.
That's a bit weird, isn't it?
The Sandy Hook families, read their lawyers, want his social media accounts.
I mean, I think Raw Egg Nationalist has it put very well here, which is, it's not about justice for the Sandy Hook families, the same way that the government puppeteers the bodies of dead children to try and push gun control legislation.
The government and the lawyers have been puppeteering the Sandy Hook families since then, and they might have been going along with it willfully because they can make money from it.
I don't blame them if they can make a huge payday from it, to be honest.
But they've been puppeteering them to try and ruin Alex Jones and seize his company.
Whatever you think of Alex Jones's company in Fowars, whatever you think of his persona, whatever you think of the honesty or accuracy of what he reports, that's seemingly to me what it's coming across as.
I definitely agree.
Yeah, and now it's confirmed that the trustee plans are attempting to shut Infowars down.
A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee has indicated plans to sell off right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' InfoWars media empire to pay some of...
So we'll still be on the hook for some of it.
The 1.5 billion he owes.
In a court filing filed on Sunday, the trustee, Christopher Murray, said he was planning to close operations of InfoWars owner, Free Speech Systems, and liquidate his inventory.
So this is the largest suit ever conducted against an American citizen, right?
Isn't it?
As far as I understand it.
I can only imagine so.
A private citizen like Alex Jones, yes, this is an absurd amount of money.
And the families are as well, trying to collect the money as soon as possible, which is before the company has had chance to sell its assets to pay them.
So that would potentially mean a smaller payday.
And other courts have said that they've blocked that motion.
But it's very strange that they would pursue an approach that means they get less money, but the company shuts down quicker.
Funny that, isn't it?
That is seemingly another politically motivated aspect of this whole case.
And I don't want to be liable for anything.
Of course, what happened to the families is a tragedy, and I can understand that after what happened to them, they would want to, you know, at least get some money for it or something.
But again, the political aspects of this entire case seems to be that there is a massive attempt to try and shut InfoWars down to the point where it's working.
From reports that I've seen from Alex Jones's website and what is being reported in these articles as well, it seems that he says here, going to try and move forward and maximize the amount of money we can make at InfoWars to then have a wind down.
So it may be a matter of months, it may be another year or two, it matters how long this ends up getting dragged on, but it seems that InfoWars might end up shutting down because of all of this.
So yeah, nice white pill for everybody there, sorry.
Again, I'm not always Alex Jones' biggest fan, but he's at least entertaining, and he tries to tell the truth.
I don't think he deserves all that, though.
No, he certainly doesn't.
Before we get on to the video comments, I'll read Neo Unrealist, who for another dollar has put in a Rumble rant, thank you very much.
Consider a defamation judgment which in theory the victims are dead and most should cap how much they earn in a lifetime.
How could Jones do as much damage as 1990s era US national government budget?
Well he couldn't.
Clearly.
Clearly he couldn't.
It's a meme number.
It's a meme number so they have excuse to seize his assets and shut InfoWars down.
Absolutely.
Go to the video comments I suppose.
So one of my workmates the other day was asking me whether or not he should leave Australia and go to the UK, considering that financially Australia is going through a downward spiral, especially with the housing crisis, which has never been great.
I mean, rent here is very high and when you want to buy a house you have to be at least a millionaire.
I told them no, considering that the situation over there is worse, and considering that speech is very restrictive in the UK, and even a mild comment could actually get you arrested.
Yeah well I think that was pretty good advice and although I think if a mild comment would get you arrested we would have been arrested a hundred times over.
You're right about the housing market and if anything lots of Brits go over to Australia.
I think the standard of living, I've looked at the economic numbers, is higher in Australia than it is in Britain so yeah if anything look at the flow of British people to Australia as a sort of sign that yes things are potentially much better in Australia than vice versa.
Obviously.
The majority of us believe in freedom and equality.
The freedom to love who you love, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom for a woman to make decisions about her own body, not having her government tell her what to do.
Fairness is an illusion designed to create disorder.
Absolutely correct.
Anarchy is the only fairness.
No, I'm joking.
I will say I am a person who aspires to a British idea of liberty and freedom.
I would like to return to a time that A.J.P.
Taylor describes back in his History of England between 1914 and 1945 where he talks about how in 1914, right before the Great War, the most interaction the average Englishman had with his local government was the postman.
I would love to return to that kind of time.
Yes.
But freedom rhetoric does cut both ways because the left can turn it back around like that.
And then it just gets into quibbling about semantics, sadly.
Yeah, I much prefer to frame it not as, I am free to do this, rather than, the government has no right to do this.
And I think that when you put it in those terms, you're not conceding to the same leftist rhetoric, it's just saying, yeah, I don't, this is over the line for me, you need to back off.
For my area, unsurprisingly, Afzal Khan won his seat.
Now the Labour vote was massively split due to the Islamists in the Green Party and the Workers' Party of Great Britain.
Unsurprisingly, Mr Khan references Gaza in his victory speech.
However, the only footage of the victory that I can find comes from Pakistani news media.
What's the difference between Pakistan and India?
Wow, amazing!
This is a success.
This is a historical victory for the Labour Party.
But they're just as British as the rest of us, guys.
If anything, they're probably more British than us, because they truly represent our Islamic values.
Inshallah, brother.
Inshallah, mashallah, friends.
Bo, I'm looking forward to working with you.
I was actually a bit worried that the email I sent you would have been a bit overwhelming.
It was quite an essay, but I can't wait to see what you make.
We have told Bo that this video comment has arrived and so he has seen it I believe but we're just playing it for the sake of the audience.
But it's also great, thank you Cooper for helping out Bo.
He's mentioned his books before as a sort of dream that he wants to do and it's nice to see him pursue that really and it's great that you're helping him out.
So yeah, enormous credit to you for helping him achieve that I suppose.
I hope it all goes well.
Yeah, I think what you're doing is valuable because you're actually offering what we often suggest, which is a different opportunity for people who are creative to get their work out there outside of the mainstream, which is always a good thing.
And Bo mentioned on the podcast yesterday that he's in the middle of going back through one of his old novels, getting it prepared and in the right shape to be able to send to you.
Should we give him a plug?
Should we do it?
What's for a cscooper.com.au is it?
There's a beep in the table beep.
That was my knee.
What is your knee beeping Harry?
You're a fed.
He's wearing a wire.
My knee knocked against the under monitor here.
Soon as you mentioned cscooper.com.au.
It tried to censor me.
Carl's got new anti-flicking censorship in here.
There's a little air horn that's going to play.
Is that all the video comments?
I believe so, yes.
So we have written comments now, and it'll be yours first, I believe, Harry.
Oh, we've got general comments that I'll read.
George Happ says, Off topic, but my Islander magazine arrived yesterday and I'm really enjoying it.
I knew the articles would be great, but I didn't expect the awesome design.
Rory did a fantastic job making it a time capsule to the 90s.
Oh, we did miss one.
Carry on, carry on, Josh.
Samson's pulling one up as well.
Oh, that sounded a bit weird, didn't it?
Pulling up a video comment.
That ad at the end needs to be a real thing.
Oh, the Donald Trump video game.
Yeah, I really want that.
I was with Rory as he was designing that, and as it was all coming together, I thought, damn, I need that game.
I think Rory's next big project is developing that.
He's learned to make magazines.
Now he's got to learn game design.
It's simple enough, right?
How hard is it?
This entire enterprise is just a project to educate Rory in all of the world's industries.
Next we'll get him speaking English properly.
That'll be the best of all.
Yeah, no chance.
Rachel Loves You says, Harry and Josh hosting together is always a dream team for me, especially if Trump is a topic.
I'm ready to be entertained.
Lol.
Coffee is ready to be enjoyed.
Well, that's very kind of you.
Thank you.
I hope that's a damn fine cup you've got there.
Also, I was saying before we came on air that I was actually looking forward to doing this podcast because it's... So was I.
Don't say it so begrudgingly.
So was I. I was being sincere.
I'm not used to you being sincere.
See, you know, we're one of the rare people that are actually more hostile on camera than we are off camera.
You know what, Josh?
I've decided you're a twat.
I knew it.
That's much better.
I feel more comfortable now.
North FFC Zuma says, here's my obligatory lads, lads, lads, minus Connor comment.
When I'm doing the poor shaming, I need to start styling myself after the fat pig in communist propaganda.
Whenever I'm poor shaming you, that's what I need to represent.
aka bb dades salesmanship works amazing work lads give credit to rory for the art and editing i hope this will be a regular issue when i'm doing the paw shaming i need to start styling myself after the fat the fat pig in communist propaganda whenever i'm paw shaming you that's what i need to represent you've been doing good job getting the build oh i've lost weight you You have.
I've lost like 6 kilograms since April.
You've been doing very well, Harry.
Thank you, thank you.
There you go.
I insult you then I pull it back and I insult you and I pull it back.
This is his gaslighting technique.
You can't be mad at me because I'm sometimes nice to you.
He keeps negging me and I keep doing everything he asks me to do afterwards.
It's strange.
The only reason I studied psychology was just to enhance my evil.
Let's watch this video comment.
Sure.
That looks lovely.
I'm getting a very strong urge to swim at the minute.
That's really clear water, that's lovely.
I need to get out of Swindon.
They don't have water that clear anywhere down south.
No, not even out of the Taps.
Anyway, how's Joe holding up Harry?
Again, Bolsonaro pilling right here, except now with added extra.
Harry eating a KFC bucket all by himself while Josh watches.
So I'm all by myself but you're watching, presumably.
I'm not a person anymore.
No, I assume you're out of the shot, like, with binoculars from a bush somewhere, watching me.
Well he says, there's a reason why throughout history powerful people have wanted weakened infant rulers.
It allows for their domination of the state without accountability.
Joe Biden is no more than a rubber stamp to those around him.
As long as he gets to sit in the big chair and Donald Trump doesn't, he'll do anything made for him.
Yeah, sounds about right.
Now we've got another one.
Josh Firm stripped down to his knickers and lathered in Big Mac sauce.
I told you not to tell anyone about that.
You're meant to keep that private.
These are getting excessively esoteric now.
With there being millions of Hispanics moving to America, both legal and illegal, they will, if nothing changes, soon end up a majority Hispanic.
That will be catastrophic, making the US more like the unstable South American countries full of corruption, coups, and civil wars, like Mexico.
For instance, if your country is full of Mexicans, you might end up being Mexico, which seems to be the case already for a state like California.
That will, I think, at current rate, end up being a separatist state.
Yeah, New Mexico is going to be a very prophetic name soon enough as well.
It's just going to be Mexico.
New New Mexico.
Yeah soon.
That's the thing, it's interesting because Callum of all people showed up on Lauren Chen yesterday being interviewed by her and he was speaking and I think it was very good about how in countries like he was visiting recently like Zimbabwe and South Africa you find that because of how multi-ethnic it is all of the democratic parties end up being Ethnic headcounts of whichever constituency they're representing.
The same way is starting to happen over here, where you're starting to get the Green Party and Labour Party, the Workers' Party, whatever candidates they're fielding, that if it's in a majority Muslim neighbourhood, they'll field a Muslim candidate and it just ends up being an ethnic headcount.
Wait, so you're saying that if an ethnically homogenous country opens its borders to a foreign population that it makes politics impossible?
Yes.
That's terrible.
On an unrelated note, I saw a report, we mentioned the economists earlier, they did some polling and found that most young people in South Africa don't want democracy anymore.
They want somebody who will keep the electric running, which they don't get with their current democratic party system.
Get the redcoats on lads, it's time for round two.
Here we go boys!
Irania, you gotta prepare for some new arrivals.
We're gonna expand.
But yeah, that's what California's gonna end up being.
That's what New Mexico is gonna end up being, is they're going to be Mexican states.
And all the leftists who voted for the policies that let it go that way are gonna go, oh, I don't like living here anymore.
I wonder why that is.
No self-reflection.
They'll move to Texas and vote for more Mexicans, and the process will continue until I don't know, North Dakota is the only remaining state.
They've got like the Federal Reserve policy of just printing lots of money.
You're just going to produce more Mexicans.
Print Mexicans.
They're just at the border being printed, sent over by George Soros.
3D printed Mexicans.
How to destroy a society in three easy steps.
Biggie Bigfoot says, do you think they're intentionally allowing Biden to decline in order to eventually replace him with a preferred leader?
Who wouldn't have otherwise won the nomination or election?
I think at first it was a case where they were eager to have him in because he was so easily manipulated and because he, as somebody else has mentioned, he can just rubber stamp things for them.
But now that it's become a big PR issue and they can't ignore how bad he is, you can see from the mainstream coverage that they want him out.
They want him out and they want somebody who's already established, who already is on the same track as everybody else for what they want to do.
but who can actually give a decent PR and media appearance.
Whereas Biden has an ego.
Even if he can't remember anything else about himself, he can still remember that he's got a huge ego.
So I don't think it's going to be that easy.
Harry eating a KFC bargain bucket again.
I'm getting pretty fat today.
You need to lay off those buckets, Harry.
I do.
It says the Democrats have no choice but to run either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
The Democrats will lose the millions already raised for campaign if they're not chosen and at least four states don't have enough time to change their ballots before November.
Again, maybe they'll lose or maybe we'll get some... I said reinforcement last time.
What was the name that they gave it?
Fortify.
Fortification.
Yeah, this is not barring any fortification.
Ramshackle Otter, Crone, says... Don't just read the part in brackets like it's facts.
She said it herself.
Not Crone, don't worry.
Says, Joe Biden had two massive brain aneurysms in February 1988, which he never fully recovered from.
This seems to have been conveniently forgotten.
I did not know about that.
I mean, I've seen footage from him from the 90s and even from 12 years ago in 2012, where he seemed much more cogent.
But I wouldn't be shocked if those over the long term have had an impact on how we see him today.
Okay, who will be Trump's VP?
A little bargain bucket Harry again.
These are all good candidates, Josh, but you're forgetting one contender as Trump's VP, Kanye West.
I didn't forget Kanye West.
I'm supporting it, you know?
Why not?
You're gonna have to come out with a public apology soon enough.
Sorry, Joe Biden being the president means that they're a joke country.
So lean into the joke.
Just go full comedy act.
I feel like we're in a very big glass house at the minute.
Yes, yay.
Who cares?
I'm just imagining it now he gets up on stage.
I'm not gonna tell you who the donors were!
They were a Jewish donor.
I can see it.
I can see it already.
Derek Powell says, I have a grudge against Marco Rubio because he's the one who was advocating for the US to adopt permanent daylight time.
I'm sure he could make a good VP, but I can't overlook that stance.
I respect that immensely.
What's permanent daylight time?
Is it similar to how we switch from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time?
I would assume so, but I like the idea instead that he's trying to make it permanently day all the time, the sun never goes down.
He's like a reverse vampire.
It's like the reverse of Mr Burns when he tries to block the sun.
To be fair, if a party put in their manifesto they're going to get rid of the hour change.
You know, I don't want the government to tell me what time it is.
Alright?
It's going to be whatever time I say it is.
I'm not no bureaucrat.
Josh adjusting all the watches and clocks that he has in his possession once a year shaking his fist damn big government get me again!
Yes and unironically Arizona Desert Rat says y'all should have heard Tim Scott's rebuttal to Biden's State of the Union speech it was rather epic I didn't in fact I did hear a clip of it actually and it was good to give him credit As far as Gabbard, she left the Democrat Party because of all the crazy stuff they're pulling.
She's a bit like RFK Jr.
when it comes to her politics, but she's generally honest and follows through with what she says and she wants to get done.
Yeah, I mean, she's obviously one of the least egregious people that have been a member of the Democratic Party in politics for the past, I don't know, 20 years.
which is not a high bar, but is something, I suppose.
Chase Ball says, We've heard what you think would be Trump's best VP picks, but what would be the funniest VP picks?
I believe there is an extraordinarily slim possibility of a tie between both Trump and Biden, which would result in a Trump presidency and a Harris vice presidency, which sounds like a setup for a sitcom.
I was going to say, if he announces Kamala Harris...
She's switched sides, everyone.
No, she hasn't even agreed to it.
He just announces her.
He just gets a sack and puts it over her head.
Takes her away.
You're my VP now.
One of the stans, you know, between China and Russia, that's how they actually get wives, is they put a sack over their head.
And that's genuinely true, that is an actual custom.
Mongolia!
Okay, that doesn't have a... Mongolia stan, instead.
I think for a joke he should announce Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential pick.
That would be hilarious, wouldn't it?
That would be amazing.
I don't know whether Hillary would actually take him up on it.
That'd be hilarious, wouldn't it?
She's so allured by power.
It's the closest you're gonna get to the White House, Hillary.
That's quite good.
Danny Delito says if America could be Abbott governor of Texas it would be hilarious since the man is a paraplegic and in a wheelchair the progressive stack would lose its mind.
Yeah, they won't be complaining about how he goes, you know, up a slope in, you know, how Trump was walking up this icy slope in the middle of winter and they're like, look at him, he's infirm!
He's in a wheelchair.
You're not going to get that, are you?
Kevin Fox says, don't forget Kanye might be roomies with Bannon if today's news pans out about him assaulting his half-naked arm candy he takes everywhere.
Oh Jesus, I didn't hear about that.
I didn't hear about that either.
Which half-naked arm candy does he have this time?
It looks like a clone of Kim Kardashian.
Man, that's terrible.
Tasting women.
He goes for women whose body shape is basically this.
The figure there.
Man has it tasteless anyway.
One more comment then I suppose we can move on to the Deep State vs Infowars.
Hector Rex says, I have it on good authority that Trump has selected a certain Eastern European YouTuber with a squeaky voice as press secretary.
What, V?
Saracon!
You just sound like the Compare the Market advert.
Yeah, so does V. He does actually, doesn't he?
Yeah, clearly!
Shall I do one more?
That was quite a short one.
Yeah, go on.
Bradley Higgins says, just to mention Josh, I believe that Ron DeSantis can't run as Florida governor as he has termed out now.
I feel like I remember that from a while ago when the primaries were going on.
Yeah, I think he's governor till 2028 maybe, maybe slightly before then.
He's going to land on his feet, isn't he?
Politically speaking.
I'd imagine so.
He's done a good enough job and he's senior enough that he's going to find some role in Republican politics.
If they give him some lessons on how to talk like a charming, normal person, he might even have a decent chance at 2020.
Are they doing those lessons?
Because I need to take those.
Yeah, I know.
ThatTexasGal says, I remember when Sandy Hook happened, watching the coverage live, and there's no denying it was weird as hell.
They're going after Infowars as a warning.
You will push the narrative or we will destroy you.
Question should be, why now?
I can't say about the coverage.
Given what's happened to Alex Jones, I'm not going to say anything about the coverage.
The question should be why now?
Well, RoragNationalist suggested in his tweet that it was more to do with...
Because Alex Jones helped get Trump in, according to RORG Nationalist.
So maybe it's something to do with that.
Michael Brooks says there are people online that question the Holocaust, which they have the right to do, and no one cares.
But your question, Sandy Hook, and they will take it all away from you.
So my question is, why aren't we allowed to question the shooting?
I will have to correct you there and say that most European states have laws that mean you go to prison.
If you question the Holocaust, I think the UK and America are two of the only countries within what you could call broadly the West that don't have laws, although even then in the UK you'd probably get caught under some hate speech legislation.
Yeah, there are other things that they can get you on.
You know, you can be arrested under pretty much any legislation if it can be argued in a court of law, which most of the time it can.
Yeah, for instance, this isn't to say anything about the man's character or to endorse him at all, but David Irving was arrested when he went to Austria in the 90s or mid-2000s, it might have been, because they called him a Holocaust denier and they put him in prison for over a year, they jailed him.
So yeah, there are laws against it, I just wanted to make that clear.
Austria doth protest if too much.
Lancia Enjoyer says Jones was fined more than Boeing for actually killing people because of incompetence.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
The man said some things about what happened that were wrong.
and the families can obviously take issue with that, but if they wanted to pursue legal action against anybody, it should have been against the people who were actually harassing them and threatening them.
Base tape, I'll read the last one here.
I watched this trial at the time because I have way too much time on my hands.
During closing arguments, the prosecution literally said to the jury, this isn't about Alex Jones, it's about making sure InfoWars is taken off the air.
I was shocked he just came out and said it.
Also, Harry, when are you next on?
Let me check that for you.
Given the secrets He DM'd me last night asking me.
Next Wednesday, by the looks of it right now, according to the schedule.
There we go.
Yeah.
So.
Take it away, Josh.
Thank you for watching.
We'll be on tomorrow.
I'll be on tomorrow.
Just as a spoiler, with some guests.
Some special guests.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Yes.
I agree with you.
And goodbye.
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