Michael Knowles, Ben Dominich, and Ben Shapiro dissect the Iran war debate, weighing risks of Strait of Hormuz closure against regime change goals. They analyze the 2028 presidential race, contrasting JD Vance's populist literalism with Marco Rubio's donor appeal, while debating whether canceling figures like Tucker Carlson effectively counters dangerous ideas or fuels sensationalism. The episode concludes with an Oscars preview, critiquing voting controversies and predicting Ryan Coogler's upset win for Best Director amidst broader reflections on new media incentives. [Automatically generated summary]
So I found out, it was in the New York Post, and there was a survey that 71% of kinky couples, so that's a subset of these hip couples, 71% say that it helped their marriage to pimp out their wife to other guys.
Okay, that's something different than I've been doing.
Yeah, that is.
What are the other 30% of kinky couples doing this?
You know, the other 30% are very wholesome.
Actually, I feel kinky if I could.
And Knowles, I'm just wondering, like, why are we doing the Piers Morgan show here?
Like, why is that a thing?
Hold on.
I want to know what's the new feud going to be this week?
Who else are we going to hit?
I want to start a feud with Rachel Maddow because it would be kind of like right in the mirror, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I feel like the feud with Piers is actually the stupidest one.
That's the dumbest one.
I mean, the Piers one, I don't even understand why he's mad.
I said that his show is the Jerry Springer of politics.
Did I miss that?
Yeah, yeah, but click whore.
Well, that was, no, that was after.
So I started by saying that he was the Jerry Springer of politics, which he is, and then he admitted online to being.
He like tweeted out a picture of himself with Jerry Springer and talked about Jerry Springer was great, but he was super pissed about.
Here's the thing that clears that Piers does, because he is indeed a click whore.
In fact, he at this point runs an entire click whore house.
He is the mad um of the click whore house.
He's the by the way, the best little click whore house in Britain.
The best little click whore house in Britain.
I know you do, Michael.
Listen, you're free to go wherever you want.
By the way, I feel like that's a good full-scale demonstration of my point, which is me saying that he's a click whore doesn't mean that I'm saying anybody should not go on his show or that he's being canceled in some way.
You're going on his show, and it's fine with me.
You want to waste your life doing that?
I mean, I suppose that you can.
We all make our decisions.
But he got fake mad about that.
Hey, guys, guys, I have to stop you for a minute.
Somebody is talking in my ear, and I can't, Drew, he's actually less interesting than you are, which is like kind of a shock to my system.
No, Drew, that's just, I know when those voices crop up over these things.
He keeps selling me kills.
It's not real.
Hey, all right, should we actually get into the show?
So I think we should get into the show.
This is Friendly Fire.
I'm glad it's finally live.
I hate it when it's pre-taped because when you do the pre-tape of the show, everybody's all tired.
Everybody want, you do the advertisements later.
I want to do the advertisements right now.
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It's after that, the dark.
They should be putting out the darkness.
They didn't update your copy.
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That's right.
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I have another month until I actually lose, but I'm.
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Okay, I want to get into enough about the hot wife.
Quadry.
Quadry, terrible dealings in podcastian.
Yes.
Yeah, enough about all the scintillating, the horror houses we were talking about, whatever.
I want to get into the Iran war and I want to get into the horse race, not just for 2026, but for 2028.
And for now, Iran.
I'm sorry.
We have a new member of the Daily Wire who's come on over here who's going to run our editorial page.
And that is Ben Dominich running on Ben page.
He's a good guy.
Yeah, Ben.
Do we have Ben?
Yeah, I hope so.
Mr. Dominich, how are you, sir?
Hey, Ben.
Hey, I'm doing great and happy to be on the team.
And it's going to be interesting.
I will say that I was listening to your prior segment, and I didn't anticipate having hot wives be the first thing that we were going to be discussing right off the bat.
I would just say anybody who gives you that advice is giving you bad marital advice and wants to steal your wife.
It's probably hot for your wife, yeah, if I had to guess.
That's true.
Speaking of hot conflicts, Ben, I've gone back and forth.
I've vacillated here, Ben Dominich and Ben Shapiro.
I've vacillated on the Iran war thing.
My basic take on it is, had I been on the NSC, just knowing what I know, obviously I'm not providing to classified information, had I been on the NSC, I would have argued against striking Iran.
But not because of pacifism, not because of isolationism.
I don't think those are serious views.
I just think that the risks here are very, very high.
I think if the Strait of Hormuz is closed for too long, we're going to have a global recession.
I think that things can spiral out of control.
And Iran is a real country, unlike some of the other places we operate in.
So I trust Trump.
He's the best foreign policy president of my lifetime.
He asked for five weeks.
I'm willing to give him five weeks.
I'll freak out on week six.
But things are very, very dicey.
Oil already hit $115 a barrel.
At what point do we start saying maybe this might not be great, Mr. Dominic?
Well, I think that there are a lot of people who are saying that privately in Republican circles right now already, particularly those who want to run on domestic issues and were kind of feeling like there were some silver linings in the economy, that people were starting to see the benefits of the tax policies that they passed, that they were going to have a better experience when it came to their tax bill this year, and that they hoped that they would be able to prevent the kind of historical trend that we have normally seen in these midterm elections.
Personally, I think that was a lost cause to begin with.
I don't think that they really have any hope of holding on to the House.
But I do think that a lot of them are now pointing to this decision as something that's making them even more nervous, particularly because, as you know, voters don't get moved by foreign policy the way that the president necessarily is in this second term, where he's paying so much attention to resolving all conflicts, ending all family business all around the world.
And I think that there's inherent risk with that that domestically Republicans are nervous about.
Ben Shapiro, you're the most profitable.
I'm extremely pro what he's doing.
Yeah, well, what Trump is doing is the bravest foreign policy decision of my lifetime.
If the Iranian regime falls, it's the biggest thing to happen in geopolitics since the fall of the Soviet Union.
And so I think that what people ought to set up beforehand is sort of their set of what would make them think that the war was a success and at what cost.
I think that once we have those sort of presets in the system, it's easy to have a conversation about whether we think that we're going to achieve those things or not.
So what the administration has set as the goal are ending the ballistic missile threat from Iran, ending the nuclear threat from Iran, and destroying the Iranian Navy.
The Iranian economy is already nothing to speak, basically does not exist at this point.
And if you're judging by sort of what we've accomplished already, basically all three of those things are very nearly accomplished.
The ballistic missile threat has been basically taken down to almost zero.
The threat of the Iranian nuclear program has been set back probably decades at this point.
I don't think that either the United States or the Israelis are going to finish this up before that threat is completely vitiated.
And if you're talking about the Iranian Navy, it doesn't exist.
It's at the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz.
So then the question becomes, is the real goal here regime change?
And then the question is sort of like, what's the timeline?
So if the war ends and the regime is still in place, but so weak that basically one tap by the Iranian population and six months later, it's a different regime.
Not only was this a successful war in the moment, it is the most successful military decision of the modern era.
If it turns out that the Iranian regime kind of holds on, kind of able to rebuild, still has some level of control over the Straits of Hormuz, then obviously that's a problem, which is why I don't think Trump is going to do that.
I think that the next move by the Trump administration will be to secure all the areas around the Strait of Hormuz, make sure that the Strait of Hormuz can't be closed.
It is pretty certain, in my view, that sometime in the next week you will start seeing the United States Navy moving along with oil tankers through the Straits of Hormuz to protect those oil tankers.
We did this in the late 80s, and we can do it again.
And if that is what has happened here, the tremendous weakening of the Iranian regime, the destruction of their forward capacity, and the possibility that they're going to shatter, then it is an unbelievably successful decision.
And I have to say, the impatience of the American people, and I won't say the American people, because I don't think the American people are actually impatient.
The impatience of some people in the commentariat is insane.
I mean, legitimately insane.
We are two weeks into this thing, and we have suffered, yes, casualties, but those casualties are obviously by historical standards, very small compared to other conflicts.
And you're talking double digits, and when I say double digits, I mean like very low double digits.
I believe the total number of deaths to this point in time is 13 in this conflict.
Every one of those people is absolutely incredibly valuable to us.
But if you're going to compare foreign policy adventurism to past sort of conflicts, that doesn't even chart.
And if you're talking about the length and duration, I have cottage cheese in my fridge that is older than this war.
And so this idea that this is like an endless war, Joe Rogan was like, every war is an endless war.
Well, no, not every war is an endless war.
And so I think everybody should sort of put out there what they think the biggest risks are and how likely those risks are to occur and what the biggest benefits are and how likely those benefits are to occur.
I can tell you what I think the big risk is.
And I think, first of all, I agree with you, Knowles, that I trust Trump on this, not so much because he's an expert of foreign policy, but because he hates war.
He doesn't want there to be wars.
And so that's the way I want people to feel when they, you know, if we could have presidents who didn't want to be presidents, that's the guy I'd vote for.
But we can't have that.
But we can have wars waged by people who don't want to be in war.
And that's what Trump is like.
And I trust him that we had to go in.
I think Witkoff's testimony, basically, that they were actually building a nuclear weapon, that they were that close, is just very convincing to me.
The Strait of Hormuz, I mean, you can mine the Strait of Hormuz with a rowboat, you know, so we're never going to break the Iranian Navy to the point where they can't drop a mine into the strait.
But I think the timeline is this.
I think the timeline is whether or not we are going to lose the government entirely to the left.
The left in this country is a major, major danger.
This is the place, I think our interests right now and Israel's interests in the Venn diagram are very close together.
But there comes a point when Israel's tactical interests, which I would think would be getting rid of this regime entirely, and I would love to see that.
I think that's a great thing, and our interest, which is maintaining some kind of chance for us to keep the presidency away from people who butcher children sexually, who think that George Floyd is an angel instead of a thug, who hate this country and are willing to open up its borders to all our enemies.
I think at some point, the politics of this, unfortunately, gets in the way of the mission.
But I don't think that point is anywhere reached.
And this is where Ben is absolutely right.
This whole thing about the forever war that's been going on for 20 minutes is absurd.
I mean, it's just absurd.
This has been a very, very successful venture.
They're doing a great job.
They've completely obliterated their military force.
And I just think that we have to hang on and let Trump be the, we're letting him be the judge of when to go in.
We've got to let him be the judge of when to go out because I do not think he wants a war that goes on for eight months.
It's just not going to happen.
On the point of domestic political issues, there's a risk here that I think, if I can interject, and this is friendly fire, and it's my first time, so I don't know if I'm being rude by doing so.
Let me just beat you.
I actually think the biggest risk here is that that commentariat gets listened to by the president, who does have people on his team who are going to echo their thoughts.
That's basically what's happening right now.
They're trying to work the reps.
They're working from outside against this argument.
And look, the policy of the United States of America toward the nation of Iran has been pretty set for a pretty long time.
It was Barack Obama who broke it in the approach that he used that was just the most crazy thing in the world.
The fact that there's still people around who defend it, I mean, it just boggles my mind, especially the pod save bros, pod save Iran.
The thing that I think is a risk here is that if that commentariat prevails, the opportunity here is to turn to China as something like an interlocutor with the regime to basically say, hey, you know, we don't want to see these missiles flying around.
The Gulf states, they don't want to see these things flying around.
The Emirates, they don't want to have to deal with this type of stuff in the future.
We have a vested interest because of our relationship with Iran.
Let us do some kind of a deal or an arrangement that allows that type of scenario that Mr. Shapiro, Ben, I could say Ben, is making note of, which would allow that regime to basically hold on to power and would also, frankly, strengthen China's role in the area.
That's the biggest thing that I'm concerned about if those interlocutors get their way and they will not like the long-term ramifications of that.
There's nothing else here, you know, and that is that, Drew, you drew one timeline, which is we got to end this thing before it starts affecting the presidential election.
Obviously, I agree, and the American people agree with that.
All the polls show that if this is a short war, Americans are fine with it.
If it's a midterm war, they're pretty split.
And if it's a very long war, they're against.
I mean, join the club.
Who's in favor of a long war?
Not a ton of people.
But there is one other timeline, and that is President Trump laid this one out.
And he is totally right about this.
In three years, he will not be the president anymore.
And when he is not the president, whether the person who follows him is a Republican or Democrat, that person is not going to have anything like the balls that he is currently demonstrating with regard to going after Iran.
And so you don't want to be in a position in three years where Iran is re-ascendant, where you have a coward in the presidency in the form of a Democrat or even somebody from the horseshoe right.
And that person is then making overtures to the Iranian government.
You have to go do this again or you don't do it at all.
And now Iran is sort of back in the driver's seat.
And so his perspective on this, which I think is 100% right.
And I think, honestly, it's why it's kind of politically heroic.
It's not political heroism if you do the popular thing.
It's politically heroic if you do the thing that you actually don't think has to do with your poll numbers.
You're just doing the thing that has to be done.
And what the president is doing right now is doing the thing that has to be done.
Regime Change and War Fatigue00:09:34
Because again, I think all four of us, regardless of where we are on the current conflict, agree.
If the Iranian regime were to fall, it would be a moment of such great geopolitical issues.
Fantastic.
It would be legitimately unbelievable, not just for the region, but for the world, because you're talking about the linking factor between, for example, China and Russia.
You're talking about the lead progenitor of terrorism on planet Earth.
If that regime were to fall, because President Trump was the only one with the stones to actually just punch them in the face repeatedly until they gave up, if that were to happen, or if this were to be, again, the predicate to some sort of uprising in Iran, where you get something other than what is, and that something is just anything other than an even harder line, resurgent Iranian regime, then I don't know how you can count this as anything other than an act of tremendous political bravery by the president.
And so the political consideration for me is twofold.
One is sort of like who gets elected, and that obviously is very important.
The other is on a downside risk mitigation basis.
I'm very worried that a Democrat gets elected in 2028.
Do I want an Iran run by the Ayatollahs with more ballistic missiles, more nuclear capacity, and a bigger Navy with a Democratic president?
Or would I like for the president of the United States to stomp on a round like a bug while he has a chance?
The issue is if bushes were horses, beggars would ride.
I think we all agree on the ifs here.
But to get back to Drew's point on domestic politics, the New York Times was breathless.
They were overjoyed to report that this is the least popular war at launch that we've ever had in American history.
It's got top populars as it's going along.
They were exactly right.
But World War II starts at 97%.
Libya, even Libya was higher than this one.
The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war were higher than this one.
So you have a lot of people who had a lot of trepidation about this war.
The domestic issue is going to get worse if the strait remains closed for a long time, if gas prices go up.
That's going to cause food prices to go up even further.
You already have people feeling that the economy is precarious.
This with all of the problems in the midterm elections.
And so, you know, I totally agree.
And this is where I think the isolationists or the pacifists are just not making anything resembling a serious argument here.
But this is where people are getting a little bit too rosy.
If we can swap out the Iranian regime, then wonderful.
That has been part of the U.S. grand strategy since 1953.
It's a great fulfillment.
And Trump clearly has the stones to do it.
Now, maybe it implies the fact that he's willing to go in in a way that's so unpopular that could really screw up the midterms, maybe that implies that he's already kind of written off the midterms.
The Republicans have a one-vote majority in the House.
Probably, you know, odds are we're going to lose it anyway.
So why not do some legendary stuff go down in the history books in the meantime?
That's not great.
I'm not convinced of that.
I'm actually not convinced we're going to lose the midterms.
I think that it's a great chance.
I'm not going to say we're going to win it, but I think there's still a chance it's an open question.
And look, I think you have to balance the enthusiasm.
We all would love to see this regime fall.
But there's this thing, there's this pansy factor in America now.
This is the technical term for it, the pansy factor, where people just become hysterical over nothing, and it's stoked by the press.
I mean, the last time I don't drive much because I don't have to, but the last time I tanked up my car about a week and a half ago, gas was $280 a gallon, which is nothing.
Now it's all the way up to where it was three years ago when I don't remember everybody getting hysterical about it, you know?
So this is kind of this engineered hysteria.
I agree with this.
I mean, if you look at the look at the price of Brent Oil right now, the Iranians were saying it was going to 150 or 200 barrel.
It went up to 115, you mentioned, Michael.
And then it went back down again.
It's been hovering around 100 ever since.
Actually, on the week, it's slightly down from where it was.
But there is a danger here.
There is a danger of temptation.
I think because of the long wars that the Bush administration fought and fought badly and because of our entrenchment in those places and the sense that we didn't get anything out of it in the long run, people are not going to want to see our guys go marching in there, even if that's the only way we can overturn the regime.
There's always a question of whether you can over-return a regime with air power.
I mean, it's not the normal thing.
I mean, unless you're going to drop an atom bomb on them, it's very hard to overturn a regime.
Now, look, the Israelis are in there, and they may go in, and we've heard about the Kurds going in and all of that stuff.
So it could happen.
But I think a major engagement where we get tangled up in there is more of my government than I want to give away to the left.
I'd love to see it happen, but that's my point.
I don't think anybody's talking about that, including the president, which is why, again, a Trump war is different than a Bush war.
But Dominic had a great piece on this early on, where he basically said, everybody wants to look at the poll numbers, like Michael was looking at the poll numbers.
And instead of me just quoting Dominic, I'm going to actually ask him to explicate what he was saying, because I think that it is the right point, which is it turns out Americans just don't like losing mostly.
Yeah, I think, and thank you for saying that.
I think that this is a situation where one of the lessons I think people haven't learned, particularly politicians, is that this long-drawn out case for war that we have seen made in the past is just not something that the American people actually want or necessarily need anymore.
I actually think that they assess things entirely based on success.
The Maduro raid is a perfect example of this in the sense that there was tons of skepticism about what we were doing in Venezuela in various poll questions leading up to that decision.
And then after it happened, everybody basically said, oh, yeah, I was always in favor of that.
And the reverse happens when you look back at the Iraq war, where there's tons of people who pretend that they were opposed to it.
So I think that part of the thing that's going on here, though, is that we are dealing with the president, as Andrew said, that has different priorities.
And I think that the number one thing that he assesses this on, I believe, is the loss of American life.
The loss of American life is not something that he wants to see.
He has this very visceral attitude towards risking American life.
And there have even been stories, not ones that I've been able to run down, though some other journalists have claimed that they have, that he kept going back to the Pentagon when it came to reworking that Maduro raid in order to get the number lower and lower and lower in terms of the risk to American lives because he didn't want to lose anybody.
And so I think that when it comes to this war, people who are concerned about American troops having to go in on the ground, I think the president will be incredibly hesitant to do that.
He is trying to do something with air power that isn't traditionally achieved.
And we will need additional work by the Israelis, I think, in order to achieve it in a real sustained way.
But that fact gives me a lot of optimism about this moment and with this president, when I am probably, you know, historically the most war skeptical of many of the people who are part of Daily Wire.
And that is born again out of, I believe, sort of a naivete that we had in the past.
I don't think the president has that naivete.
I think he wants to get this done.
He wants to get it settled.
And he does not want it to be the kind of thing that he has asked about after his presidency.
Do you wish you had handled this differently?
Well, we'll get to more in this in one second.
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Let's be real about this.
Okay.
Like, you guys, you're our acquaintances.
We like you.
That's fine.
But you can't be best friends with us.
And Knowles is a really, really strong friend.
Less so, as it turns out.
But Michael Knowles actually is very into the friendship.
And you can be Michael's best friend.
Drew is a pretty good friend.
I think Dominic is a pretty good friend.
You can be best friends with all of these people and more of our hosts, including Matt Walsh, who actually is shockingly friendly in person.
He would not want me to say that.
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Michael, you want to jump back in there?
I don't.
Well, okay.
Have we figured out Iran?
If we figured out Iran, then I do want to move on to a topic that actually, I guess it pertains to Iran or some foreign policy disputes around it, which is the horse race for 2028.
You know, we don't know what's going to happen with the midterms.
There's the kind of fringe view that Trump has just written it off and he's just going to do gangster legendary stuff.
And then Democrats will get subpoena power, then he'll get impeached.
And then who knows what?
Maybe he gets convicted.
Then maybe JD Vance becomes the president just automatically.
He's probably the insurance policy on that happening.
Okay, whatever.
As it stands right now, the president has basically endorsed JD Vance and Marco Rubio as a ticket in 2028.
Rubio has basically endorsed Vance as the top of the ticket in 2028.
It all looks good until it doesn't.
And so there are a lot of people who I think are trying to stoke some division in the Trump admin.
Obviously, we know Rubio wants to be president.
He ran for it the first time that Trump was running in 2016.
So there's this question, will Rubio turn on JD, run for the office?
Will Trump turn on JD and endorse Rubio?
There have been some rumors about donor conversations or whatever.
Will there be an outsider?
Will someone from the Senate or from a governor's house, will they come in and be 2028?
Or is this all idle, stupid speculation two years out that means absolutely nothing?
Well, of course.
Yes, of course it's that.
I think that that is absolutely the case.
Personal Wars Over Evil00:15:19
But look, I think we have to talk about this.
And Knowles cuts me off every time I say this because he's so ashamed of himself.
We have to talk about Tucker Carlson.
This guy's not going to be able to do that.
Why do we have to talk about this?
Why do we have, because he's a demon-infested Nazi, and I think that if Vance attaches himself to him, he's going to drag him underwater like an anchor tied to his leg.
And I think that, you know, this is the thing.
I've been yelling at both you guys off camera.
I want to yell at you on camera.
I mean, first of all, Knowles, it's time for you, you're a Catholic.
It's time for you to fight the demons.
When people are infested with demons, whether they're Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson, they're the bad guys.
I mean, they're not right-wingers anymore.
They're not our friends.
And it's time to say they're bad guys.
And Shapiro, if I could strangle you and keep you alive because I love you, I don't want to kill you, but if I could just strangle you a little bit, I would because we can't spend more time yelling at clowns like Pierce Morgan.
Oh, that's unfair.
That's unfair.
First of all, I absolutely can't.
I'm just glad who's getting you.
Fine.
I'm glad to hear that.
I mean, okay, so first of all, just to be clear.
Hold on, wait, can I respond?
He brought up the demon thing and whatever.
I just want to make my point on this.
Exorcists on your show now.
Yeah, hold on.
Put them to use.
I'd like to make a point in defense of not engaging in the podcaster wars.
And my defense is this.
One, I've been very clear about what I think about all of these issues.
Whether we're talking about Iran, whether we're talking about Erika Kirk, whether we're talking about anything in between, I've been very clear about what my point of view is, and I've said that people are wrong specifically when I think that they've been wrong.
However, I think it is helpful, one, to engage with as much charity as one can possibly engage in and all of these things.
And two, I think that the podcaster wars are deeply counterproductive.
I think even if you want to take friendship and personal affection, all that out of it, it seems to me that if the objective of the podcaster wars is to, you know, talk about how evil and terrible everybody is, the only meaningful objective to that, other than stating your own position, which everyone has clearly done, is to try to reduce their reach or get people to stop listening to them or get them to be less influential.
None of that has worked.
Everyone that has been named, and many who have not been named, are more influential than ever, more popular than ever.
And so it seems to me that the better strategy is to focus on the real politics rather than what I think is the vice of new media and the podcast.
I've been here for 50 years to make it.
I've already got my hobbies.
Look, I know, we all do it.
It's a temptation for me to do it.
This is only half true, though.
This is not, this is, there's a serious aspect of this, and then there's one that is actually very fun.
And I resent the idea that making fun of Pierce Morgan is something that is out of balance because it's just too much fun to do.
But here's the thing.
What you are getting at is something that I think is important, which is that we shouldn't allow these wars, which I believe are fun to fight and good to fight, arguments that are worth having, if only, by the way, to show that the other side of it often does not have any willingness to argue or debate or actually deal with any of the ramifications of the things that they're saying, which tells you enough.
But I also think that we have to make sure that there's some balance there.
You can't only be about the podcast wars because that's like being, that's like only watching Bravo for the real housewife reunions.
Like, it's just not, it is not the best use of your time or good for your mental health, even if you can talk about it for weeks on end.
And so that's the thing that I think we need to just have some perspective on it.
But the podcast wars actually are representative at some point of different sides within these arguments that are taking place.
I just think that they are.
Are they?
That's my question.
Yes.
Are they?
But I think they are often going after evil people.
But they are when you're going after evil people.
When you start to go after people who don't go after evil people, then you have to go after the people who don't go after the people who don't go after the evil people.
Then you've got a cancerous situation, and I think it's really damaging.
I mean, so I agree with that, but I think that there's a difference between doing that and doing an actual defense of the people who are evil, which is a thing that has happened.
And attacking people who defend those who are evil is a thing that I think is worthwhile.
And as far as sort of the matrix that you're setting up here, Michael, frankly, I think it's a catch-22, because the basic idea that you've set up is that if you say nothing about them, that's because they're very powerful, they're not going away.
And also, if you say something about them, it's because they're very powerful and they're not going away.
Well, I don't think it's because they're powerful.
I also think that's different.
Just to clarify my point here, I think that the podcaster wars are not a real political phenomenon.
Basically, even just looking at the polling, basically all the movement conservative activist base types still support Trump, basically support Vance and Rubio, basically support the same policies.
They're a little divided on Iran.
And I think that the podcast wars are a meta-political phenomenon about all sorts of crazy things like aliens and the occult and weird alternative history.
And that it basically is just an attention grab for everybody to grab audience diverging away from the political objective, which is to bring voters together in a coalition.
Well, okay, so here is the problem.
Okay, let's be very clear about the problem that has now emerged on the right.
There are multiple wings that are sort of arguing for the future of the right.
One of those wings is led by people like Tucker and Candace.
That is a reality.
And pretending that that is not a reality.
I mean, I don't believe that you don't even buy it.
I think the wings are led by JD Vance and Marco Rubio, if we're even going to call them wings.
I don't think it's the podcast.
We've got to get an ejector seat on this guy as well.
I mean, well, first of all, let's, okay, that's fine.
But then it does beg the question as to why the vice presidents of the United States keep ushering Tucker Carlson into the White House in quite visible fashion while Tucker Carlson is doing many of the things that he is doing.
The vice president has plenty of friends.
The idea that Tucker is his only friend, I think, is dishonest.
And this defense is not going to work for one second of one day.
It is not going to.
When Barack Obama was running for high office, everybody on the right correctly pointed out that his pastor was Jeremiah Wright.
This notion that people's associations, close personal associations, people who help make them vice president, that that has no impact on how people see them, is obviously untrue.
And when we talk about the sort of growth of particular ideas on the right, pretending that, for example, young Republicans, young conservatives are not being infected with some pretty bad ideas by the people online is ignoring both the poll data and ignoring the actual viewing data of a lot of these folks.
I'm not the young activist.
Right.
And well, that makes a pretty big difference.
And so the question becomes not just, quote unquote, what is the purpose?
Obviously, listen, I think that there is a purpose to calling out evil where it occurs because calling out evil where it occurs is a good thing to do on a moral level.
So if Candace Owens decides to slander the widow of Charlie Kirk, I think that people have a moral duty to say that this is a bad thing, even if they are quote-unquote friends with those people.
But let's take that further.
So obviously one should state one's view and say, you know, Erica's great and the attacks on her are not right.
Well, Michael, I'll just ask you straight up.
Is Candace Owens doing something evil by attacking Erica Kerr?
I think that it's wrong to attack Erica Kirk.
Say the sentence with her name.
I'm not going to dance with you.
I know I can offer it for the podcast.
You don't know that.
You don't have to dance like a podcast, but you can't do it.
I think it's clear.
And you are dancing pretty quickly.
I mean, there's a lot of tap dancing here.
I don't know.
I don't think there's any tap dance.
Even if you are interested in it, it's totally clear.
Even if you are interested in the podcast perspective, people who are leading the invective against Candace are her biggest publicists.
Leading the invective against Candace.
I mean, this I take a little bit of umbrage at.
I don't feel that it's invective to say that what she is doing to Erica Kirk is totally demonic.
No, it is invective.
It could be justified invective, but it's certainly invective.
My point is, all you're doing is when's the last time you used the term invective to talk about justified invective?
Give me a point.
No, of course.
The three most famous speeches in Dante are the invectives, and they're totally justified.
Invective can be a good thing.
My point is just that what is the goal of that?
Is the goal to make oneself feel really morally good, to puff oneself up to one's friends and fans?
Or is the goal to try to reduce, I don't know, the popularity of some show?
Because if it's the latter, it's not worth it.
No, It's about stating principles.
That's what we're here for.
That's our job.
John can easily make that action outfit.
And we actually cash checks because we state our principles.
And this is a real question.
This is not, I'm totally against calling people out and calling people names.
I think it's a bad thing.
But I'm not against calling out evil.
I mean, Ben's right.
This is the basic, it's the basic.
But no one disagrees with it.
I'm lying.
No one disagrees.
But you don't do it.
I've made my view on the Erica Kirk thing completely clear.
Yeah, but I mean, look, you know, Tucker Carlson is sitting around saying that American soldiers, implying that American soldiers want to rape Iranian women, and that's what Donald Trump meant by unconditional surrender.
I mean, that's a disgusting thing to say.
American soldiers have been the best-behaved soldiers on earth in human history.
And I just think it's, you know, when people say that stuff, something's wrong with them.
Something has gone wrong with these people.
And it's not the policy.
Why would we publicize it?
I guess it's exactly what I'm saying.
We don't need to publicize it.
As you said, they're tremendously popular.
But the thing about it is, like, if you take someone like Candace, I believe Candace is popular with people who no longer matter.
You know, anybody who's taking what she says seriously on any level is already lost to the light, as far as I'm concerned.
Tucker's a little smarter, although he's starting to go, you know, when you get infested by demons, after a while you're crab walking across the ceiling, scursing with the priest.
You know, I mean, that's what happens.
That's the trajectory of that.
But I mean, at some point, you know, you stand for something and you don't stand for anything.
Right.
But no one is.
I think that's a false dichotomy, basically.
I think we're saying, well, you need to state your principles.
You need to state what you believe.
Yeah, sure, we all agree on that.
The only question that I have is: should the podcasters be spending all of their time talking about each other in these metapolitical fights and promoting each other's clips, for goodness sake?
Okay, so first of all, all of their time is a wild exaggeration as far as I am concerned, because last I checked, what actually happened is that I made one speech at TPUSA and then said literally nothing for months about any of these people.
And they are attacking you.
It's not just you.
I'm not even saying you're leading it.
The only point that I'm making here is that if these people do have a great level of popularity, which they do, and they are saying things that are bad, which they are, calling out the bad things that famous people are saying and doing is actually the thing that we do for a living.
And we do it for politicians.
Michael, you do it for commentators on the left.
We play clips of these people all day long on our shows.
When those people are quote-unquote purportedly on our side, and some of them are in the ear of vice presidents of the United States, then it sometimes becomes a little important to actually call that out.
And that is the thing that I think is that, now, listen, you can do whatever you want.
Obviously, it's a free country, and you're well within the Overton window in your opinions, as far as I am concerned, even if we disagree about your approach to these particular personalities.
I mean, many of our hosts have appeared and continue to appear on the shows of the very people that we are talking about.
And at no point have I or anybody at the Daily Wire said they should not do that.
So, you know, that is sort of beside the point as to what we're arguing here.
The only point that I'm making is that if what the commentary business is about is speaking to the audience, meaning a large audience of people who are making up their minds as to who they ought to listen to and the kind of ideas they ought to consider good and bad, then yes, it is worthwhile to say it is not worth your time to listen to people who argue that, for example, the Khazarian Jews are responsible for the breakout of World War III, or that they're digging tunnels across America like rats,
or that the or that the Israelis worship Baal.
If people like that have millions of viewers and that viewership has crossover with the movement that I've grown up my entire life trying to build.
And their numbers are going up.
And I think that is a good thing to say, hey, you probably shouldn't watch that.
And in this situation, I just want to say that.
Can I jump in here for a second?
I just want to make something clear.
Michael, I think that a lot of us feel like if you don't speak up and point these things out, you are effectively abandoning the field.
You're basically treating it the way that a lot of Republicans used to treat an issue like abortion, where they just didn't want to talk about it.
So what would happen?
What would happen is the Democrat would entirely talk about it.
They would define the terms.
They would determine what the debate was about.
And they would attempt to reframe the issue.
We saw this happen time and again, by the way, in Virginia.
And that's the kind of thing that leads to a false depiction of people who are trying to advocate for moral right as being extremists, when in reality, they're just saying, we want to stop killing babies.
But just to take that to the Candace Owens situation, for example, I just don't think you don't have to engage with every amount of crazy.
But I do think that one of the things that's really been important and worthwhile is that I used to love Tucker.
I have known Tucker.
I met him when I was 15 years old at the Mayflower.
He was always very nice to me.
We've never seen any kind of personal clash.
But the simple fact is he lies to the people who pay him money for those lies repeatedly.
And not just about things that are related to what we've been discussing, but about history, about Winston Churchill, about the nature of reality in the world, and particularly foreign policy and our national security.
And those are lies that I think have to be confronted on occasion when they rise to it.
And if we're not going to confront them, who is?
I just want to say that.
But there's a flawed premise here.
There's a flawed premise, which is that by not engaging in these podcaster wars, which become extraordinarily personal and go on forever, much longer than the Iraq-or-Afghanistan wars, by not doing that, we would not be talking about the issues, which is not true.
That is completely false.
Whether we're talking about, I don't know, whether they're talking about the Iran war or the assassination of Charlie or the Khazarian baal worshiping, whatever, you know, that Ben was just referencing.
One can talk about all of these things.
One does talk about all of these things without necessarily engaging in this very personal aspect, which to my mind, no one can give me an answer on what is being accomplished here.
Because my premise is that a lot of the podcaster stuff is quite and increasingly divorced from the actual political realities.
Just one point to finish this.
Look at Trump's approval numbers.
Look at the administration's approval numbers.
Look at how people feel about these interventions, Venezuela or Iran 1, even Iran 2, compared to the podcasters.
100% almost of the podcasters and the live streamers are opposed to all of these Trump admin things.
The electorate is for it.
And so it just seems to me there's this perverse incentive that did not exist in radio and TV.
It does exist in the new media, which is to be more radical, to be more sensational, to be more personal, make it more about the host.
And these incentives come up because everyone's kind of independent now and they all make it about themselves.
And it just seems to me this is not effective for a coalition.
And the more attention that you give to the personalities, the more their ratings are going to grow.
That wasn't true 10 years ago, but I think it's true in this situation.
I do not understand how a man who wrote an entire book claiming that there are some things that are actually off limits to say, you said that it's not that we don't want to cancel people, but the left is canceling the wrong people.
Don't we have a responsibility on our side to say, yeah, you know, we're not going to be able to do that.
But we have no ability to do it.
It's my opinion.
Yes, what the hell do you say?
Radical Tactics and Ratings00:05:18
The hell do you say?
We sure do.
We're not canceling people, but we do have a right to build up the borders.
None of these people's ratings have declined even slightly.
I don't care whether their ratings decline.
It's who's listening to them.
Look, anybody in this country can get 15 million people, especially if you're hating Jews, to follow you.
Wait, is that the secret?
I've been trying to get 15 million people for 10 years.
That's all I got to do.
You don't hate Jews enough.
That's why.
I've got to work on that.
I mean, popularity is not a sign of good or bad.
It's just something.
So it's not their popularity we're attacking.
It's their ideas.
And their ideas are attached to people.
And Tucker is a charming guy, and he's a clever guy, and he knows how to do what he's doing.
And we have to call him out because the words that come out of his mouth are simply untrue.
I mean, the facts that he sells are untrue.
The morals that he sells are morally illiterate.
The Bible, when he talks about the Bible, he's not quoting the Bible accurately or interpreting it accurately.
He's a Protestant.
Yeah, well, he's worse than a Protestant.
I mean, I know some pretty decent people.
He's worse.
He's an Episcopalian.
I'm just saying I don't see why we – yeah, that's true.
He's not even a Christian.
I say that as former Episcopalian.
Me too, me too.
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
I would just point out when we're talking, because I agree with you, Drew.
I'm all for censorship.
When it's just and prudent and within bounds and all that.
You're right.
That's the whole point of my book, Speechless, which is available for purchase wherever you get to find books.
But my point is, the two examples where people have really gone out of bounds in recent years, it would be probably Alex Jones, right?
It would be when he started talking about Sandy Hook.
And then what was the other one?
I don't know.
Well, I guess actually one example you could actually use an example of Tucker Red Fox before Tucker left.
But in both of those cases, how were the standards reinforced?
Regardless of whether you think it was good or bad, what happened to Alex Jones or Tucker or whatever?
You know how it was enforced?
Through lawfare, through censorship.
Actually, a way better example than Fox.
Father Coughlin, most popular radio host in America, what was it, one in four American households was listening to him.
He did not go off the air because people complained about him and called more attention to his program.
He went off the air because the hierarchy of the church and the White House shut him down.
That was basically what did it.
And so I guess my whole argument here is not that we shouldn't have standards.
It's not that we shouldn't say what we believe.
It's just that if one is going to undertake a political tactic, it should work.
And in this case, I just don't.
I think this one's been totally counterproductive.
Here's what I'll say just about the efficacy point, and then I want to bring this away from struggle sessioning Michael and back toward actually what I think is a more realistic issue.
So as far as the utilitarian nature of the tactic, it depends who you're talking to.
If the goal is to inform people who, say, were Fox News Tucker fans of what Tucker has been saying lately, I think that is a virtuous thing to do.
Because I think there are a lot of people who are totally unaware of the stuff that Tucker is saying now or has been saying who have sort of vestigial goodwill for the Tucker Carlson they remember from 2018.
I think it's a very real phenomenon, which is why he has broader purchase.
I think telling young people who are falling into the trap of listening to Candace or to Tucker's lies that what they're listening to is actively untrue is a useful thing to do.
And if their numbers continue to go up, they continue to go up, but you've done your duty in at least giving people the informational choices available.
And then they can make their own decision because, of course, it is a free country and no one is actually calling for people to be banned from the air.
Where this makes a difference and where the rubber meets the road.
And this goes back to your point, Michael, about sort of the political.
And this is where, you know, I know Drew went right into the Tucker when we started talking about JD, which is, remember, I'm trying to reverse engineer where we were in this conversation.
And this is, again, is why we have the show is so we can actually beat the living hell out of each other, obviously.
But the JD and the Rubio of it, it goes to coalition building, which I think lies under a lot of this.
What is the coalition that each of these candidates is trying to build?
I think the reason there's been a lot of heat and light around JD and Tucker is because the question is, is JD's coalition is it inclusive not only of Tucker as a voter, like coalitions include lots of voters, is it inclusive of Tucker's ideas?
Is it inclusive of Tucker as a leader of that coalition?
Because if so, that's a very different coalition than the coalition of Donald Trump, who may eventually, who may talk to Tucker and then will go out publicly and say, he can say whatever he wants.
I don't listen to a word he says, which is something that JD Vance has never said about Tucker Carlson.
And I think is leading to a lot of people suspecting maybe he agrees with some of the things that Tucker is doing and saying.
And probably one of the reasons why Donald Trump himself, you kind of led this off by saying Trump has appointed JD his heir and then Marco his running mate.
And Marco has committed to the idea that he's not going to run against JD.
But I don't think that that's quite accurate in the depiction of what Trump has said about JD or Rubio.
He said, I like both these guys.
He says, I like both these guys.
And then he's apparently been pulling rooms of donors as to which one people like better.
And a lot of the donors seem to like Rubio better.
And I think there are some reasons for that, including kind of JD's affect.
I think also including the sort of political, the sort of political coalition building.
And here I want to kind of shift the conversation into a prudential one, which is which one of these candidates, if you had to choose, right?
Assume both of them were running.
They're not, but assume both of them were running for a second.
Which one is likely to build a successful coalition?
JD Vance vs. Trump Voters00:13:10
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Okay, you do.
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Now's the time for us to say goodbye to Ben Dominich and Ben.
They're not all like this, I have to say.
This episode, you know, the minute that Walsh steps out, suddenly, you know, the actual battles begin.
Who would have figured that one?
But Ben, thanks for stopping by.
I really appreciate it.
Good to see you, Ben.
Welcome aboard.
That's because Walsh, you know, everyone thinks because Walsh seems kind of disagreeable that he's the one that's going to love to scrap.
He actually hates.
We're the ones that love to fight.
This company, we kind of forget it.
A lot of people don't even know this.
When this company began 2015, 2016, the first two hours of the day, you guys were each other.
We would just beat the hell out of each other for like an hour or so.
Exactly.
You remember, Ben, you and I would fight so much that the women would call us up and say, are you okay?
That would always make me laugh.
Yeah, yeah.
That is natural.
We'd have totally forgotten it.
Are you guys all right?
Yeah, exactly.
Everyone's like, is everything okay in the office?
Like, yeah, we're just beating the hell out of each other.
I actually, my kind of button, this is my like esoteric philosophical button on the podcaster wars sort of like tactical disputes.
It occurred to me the other day, this might come down to a Kantian versus Aristotelian thing.
Is that too much?
Is that too much?
I know.
You should call it Kant as well.
Yeah, well, I mean, number one, if you're calling me a Kantian, you know, you can just.
Those are your fighting words.
What is your fighting words?
Second of all, I think that based on the evidence, Aristotle himself would look at Tucker Carlson and think to himself, dude, does too much L.
And then look at Candace Owens and saying, none of this seems to be rooted in the evidence that I see here on this earth before I build platonic visions of this.
Well, that was the problem.
You know, sometimes people say, like, well, we know more than the ancient philosophers, you know, because they lived a long time ago.
And we have scientific discoveries.
Yeah, forget about that.
It's we have nicotine.
They didn't have nicotine then, so their brains didn't work quite as well.
That must be it.
That must be it.
Only made in India.
You need nicotine made only in India.
The greatest nicotine is only made in India.
Anyway, enough of my snide references to, you know, a guy who was scratched, to be fair, by a demon.
Let's talk instead about the coalitional differences inside the Republican Party.
This actually is, I think, an interesting topic, and it is more of a pragmatic topic than some of these sort of ideological battles that we're talking about.
I'm going to make the case that JD Vance has a coalitional problem, not in sense of like Tucker versus me or any of that kind of stuff.
I'm going to make the case that if you look at Donald Trump's coalition, JD Vance is trying to replicate almost identically Donald Trump's coalition.
I do not think it is possible for JD Vance to do this.
I think this is a poor strategy.
J.D.'s brilliant.
I think J.D.'s incredibly talented.
I think there's a world where J.D. can build his own coalition, but it looks different than the Trump coalition.
When I look at JD Vance right now, what I see is somebody who will underperform Trump in nearly every category, meaning he will win fewer non-college-educated white voters because it is not possible to win more non-college-educated white voters than Donald Trump does.
He'll win fewer Hispanics for sure.
He'll win fewer black voters.
He'll win fewer women.
He'll win fewer Jews.
He'll win fewer Asians.
And so I look at the coalition that Trump has built, and I think, where is the pickup?
Like, where is the, where is, if you're setting a stereo, where exactly is the factor?
Where's the base?
Where do you ramp up the treble?
You know, like, where exactly does he ramp it up?
When I look at Rubio, I know exactly where he loses some of Trump's coalition.
Like, blue-collar white voters probably won't vote as much for Marco Rubio, but does he do better than Trump did with Hispanics?
That's possible.
Does he do better with college-educated whites than Trump did?
That's certainly possible.
Will he do better with women than President Trump did?
That's possible too.
Now, none of that's a guarantee, but that at least is sort of an interesting thought as far as what does a future post-Trump coalition look like?
Because people tend to think of like post-Trump politicians, but every politician's got their own coalition.
The Bush coalition was not exactly the Trump coalition, right?
Bush had the soccer moms.
Trump really didn't.
So what exactly does the Vance coalition look like?
A victorious Vance coalition?
And I know, Michael, you're a big fan of sort of the Vance coalition vision, so I'll let you all.
No secret, I'm a big admirer of the VP.
But it's a good point you raised, Ben.
I mean, even down to, according to these reports, who knows if they're real?
But let's say they are real, that the donors like Rubio more.
That doesn't surprise me at all.
The donors in 16 liked Rubio more than, frankly, most of the other guys on stage other than Jeb Bush.
So that doesn't surprise me.
In fact, I think a lot of the vice president's appeal is he doesn't speak directly to the donor class.
I think he's fluent enough in their language.
He spent time in Silicon Valley.
He's a lawyer from a top school.
So he can talk to them.
But I agree.
It's more, he's going to speak more to blue-collar voters and more to a populist coalition.
I guess you raise a serious challenge.
The counterexample I would give is George H.W. Bush.
So you get two terms of Reagan.
The Reaganites kind of hated the Bushies.
Here, at least, there's real alignment between Trump and JD Vance.
The Reagan-Bush ticket was a compromise to unify the party.
The Reaganites were very, very skeptical of the Bushies.
Bush was less appealing than Reagan in almost every way, and he was able to win as a matter of Reagan's third term.
Now, I think clearly, J.D. being picked as the VP for a non-consecutive second term, he was being set up to be Trump's third term.
And so this creates another problem for J.D.
I don't think it's a coalitional problem.
I think it's a you ride or die by Trump.
I mean, there is really no light whatsoever between the president and the vice president.
I think in many ways, the horse races that are trying to distinguish the differences here, no, I think basically Trump's going to win a third term or he's not.
I think that's right.
I was a big supporter of Vance before he was picked.
I thought this is the perfect guy.
I think Rubio has done a spectacular job as Secretary of State.
He's the one thing that Trump says that I don't think is hyperbole when he calls him one of the great Secretaries of State.
I saw him at the meeting about the anti-cartel organizations and when Rubio was speaking in fluent Spanish to the assembled people from south of the border, I just was thinking every Hispanic in America is going to vote for this guy.
I mean, the guy is unbelievably good at what he's doing.
He has a record that is, you know, I'm not as big a believer in what the media tries to sell.
People vote for.
They think we vote for looks.
They think we vote for, you know, all kinds of things that work well on television.
But I think people actually pay attention to some of the issues, especially economic issues.
And, you know, Rubio was soft on the border.
He really, even though he won the support of donors, I think that Trump wiped the floor with him as a candidate.
I mean, he made him look really, really bad.
And some of those videos are going to come back to haunt him.
I do think that, you know, I don't want to get back on Tucker, but I do think that's a good idea.
You do want to get back on Tucker.
I think that Vance has given himself a moral problem.
If we go in, if this war in Iran continues to be successful, and if it's as successful as we all hope it will be, I think Vance looks kind of bad.
And I think, and I don't say that with any kind of animosity, because I really do like the guy, and I think he's better.
I think he's better than he appears, and I think he'd make a good president.
But I think that he has given himself a moral problem.
And normally in America, America has changed over the years, but normally in America, these hate fests, like the anti-Jewish hate fest that's going on right now, they blow up the bubble and then the bubble explodes and people come back to their senses.
Like in the Salem Witch Trials, they sort of remember who they are.
They remember what America is.
And I think that if that happens, a lot of people are going to have some stench on them.
And one of them is JD Vance.
So right now, I'm just a little bit concerned that Vance doesn't have what it takes to stick the ball, to make it over the goal line.
And that's kind of interesting.
You remember Selena Zito had that famous phrase about Trump, take him seriously but not literally, which I think remains the single best description of how to actually treat the president.
When you think about that, I think there's a case to be made that Marco Rubio takes the president seriously and JD Vance takes him literally.
What I mean by this is that if you look at how the vice president sort of interprets the way that Trump ran in 2024, he interprets the way that Trump ran as he was the Joe Rogan candidate, right?
He was the guy who was going on Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan.
And so if you just sort of be the guy who goes on Theo Vaughn or Joe Rogan, that's the sort of swing vote that you need to appeal to, is Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan.
The point that I've made, including to people on the vice president's staff, is that I do not actually think that that is an accurate depiction of where politics is going to be in 28.
I would be shocked if Joe Rogan votes Republican in 2028.
I'd be shocked if Theo Vaughan votes Republican in 2028.
You can already see them creating gaps between themselves and the administration in order to move away and back toward, quote-unquote, the middle or back toward the other side because they realize that in the polls, you know, the popularity of the administration isn't exactly soaring right now.
And so trying to program is that you're not going to be able to outbid a Democrat when it comes to being anti-Israel.
You're not going to be able to outbid a Democrat when it comes to being big government-oriented and anti-capitalist and anti-business.
You're not going to be able to outbid them on any of that.
And if the only thing you have is transgenderism, granted, that's a powerful issue for a lot of the podcast bros.
But this is where, you know, Michael, to go back to sort of the broader podcast point, not having to do with any specific personality, the reality is that we called the last election the podcast election for a reason.
These people, their voices do matter.
And pretending they don't matter is, of course, I think, whistling past the graveyard.
I think that the vice president has all the talent in the world and all the intellectual capacity in the world.
I think that he is actively misreading the nature of the American electorate if he thinks that the way to build a coalition is to find the Joe Rogan voter and then grab that Rogan voter and hold him by the hand all the way to the polls.
I think that that is not going to work out well for him.
And then you look at Rubio and you think, man, I've never seen more two dissimilar people than President Trump and Marco Rubio.
Just like wildly dissimilar.
But if you look at where they are in policy, Rubio has been in lockdown.
There's not been a single story that has been leaked the entire administration, the entire administration, in which Rubio was not in lockstep with the president.
There have been stories almost every two weeks about how Vance was not in lockstep with the president, including one from Politico today about the president and the vice president with regard to Iran.
Now, I don't know whether those leaks are coming from Team VP or Team Anti-VP.
It could be either.
Not only that, not only that, Trump has done the presence of Trump, the experience of Trump, has done something to Rubio.
He is not the man he was.
I think we all notice this.
He is not as unsure on his feet.
He's incredibly articulate.
He's incredibly on point.
There's something about being around Trump that has made him a better man and a better candidate.
And I think everybody can see that.
And I think Trump is, you know, I think Trump's having fun, you know, polling people about which candidate is which.
And I think he's almost playing a political game.
But still, I think that there is something that, you know, we all, I thought of JD Vance as the third Trump term.
But right this minute, if I had to pick which one of them was the third Trump term, I'd be hard-pressed to do it.
You know, the other thing that I think is worth mentioning here is that, again, Marco says he doesn't want to run if J.D. is running.
So it may be a moot point, but it's a message that I think that the Vance campaign should pick up.
If there is this much roiling underneath the surface about, like, well, yeah, then maybe there's some voices worth listening to on that side of the aisle as well.
If you're talking about a coalitional approach and one side of your coalition is deeply, deeply unhappy, then it may be worthwhile to, you know, maybe steer a little bit differently, is all I would say.
Again, if we're talking practical, pragmatic coalition building.
Oscar Upsets and Coalitions00:10:27
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I have to say, I don't mean any shade to Walsh.
I always like it when Walsh is here.
This is my favorite episode of this show.
It really feels like the old days again.
Look, we'll get Walsh shaky.
I'll get in scrappy spirit too.
But it's all, it only increases my appreciation of the Daily Wire members.
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So now that we've talked about all the interesting things, I am forced, under duress, to talk about something that interests me not in the least, but thankfully, speaking of the old days, we're bringing back an old pal of ours from LA, Christian Toto.
Apparently, the Oscars are coming up.
Is that right?
Do I have that right?
I think so.
So, here's my take on Tucker.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, this is the worst weekend of my professional life when I have to watch the Oscars because I can't tune away for a second, and the show goes on for at least eight hours.
That's one of my best weekends because I don't watch it.
Well, I mean, so for the people who are watching it, I'm just going to point out here: Calci is one of our sponsors.
The Calci markets suggest that one battle after another is going to win Best Picture.
Michael B. Jordan is going to win best actor.
That is what the Calci markets are suggesting.
And 76% for One Battle After Another, that is the Paul Thomas Anderson piece of crap, all about how America is run by white supremacists, and those white supremacists want to have wild sex with black radical revolutionaries.
Thanks for that, Drew.
And best actor, Michael B. Jordan.
Huge late surge for Michael B. Jordan, not because he's playing for the Chicago Bulls, but because this is the other Michael B. Jordan, because Timothy Shalamet said some bad things apparently about opera and ballet.
This is like the big.
I love that we're now down to a controversy where Timothy Shalamay pointed out that there aren't that many people who are fans of opera and ballet.
And let me say, as a fan of both, there are not that many fans of opera and ballet.
So, Christian, have you watched all 10 of these?
I watched all 10 of the best picture nominees, I will say.
I have to say, I miss the secret agent, but I've seen everything else.
And, you know, you forgot the key thing against Chalamet is that they said he's got too much swagger.
What the Oscar voting process has been reduced to is this sort of bizarre personality test where if you say the wrong thing, if you insult cats, like Jesse Buckley has done to risk her Hamnett nomination, that things can go south.
So it's really crazy why we don't really judge on the best picture, best actor.
It's everything but these days.
So let's talk about what you think actually was the best picture.
So I watched every single one of them.
I thought that they were basically all extremely lackluster, except for one, which I thought was pretty good.
So I thought one battle after another was terrible.
I thought that Sinners, the first half of it, was really kind of interesting, and then it just did from dawn till dusk, but super duper racist.
Hamnet, I was underwhelmed by.
The one that I thought actually was quite interesting was Marty Supreme.
I thought Marty Supreme featured characters that were wildly unlikable, but it had some in kind of the same way that the movie with Adrian Brody last year.
What was the name of that?
The Brutalist.
In the same way that it was sort of, yeah, in the same way that I did not like it, but it was interesting.
Marty Supreme, I liked more, but it was similarly interesting.
It was trying to say some things, and Shalamet's performance is, in fact, fantastic.
It is a really, really good performance.
I wonder what you thought the best picture of this lackluster bunch was.
Not to be kissing up, but that was my favorite movie of the year.
My favorite performance as well.
It really was bursting with originality, but it all made sense.
And, you know, the great actors, the Gene Hackmans of the world, can play a villain or a jerk or a cad, and you can't help but root for him or love him sometimes.
And I think that's what Shalamay did because his character on paper is a horrible human being.
Yet he was so determined and so smart and so savvy and so unwilling to give up that you couldn't help but root for him, even if he did the wrong thing one time after another.
It's a really good film.
It's not going to win, sadly, but I agree.
I mean, and it kind of reminded me of Drew, Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, right?
And if you watch Marty Supreme and you watch Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, it's hitting a lot of the same notes about the corrupting nature of trying to seek success in society above your morality.
This one actually has a bizarrely happy ending, which I wasn't sort of expecting.
That at the very end, it's like he achieves his dream and then he becomes a decent person seems to be the implication at the very end.
Yeah, I found it an unearned.
I also just thought it was the same scene for two and a half hours, basically.
I thought it was just very repetitive.
You know, the guy's a great actor.
He's actually a terrific actor.
I want to put in a vote for Anaconda with Jack Black.
I know, this is hilarious.
I got to tell you, I came home and I watched that.
I was sitting around with channels.
I was in stitches.
That movie is funny.
It's so dumb that I thought, was that me?
Am I like that?
So I wrote to a pal in England who's a very, very sophisticated literary guy, writer, excellent critic of thought.
And he wrote me back and said, I just watched it at your recommendation.
That's a really funny movie.
I just think that Jack Black should win best actor.
I think the snake should win best snake.
It's just, if you have a chance to watch it with a couple of drinks, especially, it is a hilarious movie.
That's the movie I like this year.
Did you watch the Weinstein was the best snake movie?
I did a while.
But then the television.
I did not watch a single movie this year, and now I actually am excited to watch Anaconda.
That's the only one.
I thought about it.
I was on a flight, and I was going to watch one of the movies that's nominated, and I thought, will I do it?
At least here I have, you know, I got endless booze coming from the cabin.
I said, no, I just don't want to.
Whatever the one about how we're all white supremacist, the one battle after another.
One battle after another.
I almost.
Or center on, actually.
Yeah, no, I heard it was a good movie, which would have made me angrier, I think, actually, that this kind of good artistry was going to the service of this bad thing.
But no, I guess now I'll watch Anaconda.
I did read in the coverage, and Christian, maybe you can tell me if it's true or not.
I heard that in terms of the Oscars show, there aren't really a lot of stars hosting the show or doing the, it's kind of a weak dais, is that right?
You know, it's been weak in the past few years.
You think you want the Nicholsons and the Denzels of the world to be there, the true stars, but then they're going to have Jimmy Kimmel on stage as a presenter.
So just imagine what that's going to be.
Standing ovation that could go on for maybe even three plus hours itself.
Yeah, you know, I almost wonder why the big, big stars avoid the night.
And that maybe could be telling in and of itself.
Yeah, who's going to tell us how to vote if the big stars are?
I mean, that's right.
Honestly, when I look at the slate of films this year, there were some where, when I read the log line, I was like, I feel like this could be interesting.
And then it just really was disappointing.
The biggest one that was like that for me was Hamnett.
I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff.
And so the fact that I found Hamnett intensely irritating and self-congratulatory was annoying to me because, again, when it comes to pretentious art that references literature I love, I'm all in for that, baby.
That's my jam.
And the fact that Chloe Zhao somehow turned that into a bizarre piece about witchcraft in the woods, that was very strange to me.
So, you know, it's unfortunate.
Hopefully we'll have some better movies to look at next year.
Okay, so let's say that you're in your office, Paul Christian.
Which one is the upset pick?
You're looking at these Cal She markets.
You're seeing Michael B. Jordan for best actor.
You're seeing, I believe, who's going to win best actress this year?
I think this one is Jesse Buckley.
Yeah.
Where's the upset pick on the board if you're looking to make a little quick buck over the weekend?
Oh, gosh.
You know, I think the best supporting characteries are often the most unusual.
You know, Marissa Tomei back in the day, Amira Seravino winning as well.
But this one, Amy Madigan, seems like a lock for weapons because it was a really good horror film, a smart, different kind of horror.
And she's been around forever and she's given good performances and she's done all the right things.
So I don't see an upset there.
The best actor, gosh, are they going to give it to Sean Penn?
It was the most overacting I've ever seen.
So it's ridiculous.
I don't know.
By the way, of all the categories, that's the one that pisses me off the most.
Because Sean Penn is actually good in some things, but he is awful in this, right?
In Mystic River, he's terrific.
In this, he can be a great actor.
He's so bad in this movie.
Like, truly bad in this film.
He played the part as it was written.
I mean, I don't know.
I understand.
I mean, maybe there wasn't anything for him to do.
That's a fair critique, but it is frustrating.
Del Raylindo for sinners and best supporting.
He's been a good, sturdy character actor for ages, and it's a fine performance.
And, you know, there is a sentimentality built into the Oscars where an older star deserves his or her time.
So I think if you maybe an upset, that might be it.
Here's my upset pick.
My upset pick is one battle after another wins best picture, but Ryan Kugler wins best director.
Yeah.
That's my upset pick.
Because, I mean, and frankly, I kind of would agree with that.
This is not even like the top five of Paul Thomas Anderson movies.
And so him winning for this feels like a lifetime achievement award more than like an actual reference to the nature of this film, which is not one of his better ones.
Well, you know, unless you have anything more to say about the Oscars, I got nothing.
I'm all out.
I've emptied the clip over here.
Really bad films, really bad lineup, I think.
Can I just make one more point about Tucker?
No, no matter.
We don't have time.
Wait, who are we talking about?
One quick thought, if I may add, you know, the BAFTA awards in Britain a few weeks ago, there was that N-word that was uttered by the person with Tourette's.
That scandal, that non-scandal, has bled into the Oscar season to the point where maybe because an all-black cast like Sinners may have some momentum all of a sudden based on that sort of sympathy, that virtue signal, that's insane in so many levels.
And the fact that everyone is treating this poor fellow as a monster when it's his condition, it's just terribly sad.
I'm looking forward to the Tourette's outburst when somebody says the one thing you're not allowed to say in Hollywood.
I voted for Trump.
And everyone just melts down.
BAFTA Scandal Bleeds Into Oscars00:00:49
It goes crazy in there.
The team of the knives.
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