What Happened To Australia? w/ John Anderson | PBD Podcast | Ep. 182
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PBD Podcast Episode 182. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by John Anderson and Adam Sosnick.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
0:00 - Start
9:59 - John Anderson on the Australian police state
19:22 - Is the USA the best country in the world?
47:15 - Should the US be sending money to Ukraine?
1:27:26 - Reaction to Joe Biden’s 'Soul of the Nation' speech
1:40:02 - What people should know if they are going to run for office
1:45:00 - Reaction to 70,000 People protesting in Prague because of soaring energy prices
Yeah, why would you bet on Goliath when we got Bet David?
Valuetainment, giving value is contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hate.
I become the man's used to do.
Right, right.
Folks, we have a special podcast here for you.
We have the former deputy prime minister of Australia, which is a deputy prime minister is a vice president to us, right?
Would that be the equivalent of a vice president in the U.S.?
It would indeed.
It would indeed, yeah.
So we appreciate you for coming out.
Obviously, been following your commentaries, specifically last two years with what's been happening during COVID and seeing how Australia, we always looked at Australia as a free nation.
You know, you're thinking Australia.
And all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute.
Am I watching this from a movie?
Is this in a movie or is this real?
You know, some of the stuff wasn't even believable.
You thought it was fake.
But then you're talking to some relatives in Australia because I'm a Syrian.
They're like, no, this is happening in a certain region of Australia, but not all of it.
So it's very interesting.
So for folks who are in today, you know, and you don't know a lot about what's happened with Australian politics, we're looking forward to taking a deep dive into that today.
We got a lot of different topics we'll get into.
Obviously, I want to hear your thoughts on one of the greatest speeches ever given the last few days, which President Joe Biden.
I don't know if you had a chance to watch that speech.
Greatest is one word for it.
Yeah, I mean, his wife thought it was the greatest speech of all time anybody's ever given.
But it's, you know, his wife has to think that, right?
That's a very...
It's a loyal wife.
It's a loyal...
You got to give her credit.
I got to tell you, to me, it was a deeply, deeply, deeply troubling speech.
Well, I want to hear why you think that.
I want to hear why you think that.
We'll get into that.
And then the rallies, obviously, things are getting close to what's going on with, you know, midterms coming up this year.
We got some weird events taking place.
I want to know your thoughts on police state, FBI's involvement.
You know, when you were there from 1995, I want to say to 2005, 1999 to 05, if I'm not mistaken, when you were the deputy prime minister, the years you were there, what it was like, how much it's changed, how much the world politics has changed, whose allies are Australia's allies today.
What are some thoughts you have on the future of where politics is going?
So if you just tuned in with us, you know, and you were at the vault the last couple of days, four days, a couple thousand people.
We had an incredible party at the house till God knows what time.
You guys, we didn't get done until 3.30 for John's 40th birthday.
It's true.
Shout out to Jesus.
Kevin Connolly, Chas Palmer.
We had a great time.
Hiya Saki.
It was a great event.
But today, we're back at the podcast.
On Labor Day.
On Labor Day.
I know that you expect us to be gone.
On Labor Day.
And by the way, and then we'll talk later on as well that, you know, John is now running a podcast as well.
What an interesting thing.
First, Dave Rubinstein, who's a billionaire, decides to start his own podcast.
A deputy prime minister of Australia decides to start.
It's such a different.
Well, Barack Obama had a podcast.
What I'm saying is we're living such, it's so great to be able to hear from, learn from folks like this.
So, John, once again, thanks for coming on.
If you don't mind taking a quick minute and just giving us your background of what you were doing prior to being a deputy prime minister to becoming a deputy prime minister and where you are today.
Well, look, thanks for being here.
Really appreciate it.
I'm a great admirer of America.
I worry about your divisions.
We need you.
The rest of the world needs you.
We really need you.
That's the first thing I'd say.
I grew up on a farm, northwest New South Wales.
I'm Scottish extraction.
Have always been a farmer.
My son and daughter-in-law now run our farm business.
I'm there sometimes, mightn't look like it today in a suit, but I drive the wheat trucks and I repair things and try and keep the background going.
I was educated in Sydney, Master of Arts in History.
Was asked to go into politics, didn't go looking for it.
Thought this is crazy, but people said, you think you've got something to offer, which is very kind of them.
I ended up in it.
I had just...
How did that happen, by the way?
Because this last week, I'm asking people to go into politics.
Who asked you that persuade you to consider actually going into politics?
How did that happen?
Two retiring federal members of parliament, congressmen in your language, at the age of 27.
It was pretty precocious of me.
Wow.
And I got in there when I was about 31, I think, and then rose through the ranks, became Deputy Prime Minister.
It's a coalition in Australia on what you would call loosely the Republican side.
You've got the Liberal Party, but it doesn't mean Liberal in American terms.
Got it.
It means sort of classic Conservative stroke true liberalism with a capital L and the National Party, which I led.
And when they're in coalition and in government, the National Party's leader becomes the Deputy Prime Minister.
So I had 10 years as a cabinet minister.
I was Deputy Prime Minister for six years.
I was there at a pivotal moment when we realised democracy hadn't won out.
That was 9-11.
Our Prime Minister was in Washington.
He's only a mile from where the plane went into the Pentagon.
I was acting Prime Minister back in Australia.
That's part of my job.
I thought, though, in 2007, there was an election in Australia.
I thought, I've done my bit.
I've got a family.
I've got other interests.
I'll make way for someone else.
I don't want to be a career politician, addicted to it for life, because I don't think that's a good thing.
Serve and get out.
That was the Washingtonian model, I think.
Don't hang about.
Past your use by don't.
And there it is.
Married, four kids, five grandchildren.
Married, four kids, five grandchildren.
So if you don't mind going back to the 27 years old when somebody comes up to you and says, I think you got to run.
What was the, they said, I think you got to run because dot, dot, dot.
Is it because the country needs a leader like you?
Is it because the way you process issues?
Is it because you could have a career in it?
Is it because you can make an impact?
What was that conversation like?
Well, it originated with me attending a rally that he was speaking at where he made three points that I disagreed with.
And so I stood up very politely and said, I want to take you to task on all of those three issues.
I don't think you'll keep my generation loyal to the party with what are outdated attitudes on issues that don't matter a lot.
And I did it in a reasonably humorous way.
And instead of holding it against me, he said, I think you've got something to offer.
Interesting.
I want to retire and I want you to run in my place.
And my jaw hit the ground.
I was farming.
I'd finished university.
I was home farming, working with my dad.
And what would be very familiar to a lot of Americans, you know, farming operations, very big family farm, but not a corporate style thing, not that big.
In those days, a lot of American equipment, all the same techniques, same crops.
And I was enjoying that.
But did have a sort of burning sense that if you want to stand on the sidelines and criticise the way the generals are running the war, you've got to at least be prepared to enlist as a private.
So I thought, all right, very wise man.
That's a good point.
Powerful point.
The man in the arena.
Yeah, it's a powerful point.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Yes.
So I thought I better have a go, otherwise I'm a bit of a hypocrite.
And you see the beauty of democracy is right from day one, you put yourself in the hands of others, so they make the judgment.
I say, look, this is what I believe in.
This is what I pursue.
You decide whether you want to go with me or not.
And for a long time, they did.
It still amazes me a bit.
Not sure I would have gone with me all the time, but others were kind enough to support me.
What an approach to take.
Here's what I stand for.
Do you like it?
Great.
If you don't totally get it, we move on and go vote somebody else instead of myself.
So, Australia, for most of the listeners, we have a 5% of our audience is from Australia that we have.
Obviously, it's in the US, but we have a good-sized listenership from Australia as well.
For those that don't know, historically, what has politics been for Australia and how much has it changed recently, if it has?
Well, Australia, of course, same size as the continental USA, but only 26 million people, clustered mainly on the eastern seaboard.
It arose out of, of course, the Declaration of Independence of America in an obscure way.
The Brits, ostensibly looking for somewhere else to put their convex, but also looking to recognise they'd lost the duel and didn't want other European countries to settle Australia, so they settled shortly after your War of Independence.
And it was given self-governance quite early.
The English were quite enlightened about that.
We might complain about them, but they weren't bad, actually, as these things go.
And Australia became, it's a federation like America.
Not as many states, states and territories, but they were made a nation by an act of the British Parliament, peacefully, cooperatively in 1900.
With a monarch or with a democracy at the time?
Yeah, the Queen is still the monarch.
It's not a republic.
But we call it a Washminster because our House of Representatives is modelled on the English House of Commons.
The Senate is precisely modelled on your Senate.
The only trouble is that our Senate really should be more of a House of Review and of wisdom and of elders, in my view, people who've had real life experience.
It's become just a creature of the parties.
So the last two years, so if we can, let's just get right into it.
What happened the last two years?
You know, we were watching some things that you can't go to work, you have to stay at house, you can't even get out.
If you do get out, people, half the stuff didn't even make any sense.
Like I was saying earlier, it was like we're watching a movie, a horror movie.
You know, like what was that one movie where you can only get out a certain time and people can go out and kill?
Is it purge?
What's that one movie where it's purge, right?
Yeah.
So what happened?
What got to this point?
Is that how Australia would have typically chosen to handle a crisis like COVID, a pandemic like COVID?
Or did politics heavily get involved in the last couple of years?
It's a really good question.
I've done a lot of thinking about it.
Jordan Peterson asked me on his show the same question.
And I sort of reverted to form a little bit, I suppose, and sort of thought the training when we're in politics is be careful what you say about your own country outside it.
And I wasn't quite tough enough.
The reality in Australia was, as I mentioned, it's a federation.
What you saw internationally more than anything else was the city of Melbourne in the state of Victoria, which is led by a pretty far-left socialist premier.
Yeah, it was bad.
And it's still going on because they arrested and handcuffed a pregnant lady for doing the wrong thing in a way that doesn't pass what we would call the pub test.
Do you have that expression?
It means that if you were down at the pub and you said, this is what the government's done to a citizen, people would say, that is unacceptable.
The pub test, yeah, like pub test, got it.
Like you're hanging out at the bar, drinking, shooting it with your buddies, and you're like, hey, what are your thoughts on this?
And everyone's like, yeah, I don't know about that, mate.
But here's what troubles me.
I'm going to say it, even though I'm in another country.
I don't know what's happened to some of the, you know, Australians were known for having a bit of a larican spirit, for being resilient, for being tough.
And they, you know, my father was involved in the Second World War, the North African desert, the first battle of any significance where the Nazis took a backfoot step.
It was there, General Rommel, against the English general Montgomery.
My father was fighting with the Australians.
Why do I mention it?
Because Rommel wrote in his book that these soldiers from Australia are the finest product of the British Empire.
There are none others like them.
They were tough.
They had initiative.
They had resilience.
They would fight for freedom, but they expected freedom in return.
And I don't quite know what happened.
I'm going to say that to you.
in the Australian psych, particularly in Melbourne, that's made them give way to an expertocracy that says, we know what's best for you.
And they look like rewarding that father by re-electing him, partly because the opposition is not strong enough.
So I can't give you a full answer, but I can confirm to you, it is concerning.
The biggest state in Australia is New South Wales, where a lot of this idiocy wasn't as bad.
But what it was about Melbourne, equal biggest city, it's a true international city that people were prepared.
It was the most locked down city in the world.
And we now know that the economic and the cultural and social costs were worse than the disease.
I don't think you could really argue that point.
So there was a difference between what was going on in New South Wales.
That's where Sydney is, right?
I was there 10 years ago.
Versus Melbourne, which is just south of that, right?
And Queensland is just above that.
Perth on the left side.
Most of the citizenry is on the right side of the country.
But there was a clear difference between what was going on in Melbourne versus Sydney.
So Melbourne was the centerpiece of the lockdown state, is what you're saying.
It was the lockdown capital of the world.
Wow.
So you would say Melbourne is more like a California or a New York for us.
Yeah.
Okay.
Or maybe even worse than that.
Way worse.
Well, the lockdown capital of the world.
It is worrying.
But don't miss this thing that I'm saying.
What's happening?
because I think it's happening in a lot of Western countries, a lot of citizens...
See, the great American model was, let's get this clear, It's about the individual.
So the individual, that's your core belief, the supremacy of the individual, and their beliefs should shape the culture and values which were downstream of the individual, and government was downstream of the culture.
But we're reversing that.
We're making ourselves creatures of the state.
And there seems to be something creeping in what might be called the progressive left, the postmodernists, the neo-sort of occult Marxist sort of world, where people want bureaucracies and experts and expertocracies, if I can use that word.
That's mangling the English language, isn't it?
I don't think you probably never mangle the English language in America, but there seems to be this desire for others to tell us what to do.
Why, though?
Why is that creating such momentum, Bill?
I think it's fear.
I think, you know, your American founders got this right.
You know, you've got to defend freedom.
If you're not really careful, the people will go, will give up their freedoms for safety.
So you've got to explain what real safety is.
You've got to explain what freedom is, and we're washing it out of our culture.
Sorry to interrupt.
Yeah, again, like, you know.
Okay, so let me ask this question.
Typically in us, like when I lived in Iran, how we looked at U.S., right?
There was a sect that looked at U.S. like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to live there.
Oh, I'm going to walk the streets.
I'm going to run into Iraqi.
I'm going to run into Tony Montana.
I'm going to run into this guy.
I'm going to run into gremlins.
I'm going to run into Ghostbusters.
It's going to be awesome, man, going to America, right?
Like, that was the dream.
You can't wait to come to America.
Run up the gremlins in America.
But then on the flip side of it, you would see some people in the streets, you know, merc bad, hombrico, merc, bad, hombrico, death upon America, death upon America.
So there was a major love, and then the media sold America as the devil.
I mean, it was like the worst thing that ever happened to the world was America.
How dare they let women walk around with, you know, their hair hanging out?
How dare they let women wear shorts and skirts and shortleaf shirts and a little bit of cleavage on how they're look how what they're doing today.
We would never do such a thing.
And people are like confused.
Who do you listen to?
How did or how does Australians, how do they look at America?
What is America to the typical citizen of Australia?
It's a really good question.
I would think in recent times as China has become more and more threatening, and they are, they've got a list of 14 demands out against Australia for supposed sins, none of which in my view were sins at all.
I don't think Australia's changed there.
I think China has.
That has driven Australians to a greater consciousness of the importance of the alliance.
But it's a really important question because I would say as an Australian and an admirer of America that the world needs a policeman and you want it to be a good, friendly, coherent policeman that believes in freedom, which is what America has done since the end of the Second World War.
They've secured the international architecture that's kept my region, you know, the Western Pacific safe, made people prosperous, including the Chinese themselves.
And we're very thankful for that and we want it to continue.
But here's the rub.
I can really deeply understand why some Americans say, hey, you know, we put our blood and our sweat and our tears and our money into this.
And just as you've told us, there are some people who not only not appreciate it, but seem to hate us for it.
And my plea would be to Americans, as Roosevelt in the 30s understood so well that for all of its might, America needs a free world and it's worth defending if we're all to live in a coherent global environment.
And it's under attack at the moment.
We're very conscious of that in Australia.
So the game of dominoes, the first one goes, and I'm not talking about dominoes like you play dominoes.
Shout out to Dylan.
He's beating everybody.
Last night he played again.
He's doing really good.
But domino, where you put one down and one drops and boom, everything goes, right?
My grandkids love playing it.
Yeah.
I mean, as a grown man, I like playing it, but let's keep it between us.
But dominoes, so, you know, in the world today, many times, like in our barracks, we had this one guy that was a bully, okay?
But if nobody was around, he would bully everybody, okay?
But say I was around and another guy was around, it was two of us.
If we were around, he was a good guy.
He wouldn't take advantage of nobody.
He wouldn't bully him because he knew we wouldn't allow that because it was just not cool.
We didn't like that, right?
Okay.
You have that feeling in families.
You know, you have that feeling where a mom feels protected by maybe a son because if the son's not around, the father will take, you know, be abusive or vice versa.
If the father's not around, the kids will take advantage of mom.
You'll see it in pubs when you go to a bar.
You know, there's this typical guy that's drunk going around, but there's the one guy that he's whooped his ass three or four times.
So, you know, don't push your weight around because if you do that to anybody, I'm going to come and clean.
So the fact that that one guy is there who doesn't impose himself, but he's at the bar, he's in the family, he's at the military base.
Nobody takes advantage of others.
That being U.S., how true is that that if U.S. goes down, the rest of the world is going to feel it?
It's absolutely true.
How could it be any other way?
Well, you have to realize you say that from Australia, but a lot of people in America don't see it that way.
You know, a lot of people in America say, oh, you know, we keep saying America is the greatest country in the world.
How do you know America's not the greatest country?
That's becoming a movement in America by the woke and some of the professors.
And by some of the right.
Yeah, and it's just you're sitting here like, well, what is the matter with you?
But from your perspective, somebody that's from Australia, somebody that got to the highest level of politics in Australia, how do you view U.S.?
If U.S. falls, how the world's going to feel it?
Like what would happen?
Say U.S. falls tomorrow.
Who takes advantage of people next?
Well, it could be very ugly indeed.
You've got what might be called an arc of autocracy, as a former Prime Minister of Australia labelled it.
So you've got China, you've got Russia, you've got Iran, you've got North Korea in particular, and then you've got ISIS and so forth.
And they loathe the idea of Western freedom.
Is Western freedom worth standing up for?
Well, ask the people who are so keen to get to America.
They're everywhere.
The people who want to get into Australia, the people who are trying to get into Europe and Britain.
Why do they want to do it?
Because they're lands of opportunity.
They're lands where you don't feel that the police are going to knock on your door at 3 o'clock in the morning and drag you away on trumped-up charges and take you to a Uyghur prisoner, a concentration camp.
These things really matter.
And of course, what's happened is that whilst we've been so comfortable after the Second World War in our Western cultures, I mean, they've been good years.
I'm a mid-baby boomer.
Boy, did I pick my parents well.
They lived in Australia.
It was a free country, a land of opportunity.
Oh, just too young to miss Vietnam.
I've had none of that.
So while I've been feeling fat and lazy and comfortable, I hope I haven't been too bad on the front, but you know what I mean.
You've had people who loathe the Western way of life, not just externally, but within our own cultures.
You know, the march of the left through the institutions, the cultural Marxism or neo-Marxism, I don't see why we should shy away from using that term because they don't.
Saying, well, why aren't the working classes rising up?
We need more rushes.
They're not doing it.
It must be the strength of the institutions in the West, the families, political systems, the community involvement, the churches, the courts.
So let's undermine their validity.
And you see it today in the destaturing movement.
The destaturing movement, when you stop and think about it, looks like an attack on the sins of the past.
It's much more than that.
The way it plays out in our kids' minds is exactly as it's meant to.
You're the inheritors of such a nightmarish culture, as Frank Farudi from England puts it, that it's not worth defending.
And maybe those guys have sees who want to bring it down are right.
And that would be my plea.
We need to wake up to this, what we've got.
It's not perfect.
But this is the best way to resolve our differences.
And when we need to change, let's do it through the political system where we can manage our disagreements, which is what worries me so much about your president's recent speech and the former president's response to it.
So you're concerned also about the former's response to it.
So please unpack that.
First go with Biden and then go to Trump.
I've been in politics.
I know the game.
And in your case, it's a slightly different Australia because we have compulsory voting.
But I reckon, can I be blunt, as an Australian, I don't want to insult your country or your country people.
But what it looked like to me, let me put it that way, and someone can push back if I'm wrong or if I'm being insulting, was that your president, with poll backing, touched the lines that he thought might bring his voter base out.
But in so doing, he really took a slash at all those people who've already been described as irredeemables and as deplorables.
Now, hang on, that's tens of millions of Americans.
They're not all irredeemable and deplorable people.
A lot of them are the people, we just talked about COVID, who grew the food and who took it to market and who processed it and brought it to your food, your door, risking their own health.
They were the muscle, if you like, that kept the place going that we forget about.
The commander-in-chief's job should be to be a unifier, to reach out to lead, to say if you're dissatisfied with our system, if you're unhappy with it, sit down and talk to me and explain why.
And we'll try and understand our common humanity so we can pull together again and rebuild a coherent society.
That's why it worried me so much.
And then, of course, it invites an incredible response, insane, what have you.
So what message does this send to our kids about the way that you relate to one another when you've got a difference?
What does it say about what real leadership is?
You know, Henry Ford II from this country, the car-making family, once gave a definition of leadership.
You know, you've got to have a vision.
One.
You've got to be able to explain it to others so they know what the vision is.
Two.
Thirdly, you've got to have about yourself the personal qualities to make them want to work with you to make that vision real.
I reckon that's a pretty good definition.
Well, what is the vision?
And how are you explaining it?
And is it inspiring people to work with you to achieve it, or is it inspiring division and loathing of anyone you disagree with?
Well, who's the last guy here that unified anyways?
Who's the last president that was a unified that brought both parties together?
That's probably a better question for Americans.
I admire many of your...
I mean, you think of a Truman.
David McCulloch wrote the most – I get a lot of young people that come to me and they say, I'm interested in politics.
And most of them I say, forget it, because you're about yourself.
I don't use that blunt language.
But the really outstanding ones I say, go and read.
One of the books I always recommend is David McCulloch's book on Truman.
Great big thick tone.
He was a guy, he left office with the lowest approval ratings of any president leading office that we know of.
We look back on it now and know that he was one of the great presidents of all times.
I think the thing with approval ratings is it's also what's happening in that moment.
Meaning, after 9-11, George W. Bush's approval ratings were sky high.
I mean, to get to 50% at this point in America, I don't know how it was in Australia, is an anomaly.
50%.
I don't know if Trump ever hit 50%.
I don't think Biden's ever hit 50, much less 51.
I think George W. Bush at one point was in the high 70s.
Unfortunately, it was on the heels of 9-11.
But I mean, I've been saying that for two years now.
I would love for somebody to be at the executive office who can get 60% in this country.
I've been saying that for a few years now.
I just don't know who that is.
But that means, Adam, you've got to drag people over from the other side.
Correct.
You need to convert people.
You're not slamming me because I have a different view.
You're not slamming me because I voted for Trump because I felt shut out.
Correct.
You're actually reaching out and you're saying, hey, can we have a conversation?
So you're in Australia.
I don't know what's happened here, but one of our better universities has been tracking confidence in the political system and democracy now since 1970.
A staggeringly low number of Australians have confidence that our democracy is working properly.
If you don't trust the system, in fact, it's bad enough not to trust the people in it at any given point in time.
If you no longer trust the institutions, that's really serious.
If you don't even believe in, understand, and trust the principles behind the institutions of freedom, then you really are in trouble.
So trust is critically important.
You don't build trust by calling people names.
That's my perspective.
Can you zoom in a little bit on that?
Can we zoom in a little bit?
Public trust in the government since 19 what?
What year is that?
1960?
1960.
58.58.
So High was who?
Eisenhower?
Yeah.
Kennedy.
And then from there, it's just gone down.
Johnson, that was a good drop-off.
Nixon, massive drop-off.
Ford, flats.
Carter, drop.
Reagan, came up.
As you can see, right at George W. Bush, right at 9-11, right?
Tyler.
No, that's senior.
No.
Oh, you're talking here?
Yeah, right there.
That was the peak moment.
What year was that?
That was 2020, 2011.
2001.
Right after 9-11, Clinton goes up.
And then since George W. Bush drops, Obama drops.
Trump goes up.
Trump's the only guy that goes up for, it's not even a go-up, but he goes up in the last two years.
And then you have Biden is a slight coming down.
And what are the numbers, though?
Because it's hard to hear the CPUs.
25%.
20% of the time.
When's the last time it was even near 50%?
Bush?
George W. Bush.
Yeah.
And what was that?
2000, 2001?
Okay, that's on the heels of the 19th.
Here's the thing.
You make a good point.
If you go to that, you know last time it hit 60%?
Who?
Look at the last time it hit 6%.
That's 60% in 01, right?
9-11.
Prior to that, the last time it hit 60% was 1970, Nixon.
Right.
That's insane.
It proves your point.
But when's the last time that this happened?
So if you look at the drop-off, look at Clinton, how he was, right?
Clinton went up.
So essentially, Clinton would...
This is after the midterms.
This is after Newt Gingrich's compact with America.
This was after the Republicans took back Congress, the House and the Senate.
This was not at the beginning of Clinton's term.
This is after he technically reached across the aisle and got the change of party in the House and the Senate.
Well, Gingrich was man of the year, what, 94?
I thought Time magazine man of the year, he was 94.
So that goes back in the early stages because Gingrich, economy-wise, he's the guy.
I mean, he brought the economy to where it was at.
But even still, they were able to work together.
The two of the guys were able to work together.
So Gingrich was one of those guys that is sort of responsible for how divisive politics is now.
When he was going after Clinton.
The part that I would like going back to the conversation we're having to say, we need a vision, then you sell it, then, hey, get people to buy in.
Okay.
But to be a unified, like in UFC, like this is almost unwanted if this is the playbook that everybody has to use.
Or it's been like this the entire time.
In UFC, okay.
Usman may be a great fighter.
He's not a good promoter.
Okay.
You know, you got these guys that are great fighters who are the best at what they do, but they're terrible at promoting, right?
Connor maybe wasn't the best, incredible promoter, right?
So, you know, Mayweather was a great fighter and he was a great promoter.
Guess what?
He got paid the most in the history of boxing, right?
Because you know how to do most.
Are we at a phase where it's all about show and less about politics?
Is this more showmanship?
Is this more about just winning your base and maybe converting a few independents and you're going to get elected?
Is that what it's become?
Like, do people, do Americans care less about politics and they care more about who the enemy is and who can scare better and who can, you know, sell the dream better?
I wonder, because how much do people actually sit there and say, what policy is the best policy today?
Or is it the fact that the guys don't know how to sell the best policies?
I don't know.
I'm not in that world.
It's your world.
Well, I'm out of it now.
But, you know, I'm a very keen observer of it.
We've got to be realistic, too.
And so it's not all the politicians' fault, not alone.
We were talking earlier about cultural malaise, about the march of the left undermining our institutions, deliberately trying to destroy the ideas behind.
I mean, you've got this whole, what is it, 16, what's it called?
The new theory about the settlement of America and its origins.
1619.
Yeah, the 1619 project.
And it all seems to me to be an attack on your real history so that young people end up with a very distorted idea or they're a blank sheet and they're very cynical.
I think that's a big worry.
So we've been in our associated state because life's been so good.
We've almost got the idea that we can do away with suffering, we can solve every problem.
Whereas real freedom demands that you're vigilant all the time and you believe in your ideals and you defend them and you try and make certain that government is downstream of culture so that it responds to us.
We don't respond to it.
But the other thing that I would note is that Americans have traditionally always revered at least the office of president.
And that was a very, it shows up in that chart.
And the president was there, even if he didn't vote for that particular president.
He was our president.
He was the president of our republic.
I understand from my history that this has been a very deep thing in Australia.
And in some ways, I think it was Senator Fulbright, pretty legendary figure right around the world, not just in this country.
But he made the point, this is where I think, you know, cheap attacks that are not based in evidence, that are unfair, can do so much damage.
He made a very telling point.
He said that President Roosevelt misled the American people in pursuit of a high ideal.
He was referring to Roosevelt putting a bit of spin on something the Germans are doing.
This is FDR, you're talking about FDR.
Yeah.
But he misled the American people because he was trying to get America into the war.
He believed only America could save the world for freedom.
He misled the American people in pursuit of a noble objective, thereby opening the door for President Johnson to mislead the American people in relation to Vietnam in pursuit of selfish ideals.
And I think that was a pretty interesting point.
He was referring to this sort of, because you can see it in that chart, that reverence that Americans had for the highest office in the land for so many decades.
And look at the culmination of that now for the past few presidents.
You said this is our president, this is our president.
The thing that people have been screaming for the last decade or so is, not my president, not my president.
And that's on the left and the right, whether it's Trump or Biden or even Obama.
Sad reality is, guys, this is the President of the United States.
So my humble plea is, I suppose, somebody from the Anglophile, as we would call it, the Five Eyes countries, the English-speaking democracies, they share all where the Five Eyes refers to the fact that they all share the deepest military intelligence.
So it's America, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
That the plea would be that we need and long for a coherent America for your sakes, because I admire you, that's what I say, but also because the world needs a good cop in very dangerous times.
Your enemies are not your fellow Americans, surely.
They're the people who want to destroy your great experiment in freedom.
Thank you for bringing that up because that was actually going to be my next question is who is Australia's enemy?
Because in America today, I have so many conversations with people on the left and on the right.
And I'm very in the middle.
People on the right will say, and I have one friend in particular, he's probably listening right now.
He's like, the Democrats, the left, that is my enemy.
And there's people, and I'm like, really?
Your fellow American is your memory.
And because you have people calling for civil war these days, out loud.
Okay, and then you have people on the left saying, if you're MAGA, if you're a Trump guy, no way can I stand with you.
You're un-American.
You're attacking democracy.
So this concept of your fellow American being your enemy, when clearly the enemy needs to be focused on all the names you mentioned before, the China, the Russia, the North Korea, the Iran, all these guys.
How do Australians process it?
Who's your enemy?
We've got the same problem.
We've had a recent federal election where, you know, my enemy was the other guy politically.
No, hang on.
It doesn't matter if you're in Australia.
It doesn't matter what gender you are, what pronoun you put in front of your name, what state you come from, the colour of your skin, whether you're wealthy or rich.
Actually, you're firstly an Australian and you've got a joint interest in keeping the place, if you like, safe for democracy, where there's prosperity, there's opportunity for your kids, where you're not going to be hauled off in the middle of the night.
There's no fellow Australian, serious Australian, that wants to do that to you.
I mean, obviously, I think there are direct parallels here with your society.
But there are people who are amassing massive military capacity around the world who would do anything to take those things from you.
They don't care about your internal wars.
We've got a brilliant fellow in Australia, and I wish I could remember more detail, but his name's Tim Dixon.
He worked for a former prime minister on the other side to me.
And he's been working with a group of people, and they've been studying relationships around the world.
And he said to me that their research indicates that in this country, you can have a bunch of wealthy Republicans and a bunch of well-to-do Democrats.
Mind you, most of the money seems to be on the Democrat side, these sides, particularly with the new tech billionaires and things.
But the antipathy is of a similar level to that that exists in the Gaza Strip in the Middle East.
You know, the antipathy towards their fellow Americans have a different political persuasion is so deep that it's of that level.
But by contrast, you said you could go out into the Midwest and find a Republican farm boy and a Democrat farm boy, and they get along fine, just like they would have in the old days.
And they josh about their differences.
They might even have a fierce argument about them, but they don't reduce it to personal attacks and hatred.
Correct.
And I think that's the problem in America today, is that you're taking ideology or philosophies and making it personal.
I hate you because you support so-and-so.
It's like, can we get back to the point where we're debating ideas, not personalities?
And I think that's a problem in America today.
But wait a minute.
Fine.
You're saying that.
But at the same time, we know which ideas do better.
But the better ideas are now winning.
That depends on which ideas you're referring to.
Okay, so go for it.
So go through politics.
Go through issues.
Be specific.
Be specific.
What do you want to go with?
What does she want to go with?
You want to go up taxes?
Can I throw one in from a credit?
Go forward.
Here's a blunt reality.
When it comes to budget management and the proper management of the economy is a highly moral thing because it directly influences opportunities, your capacity to help those who are not doing well, your freedoms.
Everything depends on a strong economy.
And I'll assert it.
I can't think of a team of non-conservatives who have ever run the budget terribly well.
Well, in America, I think it's the exact opposite.
It's your point.
Well, if you want to debate ideas, how did trickle-down economics work under Reagan?
From what I recall, not well.
I could be wrong.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
But the last time that we balanced the budget was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
And, you know, the famous James Carville quote is, tell me what you didn't like about Clinton, the peace or the prosperity.
Whose policies were they?
Those are Bill Clinton's policies.
Moderate Democrats.
But no, who was handling, who was handling the economy at that time?
You're saying he did it all by himself without the help of Newt and others?
I'm not saying, but, well, if you want to start going down the line of who was in charge, we can go that route.
But at the end of the day, doesn't the job fall on the president?
And you're saying Reagan's politics didn't work?
I'm saying trickle-down economics didn't work.
What part of trickle-down didn't work?
Just because people say that doesn't mean that's true, right?
So when you say trickle-down didn't work, explain.
Like, say that, but give us a little bit more depth in it.
Well, the whole thing on trickle-down economics is the fact that it's...
It's what?
The concept essentially has been lambasted since that it did not work.
But no, no.
But who said that?
I'm asking you.
Is this your opinion or is this what others are saying?
Well, look at his favorability ratings.
They tumbled towards the end of his presidency.
I'm asking you a question logically.
Explain to me why trickle-down economics.
I was seven years old at the time, so I can't go into in-depth about Ronald Reagan.
But then that's the problem then.
Then the problem is we keep repeating what we're being told without questioning what we're being told and doing, we're being a little lazy.
Okay, so let's go to the Trump tax cuts.
Let's talk recent memory then.
Okay.
Okay.
The problem with Republicans today is that they stood for the party of low taxes, lower the deficit, balance the budget.
Here comes Trump.
We've added trillions onto the deficit because of Trump.
Yes, there were some tax cuts.
They favored the wealthy.
That's great.
I'm not in favor.
I'm not sure the whole story.
I'm not in favor of more taxes, but it's not like that worked out well for the balanced budget.
Like, for example, what's this lady's name?
Jean-Pierre, what's her last name?
Crane.
Crime Jean-Pierre.
She's like, yeah, let's look at what the prior administration did.
The prior administration locked down kids from going to school.
She's saying this with a straight face yesterday.
I'm listening to him.
I'm like, wait, wait, wait.
Who locked down?
Who locked down kids from going to school?
What the hell are you talking about?
And then you state-ish.
But wait a minute.
And then you have Biden gets up and Biden says, we don't believe in defunding the police.
How can Republicans not protect the police and the FBI?
What are you talking about?
Year and a half ago, you're talking about defunding the police may be a good idea.
So it's so much gaslighting that people are just going, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is.
The $200 billion, what do you call it, a program that they came out with for the kids, the rescue plan that they came out with, $200 billion.
Yeah, $200 billion.
Fantastic rescue plan.
That's what we did.
We're trying to help these kids.
Only 12% was spent.
There's the other $170 billion, $180 billion is sitting in the account doing nothing.
Only 12% was like, you really care about this stuff?
So if you go back and think basic principles, basic principles, policies, taxes, if we keep just repeating what other people say, trickle-down economics didn't work, and then we say, yeah, trickle-down economics didn't work.
Tell me why it didn't work.
Well, tell me why it worked.
No, no, since you brought it up, you got to defend yourself.
I don't need to.
You made the argument.
I didn't bring up trickle-down economics.
You brought it up.
So tell me, defend why it didn't work.
Tell us.
Listen, I'm not going to start defending or putting it.
Okay, how about this?
Would you agree that in the nomenclature out there, trickle-down economics didn't work?
No, that's something that people agree.
I disagree.
I disagree with you.
I feel like that is the thing that people talk about.
But I can give my argument.
You need to give your argument.
Okay, then I'll admit that I don't have a nuanced approach to this other than the fact that I know that it quote unquote didn't work.
Like, for example, this might be a controversial topic.
I wasn't around during civil rights.
I wasn't around during slavery.
But I'm going to go on the record that that stuff didn't work well.
I didn't have to be there in order to describe it.
A couple of observations from the other side of the pond about the Reagan years.
It came in after Carter when the American economy was on his knees.
By the time he left, the American economy was much stronger.
More significantly, what was the slogan?
It's morning in America again.
You know, you had the collapse of communism.
The wall came down.
Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall and the wall came down.
And actually, that lies in some ways at the part of the problem.
I think we went to sleep.
We thought democracy's won out, you know, and democracy seemed to be on the march.
So I would say that there's a plus side there.
And in relation to Trump, pre-COVID, it's worth noting.
But that's not economics.
It is.
It is part of it, but it's socioeconomics.
No, Hang on.
I would argue that the sheer strength of the American economy, which the Russians couldn't match, was the undoing of that autocratic regime and its collapse.
It was the strength of this economy.
That's pretty powerful.
That's a massive blow for freedom.
And in relation to the Trump views, but until COVID started, what you actually saw, because this country, this incredibly wealthy country, every time I come here, I'm reminded of it, you know, their magnificent buildings.
Anyway, I could go on and on.
But you had flatlining real wages.
Living standards had only been rising because people had gone deeper and deeper into debt.
You can chart all that out.
That was starting to reverse.
You had high levels of employment and real wages were starting to rise again in this country.
Now, I don't know where you go post-COVID and in terms of the policies of the current administration.
But to be fair to the Trump era, you could chart all of that out.
You know, more people had jobs and real wages were starting to rise again.
And I think that's a big thing in an age where I'll tell you what really worries me now is the astonishing concentration of wealth in the Western world, but particularly in your country.
Astonishing accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
You've got the tech squillionaires who now have enormous influence over government policy.
While many Americans are saying, hang on, we've gone back to these days of declining living standards, really falling real wages.
We've got the same problem in Australia.
You're not unique.
And that really worries me economically and socially.
And I don't think you can actually separate the two.
Donnet.
That's just a perspective from the other side of the problem.
That's great, but you're making the parallel between Australia and America.
Is basically Australia a mirror of what's going on in the States?
I think it's common to all Western countries.
And I really despair at the lack of focus on repairing budgets.
You know, we could face a serious global food problem, particularly if the Iranian situation is, you know, they're starting to export grain at the moment.
You're saying Ukrainian or Ukrainian.
Okay, Ukrainian.
Because Russia and Ukraine are major wheat traders.
Post-communists.
Ukraine is the number one wheat country exporter in the world, I want to say.
Number five.
Australia's number six.
China, believe it or not, is a very big exporter.
It's funny how the world works out.
But the point is that I don't know how many, the next crop might be a different matter.
They mightn't be able to say.
But we may face a global food security issue of very big proportions.
That will be another international shock.
How a country is going to cope.
I've just been to a conference in Canberra, which I chaired where we were talking about this, because most economies are so deeply indebted.
And no one's talking about putting some shots back in the locker.
No one's talking about budget repair.
No one's grappling meaningfully with saying, you know, we are going to wipe our kids off the face of the earth if we don't do something to get our economies back in order.
And if there's another, there'll be another pandemic.
We haven't got the resources to help with it in the way that we did in the past.
And you Americans, thankfully, are investing heavily in the Ukrainian situation.
You're putting a lot of stuff in there.
You think that's a good thing for us to continually just throw billions at Ukraine?
You can't.
It's inconceivable.
We let the other side walk all over Ukraine.
That will be so dangerous for global stability and peace.
It'll be terrible.
So you are an advocate that America does get involved and even more involved in what's going on in Ukraine?
I don't want to tell you how to do it.
No, but you have an opinion.
But you're putting a lot of resources in, and I admire that determination.
And the West has shown it's still some unity.
That must be sending a clear signal to Beijing.
You know, we do still have some strong beliefs in freedom and democracy and what have you.
But it's costing us.
It's costing a lot.
Then you've got Germany, of course, that's pumping, still pumping because of bad policy, I would say, more money into the Russian economy than it is into assisting the Ukrainians withstand that on.
Why, because it needs its gas?
Yeah.
Well, they've set up a very fine policy.
They were unrealistic.
This is one of the great problems.
Naivety.
We didn't stand up when the Chinese started taking over those islands.
We didn't stand up in the Middle East, red lines, all that stuff.
Oh, they're nice guys.
They'll come to their senses.
Yeah, well, that's what they said about Adolf Hitler.
There's some people who only understand strength and resolution.
And I want to say, I mean, I actually think the Americans, again, have led on this.
They're putting up the bulk of the resorts.
The Brits have been good.
We've done our bit.
We actually really have.
We've stepped up a long way away, but we've tried.
We're putting stuff in there.
Yeah, these things really matter.
I don't know.
I'm not sure I'm fully convinced sending money to Ukraine is a good idea.
And I think maybe they don't have a choice right now that they have to do that.
But I think there was a different way of handling that situation because all it's doing is you're unifying Iran, Ukraine, and Iran, Russia, and China.
And the closer they get and they unify against the U.S., I mean, the U.S. is in trouble if they do that.
A lot of people are in trouble if they do that.
And Ukraine is, you know, he's done a great job, become this heroic figure, but at the same time, not comfortable with all of it.
You're saying Zelensky?
I'm not comfortable with all of it.
I mean, I understand Ben Stiller thinks he's the hero or whatever, but I'm just not comfortable with it.
It's like, hey, this is not enough.
You need to send us more money.
Hey, this is not enough.
I'm just not comfortable with that.
Makes me very uncomfortable with the way he's raising money and asking people to send money.
And then he's doing a photo shoot for.
What was the one that he did a photo shoot with?
Are you saying that it's a sense of entitlement?
Yeah, I'm not comfortable with it.
Because the reality of it is, listen, so, you know, again, this goes back to leadership.
If the right strong personality is there, the other guy doesn't bully.
Goes back to the same exact example I gave 20 minutes ago.
When there's that one person in the family and he dies, people get bullied and taken advantage of in that family.
When there's this one guy at the bar that he just shows up and the place is quiet, no one messes with anybody.
They just have a good time.
And then he leaves, then bullies show up and abuse others.
Yes.
I think nobody in the world is intimidated by Biden.
Nobody is.
And his horrible foreign policies without showing any strength on the way he handled Afghanistan, just opened it up and said, listen, if we're ever going to go after Ukraine, this is the time to do it.
So anyways, we've already talked about that many times.
I'm not convinced the solution.
Look, I'm in the insurance business.
What is the insurance business?
Risk.
No, the insurance business, it is risk, yes.
But the insurance business is about don't buy the product after you have cancer.
Don't buy the product after you had a heart attack.
Don't buy the product.
The best part about insurance is buy it early and keep it.
Insurance companies make money because people cancel their policies.
If you keep your insurance policies, insurance companies don't make money.
So it's more preventative, right?
Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but then you got a bully called Mr. Putin as well.
I understand.
And the bully wouldn't be a bully if America had a leader that knew how to stood up, stand up, and be strong.
The bully only can bully because there's not somebody else that says, hey, knock it off.
So Putin is not in.
Putin doesn't wake up in the morning or going to sleep thinking about Biden.
He doesn't think about that.
And you know how certain people in life, they threaten.
There's certain people you're not worried about their threat?
If Joe Biden right now said, John, say something, I'm going to whoop your ass.
What would you do?
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know what I'm saying?
Like, there is no weight behind his words.
And I don't think we can handle APIs.
You think he went to sleep worrying about Trump?
Putin?
100%.
Yeah, he was unpredictable.
100%.
He's true to China.
He's a million.
So Vladimir Putin may be a bully, but he's a pest.
He's a pest.
He's not a threat.
Xi Jinping is a threat.
And all we're doing right now is throwing resources at Ukraine.
We're running out of, the U.S. Army is running out of ammunition.
Like, we are not going to be able to defend ourselves should we have to against a threat like China.
And it's not like, and Ukraine isn't like we're going out to defend Japan or Taiwan or Hong Kong.
I mean, Ukraine has always been one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
So yes, while Vladimir Putin may be a bully, all we're doing is driving him into the arms of Xi Jinping.
And I think it's worth to think of Vladimir Putin as a Joseph Stalin.
While Joseph Stalin wasn't some hero in the world, we won World War II because of the Russians.
And Oliver Stone pointed this out.
If we didn't have the Red Army to stand up against Germany and how powerful Germany was, we would have never won World War II.
We would have never won this out.
So I think it's not very beneficial for us to be throwing billions and billions and billions of dollars at Ukraine, especially when all we're doing is driving Vladimir Putin into genes arms.
I've got to say to you, I understand what you're driving at.
It is a real problem.
And again, the worst offenders, let's be honest about this, is not actually the Americans in that regard.
NATO, you know, really essentially, as Trump was pointing out, bludging on you guys and not spending enough on defense.
And then it all goes to custard.
Hey, we're the Americans.
We can't live without you.
And, you know, my own country has not been active enough.
We've been spending about 2% of GDP on defence.
We've always wanted to hide under your umbrella.
But to pick up what you're saying, I think there's a fair bit of wisdom in just history's always a great teacher, isn't it?
You think the end of the Second World War, the Allies squeezed the German pip until orange until the pip squeaked, as they put it.
They just nailed them to the floor.
And look at the results.
After the Second World War, I just, I think, you know, if you want to talk global leadership, you want to talk insurance, you want to talk compassion, you want to talk doing the right thing.
Think of what the Americans did with MacArthur in the lead in Japan.
And Japan now is a major force for good in the world, I would argue.
It's a democratic country.
It's cooperative.
It's a great partner and an ally.
You think of what happened in Europe.
This country had a horrendous debt after the Second World War.
They turned around and found another $13 billion for the Marshall Plan.
Europe wouldn't exist.
It was in a worse mess when they introduced the Marshall Plan than it had been at the end of the Second World War.
Economy shocked, kids starving, just an absolute mess.
And the Americans displayed leadership and wisdom.
And maybe a big part of what we need to recognise in the West is that after the Berlin Wall came down, we kind of left them all to it.
So the Russians actually tried democracy for a few years and they couldn't make it work.
Under Boris Yeltsin, yeah.
And where was Europe, where were we all in helping them through that difficult period where they became so cynical, they said, give us back some order.
And democracy collapsed and they embraced Mr. Putin because he gave them back some order.
There was a downside, a lot of serious downsides, but he gave them back some order.
They felt safe in their beds at night again.
But history is a valuable guide.
And one of the reasons I admire your country so much is because, well, you saved Australia during the Second World War.
But you also gave us an architecture afterwards that advanced democracy and made the Western Pacific a prosperous region.
You brought up Japan right there and what they were able to do.
And you obviously were referring to China.
Since you're Australian and we're United States, I think it's a perfect segue into this concept of this quad, this quad alliance between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.
What are your thoughts on this alliance?
I think it's a very good, I think it's a good one.
Lee Kuan Yew, the great statesman from that tiny little Singapore, he warned over 20 years ago what was coming.
And he said, he actually, his perspective was the Chinese may never have to fire a shot.
They just squeeze their economic muscles and everybody will toe in.
But he said, unless nations that are committed to freedom combine together, there'll be no way to hold this juggernaut.
And I think that's right.
Japan has moved a lot.
Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated, I mean, the most extraordinary thing for that to happen in Japan.
Only a few months ago.
I actually knew him.
He was a great and a fine man.
Yeah, we met before we were serious office holders.
And he told me how much he respected Australia because he told me the story that as a young man, he'd not known what Japan had really done in China in the 30s and then right throughout Asia.
They were not told at school.
He said, I went to Australia and I started to understand that we had not behaved as honorably as we're told.
And I started to understand that Australia and the West had behaved very honorably.
And then when I discovered that the famous sub-mariners, midget sub-mariners who were killed in Sydney Harbor in a raid there in 1942 had been given military funerals because the Australian military said, we will set the standard.
You know, they were obeying orders.
They were doing their country's bidding.
We would expect the Japanese to respect our dead service people, men and women.
So we will give them a military funeral.
It was controversial.
And he said, at that point, I came to realize that we had behaved dishonorably.
You had behaved honorably.
He was paying tribute to Western values at that time.
I'm not saying we're perfect.
I don't want to sit here and say we're perfect.
But I just want to say that history shows us at our high points.
We've got things right.
Your point about firing off too many shots now is really worrying because you've got so many trouble spots around the world today.
The British military used to say it needed in empire days, which I know Americans hate as a concept.
And, you know, the Americans were always having a go at Churchill over it.
But the Brits used to say they had to be able to maintain two battles and one major ones and one minor one at any given time.
And that goes to your point.
What could the American military really cope with, even with all their allies on board, if a really serious problem, well, I guess we've got one now, but if others start to think here's our opportunity, we'll go for it now.
That is a real danger, and we truly need statesmen and women to lead us through it.
We really do.
Hey, Pat, that alliance that we're talking about with John here, America, Australia, Japan, India.
My question is about India.
I think population-wise, you said 25 million in Australia.
Yeah.
I think in Japan, it's a little over 100 million, 125 million here in the United States, 300 million.
India, 1.4 billion people.
Right?
I mean, that's, I mean, them and China are neck and neck as far as world population.
And I know you have strong thoughts on where India's role is and how young they are versus China's age.
What do you say about that, Pat?
All I'm hopeful of is the right philosophy winning and advancing.
India is the one country that does not trust China at all and China doesn't like.
It's a pest to China.
But if they're willing to stay that strong against China, the world is a safer place.
If India, their philosophy shifts into what China believes in and they become united, the world is going to be in deep trouble if those two guys unite.
Very problematic.
The fact that these guys stand up to China makes the world a better place.
But that's a completely different conversation.
But it's part of it with this whole quad concept with Australia.
And we now have AUKUS too, where America and Britain have agreed to share nuclear technology and ultimately nuclear submarines with Australia.
I mean, I don't want to go on a limb here, but it seems to be it's the good guys versus the bad guys.
Okay?
The five eyes that you talked about, right?
The UK, Great Britain, United States, Australia, Canada, EU, democracies, everyone.
And then it's China, Russia, Iran, sort of totalitarian states, if you will.
That seems to be.
And then India, I think they're on our team.
Pretty sure.
They're a democracy.
Right.
So at the end of the day, I mean, why would the world allow a China to take over?
Because we self-doubt.
Neil Ferguson makes a point.
I asked him a few years ago in one of my podcasts, what are the three greatest threats to our freedom?
He said, first, Islamic extremism in ascending order.
Islamic extremism, number one.
No, no, three, sorry.
In ascending order.
Okay, gotcha.
Second, misadventure between the superpower and the rising superpower.
Miscalculation.
Well, that's what we're talking about.
US is that we don't believe our history, our values.
We've rejected them.
We've undermined our own confidence in our own model.
And this is the amazing thing.
This is why it's so brilliant to hear your perspectives as somebody who, you know, you see the flaws, you see the weaknesses, but you see the value and the opportunity for us to flourish as human beings.
I can flourish in my own country now, even if the society is becoming less and less coherent and the politics is breaking down.
But if we're not careful, our kids in 20 years' time won't be able to.
Yeah.
So for me, sometimes the kids and grandkids, like when they talk about how many generations does billionaires' wealth last, right?
Three generations later, the money disappears.
Not because the original guy that created it, the founder, he knows how much work it takes to make the money, right?
The guy that made it made it.
Then the kids, they got a glimpse of what daddy or mommy, the price they paid.
So they get the firsthand training.
Here's what dad had to do.
Grandkids have no clue what it took, and great-grandkids have no clue what it took.
You're hoping somebody wants to pass down the legacy and continue it.
And someone has to keep teaching it and not compromise the values and principles.
It's very, very hard to stay disciplined and keep high standards when you're rich and you can buy everything and life can be very easy.
It's a very, very hard to say no to your kids, to say no to things that we don't need to spend money on.
What's the big deal?
It's just a thousand bucks.
What's the big deal?
It's just 500 bucks.
What's the big deal?
It's just 200 bucks.
I think America right now is becoming that, unfortunately.
It's they're no longer standing up to saying no.
Hey, can you send us more things?
American people, no.
Can we spend more money on this?
No.
Can we go?
No.
It's the great, great, great grandkids are now running the country and they don't have a clue what it took to pay the price of building this thing up to where it's at today.
Anyways, that's just my idea.
And then what happens when you got money that you never earned?
You easily give it away.
You don't care.
You give it away to anybody and everybody.
So we're not diligent with the amount of work people did prior to us to get America to where it's at today.
And the arrogance of thinking you'll never fall.
I mean, you know, you've seen stories like that in the military.
You've seen stories like yesterday.
You know, Florida State's playing Louisiana, LSU, right?
24-17, guy catches the ball.
He fumbles it.
Florida State gets it.
They're about to score a touchdown.
They fumble the ball.
LSU comes back.
They throw a touchdown.
They're about to do, what do you call it?
Did you see it or not?
No, I didn't see anything.
So Florida State is up 24-17.
LSU is about to receive the ball.
The guy that receives the pawn, the kickoff or the punt fumbles it.
Florida State gets it on the 10-yard line.
They score a touchdown apparently.
Then there's a flag.
They come back.
They're about to score another touchdown.
The guy fumbles the ball on three-yard line.
LSU gets it back.
They take it ball.
They score a touchdown.
They're about to kick the, what do you call it, the one-point extra point to tie it?
Misses the point.
Game's over.
Zero seconds left on the clock.
Florida State's win 24-23.
The arrogance of thinking we have it because we're this, you know, we don't think it'll happen to America.
The level of paranoia, I don't think it's high.
And the people running it are very reckless with the way they're spending money.
And it should be deeply concerning to a lot of people.
That's my thoughts.
I mean, we're spending money, sending money to everybody, trying to solve everyone's problems.
And we're not teaching, hey, guy, life is hard.
Get a damn job.
But you don't know how hard life is.
Believe me, it's very, very hard.
But it's not one 1,000th of how hard it was in 1776.
It's not 100,000 of how hard it was.
Your heart today is a joke of 200 years ago.
So stop pitching, stop whining, stop feeling sorry for yourself.
And more importantly, the leaders at the top stop.
It's one of the hardest things to do as a leader.
One of the hardest things to do as a leader is to feel bad and guilty for the amount of work somebody else has to do like you did to get to the point where you feel guilty.
You want to help them get it in an easier way.
They got to pay the damn price.
And we're in a place right now where we feel sorry for everybody.
It's a very weak leadership position because you don't have a backbone.
That's not real leadership.
Real leadership is to empower, tell people we believe in you and challenge in them and willing to stand aside, even though they may criticize you, demonize you, and hate you a little bit.
And you're going to say, I'm going to be okay because long term, you're going to be independent.
You're not going to need me long term.
The job of a father isn't to keep the son dependent to the father for his rest of his life.
The job of a father is to keep the kid independent that one day son doesn't need him.
So when the daddy's dead, son says, oh my gosh, my dad raised me well.
We're not thinking about those things today.
We're just thinking about, here's another $200 billion, do whatever you want to do with it with a bunch of games.
And I think it's a very weak leadership and it's concerning.
Well, you're in a unique position to be able to say that, you see.
See, man, I can try and make those points because I've been in public office and I've seen it and I've had the incredible benefit of being able to study history and meet people and talk and discuss and all the rest of it.
But in the end, I've not known the alternative personally.
You have, which is why what you say is so powerful and why you can render such a service, if I may say so, when you say things like that, when you bring this back to reality.
You've seen the option.
You've seen people.
Yesterday, we have a couple of guys at the house two nights ago.
I mean, yes, it's at midnight.
I'm talking to these two Iranians.
I said, tell you a story, I haven't told anybody.
What's that?
I'm living in Plano.
So four years ago, I go to my dad.
I said, I got to talk to you.
I don't want you to tell anything to Jen.
What's that?
I'm going to go to Iran for a week.
You're not going to Iran for a week.
I'm going to Iran for a week.
I'm not telling anybody.
I have to go to Iran.
Why?
I have to go to Iran.
I have to go see Iran, where I was raised.
I want to see it.
I'm yearning for it, right?
And Jam Hospital and all these places.
And he's like, no, you're not going to Iran.
I'm telling you, I'm going to Iran for a week.
I just want to go see this place because I want to take my kids to Iran one day.
I want to go see it first.
And then when these guys are grown-ups, I want to take them to Iran one day.
Anyways, long story short, letters come in.
My sister shows me something and he's able to persuade me not to go.
We're running a company.
It's not fair.
You got kids.
You got wife.
You got companies.
People are relying on it.
Anyways, obviously, I didn't go to Iran for the one week.
I was going to keep it low-key.
And then, boom, I was going to go and come back.
You have no idea how bad I want to go back, Iran, and see what Iran's like.
You know, I want to see what happened there.
Here's a great nation with a rich history that lost it all because of extremism and not paying attention to the value of freedom.
And then in America, which the greatest country in the world, hands down, the greatest country in the world, the idea that accelerated and grew at a pace that no other country in mankind has ever grown.
And here we are apologizing for it.
How weird is that?
When have you ever heard a team win first place and apologize to second place for whooping their asses?
I've never heard of that before.
Have you heard about that?
Like, have you heard Dom Brady saying afterwards, listen, I'm so sorry we beat you.
I'm so sorry our ideas and plays are just better than yours.
I'm so apologetic.
Can you see Michael Jordan going to the Lakers and saying, or going to, you know, the Phoenix Suns, hey, Barkley, I'm so sorry I beat you, man.
Really makes me feel so bad.
No, we're a leader.
This is what we are.
Comes with pressure, comes with a lot of animosity from others because they don't like the fact that they lost.
But at the same time, don't put it in their face.
Be a humble winner.
Be a humble number one and keep the standards high.
We have a standard issue.
And unfortunately, I've said this numerous times.
With high standards today, you're not going to get elected.
The only way to get elected today is with low standards, with today's policies.
To inject the concept of high standards, I believe, into men and women of a nation, you need the support of education.
You need the support of universities.
You need the support of a lot of people to get it to say, you're right.
The way we can resurrect what we once had, we all need to buy into high standards, low excuses, responsibility, reliability, pride in our nation, pride in our last name, pride in the fact that I'm an immigrant.
I came from Iran.
And even though I'm born in Iran, I'm made in America.
I got pride for my blood, but I love the country that gave me this freedom.
That message today resonates with a percentage.
The other percentage sits there and say, you're arrogant.
I can't believe you're saying this.
Again, this doesn't mean feel sorry for me.
This message is not going to sell.
This just means say it anyways.
Don't be afraid if you're losing certain people.
Sell high standards.
We're not selling high standards.
We're selling low standards today.
We're selling feel sorry for me today.
We're selling victimhood today.
100%.
So the only answer to cancel culture is courage culture.
Tell the truth.
Well, I think what you're talking about.
There's a famous phrase, I'll just dumb it down.
It's you got to take the good with the bad.
And the problem was with this, you know, wokeism, leftism, victim mentality is that they want to burn the whole thing down and dismiss all the good that's been done here in America.
Well, they did this and oh, they did that.
And it's not fair.
And it's like, well, where do you want to go, buddy?
Because you're living in this country complaining about this country.
Where would you like to go?
It only costs 500 bucks to get a ticket to go anywhere else.
Go someplace else.
So that is what is so upsetting to me.
It's like you're 100% believer in capitalism, right, Pat?
I'm 100%.
Okay, however, you are willing to say maybe there's some areas that can be fixed, but you're a capitalist.
Fair enough?
I'm in the, I mean, I'm all about incentives drive the right behavior.
Okay.
So whoever controls the incentives will produce the right behavior.
So if the incentives today are controlled by a Biden, they produce the wrong behavior.
That's what I believe in.
Okay, but overall, capitalism, you agree with it, but it's not, what do they say is it's not perfect, but it's the best system we've ever seen.
Everything else is secondary to it, but it's not perfect.
You know what what I would use, though?
It's natural.
Capitalism.
It's 100% natural.
Rather than forced upon you collectivism.
To me, capitalism, when some people apologize for it, and we all say it because somebody else said it, which is what?
It's not perfect, but it's the best thing we got.
Bullshit.
It's natural.
It's you.
We're naturally born capitalists.
We are capitalists.
It doesn't matter what you think about it.
We're capitalists.
Everybody's a capitalist.
Even the socialist is a capitalist.
You know, even the communist is a capitalist.
The communist is so competitive that he wants you to believe his argument is the best.
The only difference between the capitalist and the communist is the communist wants to eliminate a competitor.
The capitalist wants to have a competitor.
He just wants to compete against the competitor to see if he can make it or not.
One is trying to eliminate, the other one wants to compete.
Allow me to see if I can do a better job.
Capitalism doesn't work when bureaucrats and aristocrats show up.
Until then, it's a great system.
What about the socialists who's tweeting about capitalism from their iPhone?
I always find that ironic.
That goes back to the whole concept where even they've sold you that trickle-down didn't work.
So we're going to go back to that?
Of course we are.
They've sold you, a smart guy, that trickle-down doesn't work because they've said the power of affirmation, saying it so many times until smart people like you say maybe they're right.
So trickle-down worked, is what you're saying.
It's not about trickle-down works, man.
Incentives work.
The only difference, you know how I would do it differently?
Here's how I would do it differently.
I would tax those that don't bring value to the economy.
But they don't have any money to be taxed.
It doesn't matter.
I'm taxing you higher.
The more value you should be the other way around.
Commissions paid higher to those that perform higher.
You don't say, hey, wait, what did you do?
You did $200,000 last month, pay my lower pays commission.
What sales organization ever does that?
Hold on.
I do have to say something because you came up with an idea a few months ago that I fully agreed with.
Which is what?
You shouldn't tax anybody that's making less than 50 grand.
I'm totally okay with that part.
I said that part.
But that's different from what you're saying.
No, once you go above that, then we should tax people that produce more or less.
The more you produce, you should pay less taxes.
So that's the antithesis of the progressive tax system.
Yes.
So that's the trickle down that you're saying with that.
But my philosophy is I need a new country to run this philosophy.
It would never work in America.
They would never buy into what I'm saying to you.
Yeah.
In Australia, so ultimately what I'm saying is there's, especially on the left, and you might have even mentioned something on the right.
America, you know, we are not doing it right.
We need to start over.
The 1619 woke ism woke.
These are people who are born and raised in America.
You never hear immigrants who have moved here and have fled other countries saying, America, they're not doing it right.
They're in line to freaking get here.
In Australia, is there that wokeism on the left that's basically saying, you know, everything that happened with Aboriginal people, everything that happened with criminal, like, what's that parallelism?
Well, it's very powerful.
It's common to the Western world.
That's the point.
A lot of it, of course, came out of the left bank and intellectualism in France.
And I noticed President Macron the other day said, we've exported it, we don't want it back, always the fact that the Americans picking up some of these mad ideas.
But it's no different in our country.
I mean, for heaven's sake, there's an attempt in Edinburgh and Scotland at the moment to tear down the statue of Livingston.
Livingston was a Scot who became one of the leading abolitionists fighting the slave trade.
You know why they want to tear his statue down?
Because at the age of 10, he worked in a cotton mill and some of the cotton might have been produced by slave owners.
Therefore, he should be torn down.
Our first question is: what sort of society, to judge him when he was a 10-year-old, had to go out to work to get a bit of bread for, I suppose, for his probably widowed mother or whatever.
What years was this?
1800s?
Yeah.
Okay.
But he was part of a great abolitionist movement in the UK, which was the leading empire of the day.
And inconveniently, it was a bunch of wealthy, white, privileged males, often Christian, who fought slavery.
They're meant to be the cause of all the problem now, white, wealthy, privileged males.
They're the problem.
So all of that stuff is alive and well.
But what I would, I'd go back to a point we made earlier about if capitalism is to work well, because what capitalism does, it captures the genius of however many billions of minds there are making individual decisions about what's in their own best interests.
But it needs to happen in some sort of context of a moral framework.
So government's got to set some rules, you know, and you've got to have ways of capturing people who really do the wrong thing.
So you want a mixed economy.
But the other point is, it comes down a lot to whether your culture is one that's a high trust culture.
And I'll give you a very simple example.
In Australia, we had the Australian Mutual Providence Society, you know, financial institution.
It started out as, its name implies, a Providence Society for the less well-off, insurance for widows, you know, if they lost their husbands so they could feed their children and so forth.
It grew into one of our major financial institutions.
Two or three years ago, we had a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the banking and financial sector.
It emerged that a lot of these people, these banks, couldn't be trusted.
They hadn't been behaving the way people thought they should have.
It was a bit overpaid.
There was still a lot of ethical behavior.
I'd want to say that to anyone listening.
There were many bankers that did the right thing.
But the AMP came out of it utterly disgraced.
It went from Now, a leading historian said, the most trusted institution in Australia after the churches when it was set up in the 1840s, the one where you couldn't put your buck and trust that it was safe, and the Australian people completely lost confidence in it.
And it was all about its charter, the people who set it up, the fact that they were committed to creating wealth, not just for their own comfort, but for the benefit of others.
And it was seen to be such.
It was trusted.
So it comes back.
It's not just trust in our politicians.
You need it in your business sector.
You need it in your courts.
You need it in your education system.
When trust breaks down, freedom disappears.
Because, you know, the three of us are here, four of us here in this room.
As we met, one of the questions in our minds was, can I trust this person?
If we trust each other, we can have a cooperative agreement and discussion.
If we don't, we're looking to think, gee, I need some security.
I'm going to back off.
Freedom's less important than security if trust breaks down.
You see where I'm going?
Yeah.
So once you decry the need to trust, once you breed up cynicism, once you breed up suspicion of the other person, it goes back to, I hope you'll forgive me for saying this as somebody from the other side of the world, but I'm so distressed by the tone and the words of the attack that your president launched that can only be seen as an attack on so many millions of his fellow Americans.
I just thought it was about Biden again.
Yeah, this is a famous speech you're all talking about here now, where we just he hardened down, presumably on poll numbers, designed to get Democrat voters out.
We don't do that in Australia because voting is compulsory.
If it wasn't, we'd have the same problem as you.
Half people wouldn't turn up to vote and even less than half of young people are so.
It's compulsory, meaning mandatory.
Yeah, in Australia it is.
You have to vote.
You have to vote.
If you're 18 or older.
Yep, you do.
Have to.
You have to.
And what are you fined if you don't vote?
Yeah, you are.
Not heavily, but you are fined.
Wow.
You have to register and you have to vote.
And you think that is a good thing?
It's a mixed thing.
The Prime Minister I served with doesn't believe in it.
I used not to.
I think I do now because I think the horrors of trying to get people out to vote, the bribery, the corruption, no, I can't say bribery, corruption, but the extraordinary things that happen to try and get your base out, to try and appeal to your base rather than to the national interest.
You know, what's good for the country.
I think compulsory, the way we have it, is probably the lesser of the problematic approaches.
I wouldn't die in a ditch over it, but I think on balance I come out of it.
I know you have strong feelings on this compulsory voting.
I know you do.
Because your idea on voting was actually very unique.
I've never heard anybody come up with the idea that you had.
You know what I'm talking about, right?
I think you've got to earn the right to vote.
Right.
Same way you live in a house and kids don't get a chance to vote for what they're doing until they're contributing to the house.
If you're contributing to the house, you earn the right to vote.
If you're contributing to society, you've got to earn the right to vote.
I'm more comfortable with a 14-year-old kid who's paid $3,000 in taxes to have the right to vote than the 25-year-old kid who's never paid a nickel in taxes.
He should not vote.
So it shouldn't be based on age.
It should be based on who's contributed to society.
My system of, again, it's not a popular, people would lose their minds if I pitch my.
Well, I'm voting.
I'm sure there's people listening that may be like, Pat, you're out of control.
It's okay.
I'm not sitting here trying to make friends.
I didn't create this podcast to say I need five more friends in my life.
I created this podcast to see if you enjoyed, you disagree with it.
Tell me you totally have no clue what you're talking about.
Fine, I'll receive it.
Or, you know, there's a point to it.
But, you know, you said something when you were telling the whole history of what they're trying to do with that man who worked at a cotton.
Livingston and Livingston of Africa.
Yeah, Livingston of Africa.
He cared about, he really cared about setting Africans free.
Who would he be in America like if you were to make a comparison to someone in our history?
Who would that be in America?
Oh, I don't know the figures because they were there.
They're decried now.
But who would have been a great American, Harriet Beecher Stowe?
I don't know.
That's a bit of a wild pluck.
But somebody who really went out against the grain of the day and said, look, these are people of equal worth and dignity to us.
Lincoln.
A Lincoln without a president.
Living.
Yeah, yeah.
Of that ilk.
I got you.
And he worked with William Wilberforce, who was my political hero.
William Wilberforce inherited a vast fortune.
He went into parliament at the age of 21.
He was seen as a future prime minister in Britain, which in those days was the leading empire in the world.
And he underwent this sort of extraordinary sort of Christian opening of his eyes, and he decided that slavery was evil.
And he started to actually campaign on the basis.
Their slogan was, am I not a man and a brother?
And Wedgwood Pottery.
You've heard of Wedgwood Pottery?
First, it's a famous English pottery company, Josiah Wedgwood.
He struck the first political pamphlet, if you like, a whole series of actual pieces of pottery, dishes and what have you.
And they had this incredibly beautiful picture of an African man looking up pleadingly and the slogan underneath, Am I not a man and a brother?
Now, that was revolutionary stuff.
And here were these people, privileged white males, who are apparently at the heart of every problem you could ever imagine, saying, we've got this wrong.
And they took denigration.
They were canceled.
Subject of cancel culture, like nothing else.
The king cut, wouldn't talk.
That's an English expression.
Wilberforce was cut by the king, which in English society, as a parliamentarian, meant that you were a nobody for his position on all this.
And eventually, they won.
They won.
And then Britain sent ships out onto the high seas, British Navy ships, to stop other countries trading in human beings, the misery of human beings.
You used a term that I've never really heard before.
You said destatufation.
Destatuing.
Destatuing.
Pulling statues down.
Yeah, I mean, my mind went to what was happening during 2020 and COVID.
And I remember a very specific story.
There's a difference between a Lincoln and a Thomas Jefferson and our friend, what's his name?
Lucius Trescott III and the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson.
And I remember, this is one of their first podcasts when we first started this thing two plus years ago.
Should Confederate statues be removed and what should we do with them?
And I, you know, Pat, to his point, very emotional at the time, Adam over here.
I'm like, take them all down.
Remove them.
They shouldn't be here.
They're traitors.
Confederates.
Get them out of here.
And I was very emotional and vocal about it.
And then I started seeing what was happening.
And then all of a sudden, slippery slope, let's remove Lincoln.
Let's remove Jefferson.
It's like, whoa, guys.
Yeah, they want to get rid of Churchill because he was a racist.
Hang on.
The bloke he defeated was something of a racist.
Yeah, yeah, that guy, Hitler, was pretty bad.
But, you know, what I came, you know, not everything's black and white.
There's great.
Essentially, what I came to the premise of is, yeah, those Confederate statues, if I had a say, would be moved into a museum.
You want to understand about the Confederacy?
Teach the message.
Teach what happened.
You can't just whitewash everything.
I get that.
Because, for example, I mean, I'd go out and join a destaturing movement if somebody wanted to put one up to, I think you called him Adolph.
We call him Adolf Hitler.
I'd want to pull it down.
Of course.
But on the other hand, if it were, you know, somebody who had a mixed record, you know, we've had one pulled down in Australia.
He had a mixed record.
He did, no doubt about it.
But he did good things as well as bad things.
You got to take the good with the bad, John.
You know, an English writer, sorry if I'm sounding like an Englishman now, but you know, the Rhodes, you've all heard of Rhodes Scholarships.
I know he was in South African.
Mixed record.
He did some bad things.
He did some terrific things.
And some of the people he's trained up with his money since have done fantastic things.
They wanted to pull his statue down.
And a British writer, Matthew Parris, said, no, no, no, no, leave it there.
Put a statue of the king of the Zulus opposite him on the other side of the street until both sides of the story.
And then we'll all learn something.
You remember that Lucius Truscott, your buddy?
One of my favorite interviews of all time.
But you know what it is, you know, as the saying goes, he who controls the present controls the past.
Absolutely.
And he who controls the past controls the future.
So people can, and I think this is George Orwell.
I want to say he said from the 84 book or something.
So whoever's controlling the present is kind of telling people what happened in the past, and you got to be kind of careful with that.
So the only way for us to remove all these statues on all these different people, all you're saying is you're afraid of people learning about the history of what happened in the past.
If I really want to teach my kids leadership, they're eventually going to be reading about this guy, Hitler.
They have to.
They've already read about him.
They've already studied about him.
They started reading about him at seven, eight years old.
You have to know that evil does exist in regards to leaders.
There's some leaders that are willing to go out there and you have to be ready for it.
You have to be strong for it.
So if you want to understand capitalism, you have to read both Wealth of Nations.
You have to study Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman.
But you also have to read Communist Manifesto.
You have to read it because you can't read one without the other.
You have to read and say, oh, I see what the argument he's making.
So if we eliminate these, all we're saying is let's dumben down the people because we can't handle people in the past who either were flawed, either it's something bad, but God forbid we learn about the true history of it.
It's a form of copping out and being weak.
But let's talk about Biden's speech.
A couple comments was made about it.
One, when Trump heard his speech.
By the way, can you pull up the picture?
Who came up with the setting, though?
Did you see the setting?
It's very weird.
Did you watch the entire speech?
Have you listened to the entire speech?
No, I've seen parts of it.
Have you listened to the whole thing yet or no?
No, not the whole thing.
So I was watching this thing, and, you know, it's a very weird speech.
Very, very.
And the reason why it's a weird speech is the following reasons.
So, for example, how many times did Trump give speeches when he was a president?
How many times was he on camera talking?
A lot.
All the time.
Daily, yeah.
Daily.
That guy was a daily.
How many times is he on camera talking, giving speeches?
Once every three or six months?
I'm not being sarcastic.
How often is he doing that?
I mean, he gives press briefings, but no, like this is not very often.
This is not.
But Trump was doing deceptive things all the time, right?
So if you're not doing this that often, that's part of your strategy where your own team says, Joe, we don't want you to give a lot of speeches.
When you do get them, you have to figure out a way to capitalize on these moments.
I thought it was a missed opportunity.
It was very divisive.
It was very, you know, the 74 million people, you have to be careful with them.
Those Marines were standing behind them.
People were upset about the red light.
That just doesn't look good, period.
That just doesn't look good with the way they did the setting.
But aside from that, here's what Trump said.
Trump hits back at Biden in his first rally since FBI raid.
Danger to our democracy comes from the radical left, not the radical right.
He shot back at him.
The Save America event marked Trump's first rally since the FBI raid hit his home August 8th.
Trump focused a large portion of his speech on the corruption and extremism of the Democratic Party.
Republicans and the Magov movement are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy.
We are the ones trying to save our democracy.
The danger to our democracy comes from the radical left, not the right.
And so he gives that speech.
Then Nikki Haley goes out there and says, where's the Nikki Haley speech?
There's something about what Nikki Haley said.
I thought I had it here.
She thought it was very, what's the word she used?
Condescending.
Condescending message that was the most condescending, the most condescending speech ever given.
President of my lifetime.
President of our lifetime, given a message that's condescending.
Joe Rogan slammed the blood-red, dark background of Biden's speech.
He reacted Friday to the background speech.
The host of Spotify.
Joe Rogan's one of your podcasts.
You know, he couldn't believe what the background was like.
Imagine thinking this was a good idea, is what Joe Rogan said.
Imagine thinking this was a good idea.
So, you know, with the current state, you saw this.
I don't know.
You said you didn't see this.
You saw bits of it, bits and pieces of it.
And obviously, you had some thoughts about it.
Is there anything else you want to say when you saw the speech?
Like, did you see that speech saying there was 10% of it that was good?
There was, you know, this part of it that was good.
Because one party's talking MAGA.
The other part is, I'm not just the president for the Democrats.
I'm a Democrat president for the left and the right and the middle.
I want to be the president for everybody.
You can't say that, but at the same time, you take shots.
Yeah.
An organization.
Again, I want to be respectful of American and Americans, so I can only say I was just personally deeply distressed as an observer from the other side of the world, as I see America as a leader of the free world and critical to our future.
And I loath division.
I hate the idea of division.
So what I saw was, yes, some appeal to some higher ideals, but that was to sort of almost set up the attack on people who have a different set of opinions as apparently being responsible for smashing those ideals rather than to say, how can we sit down and talk through and recommit to those ideals?
And I found myself thinking, this is a surprisingly fluent speech because I haven't seen a lot of fluent speeches.
You know, I usually see the cards or we hear him repeating bits that are on the auto queue.
A genuine question, would he have had some sort of device there for auto-cue screens in front?
Because it was quite fluent.
Yeah, I think you make a great point here.
And I'm going to give a couple different perspectives here.
I hear so many people basically saying, Joe Biden can't speak anymore.
Okay.
He's got dementia.
He can't even get words out of his mouth.
He was pretty clear for an hour.
People understood what he was saying.
20 minutes, 22 minutes.
Okay, so half hour almost.
Point is he gave a long speech.
So on one side of things, people are saying he can't speak.
He's in the basement hiding.
Well, he's out there.
I don't think it was necessarily a speech that will live in infamy.
However, this is the thing that he's missing.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.
Okay.
MAGA is the new Republican Party.
Okay.
What's Donald Trump's approval ratings within the Republican Party?
90%?
Tyler, you would know this.
Yeah, it's close to 90%.
Okay.
So the Republican Party that we knew, the George W. Bush, previous Republican, Dick Cheney, that establishment, that doesn't exist anymore.
That's gone.
But does the Republican Party of Truman and Clinton, Democratic Party of Truman and Clinton exist anymore?
Arguably.
They would say that.
To be specifically about the Republicans.
The old Republican guard does not exist.
The Liz Cheneys of the world, the Adam Kinzers of the world, the Dick Cheneys of the world, the Mitt Romney's of the world, the George W. Bush, gone.
This is Trump's party, whether it's good or bad.
He controls the party.
So what Biden is missing is, quote-unquote, the MAGA Republicans.
That is the new Republican Party.
It's not a fringe element of the Republicans.
So your point is that it really is an attack on a vast number of.
That's what I'm saying.
Is that 80 million people voted for Trump?
And of that, of the Republicans, 75 million people is who we're talking about here.
So it's a mixed messaging.
So that's maybe what he, I don't know.
Clearly, somebody was telling him what to say.
He wrote the speech, what have you.
But that is the most, that is what resonates the most with me about this, is that the misunderstanding that the Republican Party is now the MAGA party, the previous party is now gone.
The rhinos.
Gone.
You know when's the only time a speech like this works?
When you know for a fact you have a big lead.
You can't talk like this when you don't have a lead.
He doesn't have a lead.
You have to try to show a different side.
You can't talk like this when you don't have a lead.
He does not have a lead.
So it's got to come from a different angle.
It's got to come from an angle to try to win people over.
You know, when I left, when I started out in politics, my predecessor in my, I think, I don't know what you'd call it, district, I think, but in my electorate, he was a wise man, a very good man.
And he said, no, but as you kick off, John, there's something you need to understand.
He said, half the people who voted for you will love you, and half the people that voted for you won't.
They voted for you.
Yeah.
And half the people who didn't vote for you will hate you, but half of them will actually think you're a very good person.
Don't antagonize the people who did not vote for you.
Many of them will have different perspectives.
And they may not have been able to put their tick against your name, but they're fine Australians.
Yes.
I fully agree with that.
I agree.
And you said, this is what distressed me about the speech as a former practice.
Look, I'm just from a little country and I was only the deputy.
I wasn't the president of the United States.
But I look at it as a really concerned, deeply committed person when it comes to democracy and freedom.
And I think this guy, what he says is, words are bullets.
And there are all those Americans out there who voted for Trump.
I just don't think Trump was the problem, as people say, so much as the product of the problem.
If you've got fellow Americans who feel so alienated, so left behind, so dismissed by today's elites, including, we were talking about capitalism, you know, the tech billionaires, the squillionaires who seem to be quite contemptuous of little people.
It's as though they're the problem.
They want their plasma TVs and their jet skis and their Chevy suburbans, and they're the enemy of the planet.
So while I get wealthier and I'm not going to give up any of my lifestyle, and I'll jet around the world to climate change conferences, and I'll live in a mansion and I'll have several holiday houses scattered around the world and I'm a global citizen.
You people who, by the way, just happen to feed me and keep the transportation system working and educate my kids and police the streets, you're just scum.
You're the enemy.
That sort of contempt is extant in all of our countries.
I'm not singling out the United States.
Please don't hear me say that.
I'm saying I think it's a real problem for social harmony and democracy depends upon social harmony.
It depends on trust.
It depends on respect for the other person.
When you have a debate, it should be as fierce as you like.
I mean, I've listened with respect to what Patrick's saying with all creativity.
Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead, keep going.
And, you know, we don't have to agree on everything.
But we're going to have a fierce argument on the things we might disagree on.
But in the end, we're fellow human beings.
And if we lose sight of that, and if some people are scum, they're the enemy and gay of the goddess Earth or whatever.
We start to paint them that way.
No wonder they're going to hit out.
So what's the commander-in-chief's job to do?
Make sure he's actually got his army behind him, not a great slab of them wanting to, you know, overturn the system.
And to your point, I mean, Hillary Clinton learned this lesson the hard way when she came out and said that half of our Republicans are what she would throw into the basket of deplorables.
Not a good look to start talking shit about your constituency, whether they vote for you or not.
To your point, half the people that vote for you will like you and not like you.
So here's a question you've got to ask yourself.
So imagine, like, you know how, I don't know what Trump's record is.
When he endorses you, you win, and when you don't, you lose by 37%.
Your name is Liz Cheney.
Okay, so the power of an endorsement from Trump is a lot of power.
Think about the guys that are getting ready for midterms.
I'm talking everybody else is like, man, I need him to give a good speech.
How many of them are sitting around saying, oh, my God, what is going to be the value of a Joe Biden endorsement today?
What the hell am I getting?
Like, I need him to be better so I can get more influence from your endorsement.
So imagine Joe Biden comes, you're running somewhere.
Yeah, I endorse Adam Sausnick for, you know, district, this, this, that.
How much weight does that have today?
So it's almost that his speech hurts others as well that are hoping for him to give a speech to get that endorsement.
I mean, we're going to find out.
We'll know in a couple months here whether there's value to it or not.
I hear you.
I'll also give a different perspective.
You know, part of the problem that's happening in the Senate right now is that they're putting out weak candidates.
Okay.
And, you know, the House is expected to flip, but in the Senate, they're expected to hold, if you look at numbers, is because the candidates are weak.
And yes, you are right that, you know, Trump, I think, went like 20 and 0 last week, something like that.
Oh, 5 and 17.
Okay, but there is a problem with that, is that all these people are just bowing at the throne of Trump, and they're just basically saying, yeah, sure, I'll do whatever you want.
They weren't doing that to Obama.
Obama was the same way.
Not to this extent.
Obama was.
There's definitely a kneeling at the golden cap of value.
Trump.
I've been an endorsement from Obama for a Democrat was super valuable.
Correct.
But not as valuable as Trump now.
Well, then that just means Trump's better.
So it doesn't mean that it's worse.
No, it's just that they're going to pander to him.
Yeah, they pander to Obama.
Like, what are you talking about?
Well, are we talking about like people didn't pander to Obama?
Like, what do you think they're going to do?
Obama's going to say, I'll help you, but here's what you need to do.
Yeah, but that just means candidates are just going to be as Trumpy as possible and just paired exactly with the colours.
Like candidates are going to be as Obama-y as possible.
So what would have happened if Donald Trump, in response to that speech, had said in genuine tones of, sorry, I'm so sorry that the President of the United States feels this way.
I'm so sorry that he misunderstands that we believe in the American dream of freedom.
We actually want to build a cooperative nation.
We actually want to say all Americans matter.
We want to say that there are serious politics.
That's not what he stands for, though.
It's not going to happen.
What's going to happen if Donald Trump doesn't tweet?
What's going to happen if Donald Trump doesn't pick fights with people that he hasn't had picked fights with?
We could have this wishful thinking of Trump, but we know who Trump is.
Like him or not, he's not changing.
I'm raising a hypothetical.
What would have happened if he had actually taken it?
And what I'm saying is the hypothetical is not even hypothetical.
It's not even possible.
That's not Trump's DNA.
He's a fighter.
And people love the fact that he's a fighter.
And some people do have to.
But they're a waste of fight.
They're a waste of time.
We know Trump's M.O. He's a fighter.
He's not going to come out and try to unify.
You'll be in a long list of people that have been trying to change the sky.
Yeah, not happening.
Not change.
Okay, well, it was a hypothetical.
It leads on to the second question.
I would love to go down the hypothetical rabbit hole, but there's no hypotheticals within Trump anymore.
We know what we're getting.
Can I ask a second question then?
On behalf of my fellow Australians, one of the things that they most commonly say to me, the question I ask, how come that an America of 300 million people, a global leader, full of very, very bright and capable people who have done astounding things in all walks of life?
I'm patting this out a bit.
Well, that's the intent behind the question.
On behalf of America, we thank you for the compliments.
I'll take this on behalf of America, Mr. Anderson.
The best of your best, they're extraordinary.
And the best of your institutions, they're mind-boggling.
Nobody else has matched them.
But the question people ask is, how come that country Has put up two guys like that as alternatives for the leadership of America.
I totally agree.
Where are the legendary Americans?
This is the great question of our time.
You're absolutely right.
This is the great question of our time.
So you were answering my Aussie question with an American question.
Yes.
High standards is not attractive.
High standards and high expectations is not a popular philosophy to be.
But how come?
Because I met so many Americans.
Because the leaders lost their backbone because leaders started appeasing to others on feeling guilty for what it really took to win.
And the better way is, oh my gosh, I have to conform.
And historically, people eventually conform.
That's what most people eventually do.
They conform.
Very few people have a backbone that they stay forever.
It's not that many people.
It's not hard to take away people's backbone.
Just tell them how special they are, give them a little bit of their recognition, you know, whether it's a nice place to live, nice book that becomes bestseller, give them a nice house, nice car, a nice relationship, accolades, respect, couple articles, write about them.
They'll conform very quickly.
There's very few people that are not turned on by those things.
They just think that's part of their life and they still keep their backbone.
And history doesn't like people like that, but history desperately needs people like that.
Okay, next question.
I sat in a study, a fellow I know, and he got some young Americans for me from all over the place in Washington, okay?
And I looked at them, I listened to them, I saw the passion in their eyes, the intelligence and the decency, and I thought, what's gone wrong in our system?
See, I'm not going to single out America because we've got the same problem.
What's gone wrong in our system that these people, even if they wanted to have a go, would feel that there was no pathway?
They're intelligent, they're driven, they understand freedom, they're committed to it, they're ideal citizens, the sort of thing that the founding fathers recognized was going to be needed in leadership and which we're all saying we want.
Do we want it enough to make pathways?
Why can't they get through in this country?
Because they can't in Australia.
That's what they tell me.
What's stopping those young people from pursuing careers in leadership?
Meaning in politics?
I don't think they're stopping.
I will say there's more younger guys that are stepping up today that are being inspired to go into politics.
There's a lot of strong capitalist young guys.
The bench is a very, very deep bench, but they're in their mid to late 20s, early 30s.
So it's about another decade.
There's going to be a very, very massive, deep bench of new superstars coming up with backbones.
But it's going to take about a decade or so for them to come.
And by the way, here's the part of that with the backbone situation on these guys coming up.
Most people, like I had a conversation with a guy, flew out and I sat down with him and I said, listen, I think you got to run for office.
I think you got to run for governor.
And I had a meeting with him and his wife and I told them why I think you should run for office.
And his wife says, tell me how bad it's going to be.
And I said, very bad.
They're going to come after you.
They're going to come after your kids.
They're going to come after your family.
They're going to come after everything you've ever done.
And some stuff's going to come out.
Well, then that's why.
I said, no, but you have to understand that none of us walk on water.
Like if people come after you and the fear is that they're going to find something in your, what do you call it?
In your skeleton.
They're going to find some skeletons.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Find the skeletons in my closet.
Yeah.
Matter of fact, I'll give you a couple other bones.
You forgot about these two.
Bring these two up as well.
I'll do some research for you and you can.
So now what?
So here's what you guys learned officially.
You learn I don't walk on water.
You learn I have a past.
You learn I have issues.
You learn I'm not perfect.
You learn all that stuff.
Now, how about I spend a half a million dollars to investigate your past with your marriage, your past with your ex, your past with your taxes, your past with this?
Do you want me to do that?
How about I spend those resources on you?
Do you want me to put that on you as well?
No, How about if I hire some investigators to follow you for the next two months?
I have the money to do it.
How about if I do it?
Then they say, well, no, that's not fair.
That's this, that's that.
No.
Then just means you don't walk on water?
I don't walk on water.
Do you like my policies?
Great vote for me.
You don't leave me the hell alone.
I'll go back to my life.
But we can't be like, well, what if they find out what I did when I did this?
Yeah, what if we all find out about what everybody did?
You know, it would be a very if if we all walked around with all three biggest sins shown above our forehead, we would be very disappointed with people.
Jonathan Rabbi Sachs was a member of the House of Lords in England.
He tragically died quite recently, but I did a podcast with him.
And he said that no, made the point that no family, no community, no country can work if you wash forgiveness out.
And that's one of the great marks of the viciousness and nastiness of our society now.
We won't let bygones be bygones.
And it doesn't work in your personal life.
You know, you're going to make a mess somewhere in your marriage.
You're going to do something wrong.
You've got to say, I'm sorry.
You're going to do it with your kids.
You've got to say, I'm sorry.
Most powerful moment with one of my kids was, she was a very strong personality, little girl.
I said, sorry one day.
He said, Daddy, did you say sorry?
I said, yeah, I got that wrong.
Instant restoration.
And he made the point that our culture now doesn't, particularly the left, this nasty, censorious attitude that if you've done one thing wrong, that's it.
You can'tceled.
You're on the way to the guillotine.
You're done.
And I said, well, what happens?
What can you hope for if there's no forgiveness?
He said, maybe that people forget.
He said, well, that doesn't work either because now social media means they can bring up anything from the past.
So maybe he had a point.
We need to learn to recognize that none of us are perfect and a little bit of forgiveness goes a long way.
Now, that doesn't mean you go live a reckless life.
That doesn't mean you go live a, hey, since I'm going to be forgiven, I'm just going to go be super reckless and do whatever I want to do and do whoever I want to do and, you know, be that kind of a life.
That's also not the point.
My point isn't that.
My point is, try to live a strong life, back it up with honor, strong values, principles, loyalty, dependability, reliability, all of that stuff.
But at the same time, you're not going to be expecting somebody to run that's going to be walking on water.
I think we've got plenty of people that should be running that don't want to run.
Are you following what's going on in Prague?
Are you following the story on what's going on in Prague or no?
Did you hear about it?
Not already.
So tens of thousands of protests in Prague against Czech government, EU, and NATO.
This is a U.S. news story from yesterday.
An estimated 70,000 people protested in Prague against the Czech government on Saturday, calling on the ruling coalition to do more to control the soaring energy prices and voicing oppositions of the EU and NATO.
Organizers of the demonstration from a number of far-right and fringe political groups, including the Communist Party, said the Central European nation should be neutral military and ensure direct contracts with gas suppliers, including Russia.
Police estimates to put the numbers of protesters out around 70,000 by mid-afternoon.
The aim of our demonstration is to demand change, mainly in solving the issue of energy prices, especially electricity and gas, which will destroy our economy this autumn.
Event co-organizer Gerald Havel told IDNES.CZ news website, the protest was held at a day after the government survived a no-confidence vote amid opposition claims of inaction against inflation and energy.
By the way, this is going on in the UK.
This is going on in Europe.
UK prices are up 89%.
Norway is saying to charge a Tesla today is $100 just to charge a Tesla.
This is a real crisis that's going on in Europe.
What are your thoughts on this?
Well, how do you open this up?
This is extraordinary.
I mean, people are genuinely worried about the planet, about climate change.
On the other hand, ill-devised policies, unrealistic expectations of others, naivety, if you like, placing our dependence on manufacturing or energy sourcing or whatever from regimes that are autocratic, us Germany, they put all their eggs in the basket of trusting the Russians to supply them with energy.
Then you've got people like the Sri Lankans who said we'll be purer than pure and we'll phase out artificial fertilizers because it's a major emitter.
And now people are starving and rioting in the streets.
We've got a massive problem.
This is a real issue.
This is a real big issue.
This is really big time.
Badly designed policy will lead to massive political unrest everywhere.
And if we're not careful, it's going to do something else.
We will weaken our own economies massively whilst we make the autocratic regimes stronger.
Yeah.
So then this goes back to the we do the right thing to get in the way and NATO constantly trying to get Ukraine to be a part of it, to go against what Putin was asking for.
Because here's what we just said.
This is a New York Post story.
Europe's energy fears mount as Russia keeps its gas pipeline closed.
That's right.
The planned reopening of Russia's main gas pipeline to Germany was halted Saturday after stadium energy from Gazpron said it found an oil leak in a turbine of Nord Stream 1, deepening fears of a winter energy crisis throughout Europe.
The announcement fueled accusations that Russia is seeking to weaponize its sway over the world energy market, which would you be surprised I wouldn't be.
This was predictable and it was predicted.
Former Secretary Mike Pompeo wrote on a Saturday, I told you so tweet.
I warned Germany not to rely on Russian energy.
Energy security is national security, which is why we must reign our energy independence.
President Zelensky of Ukraine also took to social media to condemn the development.
When a state turns energy poverty or hunger into a weapon, it harms everyone in the world.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, these are the ripple effects of some decisions that you make.
You're going to piss off Putin and he can play this game.
Two huge issues here for Western societies.
The first is naivety.
We've got to stop.
Leaders especially should not be naive.
Whether it's the Chinese saying, no, we won't militarize the South China Seas, and we say, oh, well, no, you're nice people, you won't.
Well, what did they do?
They did it.
You know, in the Middle East, don't cross this red line.
We cross the red line.
What happens?
Naivety is inexcusable in leadership.
That's the first point.
The second point is the massive dishonesty that pretends you can have your cake and you eat it too.
We don't have the technologies yet to move to renewables and net zero.
We have neither a political nor a technological pathway to net zero by 2050.
Now, I happen to believe, I'm not a climate change denier, I believe we need to take these things seriously, but I think we'll utterly, if we abandon our humanity in terms of feeding people, if we hand over control of the global architecture to the forces of darkness, the rules-based international system that the Americans put in place, the West put in place as the victors after 1945, but the Americans drove and have upheld ever since.
If we're going to break those, what we'll actually do by not being honest with ourselves about the real policy options before us, the real choices that have to be made, we'll do the very thing I've touched on here.
The very wealthy, the people pushing all this stuff, leaning on governments, save Gaia.
I don't know, do you have that expression here?
It's an old Roman thing, you know, the environment, Earth is God, Mother Earth.
Now, we all want to save Gaia.
I don't know too many people who want to damage Gaia.
But there are other things that go with it.
And you have to be honest with people.
And if you're going to have all the tech billionaires and all those people who have become so staggeringly wealthy telling governments that you've absolutely got to force everybody to buy a Tesla and you've got to, you know, make them do all of these things in the name of climate change without explaining the cost, you're setting yourself up for the very destruction of a trust-based political system like democracy.
John, question for you.
And this may not even have anything to do with what we just talked about, but maybe a little bit.
During the COVID lockdowns, when they did what they did and a lot of the folks in Australia couldn't say anything, they couldn't do anything.
Would anything have changed if the 1996 gun buybacks that they did, where they got a million of it, would they still have been able to push the people the way they did if the Australian people had the guns and it wasn't the way it was?
Because, you know, in America, one of the conversations right now is you've got some candidates that are talking about buybacks as well.
Would it have made a difference?
You know, I genuinely don't think so.
I'd have to think longer and harder about it.
Yeah.
But I genuinely don't think so.
I think something else has happened, particularly in our education system, that has made people, as I say, I don't think we can underestimate the comfort that we've lived in and the way it's satiated us and we've thought it.
You've touched on it.
And we haven't been alert to the subversion of our core foundational beliefs, the ones that underpin freedom and individualism, as they've been eroded.
And we haven't understood what that's done to our children and as our children have aged come through the system, our society.
And I'll tell you what, I do think.
I think in Australia today, and some of my fellow Australians might disagree or think I'm being too optimistic.
I think a bit like China, you've had a giant wake-up call and people are becoming much more realistic.
And I don't think governments in Australia will try to lock people down like that again.
You don't think so?
No, I don't.
Why not?
I think the Australian people started to say, you say they didn't have a voice.
I think it started to show up in the political parties research and so forth that Australians were starting to say, hang on, this is over the top.
They got there before the politicians did.
This is not working.
We've got to open up our economy.
We've got to go back to jobs.
I don't say it's been a completely healthy recovery.
It hasn't.
We've still got too many people who don't want to go to work.
We've got unbelievable levels of stress for people trying to find enough workers is the irony.
It's very different to the previous time we had inflation breaking out because you had high unemployment.
We've got almost no one unemployed in Australia at the moment.
It's incredible.
And you've got very high employment here too.
I see you, you know, driving around here.
Your suburbs, the shops have got We're Hiring Now signs out.
I don't know how common that was.
But in Australia, I hadn't seen that for 20, 30, 40 years.
No one's talking about the fact that unemployment just hit 3.5% when it was basically the 50-year low where Trump basically got it to in 2018.
So unemployment, I mean, we're not talking about how high inflation is in consumer price index.
But my worry now is what happens to the wage levels as interest rates go up.
And the other worry I have is because nobody's talked about budgets.
You've got a $30 trillion public sector debt in America.
What happens when the interest rates start to rise?
The cost of servicing that?
What's that going to mean for the other things government do?
What's it going to mean for your defense budget?
What's it mean for your welfare budget?
Because actually, people get the wrong idea about America.
Your welfare expenditure is actually very high now.
You write a lot of checks for welfare in this country.
It doesn't seem like it's slowing down anytime soon.
Anyways, gank, this has been two hours.
I hope you've enjoyed this as much as we have.
John, appreciate you for coming out all the way from Australia.
You came out and paid your visits to the U.S., you know, all over the place.
Folks, if you have not yet subscribed to John's podcast, he's got a YouTube channel.
It's a very different perspective.
It's a perspective that we need to hear today.
He interviews a lot of different personalities.
Jordan Peterson's there.
I thought I saw Hitchens' brother on.
I had him several times.
Yeah, he's very interesting.
Dave Rubin.
Dave Rubin, a lot of different personalities that I've been on.
But we're going to put the link below, title, if we can put the link below in the chat as well as in the description so people can go out there and subscribe.
Again, John Anderson Conversations.
Go click subscribe to his podcast.
And once again, John, thank you so much for coming out and being a guest on the podcast here.
I'm surprised you wanted me, but I'm very honored and I've really enjoyed it.
I've enjoyed it way more than you've enjoyed it.
Again, learning from somebody like you from your perspective sometimes allows us to see our blind spots on what we're missing here.
So appreciate your wisdom.
Thank you.
It's been a great joy.
Take care, everybody.
I don't think we're doing a podcast this week.
We've got some special surprises that will be announced into you very soon that you're not going to like.
