The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1294

Nov. 12, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1294

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	Good afternoon and welcome to the podcast Lotus Eaters episode 1294.
	I'm your host Harry, joined today by Stelios and Bo.
	Today we're going to be talking to you about the death spiral that we are trapped in.
	I'm going to be asking and trying to answer the question of who MAGA is for after the disastrous bit of PR that they've done over the past few days.
	And finally, we're going to ask what is happening with Sarkozy, which is a question I don't know the answer to, so I'm very interested.
	With that, I don't think there's anything else that we need to announce.
	So let's get on with it.
	Right.
	So the UK economy is not in the best of shapes.
	It's in one of the worst shapes it has been lately.
	And the Labour doesn't convince people that they can actually handle the situation.
	Now, I'm generally speaking very much against what I consider to be excessive welfarism.
	I think that it's the perfect recipe to create a culture of dependency.
	And then everyone is treating the state not as the government of the people, but basically as a mechanism to extort resources for resource extraction from one group and give it to another.
	And essentially leads society to economic and then moral corruption.
	Or you could say in the reverse order.
	Or if you're a commie, it's the redistribution of wealth, which is a brilliant thing always.
	Yeah.
	There's always this question of are they doing it deliberately or are they stupid?
	Or are they both?
	In case are they doing a poll pot?
	Are they deliberately stupid?
	Right.
	So just because we are going to talk about welfarism and the culture of dependency that labor is presiding over, but which has been created before labor, they're definitely not the only ones who are guilty of that.
	We have the symposium that I did with Josh, symposium number 58, the evil side of welfarism.
	You can subscribe to us with as little as five pounds a month, gain access to all our premium content.
	And here with Josh, we are discussing several of the themes that we are going to discuss today.
	These things are not working.
	Is this mouse working?
	Mouse is on this screen.
	There we are, Commissioner.
	Yep, there we are.
	so you see here this guy saying basically give me give me give me give me it's the recipe for creating a that's the government whenever they want anything yeah Yeah, but also some of the groups that ally with the government to get resources from groups they hate.
	Well, yeah, the government is the mechanism of force that then redistributes everything that I have earned to people who haven't earned it.
	Right.
	So Labour got elected last July, not last July, July 2024, about a year and three months ago.
	And textbook leftists as they are, they essentially promised lots of free things to people.
	And to some people, they do seem to be giving free things.
	We are going to talk about that.
	But as a whole, for the entire country, for the entire economy, they seem to be accelerating to a particularly negative trajectory, a particularly negative course.
	Right, so according to Commons Libraryparliament.uk, unemployment statistics have been quite volatile in recent months.
	And there were 1.79 million unemployed people in the UK in July to September 2025, an increase of 282,000 from the previous year.
	The unemployment rate, the percentage of the economically active population who are unemployed, was 5%, up from 4.3% a year before, which is one of the worst eras since COVID, and especially in the beginning in 2021, where it was a bit over 5%.
	Then it went down.
	Now it's coming back up again.
	And also we have youth unemployment problems.
	We have 60,000 more young unemployed compared to last year.
	Right now, according to this website, we have 702,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who are unemployed in the period of July to September 2025.
	Last year, there were 60k less.
	Is that including people who are unemployed but in education though?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think so.
	There have other metrics for them.
	This is more for the economically active population.
	The others would count presumably as economically inactive.
	And we have here a measure also of people aged 16 to 64 of economically inactive who are 9.08 million.
	They're not unemployed, but they're economically inactive.
	That's the fun thing when you start to look into this stuff is the unemployment rates is basically hidden by the economic inactivity rate.
	They shuffle most of it into there so that you don't get a true idea of what the unemployment rate is.
	Because look, that's 16 to 64.
	That's the prime working ages for people.
	9.08 million.
	That seems like a staggeringly high number to me.
	It's interesting, actually.
	I think I've said it before in here.
	I'm really interested in the politics of Britain during the 70s, specifically the 70s.
	And if you go back before the 70s, we would sometimes have full employment.
	Full employment.
	And of course, unemployment was probably at its high under Thatcher in the early 80s, up sort of 13 million, something like that.
	Especially in the very beginning of her.
	Yeah, right.
	It was actually the previous Labour government, shock and Dennis Healy, which made all that happen, really.
	Stuff that went down between 1974 and 1976, where we had to borrow money from the IMF.
	Real, real terrible economic times.
	Anyway, still, that number there, over 9 million, that's sort of disastrous to me.
	Yeah, that sounds disastrous.
	Look, it's almost a quarter of people aged 16 to 64.
	According to this graph, this one here, economic inactivity rate, is what?
	22, 23%.
	That's absurd.
	If you count it like that, that is higher then as a percentage than even in the darkest days of early Thatcher.
	Makes sense.
	Looking around the country, it makes sense.
	Does it seem like there's loads of people on the streets not at work when you go out at lunch or something?
	Yeah.
	Loads of people.
	Why aren't you in work?
	What are you doing?
	The streets are full of people.
	How are you still able to eat?
	We also have less vacancies.
	They say vacancies fell over the year to 723,000 in August to October, October 2025, which is below pre-pandemic levels.
	And if you see, you can see here metrics.
	Redundancies are also rising.
	Vacancies are falling.
	If you see there's a steady fall in vacancies.
	Full-time.
	And yet the inactivity rate isn't going down.
	Yep.
	Really?
	It's staying pretty level.
	Employees are rising and the self-employed are not.
	Right, so we do have some very negative data.
	Let's move on to more negative data.
	Let's see here.
	So, number of benefits claimants who never have to work hit 4 million for the first time.
	And they're saying that this is a historic high.
	It has never been higher.
	So, out of the economically inactive, those who are basically not out of the economically inactive, sorry, people who are not working, they are basically 4 million and they don't have receiving benefits without even showing that they're looking for work.
	Well, surely this will be included in those economically inactive figures because, I mean, 4 million is more than the unemployment rate.
	Yeah, or it's what you said before.
	I think what you hinted at is that they are moving some people from the unemployed to the economically inactive.
	Depends on how they count it in order to shuffle things around so that the figures aren't clear, so you can't get a true look at what is going on.
	But again, the statistics are fancy ways of lying or lying to people or obfuscating.
	Just look at the streets if you want an accurate picture of England.
	But also, they are clear.
	They are very negative for the government.
	It's just that they would be much worse.
	And most probably they are much worse than the government is already saying, which already is a problem.
	Just to build on what Harry was saying there, when I first became sort of fully aware of sort of politics and the political cycle, probably during the John Major years, certainly by Tony Blair years, that was the thing they would always do, Major, Blair, and Brown.
	Well, they all did it, but particularly those who just come out with new figures, say unemployment is down, but they've just, the Home Office has just twiddled with the stats in some way to not include this, not unemployed.
	So it's an old, old story.
	As old as rhetoric.
	Right.
	Right.
	So we have here the number of people receiving jobless benefits without having to look for work has climbed above 4 million for the first time.
	Figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions show the number of universal credit claimants with no requirement to look for a job rose to 4.03 million in October.
	This is up from 3.9 million in September and 50% above the 2.7 million level in July 2024, where Sarah Kia Starma became prime minister.
	So it's as if we're about to have taxes raised on us.
	It's as if the number of people who are incentivized to not work are rising under the Starmer government.
	They were already present before.
	It was already a high number, 2.7 million.
	But Kia Starma has increased that number by 50%.
	It means half of the record, 8 million people claiming Britain's main unemployment benefit are now exempt from finding a job.
	What's the point of even working in this country anymore?
	But that's the issue.
	That's one of the problems with welfarism.
	When it crosses a line, it's you come to a point beyond a particular threshold that there is no incentive for people who work.
	And if you're being incentivized to get these benefits, basically, without having to look for work, yeah, no wonder you are going to create a class of people who are basically just feeding off from the working population.
	I mean, because what's the incentive?
	Because not every single one of those 4 million people is actually going to be a position where they could never work again.
	So there's going to be some fraud going on within that.
	So, what are the major incentives to work?
	Well, you earn a living.
	You earn money.
	But what are all of the cons that come with that?
	Well, you've got to...
	You have to pay taxes.
	You have to pay taxes.
	You have to take on all of these different responsibilities.
	Or you can find some loophole in the system and claim money.
	You don't have to work.
	Your day is free.
	You don't have to commute.
	You can just stay at home.
	The problem is that when you are creating a culture of dependency by these policies, and these are diachronic policies, they didn't just happen with this Labour government.
	They happened for a long time now.
	In Bose, Britain, the bar would be so unbelievably high.
	You'd have to be like a quadriplegic.
	Yeah.
	Or paralyzed from the neck down.
	That's the only two criteria.
	But this is a culture of rights without responsibilities, basically.
	And the more this policy continues, the more the class of people who want rights and benefits without responsibility rises.
	And that's what Labour is doing.
	That's the stuff that makes the creates voters.
	And here we have the other thing.
	The DWP figures also showed the number of foreigners claiming universal credit is also at a record 1.24 million with EU citizens with settled status accounting for the largest share.
	Now, I will say this.
	I don't believe this.
	I believe that behind the description EU citizens lie other data behind.
	Because lots of people may come to Europe, they may get European passports, and then they can be called EU citizens and come to the UK, and then they may count as EU citizens.
	There was the big scandal with Poland handing out Polish passports in North Africa so that they could come to Europe.
	Yeah, and the reason I say this is not because I think that there are no EU citizens doing this.
	Most probably there are.
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, out of 1.24 million, some of them will be.
	But the point is that we have consistent data across Europe and across the Western world that shows that particular groups are a net drain.
	And they're not the European ones.
	Let's put it this way.
	Maybe you go to Germany from Syria during the Merkel years.
	Boom, you're an EU citizen.
	So now you can go to the UK, claim benefits, and you count as an EU citizen.
	Because this data consistently shows that it's not the European peoples who are doing this.
	Right.
	Let's go to another statistic here.
	This is from Sky News.
	Record number of Britons receiving benefits that amount to more than they pay in tax, according to a study.
	According to this think tank called Civitas, they show that 83.83% of all income tax is paid by 40% of British adults.
	And the studies also say the net dependency ratio is the highest on record.
	And basically what they're saying is that a record number of people, 54.2%, 36 million, now live in households which received more in benefits than they contributed in taxes.
	Now, what I will say this, that this is just one study.
	There are other studies that give roughly different numbers, but they're roughly the same.
	It's there.
	Some studies show 53%, others 54%.
	But basically, they're saying that last year, before Kirstamer took over, it was somewhere like 52%.
	So it's hardly that he created it.
	The Tories definitely capitalize upon this.
	But he is accelerating it.
	And they're saying that roughly 36 million people live in households that are a net drain.
	And they receive more in benefits than they contribute in taxes, which raises the number of those who are contributing, raises the degree in which those who are economically productive and considerably need to help and pay taxes and help the rest.
	Surely on the face of it, that's just completely unsustainable.
	Surely just at a glance, common sense says that's completely unsustainable.
	It is completely unsustainable.
	And here we have the other problem of the welfare states is that in the long term, this is an unsustainable policy.
	But we have politicians who are thinking short term.
	They just think of their re-election and they're not thinking of how the country will be shaped by these policies five, 10, 15 years down the line.
	The only thing they care about is how they're going to be re-elected.
	And in order for them to do so, they don't even have to do a good job.
	They can do what Harry mentioned before.
	They can tinker data and say, no, we are lowering unemployment.
	But lo and behold, if someone checks you on the economically inactive population, you see that it's rising and vice versa.
	But here it goes.
	It's a massive problem and they can't hide it basically.
	The question for them right now is how much are they going to hide it?
	It's not whether they can hide it.
	Yeah, I think the statistic that I saw recently, I think Carl mentioned it on one of his segments a few weeks ago, was that you need to be having a household income of something like £39,000 or £41,000 per year combined across the household to be paying more tax than you are taking from whatever benefits that you're taking.
	So that's kind of the threshold there.
	So more than half of the households in this country, as of 2023 in that article, were earning lower than 39 or 41,000, which for Americans watching this right now should put in stark contrast just how much wealthier you are as a nation than we are, because that is, for a full household,
	if you've got two people earning in the household and they're not able to get that together, that's not very great.
	The problem with this, and yeah, I agree with you totally.
	And I think that one of the main drivers of this is the idea that the state is going to be the main engine for social change that lots of people have, especially the modern liberals and all the leftists and the commies and stuff.
	But they are constantly trying to say, well, if we allow the standard economic models to work, we aren't going to end up with favorable outcomes.
	Now, that's very questionable.
	It's very questionable.
	So we have to justify state intervention in the economy.
	But for some reason, it always gets worse.
	They constantly say, well, look, if we don't intervene, bad things are going to happen.
	So let us intervene to prevent bad things from happening.
	But bad things are happening.
	And Asbo said, this is completely unsustainable.
	So the next question is, how are you going to change?
	And the answer is, give us more power so we can intervene more.
	Let us see what Rachel Reeves has to say about taxes, where she and the Labour government did promise that there wouldn't be a massive tax hike.
	But we all know that They can't fund their programs otherwise.
	They cannot sustain their voters.
	And it's not exactly that everyone's happy with labor at the moment.
	Will we discover in two years' time that there's some reason why they've got to go up?
	No.
	Or is this an absolute commitment?
	It's an absolute commitment.
	It's now on us.
	We've put everything out into the open.
	We've set the spending envelope for the course of this parliament.
	But we don't need to come back for more.
	We've done that now.
	We've wiped the slate clean.
	So you're saying actually there's not going to be an Oliver Twist moment.
	You're not going to come back and say we want another tax rise.
	Or if you did, that would be a huge failure for your government, wouldn't it?
	Yeah, look, I'm not going to have to write the five years' worth of budgets on this show today.
	But what we have done is there's nothing more tax rise.
	You're right, Trevor.
	There's no need to come back with another budget like this.
	We never need to do that again.
	We've now set the spending envelope for the remainder of this parliament.
	We don't need to increase taxes further.
	So she says we don't need to increase taxes.
	But the question is, how are they going to fund this state that they have created and this kind of society that they are capitalizing upon?
	We all know that they're going to raise taxes.
	In their manifesto, they were basically saying that we are not going to do that.
	We are going to help the middle class.
	We are going to help everyone because they're a typical leftist.
	Here, as lots of people have noticed, they hid the labor manifesto from their website.
	Because they don't want people to remember what they promised and call them hypocrites, maybe.
	So they actually changed it since.
	Yeah, they erased this part here.
	That's the before.
	That's the after.
	Yeah.
	You see, campaign for labor, campaign for labor, labor people, labor people, and then the labor's manifesto turned into a plan for change.
	Okay.
	Which again talk about secure borders, national security, economic stability.
	Nothing of the sort is what they are doing.
	And one thing that we need to mention, because we have been mentioning it again, and I'm surprised I didn't mention it before in the segment, is that it's not just welfarism, it's also the combination of welfarism with open borders.
	And it's a massive problem.
	And yeah, if you're going to send the signal to the entire world that if you come here, you're never going to, you won't be deported because it's a human right to get money from the British taxpayer.
	You are going to have more people coming here to get money from British taxpayers.
	It's as simple as that.
	The combination of an open borders policy where there's no cap.
	Yeah.
	There's no cap on the amount of immigration into the country.
	Any discussion on having a cap is just racist and bigoted and off the table.
	That combined with welfarism is economically suicidal.
	Yes.
	Absolutely.
	It's a recipe to destroy a nation.
	It's its economy, at least.
	And of course, she's going to raise taxes.
	She's planning to raise stocks and shares because they are going to market it as we are against the very rich.
	We're going to eat the rich and we're going to be for the middle class and the poor class.
	But we know that that's not how the economy works.
	If you don't have investment, you don't have opportunities.
	People like being promised free stuff, but that's not how it works.
	There is no money tree.
	And this is a cliché, but it's a true one.
	It's funny that they say they billionaires are the problem.
	That's their mantra, isn't it?
	Yeah, but not the open borders that some billionaires want for cheap labor.
	They never do this.
	Yeah.
	This together.
	And here we have just this from the Telegraph.
	Labour's U-turn on the sick benefits will cost each taxpayer about £600 per year because there are surging numbers claiming sickness handouts that will raise the bill to £27 billion over the next four years.
	So the Labour philosophy is to constantly accelerate on this bad trajectory because their whole modus operandi is to care only about the next election and to win that next election.
	They think the best way to do so is to promise that they're going to give free money.
	But long term, this is disastrous for the country.
	The irony being that they're almost certainly going to lose the next election anyway.
	Yeah.
	So you get a massive washout.
	I feel like what this is, this is these are Fabians, socialists, Trotskyists, communists that want the redistribution of wealth.
	And they're just not saying that, but that's what they're doing.
	That's what they're doing, isn't it?
	It's absolutely this.
	And notice how they are went global in the sense that the left before had a bit more of a local had some local manifestations in its rhetoric because they were talking about the domestic working class and the rich and the poor.
	And now the rich are the globally rich.
	And the middle class and even some of the poor people in England count as globally rich according to the globalist will to redistribute wealth.
	So if you want to go redistribute wealth from the globally rich to the globally poor, you're doing it with global standards, not with domestic ones.
	And because we know that they hate Western civilization, this means that most of the Western people count as globally rich.
	So they're saying, no, you need to shut up and pay for everything.
	Even if you rinsed everyone in Britain down to penury, down to starvation levels, the actual breadline or below, that's a drop in the ocean for the globally poor.
	Well, it takes my mind back to all of those adverts that you used to get where it's like, Mbali in Africa, he lives on $1 a day.
	And there you go, well, that's a lot less than what you're getting.
	Even if we do rinse you down to your last pennies, that's probably still a lot better than what he is getting right now.
	But the problem is I don't care about Mbali from Africa or anywhere.
	I don't care about these complete strangers who have nothing to do with me.
	And if they were to ever come to my country, would see me as a tax pig to steal from.
	If it moves, you tax it.
	Essentially.
	Anyway, Harry, can you get the Rumble Rants and Super Chats up on the screen for us down here so that I can actually see them?
	We've got two squad blood, five pounds.
	Harry, I'll give £200 to a charity of your choice if you shave your head live on stream.
	Jokes on you.
	I don't believe in charity.
	And somebody else sends $50 in.
	Thank you very much.
	Bo, did you ever think you would one day have a digital harem on Twitter?
	They're a feisty lot too, ready to throw down against any of your detractors.
	Have you seen this?
	Have you heard about this?
	Multinational, too.
	There's never any doubt in my mind that I'd ultimately have a giant digital harem that worships me and hangs on every word I say.
	There's never any doubt.
	I mean.
	How much do the boys?
	No.
	No, I'm joking.
	It's crazy.
	It's weird.
	It's flattering.
	What did I want to say?
	Yeah.
	Nice.
	It's nice having an audience.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There you go.
	Having a coat of personality without actually ever trying to make one.
	Because you are a personality, you know.
	He's a character, this one.
	It's like you remember in Pulp Fiction, you may not have a character, but you are one.
	In the end, where he's at.
	Now I wasn't talking to boys.
	Just a cool line by Harvey.
	I've not watched pulp fiction in years.
	Or any Tarantino film.
	You saved it there.
	Saved it there by adding in years.
	I've not watched a Tarantino film since I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in the cinema.
	And that was a good one, to be fair.
	Tarantino can be a little hit and miss, but that was a good one.
	Anyway, moving on to the next segment, we're going to go across the pond now and talk about America, specifically the MAGA movement, and ask the question, who is MAGA for?
	Because that question is very relevant right now.
	After the past few days, there has been one bit of disastrous PR after another.
	The messaging that has come from Donald Trump himself and other parts of the movement, particularly the more establishment members of the movement, like for instance, Ben Shapiro telling New Yorkers that if you can't afford to live in New York anymore, then you should just leave.
	Who cares if you've lived there your whole life?
	Who cares if your family's from there?
	Just leave.
	That's the kind of messaging that got Mandani into the mayorship in New York.
	But alongside that, MAGA's been making some big mistakes recently.
	And that's on top of it having been quite, for me at least, and many other people, quite a shaky year.
	So again, it begs the question, who is MAGA for?
	And lots of people have been asking that, and it's led to somewhat of a rift between the MAGA and America First sides, America First, as being represented by the recent alliance of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, which has created a lot of controversy and generated a lot of questions about censorship and free speech, particularly from organizations like the ADL.
	Because you could argue, no matter what you think of them, that this new alliance of Tucker and Nick represents a more grassroots, genuinely populist America First right-wing movement that has come out of the MAGA movement.
	And the ADL and other people have been very, very upset about this, that Nick Fuentes is somebody who has received more of a platform recently.
	As you can see from Jonathan Green Blatt, the head of the ADL, posting about how, you know, like Mandani, Fuentes, Tucker, and mainstreaming anti-Semitism, they want to really bang on this drum, say that this is the new rise of anti-Semitism.
	See, MAGA did really birth a new Third Reich movement in the form of America First and Nick Fuentes, how scary.
	Jonathan Green Blatt explicitly calling out Tucker here, saying, given his own unrelenting anti-Semitism, notorious anti-Semite Tucker Carlson, the disgraced podcaster defended mayor-elect Zoran Mandani on the soundness of his anti-Israel positions and will do little to convince Jewish New Yorkers of their safety.
	And there are other articles here.
	Unrelenting.
	His unrelenting.
	Unrelenting.
	I'm sure what Tucker Carlson is presenting, given that brief description that we saw there, was that Mandani, whatever you think of the rest of his policies in all of the debates leading up to the election, did present not necessarily America, but a New York first position in terms of foreign policy.
	In that when people were trying to go on to discussions of Israel, he tried to divert the conversation back to New York and the people of New York.
	No matter what you think of the sincerity of that, it did play well with his voter base.
	I mean, there are loads of videos of Mamdani constantly talking about the Middle East and not New York.
	Of course, but in the actual election debates, that was the tactic that he took.
	I don't trust that Mamdani is sincere if he says he doesn't actually care about Israel.
	Clearly, by everything that we've seen of him, he's going to be very, very anti-Israel, and that's going to be something that will be very much at the forefront of his mind.
	He has said that if Netanyahu were to step foot in New York while he's mayor, he would have him arrested on the charges of international war crimes.
	But still, and he'll be very effective in doing that.
	But still, that's the kind of position that Tucker was putting forward.
	I don't necessarily agree, but I don't think that you could charge him with anti-Semitism for that.
	And this article here says that Daniel Kelly, Director of Strategy and Operations at the Anti-Defamation League's Center for Technology and Society, called the move, that being to platform Nick Fuentes, a mistake.
	When you have bad actors, quote, like Fuentes on mainstream social platforms, you're giving them a megaphone to spread hateful anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and the like to many, many more people.
	The ADL described Fuentes' rise as a case study and what happens when the major platforms backslide from enforcing safety and speech standards.
	While Fuentes remains banned from Facebook and YouTube, the relaxation of content moderation has eroded previous taboos against figures like him.
	So this is a call to now that this movement is picking up more steam, now that MAGA has been making enough mistakes to generate a positive opposition who's presenting a different perspective on what America first should look like.
	Organizations like the ADL and some of the more mainstream establishment, right, the center-right, are trying to censor him.
	They're trying to cancel him.
	They're trying to advocate for more censorship.
	The ADL has worked alongside companies like YouTube in the past to try and get people and to successfully get people banned off of these platforms.
	Some people are dancing around this subject in his video on it.
	Ben Shapiro said, you know, this isn't cancelling.
	This is holding people to standards.
	Mark Levin just came out and said straight out that, you know, we've cancelled Pat Buchanan, we've cancelled Joseph Sobron, we've cancelled all of these figures in the past.
	We're going to cancel you, Tucker, and we're going to cancel you, Nick.
	So he was much more straightforward with it, that this is what this is trying to be.
	Whatever you want to say about like old clips of Fuentes that you can dredge up of him trying to be edgy, he is starting to make inroads and become a lot more popular thanks to his association with Tucker.
	And these people see it as a threat.
	Is America, though, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, isn't Tucker allowed to have a podcast and talk to whoever he wants?
	I mean, even if you don't agree with Tucker and/or his guest, isn't he allowed to do it?
	Isn't it the land of the free?
	Well, I'm sorry.
	I thought this was America.
	I'm sorry.
	Well, the point of the First Amendment was not that you have to tolerate and agree with everything these people say.
	I thought.
	It's that you have to, you're not allowed to censor them.
	You're not allowed to use government power.
	And the ADL is not the government, yes, but I do think that it trying to exercise its immense power being adjacent to government to try and censor these people is immoral for the sake of shutting down conversations and shutting down opposition to the mainstream establishment center, which sadly MAGA has kind of been swept into, in my estimations.
	But we'll get more onto that in a few minutes.
	This has wound up really getting a lot of people in trouble because some people, like the head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, took a bow approach to this, saying that, yeah, this is America, actually.
	I don't have to agree with everything Fuentes does, everything that Tucker Carlson says, or who he platforms, to be able to say that Tucker Carlson is still my friend, that he is somebody that I'm going to support, and that there is a real sincere passion behind this movement that is building up, that it will not help anybody if a large, shadowy cabal of people tries to shut it down.
	In fact, that is going to only add fuel to the fire of people's conspiracy theorizing.
	That got him in a little bit of trouble.
	He immediately went out of his way to try and clarify that, you know, I believe in free speech, but here are all of the awful things that I hate about Nick Fuentes.
	Again, dredging up all of the same kind of old clips of him being edgy that Ben Shapiro was talking, like, used in his attack on the Nick Fuentes-Tucker-Carlson debate, or sorry, discussion that they had.
	And then it went even worse by him being forced to apologize for making the video in the first place.
	It says here, in leaked footage of a Heritage Town Hall from Wednesday, staffers largely said that Roberts' decision to align the think tank with Fuentes was a mistake.
	Just to be clear here, to clarify, he never at any point aligned the Heritage Foundation with Nick Fuentes.
	He said that Tucker Carlson is his friend and that he can platform people if he wants to, whether he agrees with it or not.
	But because they are close friends, he will not engage in an attempt to cancel him.
	But apparently this, according to this, staffers within Heritage felt that that was aligning himself with Fuentes.
	Roberts said, I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution.
	Period.
	Full stop.
	He claimed that he did not know much about Fuentes before he recorded a video and posted it on X in which he defended Carlson as a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.
	I'm just going to assume that that's not true.
	I'm going to assume that's him covering his back.
	All right.
	He said that a chief of staff who has since resigned wrote the video's script.
	Push that all onto this guy.
	He got fired now.
	Sucks to be you, I suppose.
	Goodbye.
	Trying to save his own skin.
	But this is mafia group tactics that we're talking about here.
	That's what you're up against, which means not good enough.
	Is Tucker allowed to have a conversation with whoever he wants to?
	Yes.
	Yes or no?
	Yes.
	Is Tucker allowed to speak to whoever he wants to?
	That should be allowed to.
	And film it if he wants.
	Yes or no?
	Well, of course, yes, or the answer should be yes.
	The ADL, Kevin Roberts, Heritage, whatever.
	Is Tucker at liberty to have a conversation with whoever he wants?
	Well, if these people get their way, no, because the Heritage Foundation has a national task force to Combat anti-Semitism embedded within it.
	And as part of that, there are a number of different people and people attached to other organizations like this one, the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, who have decided to attack heritage from the inside because of this video and have decided to all try and pull out at once.
	And it's pretty shocking in this particular article, which is an open letter to the Heritage Foundation and Roberts personally, how far they go in the personal attacks,
	which is not substantiated at all by the original video that he put out defending Tucker Carlson, which, to remind everybody, was first started by the fact that people immediately tried to call for Heritage to join in in cancelling Tucker Carlson because of his close association with the Heritage Foundation.
	He took a principled stand and said no.
	And this is what he gets in response.
	They say, after they go on about how terrible Tucker Carlson is and how terrible Nick Fuentes is, they say that's not the point, though.
	No.
	The genesis of this letter is our deep concern with how you, Mr. Roberts, on behalf of the Heritage Foundation, have chosen to exercise your rights.
	Given the opportunity to apologize and retract your comments criticizing a venomous coalition of globalists, the globalist class, and their mouthpieces in Washington, comments that feed into the very anti-Semitic tropes you claim to abhor, your speech at Hillsdale College yesterday fell well short of the mark.
	Taken together with your defense of Mr. Carlson's decision to treat Holocaust denial as a legitimate political discourse, begs the question of whether Holocaust survivors, their families, and the American Jewish community at large have a home at Heritage.
	And then they go on to talk about the Holocaust being an immutable historical event and how Roberts is defending tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists that believe the earth is flat and that Winston Churchill was the actual villain of the Second World War.
	So this is going all the way back again to Tucker Carlson's interview with Martyrmaid, Darryl Cooper, around September of last year.
	And again, the willful, purposeful misunderstanding that these people have taken from that interview where Darryl Cooper was talking explicitly, explicitly about POW camps, which are different and were different from concentration camps.
	And they try and take what he said about POW camps, assume that he was talking about concentration camps, therefore assume that he was denying the Holocaust.
	And they are trying to take that willful misinterpretation and put that on this guy.
	Surely, is that libelous?
	Right.
	So, Harry, I think I'm against cancellation, right?
	I'm against cancellation because I believe in free speech.
	I've always been.
	So, the only thing I've said was on the Jimmy Kimmel thing is that when people were saying he should get fired from the Jimmy Kimmel show, it's not an issue so much of free speech as much as it is an issue of the standards that they have and freedom of association.
	No one said he shouldn't be allowed to speak, speak his mind.
	So, I'm against cancellation.
	But I will say that I think that what I don't like about this discussion here, not ours, but this discussion, is that everyone is screaming that they're being cancelled even when they're not.
	And I'm not saying that there aren't people like Mark Levin who have said that specifically.
	We canceled XYZ individuals.
	But for instance, when it came to Martyr Maiden Darrell Cooper, he was given the opportunity to debate Andrew Roberts, and I think he backed down.
	So that wasn't exactly a we don't give you the opportunity to speak.
	That was we do give you the opportunity to speak and he didn't take it.
	So what I want to say is that when it comes to this, I think that people who want to form an opinion about this issue should be very careful about the framing.
	I will say this, that when it comes to the issue, I will say about Tucker and Fuentes very, very, very briefly.
	I think I've said many times before, I don't trust Tucker Carlson.
	I just don't trust him at all.
	Really?
	Yeah, not at all.
	Because I think he's constantly whitewashing people who have a very, let's say, very authoritarian and totalitarian way of acting.
	He constantly tries to normalize that kind of rhetoric.
	And anyway, I think I don't know much about what?
	What?
	No, it's just a little bit.
	I said base.
	let's carry on do you want to carry on No, no, no, no, no.
	You can carry on finishing.
	No, what I say this is because I doubt, I very much doubt that what Tucker Carlson is representing is representing an authentic grassroots movement in the U.S. One thing, I'll give you a very small example.
	did think that operation midnight hammer in iran was going to lead to World War III he he had a very he had the rhetoric that constantly said i think i think it's perfectly reasonable to worry about it's not to show concerns about america striking it is it is the point is that many people many people thought that that would cost trump immensely and it hasn't And also, there's also the question.
	And I'll just, just my opinion for the thing.
	I think that part of the significant part of Tucker's audience is third world Hitlerites who basically do love Hitler because they think of him as a sort of main engine for decolonialism.
	I find plenty of the groups of the idea that they're trying to promote this idea of Hitler as some kind of multi-racial, multicultural coalitionist who was just trying to stop the Jews because they wanted to stop black and white coming together is absurd.
	It is absurd.
	It is completely atheist.
	But you do see that there are some people who are basically saying that the one and only criterion for anything in politics is not whether it helps America or England or Britain.
	It's whether it harms Israel or whether it benefits Israel.
	There are many people who see politics through both sides of this lens.
	And I think that what is interesting for me, who I'm trying to find out what is happening here, I want to say who does each and sort of put them aside and say, right, sorry, these are not the only things that matter in politics.
	So it's not just either Israel first or Israel or anti-Israel first, as this, as a very large part of this conversation is trying to lead towards.
	And I'm not saying, and with respect to Fuentes, I think he's a young 27-year-old man.
	He's doing the edgelording things and whatever.
	I don't know that.
	I haven't watched him that much to see him.
	But I would say that I have been very critical of Tucker.
	I think that he is representing this side.
	Well, again, I think to steelmen, the Nick Fuentes America first position, and then I will return to what you said about Martyrmade and then I'll carry on with the segment, is that they are not purely Israel and anti-Israel.
	It's not just a case of anything that is bad for Israel is automatically good for America.
	The concern is that the Israel lobby and organized groups in America specifically are against the interests of the American people, against the liberties and rights of the American people, push foreign policy in America in a particular direction that is against the interests of the American people and purely for the interests of the Israeli state in the Middle East.
	That is their concerns.
	And when they see things like this happening, that Tucker Carlson can get some guy on his show.
	And you could see it as well with Marta made last year.
	They get one guy on and immediately the entire system coalesces to attack him and to try to, you can say it's not cancelling, but I think Mark Levin was the most honest when he admitted that, hey, we're just going to try and cancel you.
	Because these were the same tactics used against Pat Buchanan in 1992 in his first presidential bid in the lead up to the Republican nomination.
	These are the tactics that William F. Buckley used against Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobron and what ended up getting used against Sam Francis.
	And you can say that it's not cancellation, but it is ultimately an attempt at reputation destruction.
	It's an attempt to willfully...
	That comes also from the other side.
	It's not that he's the only one who does it.
	I've never said that.
	I'm saying that that's what this is.
	It's everyone's trying to destroy each other's reputation.
	Because when you have the situation that when you have this discourse, that we have one myth and we have the other myth, and they're all using that myth to lie to you, yeah, you are doing reputation destruction.
	Both of you.
	I don't know what you mean by that myth.
	But if he's saying if the Martyrmaid rhetoric is we have the Churchill myth, which whatever he says about Churchill, we do know that there is this line of argument, that there is a Churchill myth, and it sort of has a very negative effect upon Western nations.
	So by implication, you are saying that everyone who is propagating that myth is either a useful idiot or does it deliberately.
	So, and when it's the latter, it is reputational destruction and also the former.
	Well, I mean, I do think that there are plenty of people who use the mythologized version of Churchill to push the current multicultural regime that we live under.
	Anyway, anyway, to do with the Martyrmaid thing, from back last year, you mentioned the Andrew Roberts interview.
	Darrell Cooper comes on and refers to a lot of information which can be found in mainstream history textbooks of the Second World War.
	Oftentimes works that are from people like Andrew Roberts, Ian Kershaw, Andrew Roberts, Neil Ferguson, these kinds of mainstream historians who came out after that interview and attacked him, a lot of the conclusions that Martyrmaid drew were from those works.
	Why doesn't he participate in these discussions?
	Because if you care about the truth, he's presumably become a member of a community of historians.
	No, no, no, no.
	The community of historians, you say it like it's this apolitical neutral thing.
	No, the community of historians.
	And he came to a heterodox conclusion whether or not it was using their work in the first place, which is what happened.
	They immediately come out and go on this huge press round, which is still going on to this day, to try to smear him, to try to claim that, to willfully misrepresent his points and say, you are a Holocaust denier.
	When in that interview, he never once mentioned the Holocaust.
	He was talking about Russian POW camps.
	There's the other big.
	Let me finish.
	Let me finish.
	Right?
	So he comes out and sees that everybody is trying to smear his reputation, willfully lying about what he said.
	And then Andrew Roberts, who's part of the orthodoxy of historians, says, No, we've poisoned the well.
	Come have a debate with me, which definitely will not be politically stacked in my favor and against yours.
	I've seen the debate that Andrew Roberts had with Pat Buchanan back in 2012.
	Andrew Roberts, frankly, is a woeful debater.
	But guess what?
	In the right environment with the right crowd, that doesn't matter because he is preaching to the choir.
	This would be a fair standard.
	If I were a fan of his, I would like to see him do the debate.
	Because in the debate, sometimes it's not about the opponent, it's about the audience.
	I mean, that's fair, but at the same time, I doubt the audience would have been fair against him.
	I think the well had already been poisoned.
	And after receiving that onslaught, I think it was perfectly fair of Marta May to say, I do not want to step into this arena on terms that have been set explicitly against me.
	Either way, we've addressed that.
	I hope you've enjoyed that little divergence there.
	I like Tucker and don't like Andrew Roberts.
	There you go.
	Thank you for your contribution there.
	Anyway, so, you know, they go out of their way.
	And this is, again, what I'm talking about with what happened with Darrell Cooper.
	These are the tactics that they always use.
	This guy comes out and says, I don't support Tucker being cancelled.
	And they immediately try to smear him as having sympathy with Holocaust denial, which I think is just a completely immoral and disgusting attempt to smear this guy, right?
	And then what else happens?
	Well, all of a sudden, within the Heritage Foundation, the National Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism sends out this email saying, okay, here's what we're going to do in response to you trying to defend your friend's First Amendment rights to free speech.
	Well, you've got to remove the video.
	That sounds a lot like censorship.
	Okay.
	You've got to apologize to the Christians and Jews that you've offended with this.
	That sounds like that's literally what when I got cancelled out of my band, if I was told that I was able to stay in my band, I was told that I would have to apologize about what I said.
	So there's a pretty big parallel there.
	Three, condemn any content, any content that Tucker Carlson has hosted or statements he has made.
	Just in general, is there an explanation there?
	No, just but an acknowledgement that you and Tucker have disagreements and that you disagree with and condemn his anti-Semitic content.
	Again, I don't believe that Tucker has made any.
	But one of the big ones that people found amusing was point six.
	The task force would like also to host Shabbat dinners with the interns and junior staffs of Heritage in partnership with Heritage to host conversations on Judaism and the Judeo-Christian tradition.
	So we would like to invite you around for struggle sessions over dinner.
	Is what that reads like to me.
	Is that there are a lot of people who are going to be staff in your organization who are going to have views that we don't like.
	We want to sniff them out.
	We want to sniff them out.
	And when somebody came up at the Heritage Foundation town hall meeting and asked a question about it, the response that he got was it was tone policing, school momming, trying to accuse him of being disingenuous.
	Thank you, Mike.
	That's a hard act to follow.
	I thought you did a really good job.
	And I just want to say I'm grateful for all of our colleagues who are speaking up today.
	And especially for our colleagues on the National Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.
	I'm especially grateful for their work.
	I also have a question about it, given some of the leaks that occurred yesterday.
	Right now, the National Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism is demanding that Heritage host Shabbat dinners with Heritage interns and junior staff.
	The faith of many Christians here at Heritage, myself included, would prevent us from attending these dinners in good conscience.
	As you know, for many Christians, Friday is a special day of prayer and abstinence to commemorate the death of Christ.
	I assume that no staff will be required to attend the Shabbat dinners, but my concern is that these dinners will serve as a sort of informal litmus test.
	And I'm worried that they will hurt many Christians who are not anti-Semitic, but don't feel comfortable attending a Shabbat dinner.
	I would like to know how you guys would respond to that concern and how we can be sure that the dinners won't be used that way when the people requesting them or someone has already been leaking them to the media.
	Thanks, Evan.
	The recommendations, and that was the word there was no demand, was made.
	That is a gross mischaracterization of what was issued by the co-chairs of the Anti-Semitism Task Force yesterday, of which I am one.
	And I take some offense to that characterization.
	This was a recommendation, one of six recommendations that the co-chairs came to in consultation with the task force to try to provide Dr. Roberts with a path forward.
	As I said, they were recommendations.
	They came out of the conversation, which we were grateful to have with you on this topic.
	And one of the offers was if any Heritage staff would like to participate in this kind of a dinner as an educational exercise, not as a betrayal of their faith, that was an open offer from the task force.
	It was made in generosity of spirit and in the hopes of increased dialogue on this issue.
	And Evan, I'm deeply sorry that you could not see that as a generous offer, but rather a personal attack on you.
	It was not.
	The concern trolling there, the gaslighting in that response is pretty crazy.
	But the Heritage Foundation situation is still ongoing.
	And we'll see where it develops from here.
	There are other developments and other situations ongoing, such as Elijah Schaefer, who's not somebody whose content that I watch, but I know is a critic of Israel and America's involvement with Israel, a few months ago, I believe, put out a Twitter post without any words on it.
	It was a joke post.
	There are jokes going around that Kash Patel's girlfriend is like an Israeli Mossad spy.
	Right?
	I don't know if there's any truth to it.
	I just hear it as a joke, right?
	Somebody put out a post.
	I haven't heard it or seen her.
	I know, I know.
	I know.
	Somebody put out a post saying about infiltration of the American government.
	He quote tweets it with no words, just a picture of Kash Patel and his girlfriend.
	He is now for that being sued for $5 million.
	Surely they'll lose, though.
	Potentially.
	Well, not surely.
	Who knows?
	Potentially, but who knows?
	Who knows?
	Apparently, they're seeking a jury trial.
	According to this video, he explains that they are seeking a jury trial in a constituency that is likely to be stacked against him in this.
	And in the complaint, in the legal complaint sent against him, it mentions essentially that you did not say anything, but given this and all of your other criticism of Israel, the implication was loud and clear.
	So he's being sued for implied criticism of a foreign government.
	I've got to ask the question.
	Is she Jewish or Israeli?
	Can we see a picture?
	I've never even seen a picture of her.
	I don't know her name.
	I never see a picture.
	I don't think so.
	Okay, all right.
	Either way, he is being sued for the implication of criticism to a foreign government.
	I mean, what's the ground there?
	It's just.
	It's ridiculous.
	If that's the hardware.
	He reads it out here, but to confirm, I have also seen the people post screenshots of the actual complaint as well.
	And he is right.
	It is just saying the implication is why we're suing you.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So that's what some factions, that's what some clients of MAGA get.
	You, the person at home who voted because you wanted a stable economy, who voted because you wanted to bring back industry into America, because you wanted to punish the universities, because you believed in the idea of an America-first MAGA that was going to prevent legal immigrants coming into the country, that was going to deport them.
	What do you get?
	Well, Donald Trump comes out in a recent Fox News interview and plants his foot squarely in his mouth when talking about H-1B visas.
	Everybody remembers the big controversy last year with Vivek Ramazwami and Elon Musk going to bat because in Vivek Ramazwami's words, you can see here, Native Americans have an American culture that venerates mediocrity over excellent.
	A culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World or Zach and Slater over Screech and Saved by the Bell or Stefan over Steve Urkel in Family Matters, which means that you just don't produce the best engineers.
	You're too busy living good lives to be productive like Vivek Ramazwami and his army of H-1B Indians.
	And what does Donald Trump say in this interview about H-1Bs?
	Well, does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration?
	Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can't flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.
	We also do have to bring in talent when we've got plenty of talented people.
	No, you don't.
	No, you don't.
	We don't have talented people in there.
	No, no, no, no.
	You don't have certain talents and people have to learn.
	You can't take people off an unemployment, like an unemployment line and say, I'm going to put you into a factory or we're going to make missiles.
	How did we ever do it before?
	Well, let me know.
	I'll give you an example.
	Good question.
	He doesn't really answer that.
	He gives in this example of South Koreans working on very particular batteries, which he mentions five to six hundred people.
	But he's completely ignoring that that is not what H-1Bs are actually used for.
	H-1Bs are used to bring in hundreds of thousands, well, tens of thousands at least of people to depress wages in low-skilled jobs.
	And he also is ignoring here that there are countless university-educated young men who can't get work in their chosen fields because those companies would rather bring in lower-wage foreign workers.
	Not a great look.
	It's a massive disappointment, I must say.
	Not a great look.
	Bannon must be fuming.
	Yeah, this is explicit.
	This is the opposite of what Bannon wanted regarding the economy.
	Well, I mentioned the universities.
	So what do the universities get?
	The universities that have fostered wokeness, the universities which have been ideological strongholds against Donald Trump, the universities which people go through so that it can take hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt and then because of things like H-1Bs and mass migration, illegal or otherwise, are unable to get work in their chosen field of specialty.
	Well, what did the universities get?
	They get over half a million Chinese.
	Folks are not thrilled about this idea of hundreds of thousands of foreign students in the United States.
	We have about 350,000 Chinese.
	One point during COVID, you were going to, you know, push to get them out, but that was pulled back.
	You've said as many as 600,000 Chinese students could come to the United States.
	Why, sir, is that a pro-MAGA position when so many American kids want to go to school and there are places not for them and these universities are getting rich off Chinese money.
	Sure.
	Never said about China, but we do have a lot of people coming in from China.
	We always have China and other countries.
	We also have a massive system of colleges and universities.
	And if we were to cut that in half, which perhaps makes some people happy, you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business.
	I think that's a big deal.
	Are they famous?
	Yeah, but you would have, as you know, historically, black colleges and universities would all be out of business.
	You would have a system.
	We have to import half a million people because otherwise the ideological ideological strongholds that hate me and my supporters and also black colleges might go out of business at all.
	One thing that China is doing is because it has so many students who are going to other nations to study is it brings English-speaking personnel to Chinese universities.
	So money stays in China.
	So this is one of the measures that Trump may be doing in order to try to offset this.
	it's okay but one of the other things that china likes when you have another lobby of when you have lots of people from another country on your on your ground you could have extra leverage against that country I mean, potentially.
	You could.
	You could.
	There are exceptions.
	We know of exceptions.
	I just don't believe that it's in the interest of the United States to have 600,000 Chinese students.
	Just bottom line, it's just as simple as that.
	Alongside Russia, I thought they were supposed to be the biggest geopolitical rival that America has.
	And you want to train up their students who are going to take that knowledge back to build China.
	And you're going to invite them into the universities where one of the reasons that China is as successful as it is is because of all of the industry espionage.
	And you're sending people over so that they can just perform more espionage.
	Again, Bannon must be very disappointed because I quite like the Bannon stripe of MAGA.
	That's what I like.
	I think a lot of people.
	Just basically, the number one thing is deporting millions of people in the United States that shouldn't be there.
	That's like the number one thing.
	When you listen to Bannon for a while, he makes it explicitly clear that everything comes after that.
	And the Donald's just not really doing it, is he, really?
	And also, just the last thing, you're going to get a 50-year mortgage.
	The bank's going to own you for life.
	So that you can...
	Because the economy is doing so great in America, and I'm sure it's doing better than England, but that's not saying much, that you're going to get a 50-year mortgage so that you can save $200 a month.
	People...
	People haven't been happy about this, and people could say that there were ways to spin all of this.
	Donald Trump in that Fox News interview, it's like she was trying to give him a leg up at points.
	So like, hey, do you want to not, do you want to not piss off your entire base?
	And Donald Trump went, no.
	She was like teeing him up for him to hit a homo and he's like, no, I'll let that one whiff by.
	There were ways to spin it.
	There were ways to talk about this.
	Or there were ways to just ignore it altogether.
	They haven't done that.
	So for them, they get to, you know, destroy foundations, cancel people without any consequence, trample over first, like freedom of speech expression and the First Amendment of the Constitution.
	You get jacked shit, mate.
	That's what you get.
	And I'll go through the super chats and rumble rants of what I'm sure was a very popular segment.
	Ryan Hannigan, Vivek's business acumen comes from scamming $360 million from his mother's fake Alzheimer's cure company.
	She also had him on a student visa.
	I didn't know any of that.
	Do you not know that?
	I didn't know any of that.
	That's a fun bit of law.
	Lone Wolf, H-1B visa program is why whenever a young person just starting out asks about going into it, I tell them not to waste their time.
	Sigil Stone, we have to import talent, people have to learn, and the people doing the learning are going to be 600,000 Chinese instead of Americans.
	I am Jack Stare of violent disgust.
	That's a random name.
	Says that Harry and Samson should cover Halo for Journey to the East.
	Might be a little bit out of the remit, but we'll think about it.
	At some point, you should do it.
	We should just do something Halo-related because I do like Halo.
	Sigil Stone, this cancellation attempt is so similar in style tone and structure to Democrats.
	Cancellation attempts even involves the same groups talking heads and talking points.
	Hmm.
	Cranky Texan, people like Tucker Carlton and Alex Jones are in danger of moderating Fuentes.
	That will not be tolerated.
	The regime needs their boogeyman.
	That's true.
	Hiro Sanit Shiban says, don't let famously anti-MAGA people tell you what MAGA means.
	Gatekeep those liars out.
	I don't know which side you're referring to when you say famously anti-MAGA people.
	I know that Fuentes has had a lot to say about MAGA so that it's not a very good thing.
	He did say people to vote for Kamala Harris.
	Oh, that was about.
	Did he?
	Yeah, yeah.
	He told people to vote for Kamala Harris.
	That makes sense.
	Yeah, I think what he wanted, because the Republicans weren't giving people what they were voting for from Republicans, was kind of like a zero seats style American campaign of punish them so that next time they're so wonderful.
	Yeah, well, that's the thing, is that there are definite drawbacks to that kind of tactic.
	I always feel that's a flawed logic.
	Yeah.
	And I'll read the two, some of the super chats.
	1950s, there are 100.
	The point is who it harms.
	For some people, they don't care if it's good for.
	Again, the logic to steel man it is if it harms the Republicans enough, they will know to actually work with us and give us what we want next time.
	Yeah, I understand it.
	That's the logic.
	It's not that complicated.
	I get it.
	I just.
	I think the example with Labour in the UK is not looking great.
	I think it is the lesser of two evils.
	Don't go.
	I don't like accelerationism, for example.
	It is basically accelerationism.
	Yeah, I'm not a fan of that particularly.
	Anyway, anyway, on YouTube, 1950s, there are 120 million Africans who desperately need your help.
	2025, after trillions in AIDS, aid.
	Slip of the tongue there.
	There are 1.2 billion Africans who desperately need your help.
	That is true.
	Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin don't seem to understand how their rhetoric lands.
	We can't spend years objecting to being called Nazis and then turn around and spew the same accusations.
	I say this as a pro-Israel millennial.
	That's the thing, is it turns people against them?
	And after the whole Charlie Kirk thing, where we all rightfully said that, hey, demonizing the right wing as all being Nazis and fascists is what led to people trying to kill him in the first place, Mark Levin then turns around and starts using the exact same rhetoric.
	It's self-defeating.
	Anyway, sorry that took up so much time.
	I wasn't intending it to.
	You're bogarting the podcast, dude.
	I'm joking.
	I'm joking.
	I must have said that too, Deadpan.
	Don't worry about it.
	I don't know what bogarting means, sorry.
	Hogging it.
	Ah.
	Hogging it.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Let's talk about Nicolas Sarkozy.
	Was he the president of the 127th French Republic?
	128th French Republic.
	Yeah.
	So one of the first things I'll say is that he was, if anyone doesn't know, he was the president of France from 2007 to 2012.
	Now, some people that are young, if you're in your early 20s or even mid-20s, you was a little kid.
	You probably not really heard of him, don't know.
	It was before your time sort of thing.
	Or if you're foreign, you might not have ever cared.
	But he was the French president.
	Okay.
	And now he has gone to prison.
	He was sentenced to five years in prison.
	And that's unheard of.
	I mean, Petin went to prison after World War II for being a Nazi collaborator, but he doesn't really count.
	How long did this take?
	Oh, I don't know.
	He's a really, really old man.
	I can't remember.
	But anyway, he doesn't count as a special.
	That's a special case, really.
	So in the normal run of things, the head of state very, very, very rarely goes to prison, right?
	Very rarely.
	Someone like Nixon gets a pardon from Ford.
	Someone like Boris Johnson, there's no question of him going to prison.
	Someone like Bill Clinton or whatever.
	If you're in the top job, it's very, very, very rare that you end up going to prison.
	But Sarkozy did.
	So I just want to talk a bit about it because it's been in the news a fair bit over the last week or two and Lotus haven't done anything on it.
	And I find it interesting.
	I find it fascinating.
	I remember all the Sarkozy years.
	I was already sort of deep into my adulthood at this point.
	I mean, do you remember much about those times?
	Which times?
	Well, 2007 to 2012.
	I mean, depends.
	I was 11 to 16 years old.
	Right.
	I mean, do you remember?
	I remember.
	I was busy at school.
	Do you remember when Cameron and Sarkozy were bombing Libya and Gaddafi got lynched?
	I was not paying attention to the media at the time, but I do know that that happened in that.
	Were you bombing Libya in a war game or something?
	I was the one pressing the big red button.
	So I just want to run through this story because it's quite a big, long saga, really.
	A bit of a long story.
	Just try and explain it for people that might be interested in it.
	Okay, so Sarkozy's been in and around French politics for years and years.
	He was like an interior minister long before he was ever the actual full-blown president.
	And quite often he gets described as centre-right.
	I mean, he's a bit more right-leaning than most French socialist politicians, but still, he's not really, really right-wing, but people, they describe him as centre-right all the time.
	So are you just going to say something, Sylves?
	No, I've heard conflicting report about him exiling a particular community.
	Really?
	Yeah, but I've also heard the other French people saying that he he actually didn't travelers.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	I don't know much about that.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	He got rid of gypsies, you mean?
	Yeah, I think he some say he got rid of gypsies and then others say that he that they came back and he did nothing.
	And now we have all this video with French farmers spraying the manure.
	Well, so anyway, to say stay specific to this thing.
	So he went, he's actually been convicted three times of criminal things.
	Back in 2021, he was convicted of basically corruption, a type of corruption, sort of interfering with a judge in his own case, which he really shouldn't have done.
	He got convicted of that and got sentenced to like two or three years, but like a suspended sentence.
	And then again in 2023, he got convicted of a similar sort of corruption type dealio, an old scandal.
	Again, he was supposed to serve a year in prison, but they said you don't have to actually go to prison until your appeal is done.
	And that can take years, right?
	That's how appeals shit works often, isn't it?
	You can draw out for years and years, especially if you've got the best lawyers and endless money.
	So they put like a tag on his ankle.
	I mean, already there, an ex-president that's got a tag on his ankle and a double conviction.
	Almost unprecedented.
	And then now they've got him for a specific thing to do with Gaddafi in Libya, of all things.
	And he was convicted.
	He was convicted of it and sentenced to five years in prison.
	So what were the actual charges?
	Let me tell you.
	He was up on charges of criminal conspiracy, i.e. just whispers behind closed doors with Gaddafi.
	You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
	If you do this, I'll do that.
	But rising to a criminal level.
	Corruption, just general, just a charge, corruption.
	Misuse of Libyan public funds.
	What's Sarkozy doing with Libyan public funds?
	And illegal election campaign funding.
	Now, he was acquitted on all of that, apart from criminal conspiracy.
	So, his enemies...
	Okay, so here's the two sides of the equation here.
	Sarkozy and his supporters are saying, this is all just lawfare.
	This is all just my political enemies going after me.
	And it's all, there's nothing there.
	I didn't do anything wrong.
	I wouldn't dream of taking money from Colonel Gaddafi.
	Are you kidding me?
	That's mental.
	As if in a million years I would do that.
	Didn't I get him ousted from power and ultimately murdered in the streets?
	Me?
	I took money from Gaddafi, please.
	And the other side of the...
	Because there's never been such thing as a backstab in political history, has there?
	Good point.
	Also, that's the other people saying, no, there's some evidence here or there that...
	How come your campaign in 2007 suddenly seemed to be really well-funded?
	What's that about?
	Okay, he's been up on all sorts of charges and he was largely acquitted and a couple of co-conspirators, people that were his right-hand men during his time as president.
	But he was acquitted of it all, apart from criminal conspiracy.
	Now, that's like quite a nebulous thing to prove, really.
	Like, you know, what exactly was said behind closed doors and what exactly...
	The idea is that, the allegation, is that Gaddafi gave him money, literally suitcases full of cash, like three different times or more, suitcases with like one and a half million dollars in it.
	another one with like three million dollars in it or whatever.
	And in return for that, well, which Sarkozy then spent on his election campaign in 2007.
	And in return for that, Sarkozy will bring Gaddafi into the fold of the international community.
	he was a bit of a pariah wasn't he you know after he put in a good word for him Yeah, trying to bring him back into the fold a bit.
	Make him look cool again.
	So, yeah, make Gaddafi great again.
	I hate Gaddafi, by the way, just to be clear on that.
	Before anyone says anything.
	So he was convicted of this, sentenced to five years, and he'll be serving it largely in almost entirely, in fact, in solitary.
	With like one hour a day for exercise and all that sort of stuff.
	Proper hard time.
	Anyway, after three weeks, he was visited by the current justice minister, Gerald Darmanin, who's an old friend of his.
	And after three weeks, they said, you're right, we'll let you out.
	No harm done.
	We'll let you out after you.
	Yeah.
	Well, actually, it's not quite as simple as that.
	It's not like he's just free now.
	They said, you can have the sentence sort of suspended, i.e., can go home, but only until the appeals process is finished again, which may take years.
	You can work on your own bench press or something.
	Yeah.
	So even when his appeal fails, he will have to go back to prison at that point and serve the rest of the time.
	But for now, he gets to go home to his very pretty wife, who used to be a model.
	If you remember her.
	Of course.
	Of course you do.
	Why are you saying, of course, Henry?
	Because of course you do.
	If it was anybody, it's you.
	So what's the actual story?
	Gaddafi.
	It goes back to Gaddafi.
	Now, I've been fascinated by Gaddafi.
	Always, I'm fascinated by Saddam, right?
	Fascinated by Kim Il-sung, all these people.
	How they did it.
	I'm a history nerd, so I'm fascinated by them.
	And so this story is all wrapped up with Gaddafi.
	Now, the Brits, the Italians, but a lot, the French, have got a long and storied past in North Africa, right?
	Particularly the French, in Algeria, for example.
	Isn't it also Italy and Libya?
	Yeah, well, sorry.
	Italy have lots of presence in Libya?
	They did do, yeah.
	They controlled it for a while, as did Britain.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, we won the North African campaign in World War II, for example, right?
	But yeah, at various times, that bit of land that is modern-day Libya has been controlled by the Italians and the Brits.
	But the French, post-World War II anyway, have had like, probably, you could argue, probably the biggest influence in sort of Algeria, Morocco, Chad, Libya, Tunisia, mainly Algeria.
	But anyway, so Gaddafi, Gaddafi does a military coup d'état in like 1969.
	They had a king of Libya.
	Gaddafi and his military, a cadre of his military officers take over.
	And at first, they thought it would be like, he said, we'll open up Libya, we'll make it much more democratic.
	We'll have socialist economic ideas.
	But this is like a new open golden age for Libya, it will be.
	But quite quickly, it's turned out that he was just basically just collecting powers into his own person and sending kill teams abroad to kill any exiled rivals he's got.
	Having people executed live on TV in the middle of a basketball game, clamping down on all his opponents, being kind of a classic example of a dictator really.
	You wouldn't really be surprised by.
	Yeah.
	And well, and by the 80s, oh, there's some of his opponents that were murdered.
	Stelios finds that hilarious, apparently.
	No.
	What?
	No, it had history porn.
	If you go before, if you go down to the left, that's history porn.
	Oh.
	Can't explain that.
	I don't know what that's about.
	I think that's the name of it.
	The eye just spotted it.
	The train ran straight for that.
	The Vince McMahon I spotted it.
	Just quickly run through Gaddafi.
	By the 80s, the Americans and the CIA, George Bush Sr., are accusing him of basically funding terrorism and letting terrorists train in his country and all sorts of things.
	A discotheque in West Berlin in like 1985 or something was blown up.
	Remember servicemen in it.
	Reagan had an address where he was telling the Americans how he bombed Libya for this.
	Yeah, yeah, Reagan.
	It's on YouTube.
	Yeah, Reagan.
	Yeah, it would have been Reagan.
	Sorry, not George Bush Jr.
	It would have been Reagan.
	They wanted to totally kill Gaddafi and tried, but sort of just about missed, actually.
	He just kind of failed to.
	Lockerbie in 1988.
	It was definitely Libyans because that plane that crashed over Scotland was actually largely full of Americans.
	280 plus people in that killed and 11 on the ground.
	And it wasn't till years and years later, like the intelligence services came out very quickly and said this was Libya.
	This was Gaddafi.
	But it wasn't until years later Gaddafi finally admitted, yeah, it was.
	So at this point, there's no doubt that it was.
	So it's a bad, bad dude.
	There's a million other things.
	There's another airliner over Nigeria that was individual.
	You remember in Back to the Future Part 1, the baddies in that are Libyans.
	It's like the classic 80s thing that the baddies are Libyans.
	So anyway, Lockerbie.
	Don't they still have slave trade?
	Well, the country to this day is a complete mess.
	I mean, Gaddafi has your classic dictator strongman.
	Like Saddam, there are some bonuses to that.
	You can usually keep the lid on certain things.
	But without him, even that is just gone to pot.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, in 2007, 9-11 happens, and Gaddafi says, no, I want to be in George Bush Jr.'s coalition of the willing.
	I'll give up all my plans to make nuclear bombs or chemical or biological warfare.
	I'll stop funding terrorism and all that sort of thing.
	I want to be on your side.
	And so there was an effort made to sort of bring him into the fold.
	Like Tony Blair went and visited him.
	You can find pictures of Tony Blair and Gaddafi walking along.
	And so a lot of the pressure was on the French to be like, look, you're the North African, main North African country in Europe.
	Why don't you try and bring him into the fold?
	It's better, for everything he's done over the decades, it's better to have him on side post-9-11 than not, right?
	Okay, so 2007 comes along.
	Then Gaddafi gets invited to Paris, shaking hands with Sarkozy there.
	And Gaddafi sets up quite an odd picture to see such a thing.
	I mean, for years, he's like an international, full-blown international terrorist, like sort of almost on the level of Bin Laden.
	I mean, it's almost now with what Trump is doing with Assyrian.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	There's his little tent, his shitty little tent.
	He's set up on the Elise Palace gardens.
	Was he living in the tent or was it just for diplomatic?
	You can take the man out of North Africa.
	Yeah.
	There is like there's Sarkozy and the colonel in his stupid little tent.
	There you go.
	They let him speak at the UN in like 2009.
	Anyway, as soon as he goes to Paris, he sort of immediately backstabs the European Western efforts to sort of bring him into the fold, just starts talking about colonialism and guilt and pan-Africanism and the UN.
	Yeah, and then he knew his audience.
	And then a couple years later at the UN, just rambling on for hours, literally hours, about how terrible the rest of the world is and how he didn't do nothing wrong at any point ever.
	But of course, in the end, the powers that be decided that enough was enough.
	And when there was a very shaky period in Libya in like 2011, NATO decide they're going to try and top him and they start bombing Libya.
	Actually, French planes took one of the leading roles in that.
	Weren't intelligence agencies also funding rebellion movements in the country as well?
	Ever since Reagan, the CIA have been wanting to get rid of him, of course, yeah.
	They just view him as a complete and never changed their view really that he's a complete enemy, cannot be trusted.
	And if there's a chance to get rid of him, they would.
	So anyway, by 2011, during the Sarkozy years, so it's Sarkozy that was supposed to have taken money from him and tried to bring him into the fold.
	Then a few years later, he's like one of the leading actors in destabilizing and destroying his regime.
	And ultimately, Gaddafi was sort of found hiding in a pipe, was dragged out and lynched to death.
	Okay, so that's the story of Gaddafi.
	Now, just before his regime, like literally just a few days before it completely crumbled, various people, particularly, I won't get into too much of the weeds of it, but there's a guy called Ziad Takiadine, as well as one of Gaddafi's sons, came out and said, oh, thanks, France.
	Thanks, Sarkozy.
	This is great.
	This is how you repay us after we gave you millions and millions of pounds to pay for your election campaign in 2007.
	Remember that dude?
	Like, come out and say it publicly, openly.
	And the French, Sarkozy's political enemies in France, as well as the French media, are like, wait, what?
	Wait, what now?
	Is that true?
	Really?
	And so, in the intervening years after that, after Sarkozy lost in 2012, he's just been in and out of court for years about all sorts of things.
	So, the question is, and I don't know, I've got no special insight.
	I wasn't there.
	I wasn't in the Sarkozy inner circle in those years, so I don't know.
	But the suggestion is, is that he did take millions of pounds from Gaddafi in order to pay for his 2007 election campaign and his 2012 failed re-election campaign.
	Now, whether he really did or not, whether it's all just law affair by his enemies and it's all completely unfair, I don't know.
	That's what Sarkozy insists to his day.
	He's completely innocent.
	He wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.
	Didn't I topple Gaddafi?
	Aren't I the guy?
	I'm the least likely person in the world to have ever taken money from him.
	But, well, it got to a court and they did find him guilty, whether that's fair or not, but they did find him guilty of criminal conspiracy.
	So it's not the end of the story for Sarkozy.
	He's still just only out until his appeals are done.
	And we'll see.
	I mean, even his wife, Carla Bruni, she's in a bit of trouble that she may have tampered with evidence.
	I think she's going to have a trial of her own, whether she may or may not have, you know, tampered with evidence.
	I think that's what she's up against.
	It just seems Sarkozy is just completely embroiled in a legal mess.
	So, this whole thing that he got sentenced to five years but let out after three weeks.
	That's not the end of the story.
	He's just free now, and that's the end of that story.
	It will keep going for years.
	I saw it in the beginning, yeah, so that was quick.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, um, doubt it's not as simple.
	If and when his appeals are finished, I may bring the story back and there may be some sort of uh some sort of closure on the Sarkozy Gaddafi story.
	But, um, Gaddafi, even beyond death, is still messing with European and Western leaders.
	He's still screwing with their program, even beyond the grave.
	There you go.
	I find it interesting.
	I hope other people out there have do as well.
	Well, there we go.
	Have we got any more Rumble Rants or Super Chats in while that segment's been going, Harry?
	Just scroll up to the top for the Rumble Rants for me.
	You can get the video comments up while I read these.
	I think it's just one of them.
	Blood for the Blood God sends in $200.
	Thank you very, very much.
	Says, first round of drink on me, back room editors.
	Nice.
	You're going to say thank you, Harry.
	$200 US dollars.
	Well, thank you, Blood for the Blood God.
	I couldn't hear you.
	On behalf of the editors, thank you.
	Yeah.
	There we go.
	Looks like we've got two video comments and then we'll probably have to call it a day We are so close to the UK now.
	We're all so excited for our adventure.
	I really hope someone welcomes me into their home.
	As you can see, several boats have now landed on our shores.
	Local men can be seen assisting some of the incoming Swedish migrants as they disembark.
	Now, this is an invasion I can fully get behind.
	What made you come down here today?
	Normally, I'm against this kind of thing, but today I fully support integration.
	That's quite good for AI as well, actually.
	I also like that it was from Josh Firm's top guy.
	Is that just Josh?
	It might be Josh.
	Or maybe it's.
	It is important to note: Scrooge's money vault contains only petty cash, the spoils of his adventures.
	The majority of it is wrapped up in intangible assets, not easily liquidated, and it took 20 years of constant failure for Scrooge to make his fortune.
	Similarly, nine years of mech work has only produced one mech, but the majority of that work is in the discovery of what did not work.
	The left being midwits can only recognize when something isn't literally true.
	They lack the ability to truly think, which is why they're so resentful.
	They can't understand the system they live in.
	Yeah, they have no inner monologue.
	I agree with this.
	See, for me, the problem with Scrooge McDuck's pool of money is that he would immediately break himself on it.
	Yeah.
	There was a family guy bit where Peter died and he's just like, oh, God.
	This is hard metal.
	This isn't viscous at all.
	I'm terribly wounded.
	I can't remember what he said, but yeah.
	Something like that.
	You reminded me of the Austin Powers thing now.
	Can somebody come down to get me?
	I'm terribly badly burned.
	I'm not dead, though.
	Not dead.
	Oh, it's funny that Scrooge McDuck has got most of his wealth tied up in assets.
	He's not cash rich.
	And yet, still, he's got that.
	I've never done an audit on his businesses.
	Do you want to read through a couple of the website comments and then we'll call it?
	Yeah, let me find a comment from Thomas Dowling.
	I don't see the.
	That says Thomas Dowling.
	Thomas is actually you.
	Let me see the document.
	Yeah, please, if you want, because I can't find the document.
	Thomas Dowling, am I going to see John Wheatley next?
	Take slotacy to Thomas Dowling.
	Yeah.
	Says, Finland has some of the highest taxes and one of the largest welfare states in Europe, and yet somehow the happiest population.
	We need more focus on how the state spends the taxpayers' money, unless on how big the state is in the abstract.
	Deportations will cost a lot of money, clearly, but that's a worthwhile investment, isn't it?
	But it's not a good idea.
	I feel like Thomas Dowling isn't actually who typed that, but I agree with the sentiment.
	And it's not an abstract thing that we're talking about in the first segment.
	That's fair.
	Omar Awad, it always comes back to that Thomas Soule quote.
	How much of other people's money are you entitled to?
	The answer for anyone outside direct descendants is always none, but your wealth is always a price they are willing to pay.
	Anything to add to that, Stelias?
	There's a classic Thatcher quote.
	I think it's Thatcher anyway.
	The problem with socialism is you always end up running out of other people's money.
	That is a Thatcher quote.
	Yep.
	Zesty King.
	This is the question that plagues MAGA.
	What matters more, America's economic prosperity and position as world hegemon or the demographic and cultural integrity of the American people?
	See, the problem with MAGA is separating those two questions out.
	I don't think they are separate questions.
	And I think that America's economic prosperity and strength on the global stage would be better served by the demographics and cultural integrity of America when it assumed cultural hegemony across the world and was the world's superpower.
	Spoiler, they're very different to how they are today.
	Michael Drybelbis.
	Much as I enjoy some of Heritage Foundation's presentation, they will respond to the same pressure as anyone else.
	They talk big about free speech and opposing cancellation, but basically allow their bullfrog mouths to get their tadpole asses in trouble.
	I've never heard that phrase before, but I like it.
	And do you want to read through a couple of yours?
	Not everyone bows to the pressure.
	No, not everybody does.
	But if they don't bow to the pressure, they become the Nick Fuentes.
	Okay, Jim Boji says, Sarkozy is what an AI would render as a generic image of a French man.
	Yeah, he does it quite Gaelic, doesn't he?
	Just at a glance, he's quite Gaelic looking.
	I would say that's a fair point.
	Baron von Warhawk says, this is Gaddafi's revenge from beyond the grave.
	The Libyan dictator must have become a mummy and has returned to curse Sarkozy for his betrayal.
	Yeah.
	Derek Power, Master of Chippies, says, Sobo likes violent dictators.
	No wonder the ladies swoon over him.
	It's true.
	I've seen it happen myself in person.
	He pulls that face and they just can't resist.
	And with that deep law that I have just revealed to you, I think that's all we've got time for today.
	Thank you very much for joining us.
	We'll be back again tomorrow, as usual.

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