PBD - Patrick Bet-David - "This Was A Bad Idea" – Andrew Callaghan’s WILD Coverage Of BLM Riots, COVID Protests & Border Chaos

April 24, 2025 - PBD - Patrick Bet-David

02:25:26

"This Was A Bad Idea" – Andrew Callaghan’s WILD Coverage Of BLM Riots, COVID Protests & Border Chaos

Patrick Bet-David sits down with @Channel5YouTube's Andrew Callaghan to discuss citizen journalism, censorship, Trump, homelessness, Scientology, and why Gen Z is turning anti-establishment. A raw and wide-ranging conversation packed with stories and sharp insights. 📺 ANDREW CALLAGHAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/42ri6S1 🎥 ANDREW CALLAGHAN'S NEW DOCUMENTARY: https://bit.ly/4jKIL1T ------ 👕 GET THE LATEST VT MERCH: https://bit.ly/3BZbD6l 🥤THE VT YETI COLLECTION: https://bit.ly/4iHfe8Q 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": https://bit.ly/41rtEV4 📰 VTNEWS.AI: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3OExClZ 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! SUBSCRIBE TO: @VALUETAINMENT @ValuetainmentComedy @theunusualsuspectspodcast @bizdocpodcast ABOUT US: 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.

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	It's funny in the moment I wasn't nervous, but watching this now, I'm nervous because I realize this is like a bad idea.
	Did you ever have a moment where you were actually scared of the city?
	Oh, all this stuff.
	Where was that?
	Well, what's the scariest one?
	I mean, personally, probably getting arrested by War Patrol.
	So you didn't pay the $5,000 to the Coyote, but you paid the $10,000 for the Galaxy.
	I probably should pay the coyote.
	I'm thinking, holy shit, they stole this car.
	And then I look around.
	I look in the rearview machine and there's a cops trailing us.
	That was a classic example of just me taking it too far in the field with the documentaries.
	Even when you put this up, cops, don't we got a hold of you?
	No, they might after this podcast though.
	I'm more scared of Scientology than any other subgroup in the world.
	Really?
	Do you have any interest?
	I have some friends I can introduce you.
	I have an extreme interest in Scientology, but I also have an interest in being alive.
	You ever seen this?
	You get a breakdown of it?
	Oh, dude, I love the fact that you're seeing this for the first time.
	Let's make a Channel 5 video.
	I would do it.
	Oh, I would love to see it.
	A lot of people would be upset with that.
	Channel 55.
	One, two, two, five is the best number.
	Don't need to talk about me.
	Did you ever think you would make it?
	I feel I'm so excited to take sweet victory I know this life meant for me Adam, what's your promise?
	The future looks bright.
	It's better than anything I ever saw.
	It's right here.
	You are a one-on-one for Sunday.
	I don't think I've ever said this before.
	How you doing?
	I'm good.
	Thanks for having me.
	It's great to be back in the country's greatest state.
	Greatest state.
	I think so.
	Really?
	Florida.
	And you're saying it's living in L.A.
	Yeah.
	I've only lived in LA for a year and a half, but I think I might have a Floridian future.
	You do?
	You may have it.
	I like it.
	I like Key Biscayne.
	I like Orlando, Tallahassee, Jacksonville.
	But not South.
	It's okay.
	I like Fort Lauderdale.
	Miami's a little bit overwhelming.
	Yeah, for me too.
	I don't know if I could do Miami, but the right place is for Lauderdale, in my opinion.
	Because if you want to go to Miami to do something, you're 45 minutes away.
	You want to go to Palm Beach 45 minutes away, Orlando 3.
	You can have lifestyle here, water, all the good stuff that comes with it.
	But that's interesting.
	We'll talk about the LA stuff.
	But let me tell you how I feel about you.
	And it's very important because I have a 13-year-old son, Patrick, who has your personality.
	And he is extremely curious.
	He loves politics for whatever reason.
	He's a jiu-jitsu guy.
	And I think you're one of the most important voices for the younger audience.
	And here's why.
	Because I think you're going through a journey which you kind of, you know, you have your own opinions and they're strong, but also you're developing it as you're going through the process by actually going to the place.
	Instead of seeing what the news is telling us, you're like, nah, I want to go see what you guys are doing.
	And you've been to what?
	You've been to Miami Beach during COVID.
	Definitely.
	Old Block Chicago.
	Philly Street, Kensington, the whole Fenton place that you went to.
	San Francisco, George Floyd protest meant Minneapolis, Chaz, which became this special thing during COVID and, you know, in Seattle.
	You swam across the Rio Grande.
	Yes.
	Phenomenal.
	Very impressive.
	Yeah, bad choice.
	Anti-vaccine protests.
	You went to Israel and Tel Aviv for the protest.
	Cock fighting in Mexico.
	Connecticut, Kia.
	You were in the car with the Kia boys.
	Yes.
	While they're stealing, you have a mask on.
	You're going with them.
	Yeah.
	And that's some crazy stuff you've done.
	And it's one of those shows that if you watch one episode, guys, you could get stuck watching two hours worth of content.
	You do such a good job.
	And you don't put your opinion in it.
	You just ask, what do you think?
	What do you think?
	How do you feel about this?
	I just want to say, great job on what you've done with Channel 5.
	I think prior to that, it was what?
	All gas, no breaks, right?
	I have some good news.
	I'm actually reacquiring All Gas, No Breaks.
	Oh, no, shit.
	Yeah, we use a quarter of the proceed from our new film, Dear Kelly, to make the acquisition of our first child, All Gas.
	So I'm going to make that announcement probably in the coming days, but I'm going to be in control of both Channel 5 and August and the entire catalog.
	I love that.
	So, you know, for the audience that maybe doesn't know, backstory, how did you say, I'm going to go out there and do this?
	How did this happen?
	Well, I had a really great teacher back in the day.
	I had a journalism course in high school.
	I had a teacher named Cal Shaw, Calvin Shaw, and he just inspired me to, you know, pursue journalism as a career path.
	For me, the coolest thing about being a journalist is you get to be in the front row seats for all the things that you want to witness in the world, whether it be a political event, you get to dive into a subculture because everybody wants coverage.
	Everybody wants to be heard.
	And if you can be a medium for them to get their message out there, you can go wherever you'd like.
	Yeah.
	And today's marketplace, as a citizen journalist, it's almost you have more credibility than the actual journalist that's sitting in front of the camera speaking.
	You're like, no, I'm going to the street.
	I'm going to go see what's exactly going on versus what you're seeing it out there.
	And I think that's been a game changer, right?
	For a lot of people that have been doing this.
	Was there anybody else that was an inspiration for you?
	Are you a 97 baby?
	Yeah, I was born in 1997, four years before 9-11, right when the internet first came around, the first iPod.
	So who was that person?
	Like 97, YouTube starts in 03, 04.
	So when did you start consuming YouTube content?
	Oh, man, YouTube content?
	Well, probably as soon as I got on the internet, but I came online during like the chocolate reign.
	Charlie bit my finger, 4chan era.
	So the online subcultures are still being formed.
	But as far as like the first citizen journalist that I was into, I was mostly into comedians at first, like Sasha Baron Cohen.
	Even early stuff like Cass MG was really good.
	There was a really fringe show called Shams de Baron or Brushstrokes with Norman Vanemi that was like a graffiti adjacent interview show where this guy would go to art shows dressed as like a breakdancer and kind of like pretend to be a high art customer.
	Yeah.
	You know, high-end art customer.
	And some of that stuff was just hilarious to me.
	I didn't put the journalism pieces together until I went to college for it and I had that professor.
	Interesting.
	I mean, Sasha Baron Cohen to me is, dude, what he did with what was that, HBO?
	Was it HBO or Max, where he goes to a couple rallies?
	He has this guy teaching him.
	He's an Israeli.
	He's going to train him how to fight off gay men.
	You know which one I'm talking about?
	Absolutely.
	Some of the stuff the guy did that he was able to convince.
	He sits there.
	He says, so, you know, what was it?
	The LEG one.
	You know, that's my favorite one.
	When he says, so I want to talk to you about, you know, euthanasia.
	He says, yes, have you seen this one?
	Where he says, yeah, what about it?
	He says, why is it always the youth in Asia?
	He says, no, it's about euthanasia.
	He says, but what I know, but why is it not other people?
	Why is the target only youth in Asia?
	This guy is freaking hilarious when he does.
	My favorite part of that show is when he goes to a city council meeting, meeting in Kingman, Arizona, which is a very hardcore biker town.
	And he proposes the construction of the largest mosque in North America.
	And they're like screaming, we don't want any fucking terrorists here.
	That to me was like the fact that he was able to keep a straight face during that character performance.
	Gotta love it.
	Okay.
	So, you know, for you, with the places that you visit, we got a lot of stuff that's going on right now that, you know, it's kind of timely with Luigi Mangioni, you know, the protest for that and, you know, Tesla, Ilan, and, you know, United.
	There's a bunch of stuff that's going on.
	But let's start off with something very important that you and I were talking about.
	I think it's probably the most important issue that most people are not aware of.
	And that is your favorite movie.
	Your favorite movie of all time is.
	The Dark Knight, the second film in the Christopher Nolan Batman series.
	And why is it the second one?
	Well, everyone expects me to say that I'm into like really cutting-edge documentaries like by Adam Curtis and Errol Morris and stuff like that.
	But I actually just love Batman.
	And I loved it so much when it first came out in 2012.
	I saw it five times in a row in Ocean City, New Jersey, every matinee for a week straight, just trying to really digest all the different subplots and narratives.
	Which character, though?
	I mean, there's The Joker.
	There's Commissioner Gordon.
	There's Christian Bale's Batman character was amazing.
	There's just so much.
	Batman Begins was a great segue to The Dark Knight.
	Dark Knight Rises didn't really do it for me.
	A little bit too political.
	Political for you.
	Well, you know, Dark Knight Rises was like a metaphor for the Occupy Wall Street movement going too far when they start, you know, when Bain is supposed to be like the commander of Antifa and they roll up in the New York Stock Exchange and start shooting people and stuff.
	Too divisive.
	Well, it was literally like, I feel like it was subsidized in some way by Wall Street.
	Yeah.
	So, so, but character-wise, like, who do you relate?
	Because for me, for the longest time, my podcast said had three characters behind me: Batman, Joker, and the Incredible Hulk.
	And it's like the three personalities I relate to, right?
	But which one was it where you said, I kind of feel like I'm this guy in this movie?
	Well, this is a hard one to answer because if I say I'm like the Joker, that makes it sound like I'm a dark, sort of sinister person.
	But I have a Joker side to me as well.
	You have a lot of vengeance in you where you'd get it.
	It's not, though.
	It's when you see somebody that, you know, when you're sick and tired of being taken advantage of and you can't let go of the, you choose a wrong enemy can really destroy your life.
	And I think that's what happened to him.
	He couldn't let it go.
	Yeah.
	But he's a hero to a lot of people as well.
	A lot of people followed his fire and the pain that he had.
	Yeah.
	I would say that I'm somewhere in between Batman and the Joker.
	Okay.
	But I think that the Joker is definitely a relatable character, more so in the dark night than he was in the Joaquin Phoenix movie a couple years ago, which I know you said you were not a fan of.
	Dude, I walked out 43 minutes into the movie.
	I go and I look at my wife.
	We have 20 people at the movie.
	Rob, were you with us or no when we watched a joke?
	No.
	So we're in a movie theater.
	I'm like, yeah, I'm out.
	Why?
	So this is divisive, man.
	You're pinning America against America.
	We don't need more of this.
	And it's interesting because that movie, what ends up happening at the end of that movie?
	He kills, he ends up killing, is it Robert De Niro, who is that, like the Johnny Carson character of the movie.
	Yeah, he kills.
	He says, how about another joke, Murray?
	And he kills him.
	And that was after he killed a couple bankers on the subway.
	After he kills a couple bankers on the subway.
	And then that leads to one of the stories, the Luigi Mangione story.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	So here's a guy.
	You got Luigi Mangioni.
	You look at his background, stud of a guy, student, good grades, everything's looking good.
	Minus the last 90 minutes, he disappears.
	90 days, he disappears.
	Well, you can't really see what's happening there.
	And the people he followed on X, I was one of them.
	He followed some 74 people who were libertarian type of guys that he followed.
	So it's not like he followed only right or only left or only middle.
	He was open-minded, is what he seemed like.
	And then all of a sudden, the rage gets there to want to take out the United Healthcare CEO.
	How much when you hear that story?
	You went to the rally by that, right?
	What did you hear people saying?
	Like, what were you noticing that caused people to go rally for this guy?
	Well, I mean, if the manifesto was legitimate, the one that was leaked that was published by an independent reporter named Ken Clippenstein, if that's real, it seemed like Luigi Mangioni had a lot of grievances against the health insurance claim denial system, particularly how United Healthcare had implemented AI to automatically deny people's healthcare claims.
	So people needed treatment, they were paying customers, and there was a machine that had one of the highest insurance claim denial rates of any other major health insurance.
	32, 33%.
	Something that was ridiculously high.
	Can you pull up that number, Rob?
	People were trying to appeal the robot's decision, and it was almost impossible.
	You were stuck with someone on the phone for days.
	And a lot of times during that window where people were waiting to get care, they would pass away.
	So I'm not sure if he had someone in his family who was affected by the healthcare policies.
	But I feel like a lot of people in my generation are kind of fed up with things not changing.
	The cost of living being ridiculously high, the wages being really low.
	And they felt like Luigi Mangioni was something like a martyr who spoke for the rage of the collective public who feels like nothing is changing.
	So how should, what do you think is the level to go to?
	Because some people, what's the one girl lately that's been talking about Luigi Mangioni in a very complimentary way?
	Tracy is a low-lorenz.
	Taylor Lorenz.
	Have you heard about Taylor Lorenz?
	Yeah, yeah, she helped us whenever we lost all gas during a contractual dispute.
	She leaked all the information, which kind of like segued millions of fans to Channel 5.
	So shout out to her for that.
	I'm not sure what she was saying about Luigi, but I think that basically probably what I'm assuming she was saying is that many people felt like he represented the call for direct action.
	And there's a generational shift to the idea that awareness culture and raising awareness doesn't actually create change.
	So there's a lot of people.
	There's kind of an idea that has persisted over the course of the past couple years, especially with the progressive left in the U.S., that raising awareness doesn't do much to actually create change.
	And so for someone to break out of the mold of like making people aware and actually take things a step further made people feel some type of revolutionary spirit.
	Wow.
	So even if it means killing the CEO.
	Well, because their logic is, you know, how many people have died as a result of their health care claims being denied?
	Yeah.
	Health insurance claims, you know?
	Yeah.
	So to you, to somebody that is going through this and you're touching and you're talking to people and you're hearing the arguments at the protests, walking away, what argument got for you to say, it's a little too much.
	And what argument was like, you know what?
	These guys may have a point in this area.
	Which one was it?
	Well, I mean, the reality is that regardless of like how I felt about the opinions, killing a bunch of CEOs is not going to change any of that infrastructure in the health insurance industry.
	You know what I mean?
	That's not like.
	See, that was my concern with the movie Joker.
	So here's your chance for me to be a hero.
	But the fact that it spurred conversations, I thought, was interesting.
	I mean, just it was fascinating to see such an, you know, the instant valorization of Luigi that happened overnight.
	Everyone's like, oh my God, this guy's so hot.
	We love him.
	He's our hero.
	It was interesting because that was very much poisoned by the social media algorithms of the time.
	You know, where like Luigi Mangioni becomes a hero to so many.
	And in general, I think that it did spark some good conversations.
	But I think you can acknowledge that while still saying it's not good to shoot people in the back of the head in the street.
	Rob, what's that clip, by the way, you just had?
	Because I think that's the one where she breaks down her argument, right?
	Can you play this clip?
	I think she does a good job explaining why she's for Luigi Mangion.
	And I don't think she's alone.
	I think there's a lot of people that are probably on her side as well.
	Go ahead, Rob.
	Hilarious to see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone standing a murderer when this is the United States of America.
	As if we don't lionize criminals, as if we don't have, you know, stand murderers of all sorts.
	And we give them Netflix shows.
	There's a huge disconnect between the narratives and angles that sort of mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels.
	And you see that in moments like this.
	And I can tell you, I saw the biggest audience growth that I've ever seen because people were like, oh, somebody, some journalist is actually speaking to the anger that we feel.
	The women who got her outside court in New York.
	So you're going to see women especially that feel like, oh my God, right?
	Like, here's this man who's revolutionary, who's famous, who's handsome, who's young, who's smart.
	He's a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.
	Yeah, I just realized women will literally date an assassin before they swipe right on me.
	That's where we're at.
	I'm sure you wouldn't like to be comfortable.
	But he's doing a pretty good job.
	I've been seeing this stuff last two weeks, and I think he's actually doing a pretty good.
	I don't know who he is, but.
	Yeah, I think she broke it down quite well in terms of like the romantic appeal as well.
	I mean, you hear the stories.
	Who are some of the people that ladies would be lined up in prison just to kind of see him?
	Was it Charles Manson?
	Who else was it, Rob?
	People would be lined up in the middle of the moment.
	Ted Bundy.
	He had the Menendez brothers who killed their parents in California.
	One of them got married while they were behind bars.
	Wow.
	I mean, every serial killer has typically had like dozens, if not hundreds of women writing them in prison.
	Why do you think that is?
	I don't know.
	I think people are just fascinated by the allure of it when people's names are in the headlines, like just someone's sort of profile being that large.
	Just fame attracts a certain kind of person regardless.
	And, you know, she said something here, which is very interesting.
	And I was having this conversation with us, Rob, one day you and I, seven of us, were at Casa D'Angelo.
	And you even said this once when you were interviewed with Weiss, I believe.
	And I don't know what the guy asked you.
	He said something about, did you ever catch yourself, you know, creating content that the audience was reacting to or something like that?
	I don't know what the context of it was, but you were kind of explaining that where she says, I've never had this many followers.
	That's not necessarily a good thing.
	Yeah.
	Because who is following you?
	Who is agreeing with you?
	You know, who is saying, man, I like what you have to say.
	And all of a sudden, you're like, you're in the room with them.
	You're like, whoa, I don't relate to you guys.
	Where did you guys show up?
	Yeah.
	And that's the thing about social media nowadays in particular is like people kind of become, it's a very fine line to walk when you exist online is doing things that you believe in and doing things that you know your fans will appreciate and kind of want you to do.
	Because once you pigeonhole yourself as a certain type of person, you know your audience quite well.
	You know that if you say a certain thing to the audience you've built up that they disagree with, a lot of them are going to walk away.
	You know, for example, like there's a lot of people, both conservative and progressive, who might have opinions about different things like abortion, homelessness, drug, you know, gay marriage, Israel-Palestine, that they know that if they speak their opinion on it, they might lose a significant percentage of their audience.
	And so I think that keeps a lot of people going in line with what they see as like the majority consensus narrative, as opposed to finding a middle ground and having conversations.
	Because at the end of the day, everyone's trying to survive too.
	Like imagine if for someone like Alex Jones went on TV and said, I support a Palestinian two-state solution.
	A lot of people would be upset with that.
	But Alex has also not been the most agreeable guy in the Republican side.
	Every president has had a little bit on the conservative side.
	Nobody outside of Trump has been very close to him.
	Most of the Republican presidents can't stand Alex Jones.
	Really?
	You think George Bush likes Alex Jones?
	What is George Bush doing nowadays?
	No, but seriously, do you think George Bush likes Alex Jones?
	I mean, I don't know if George Bush knows who Alex Jones is.
	No, I guarantee he knows who Alex Jones is.
	I guarantee he knows who Alex Jones is.
	Wasn't Alex like the first one that came out saying 9-11 is going to be happening and they're going to blame this and they're going to blame that?
	Isn't that, didn't he do something like that?
	Yeah, I mean, he was warning of an impending terrorist attack.
	I think specifically on the World Trade Center, like years and years before it happened.
	Right.
	Bear in mind, that was after there were bombs detonated in the parking garage of the World Trade Center.
	I think it was in 1997 or 99.
	So it makes sense.
	It wasn't like he was conjuring up that image from scratch, but it makes sense as to why George W. Bush doesn't like Alex Jones.
	So I guess what I'm trying to say is when you use the example of Alex Jones, I don't know if Republicans side with Alex Jones outside of Trump.
	I guess what I'm kind of trying to say is when you become a social media influencer on different political side, on one political side of the aisle, it can disrupt your business and income if you decide to deviate from the norm of the consensus.
	So for you, when I watch you, you say, you know, I have leftists, but I'm not really, I don't want to be tied to a political side and I don't want to do this and I, but I'm, you know, I'm kind of this, as you're going through all of these places and, you know, you're living your life and you're developing your own opinion.
	You're only 28.
	You're growing.
	27.
	27.
	97.
	I'm doing a math.
	So you're going to be 28.
	What month are you born with?
	I'm actually born on April 23rd.
	So it's coming right up.
	Well, that's right.
	We made a note of that.
	Your birthday's coming up.
	That's right.
	But happy early birthday to you, buddy.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate it.
	Yeah, as you're going through this, you know, would you consider yourself more of an anti-establishment person?
	Anti-establishment, like socially progressive.
	You know, I think people should be able to do whatever they want to do within reason.
	But yeah, socially progressive, anti-establishment.
	Definitely don't find any identity in either of the major political parties today.
	Yeah.
	And to you, and Alex Jones would be a guy that is, would you put him as an establishment guy or anti-establishment?
	Anti-establishment person.
	100%.
	Yeah.
	So I think you and Alex are, obviously, he claims, he makes claims.
	He says things.
	You don't do that.
	You just go get the content and say, hey, what do you think, audience?
	Make up your mind.
	This is up to you, right?
	You don't get up there and say, let me tell you what I think is going to be going on.
	That's not your brand.
	You're more going out there doing the journalism.
	But to me, he is, it's almost like whenever somebody isn't invited to the White House too often by president, they don't trust the guy fully.
	The only guy that's given this guy the opportunity to come in is Trump.
	All the other guys weren't comfortable with him.
	As a young guy yourself, how do you feel about Trump?
	I mean, in what sense?
	I mean, okay, so you're in the streets.
	You're talking to everybody.
	Did you think he was going to win or did you think, oh, there's no way this guy's going to win?
	I definitely did not think that he was going to win.
	Even until the last minute.
	I mean, I think I'm kind of in a bubble to a certain extent.
	I'm mostly in like progressive major cities.
	So I didn't even realize that he was going to win.
	But then after the assassination attempt, I knew he would win.
	You know, specifically when he pumped his fist and said fight, I was like, it's done.
	There's nothing the Democrats could possibly do to take the trophy away from this guy.
	But yeah, I would say in general, like I'm not really a Trump guy.
	Mostly, I don't like the way that that political movement makes people treat each other.
	You know, just on like a day-to-day human level, like interpersonal interactions get really dark between the Trump crowd and their opposition.
	Who do you think created that?
	I just think that the showmanship of politics that's happened in the last, you know, probably six to eight years, it's kind of like two football teams, and it gets pretty gnarly out there.
	I don't think people were fighting in the streets during the Obama and Romney election.
	You know, I don't think there was like a Romney Proud Boys, you know?
	You don't think there was Romney Proud Boys?
	Okay, so let me ask you this.
	Do you think for a guy that's anti-establishment, do you view Romney as an establishment guy or an anti-establishment guy?
	I mean, I know he's part of the Utah establishment because he is a Mormon, which is no disrespect to Mormons.
	They're actually really nice.
	Sure.
	But I think so.
	Yeah, for sure.
	He's like an RNC guy.
	Did you do something with Mormons or no?
	No, I want to.
	But it's kind of hard because if you portray them negatively, it's kind of like Scientologists.
	Like the Mormons have a lot of money to sue you.
	Yeah, but Scientology will come after you in different ways.
	I'm more scared of Scientology than any other subgroup in the world.
	Really?
	Yeah, you know about fair gaming, right?
	Their policy where they can like stalk you and harass you for years.
	Of course, I'm very familiar with.
	UCIA technology to make you think you're having a schizophrenic break.
	For sure.
	They are incredible at what they do.
	I mean, the guy's wife's been missing for how long?
	David Miscavige's wife has been missing for how many years now?
	Shirley.
	Is it Shelly or Shirley?
	Shelly.
	Shelly.
	Yeah, and there was like an LAPD checkup where they like reported that nothing was wrong.
	I was like, what do you mean?
	Did you talk to her?
	They're like, we're not going to say, but everything's fine.
	There's a guy in Los Angeles right now.
	He's one of those Second Amendment, First Amendment audit, like cop watcher guys.
	Yeah.
	His name is, I think it's like Scientology, Stop Scientology LA.
	He stands outside of the Church of Scientology on Hollywood Boulevard every single day, live streaming for hours, physically like blocking the entryway, getting people to not go inside and get a free auditing session.
	So he's single-handedly shut down their recruitment operation in Hollywood.
	One man.
	Yeah, she's apparently been missing since 07.
	Okay.
	Since 2007, she's been missing.
	Well, I think we know what happened.
	What's that?
	She's dead.
	You think so?
	Yeah, dude.
	Leah Romani.
	Did you ever see the Leah, am I saying her last name correctly?
	Shelly Miscavige.
	No, no, Leah.
	Remini.
	Do you know who she is?
	Leah Romini?
	No, no.
	Oh, she made a, she was in Go and Clear, right?
	That big Netflix documentary about Scientology.
	Yeah.
	And she went on and she says, well, one time I went and I said, so how's Shelly doing?
	And everybody looked at me saying, hey, you don't ask a question like that.
	And it's like, well, I'm just asking a basic question.
	She's a friend of mine.
	You don't ask a question like that.
	And then she's like, that's when I realized something's weird over here.
	Yeah.
	So you think she's been dead in 07.
	So let me ask you if that's the case.
	What is the protocol?
	What are they supposed to do?
	Is the government supposed to investigate?
	Or are we one day going to sit there and say, Shelly Miscavige is 173 years old, been missing since 2007?
	Like, you know what I'm saying?
	Yeah, like she's going to get a funeral.
	When does it get to a point that the government says, I want to investigate what really happened to her?
	Has there ever been one, Rob?
	Has the U.S. government or the PD ever investigated to find out what happened to her?
	You just went after Scientology.
	Another crazy fact, too, is that David Miscavige, their leader, has never done an interview.
	He's only ever been documented.
	Wait, with who?
	One interview he did.
	You've never seen this?
	No, I got to find it.
	You have to watch this.
	You're saying you're in the space, so maybe.
	I've only seen him portrayed by Scientology media.
	He's done one interview his entire life.
	Yeah, I'm right with Ted Koppel.
	By the way, if you've never seen this.
	Okay, thank you for the fact check on watch this.
	So it's been over 30 years since appearance.
	And let me tell you, the way he interviews, the way this guy interviews with Ted Koppel is unbelievable.
	And if you watch him, you know whose mannerisms you'll pick up.
	Okay, I want you to watch this and tell me what actor's mannerism do you pick up.
	Go ahead, Rob.
	Just press play.
	Watch this.
	I would like you.
	I feel perfectly comfortable with my life.
	I like my job.
	I'm happy with my family.
	I love my wife.
	I'm healthy.
	I'm perfectly content.
	That's why I'm asking you.
	What is it you can do for me?
	Well, number one, I would never try to talk you into that Scientology is for you.
	You see, that's the funny thing about this.
	I'm now going to give a sales pitch to you on Scientology.
	Believe me, Scientology is valuable enough that it doesn't require any salesperson.
	But let's look at it this way then, what Scientology does, man.
	If you look out across the world, the only interview I've ever done.
	If you take a person who's healthy, speaking positive, whatever you do, watch this when you're out of here.
	Yeah, I can't.
	You will be blown away by this guy's interview.
	We've tried to have him on many, many times.
	I'd love to talk to the guy.
	Have you gotten to the stage of like him considering doing an interview?
	No, but we spoke to his camp because we've had a few people on.
	One guy who left the organization and we had a couple other guys.
	Mike Rinder, who what is his relation to David Miscavige?
	He was one of the highest-ranking guys there, right?
	The senior executive of the church international.
	And he ran the C organization, which is like the place to be.
	Yes, for those unfamiliar, that's the top organization in the hierarchy of Scientology.
	And if you buy your way into the Sea Org, there's an annual cruise that you get to go on, and that is sort of the top tier.
	I think, I don't know how much you have to spend to get into Sea Org, but once you're there, you're in.
	And I don't know what the benefits are of that.
	Do you have any interest?
	I have some friends I can introduce to you.
	I have an extreme interest in Scientology, but I also have an interest in being alive.
	So you don't want to be a member?
	No, I mean, holy shit.
	Can you imagine having those guys against you?
	Yeah, but imagine if you have them with you.
	That's even better.
	It would be like Andrew Callahan.
	Imagine if you were part of an organization and we had your back.
	You would never have to worry about anything.
	Does that sound appealing to you?
	It does, but what sounds more appealing is staying away from them or being a liaison between Scientology and the public.
	Like David Miscavige is like, you know what?
	Shelly's actually at my apartment here in Florida.
	Come meet her.
	Come meet her.
	Do an interview.
	Let's make a Channel 5 video.
	I would do it.
	Oh, I would love to see it.
	I'd love to see it.
	I'd love for you to go and just talk to her.
	You know what else would be interesting for you to do?
	If many, many years ago, when I was an atheist, I would go to churches in LA and I would just go want to talk to everybody about whatever they believed in.
	I'd go to LDS and I'm so tell me about this Gordon B. Hinckley.
	Tell me about this, you know, Joseph Smith.
	Tell me what happened with Vermont when he found these plates and he moved to these states.
	And every time you guys moved, he got kicked out until you got to Utah.
	What happened there?
	Tell me about this.
	I would go to Scientology Church and I would say, what do you believe in?
	Who's God?
	Who's this?
	Whoever you believe in.
	Who do you believe in?
	And it was always such an incredible method of communicating with you, which is so impressive.
	If you notice one thing about Scientologists, you know what they definitely can do better than mostly other religions?
	They're incredible communicators.
	John Travolta, Scientology.
	Yeah.
	Tom Cruise, Scientology.
	Just look at the way David Miscavige speaks.
	He speaks better than most preachers speak.
	The way they teach their guys, I had an office one time where 70 agents in the office were all Scientologists.
	I loved working with them.
	Yeah.
	They're kind of like Toastmasters, intergalactic.
	On steroids and growth hormone, and they hang out with Gary Breck all the time, type of health.
	Yeah.
	Like they're at that level.
	But one thing I know they do is whenever they do the auditing sessions and they ask you to recall a traumatic memory or something that's sitting in your subconscious, I know that they record that session so they can hold whatever you're saying is blackmail to leverage against you in the future.
	I do believe that Scientology is sort of a massive for-profit blackmail operation that has it's deeply entrenched in Hollywood and the police departments of Southern California.
	Interesting.
	Because I mean, what is the purpose?
	Because they're not atheists.
	They believe in an ascendant spiritual plane where thetan, which is your soul, will live there and occupy its own planet after you pass away for eternity, which sounds fantastic in theory.
	So I hope it's true.
	So if you're a Scientologist watching this, I hope you're right.
	But imagine you die, you get to heaven and you're a Christian and God is like, Scientology was right.
	So what are you?
	What do you believe in?
	Me, man.
	That's the thing, man.
	Like you said, I'm 27.
	I'm still trying to figure things out.
	Like, my opinions sort of change as I'm learning more stuff about life.
	I would like to think that there's an afterlife.
	When I was a kid, my grandma told me that, you know, there was, and that all my great-grandparents were there watching the Phillies games, and the Phillies always win in heaven.
	That sounded nice.
	I was like, oh, that sounds great because they're losing right now.
	But as I'm getting older, man, I don't know.
	Sometimes I watch a bug die or a dog.
	You know, we just had to put down a puppy.
	Never mind.
	Anyways, I think to myself, like, man, what makes me different from all these animals and wildlife that's passing away?
	Is there something special about the human spirit that allows us to occupy the kingdom of heaven?
	Are we more than animal?
	Well, listen, I don't know if you ever watched Charlie, All Dogs Go to Heaven.
	You ever saw the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven?
	I believe all dogs go to heaven.
	I don't know about cats, but I think all dogs go to heaven.
	But do they get their own specific heaven?
	Are they with us?
	I think they're hanging out with us.
	I can't imagine going to heaven, not seeing dogs.
	So dogs are the only species in heaven or all other domesticated petries?
	I don't know.
	That's a pay grade that I haven't reached that level 32 or 33 to know if they're going to be there or not.
	I'm kind of going based on faith.
	I'm hoping they're going to be there because we love animals.
	But if my dad's version of faith to him, he is hoping animals don't go to heaven because my dad can't stand dogs.
	Because they poo everywhere.
	Because my dad is a clean freak and God forbid an animal touches him.
	He loses his mind.
	Till today, his mother, my grandmother, had 12 cats, two dogs, two parrots, 12 birds, two snakes.
	All her kids love dogs and animals, except for my dad.
	She had four kids.
	They all love animals.
	My dad can't stand them.
	So my dad's depiction of heaven, it's just human beings.
	So mine, I'm hoping there's some animals, but we'll see.
	So you don't have a faith.
	You don't have something you believe in right now.
	No, I'd like to, though.
	I'd like to have some sort of ecstatic religious experience.
	Well, you know, you're 27.
	You're going through it.
	You know, when it, the way the journey you're going on is so awesome that I'm really curious to know who you are three years from now, six years from now.
	Sincerely, I want to know where you're going to be 10 years from now.
	You know, there's certain people you watch who are coming up and you're like, I think this guy's going to change a lot of times.
	And I can't wait to meet the next guy.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like, look, 10 years ago, Rogan was a Sanders guy.
	Yeah.
	And then all of a sudden, wait, what?
	He was one of the reasons why Trump got elected.
	They hug each other at UFC as if they're best friends.
	This is not the same guy.
	When I was on Rogan's podcast, he's like, I'll never have, you know, he was thinking about it, but at one point, he told Lex I'll never have him on.
	He called me all this other stuff.
	What happened to him?
	What evolution did he go through?
	I think last week, Rogan just said, I'm no longer drinking alcohol.
	Yeah.
	Or two weeks ago.
	stopped about 39 days ago.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	How is it so far for you?
	It's just fantastic, man.
	Like, you know, I used to spend so much time socializing, it became like a second job.
	You know what I mean?
	I'm like, I get off work.
	I have my, my, it's, it felt like partying was a job.
	And I just have much more time on my hands, much more emotional regulation.
	That's why I'm putting up three videos a week now as opposed to one.
	I wake up at five o'clock in the morning.
	I've been running, get to work, edit, put something out.
	And you edit your own stuff out here.
	Yeah.
	One thing I wanted to ask you, wait, what'd you say?
	I hear you edit your own video.
	I edit my own videos mostly, but I have a new team of editors.
	Shout out to Charlie, Nate, Gabe, and Ethan.
	Those are my first four editors, my first four Channel 5 employees of history.
	Charlie.
	Charlie Brady.
	He edited the video about West Virginia Greyhound Racing.
	Oh, very cool.
	I wanted to ask you, though, what religion was your father?
	Is your father?
	Mom and dad, both Christians.
	And they're from Iran.
	Iran.
	Yeah.
	Is that the dominant religion there?
	No, but remember, my dad's a Syrian and my mother's Armenian.
	So I speak Armenian.
	I speak Aramaic.
	But I lived in Iran for almost 11 years, went to Germany, then we came here.
	Were Christians expelled under the Shah?
	Not under the Shah.
	The Shah was like open.
	Oh, I mean, Khomeini.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, under Khomeini.
	You do not want to.
	You're walking on eggshells under Khomeini when you were a Christian at my time.
	It was uncomfortable.
	It was, you couldn't go out and be too public about it.
	See, there's a couple things when you talk about Iran and you talk about America.
	And for me, when you grow up as a kid, you're like, whoa, why can't I be a Christian here?
	Why can't I be public about it?
	Why is this so judgmental and unsafe?
	And you got to be careful and all this other stuff.
	And then you come to America, you're like, yeah, you're a Muslim?
	Great.
	Go to Detroit.
	Take over Detroit.
	Take over Dearborn.
	Do what you want to do.
	You want to be a Scientologist?
	Go to LA.
	Build it up.
	Go to Tampa.
	No problem.
	You want to be a Mormon?
	Go to Utah.
	Do your thing.
	you want to be jehovah you want so it's like you know it allows you to do it This country being a great one.
	But going back to it, establishment asked the anti-establishment.
	We're talking about Trump.
	And your industry's talking to, you would be a what?
	Are you a Gen Z?
	I think I'm on like the very late Gen Z. Right.
	Yeah.
	I'm like the last, like, I'm like the oldest Gen Z person.
	Wow, you're old.
	I'm like, right, you know how there's like the Aries Taurus cusp, which is today?
	Yeah.
	I'm like that for Gen Z. I'm not a millennial, but I'm definitely not Gen Alpha.
	Like I, when I was a kid, I was like playing with sticks and kicking rocks around and stuff.
	I wasn't.
	Did you experience that?
	Yeah, I was, I had no, the internet came around when I was like seven or eight, at least home computer.
	So I was out there, you know what I mean, just doing my thing.
	The good old days.
	The good old days.
	I wasn't watching people on live stream typing in like W chat or L chat.
	Like I was really experiencing it.
	How old is Mr. Beast?
	Is he older than you?
	Or you guys are.
	Yeah, Mr. Beast is, I would estimate 31.
	How old was Logan?
	Logan Paul's, what, like 28?
	Oh, shit.
	Is he really 26?
	He's not 26.
	Oh, Mr. Beast was born in 1998.
	Wow.
	I got to get my hustle on.
	Holy shit.
	He's 26.
	Dude, I thought he was 30.
	How old is Logan Paul?
	Can you pull that up, Rob?
	How old is?
	He's got to be like 28-ish.
	Oh, I've got Logan Paul.
	It's three years.
	All right, we're good.
	And Jake is what, 29?
	Jake, like a year younger?
	28.
	28.
	So this is like the 26, 27, 28, 30.
	I think the way you're going, if you continue the way you're going, you'll be a 20 million plus sub-channel.
	I hope so.
	No, I think you will be.
	I think your only reason you won't is because you're going to be your own enemy and get in your own way.
	If you kind of buckle down and stay disciplined, I think you're going to get there.
	And I think you'll be a very, very influential voice in citizen journalism in America.
	Thanks.
	And help a lot of us that maybe we don't have the time to go there.
	We'll be like, okay, where's he at now?
	Oh, shit.
	I didn't know that.
	That's what it looks like.
	But going back to it, you're not a Trump guy.
	But you said when I asked you about Romney, somehow we went to Scientology.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Which was a very weird left turn we took.
	Well, I think it was the Mormon Scientology.
	Establishment.
	Mormon establishment.
	However, that's happened.
	Yeah.
	But would you put him more, like, do you think Romney is more with President Bush or do you think Romney is more friends with Trump?
	I mean, as far as Trump, he's not part of the RNC establishment, but there's a new establishment forming around Trump.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, I think that he ran on the platform of being against the DNC establishment, who obviously are entrenched in like the mainstream press, late-night television.
	Most cable news networks, except for Fox, do, are kind of obedient to the Democratic Party.
	You saw that when they disenfranchised Bernie Sanders during the primaries in 2016.
	Yeah, for sure.
	So I think that he was for a long time, but I think there's a new establishment forming.
	But hang on, forming.
	But prior to being established, they were anti-establishment before they got established.
	Well, there's multiple establishments is kind of the thing.
	I totally get it.
	But establishment is what?
	Those who are the majority, they have the control, they're established, and this is our way.
	You have to come ask our permission to run, right?
	Kind of like, hey, I'm Obama, I'm Clinton, I'm this.
	You're going to come through us before you run, right?
	Yeah, Trump is totally an outsider anti-establishment 2016.
	So check this out.
	That's kind of where I'm going with this because I'm trying to see positioning.
	So Obama, would you put Obama as establishment or anti-establishment?
	Establishment.
	For sure.
	Would you put Bush as establishment?
	How about Clinton?
	Yeah.
	How about Senior?
	Yeah.
	How about Reagan?
	Yeah.
	How about Carter?
	Every president ever before Trump was a part of a major political establishment.
	How about Kennedy?
	Kennedy, I believe, was assassinated by the government because he went against the agenda.
	What that agenda is, I'm not sure.
	I'm going to have to do some research.
	So I would say the last two anti-establishment presidents we've had are Kennedy and Trump.
	I think that the Democratic Party wanted Trump to win in 2016, to run in 2016 because I think they believed that he had no chance.
	And I think that the Democrats actually propped him up.
	It's called the Pied Piper Strategy.
	I think they did that in 2016, Hillary in particular in the DNC camp, because they thought this guy's ridiculous.
	After he went down on the elevator, they were like, no way is the birth certificate guy going to possibly win.
	So I think that they purposely propped up an anti-establishment candidate in 2016, anti-political establishment, not financial or corporate establishment, with the idea that he'd be so easy to beat.
	But he was so good at speaking and having a genuine connection with the people and the way that he talked casually, off script, pulling no punches, that people resonated with Trump a lot.
	Why do you think even from the younger males, Gen Zs, why do you think there's such a big growth and attraction to Trump today like never before?
	Because it's more your generation, your age, guys.
	18 to 27-ish, 28-ish.
	They're seeing themselves like, man, I kind of want a guy like Trump instead of what's going on.
	Why do you think that number is increasing the most, that demo?
	I think it has a lot to do with the sort of like— Can you pull that up, Rob?
	Because we've talked about this before a few times.
	A lot of the culture war identity stuff being pushed a lot by the Democratic establishment is backfiring in a way that makes a lot of young white dudes feel like, why are people hating on me all the time?
	Feeling kind of disenfranchised.
	They're being told their voice isn't important and that it's not about what your ideas are, but it's about what you look like and what your background is.
	And if you're from a high place of privilege, then you shouldn't be able to have as much of a role in the conversation as someone else who's been given less in life.
	And so I think that especially in academia where you're seeing a lot of people kind of feel disillusioned with the discourse there because it's so generally one-sided on college campuses.
	I think there's a lot of young people who are also seeing Trump go on podcasts like The Ovon, Nelk Boys, this one, a lot of podcasts where you're talking, you're having a regular conversation that you wouldn't be able to have with most establishment candidates.
	And they think, all right, you know what?
	I might not love everything about this guy, but I'll tell you that he's able to have a conversation here or with someone who's just willing to talk.
	And they feel like, you know, if he can, he could be my friend too.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	You said, I'm kind of in a progressive bubble.
	That's what you said a few minutes ago, right?
	To a certain extent, yeah.
	Okay.
	So in the progressive bubble that you're in, what is that progressive bubble belief in?
	Well, in the progressive bubble that be like more leftist oriented late Gen Zers, there's not much Kamala Harris or Biden support.
	I think that's the big thing that conservatives missed is that nobody in my age demographic was excited about the Harris campaign except for a select few.
	Most people I know didn't even vote for the Democrats who would be considered very anti-conservative because they felt like we didn't have a candidate that would speak for the interest of the more progressive youth.
	And I think that we still don't.
	That's why I kind of look for 2028 as the great equalizer year.
	Because after the Harris loss, I think the DNC establishment is going to be in obscurity.
	And I think that with Trump taking over the conservative side, the traditional Bush RNC is also not as important.
	So I think we're going to have fresh primaries in four years with great voices from both sides of the aisle.
	I think it's going to be one of the most fair and free elections ever.
	Okay.
	So what I want to hear is values.
	Progressive bubble.
	What are the values you believe in?
	Your top three values.
	Socially progressive.
	Probably socially progressive.
	Well, I believe in like the complete legalization of gay marriage.
	Okay.
	Pretty pro-choice.
	I think that the richest people in the country should be taxed a little bit more.
	And I think that the working class people should be paid a little bit more as well.
	I think that there's a wide gap that you're seeing, especially when you have the richest cities in the country have the most inequality.
	You have a state or a city like Los Angeles, which has the highest corporate tax rate and the highest homelessness rate in the country.
	So the fact that these two things are existing in tandem shows that the money from taxation is not being spent effectively.
	People are not able to afford to live a normal life.
	I think that even 30 or 40 years ago, it was normal to get a college degree, go straight into the workforce in the white collar sector and be able to buy a home for yourself and start a family at 30.
	Most people that I know are so overwhelmed by student debt at this point in their life and that they can't even think about anything except for clearing that debt by any means necessary.
	People are so overworked, they have no time to pursue their creative interests.
	There's no politician they feel like speaks for the working people of the country.
	And I think that I'm more in line with that way of thinking.
	I don't sit around hating on Trump or getting upset about that because I think all this stuff is just a symptom of the dysfunction in our country that at some point will work itself out if we can come together.
	Would you say you're a pretty reasonable guy?
	I think so, yeah.
	Okay.
	I think so as well.
	You give me the vibes too.
	The conversation of allowing men to compete in women's sports, how do you as a young Gen Z progressive view that argument?
	I mean, I just wonder how much of like an issue that really is.
	It seems like the kind of thing that is really like small, that doesn't affect that many people's lives, that's being blown out of proportion by different news organizations to distract people from the real growing income inequality that's happening.
	I mean, evidently, if there's like a buff person who identifies as non-binary who is competing in women's sports, but they were born as biologically male, obviously that's an unfair situation.
	Okay, so you say that.
	Yeah, I mean.
	By the way, so that's logic to us as well, right?
	But when, again, to me, this is where a couple things are happening.
	That's one thing that I'm curious to know your thoughts.
	So when I look at the Democratic Party and their approval rating was higher pre, what do you want to call it?
	Pre-Obama was higher.
	And even legislative during Obama as well was higher.
	To where it's at today, I don't know if you've seen the rating or not, where they're at.
	Have you seen that lately?
	What they've been reporting?
	I didn't even know they did approval ratings for people who aren't in power.
	Oh, you know, you got to see this.
	It's done by CNN, which is the one I trust the most because CNN polls.
	Yeah, they want that number to be as high as possible.
	That's exactly.
	So Fox did it.
	I would be like, yeah.
	Yeah, Fox is like, turns out everyone's right.
	Rob, do you have the video where the guy, Henton, what's his name?
	Hinton?
	Harry, yes.
	Harry, that does it.
	He does a very good job.
	We have that clip.
	But when you watch this, you know, you ask yourself, okay, why is that not idea not as popular as it used to be?
	What happened all of a sudden, right?
	The numbers are staggering on how much it's dropped.
	What's it at now?
	Like what?
	30 35%.
	No.
	Less than that.
	You got to see this.
	Rob, did you find it or?
	I'm looking for the video now.
	I did find the article that you.
	No, it's a video.
	What's the guy's name?
	Harry Enton.
	Enton.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So if you go on X, just type in Enton Democratic Rating.
	There you go.
	Is that the most recent one?
	This is from February.
	There is another one that he did that's more recent.
	November, March.
	Yeah, March 12th.
	Okay, go with that one.
	Watch this.
	No, that's old.
	Hold on.
	Sorry.
	While he finds it, I just want to say, I think that the trans women and sports thing is like a classic divide and conquer, overblown, culture war distraction, divide the public thing.
	Because like realistically, they know that what they're doing now by creating that issue is that it's taking precedence over things that are far more important that affect millions and millions of people.
	And they know that there's going to be a push on the progressive side to vehemently defend that, you know, because that's what they do.
	And there's going to be a conservative push to make that the main issue.
	And so it's creating this like matrix.
	It's almost like filibustering public conversation.
	But also, let's say you're right.
	And let's give credence to 20% of the argument of that being a part of it.
	Let's put that there.
	That I think there's a part of it that the opposing side's like, hey, show this clip.
	Look at what this happened.
	So I get that.
	I get a little bit of that, you know, that's happening where they're showing.
	Okay.
	Like, hey, look at what's going on with, you know, the economy.
	Stock market drop.
	New job reports came up.
	It's higher than expected.
	No, no, don't show this report, CNN.
	Show what's going on with the stock market here and tariffs, right?
	I get that part.
	However, maybe some of it is also the bad policies cost a lot of people to leave the Democratic Party more than ever before.
	Rob, if you want to play this clip, watch this one here.
	This is how long ago, Rob?
	This is March, March 17th?
	March 17th.
	There's an updated one, but let's just watch it.
	It's close enough.
	Yeah.
	All I have to say, Democrats, call your office.
	You know where March Madness Times, terrible, terrible, terrible.
	To quote the great Charles Barkley.
	View Democratic Party favorably.
	CNN SRS, look at this, 29%.
	NBC News, you want to go lower than that?
	How about 27%?
	Both are record lows.
	The law is going back to 1992 in CNN polling.
	The lowest going back on record to 1990 in NBC News polling.
	The majority of Americans' energy on the right.
	That's going to be full point announcing.
	All I can say is I'm a big fan of the oldies, so I'm going to call it a ton of people.
	Talking like Trump, how low can you go?
	Nice.
	Well done.
	What about the congressional Dunn?
	Nice.
	What about congressional Democrats?
	Why does he look so uncomfortable?
	Holy Toledo.
	Voters' views of the Democrats in Congress among all voters disapprove.
	68%.
	And look at the approved number.
	Just 21%.
	Even lower than the Democrats.
	I want to hire this guy.
	Look at Bernie Sanders Trump crossing.
	Looks like the dad from Modern University polling.
	You think these numbers are bad.
	Watch this one.
	Watch this.
	Dems on them.
	Democratic voters feel, get this.
	The plurality of Democratic voters disapprove of Democrats in Congress at 49% and just 40% approve.
	So data is data, right?
	Data is data.
	So when you look at that, this is not good.
	So then the question becomes, how did you guys get here?
	What ideas were bad ideas?
	You said something very interesting and where you're like, you're for gay marriage.
	Cool.
	And then you said you're for higher taxes for the guys that are making more money.
	Not okay, just to clarify, I'm talking about like the genuine like billionaires.
	Like, for example, California, the tax system is ridiculous.
	Yep.
	Like I got, they took, I think, 45% of my income in total when you add up state and federal taxes last year.
	And I would have used that money to hire more people.
	So the logic is like, we're going to take this money and distribute it to those who need it.
	But I actually would have used that money to hire like five more of my friends and pumped it back into the economy.
	I don't believe that entrepreneurs who are entrepreneurs who are like around that like million, two million to 10 million level should even be taxed.
	But I'm talking about when people are hoarding such absurd amounts of wealth, multi-billion dollars, I just think that it should to a certain extent be distributed, not necessarily in the way of like the government seizes all of their assets and gives it to the poorest people, but there has to be a way to bridge the extreme divide in income inequality in the country.
	Okay, so check this out.
	You just answered a very important question that took me a while to figure out.
	When I was making $30, $40, $50,000, I'm like, dude, these rich people are greedy.
	You know, they suck.
	They should pay more taxes.
	It's not fair.
	Then when I started working my ass off and I built a business and the money came in, I'm like, dude, if I had the money, I would hire five more people right now.
	If I had that money, I would hire 10 more people right now, right?
	You're thinking about it from, and you literally would.
	And if you don't, you go buy a car, you're creating jobs.
	If you don't, you put in a bank, the bank's going to lend it to somebody.
	If you don't, you put in a mutual fund that companies work and someone's getting paid.
	No matter where the money floats, it's creating jobs, right?
	So the question on raising of the taxes, do you think you're more capable of doing good with your money or the government can?
	That's a really, really good question in terms of like personal financial liberty.
	I mean, as far as that question goes, obviously you would be better at spending your own money than the government if you're managing a business.
	But the fact is that once you get past a certain threshold of wealth, a lot of people are just hoarding it and not pumping it back into the economy.
	Like back in the day with Reagan, when he installed supply-side economics, the idea was, oh my God, it's going to stimulate the economy so much if we give no taxes to billionaires who run corporations.
	But what happened is they ended up just kind of hoarding the money, buying more estates, jets, vacations, living a lavish lifestyle, because there's a human tendency to just want to be as much of a baller as possible when you have a billion dollars.
	It's just how people are.
	Everybody likes to flex, get the nicest car, get a helicopter, do things that you can't do, things that you've dreamed of when you're playing like Grand Theft Auto as a child.
	So but go there.
	Go there with that.
	Let's say you're the greedy billionaire.
	Okay.
	What's a greedy billionaire buy?
	Oh, damn.
	Just you're asking me, like, what would I buy if I'm not going to be able to do that?
	What network do you want to do?
	You want to do 100 million, wind to a billion, or you want to stick to billionaires?
	Yeah, let's stick to people who are making, you know, multi-billion dollars every year.
	How about, let's say, billionaires and up?
	Okay.
	What does a rich billionaire buy?
	What things do they buy?
	Well, the first thing that comes to mind for me is a pool, like an infinity pool that bleeds directly into the Pacific Ocean.
	Beautiful.
	A fleet of jet skis for all of my friends.
	Okay.
	So we can kind of travel.
	I love it.
	Corporate real estate on the water so we can jet ski from the house to work.
	I love it.
	This is like Larry Ellison.
	You ever seen Larry Ellison's headquarters?
	No, I haven't.
	So this guy's from Oracle.
	This is the kind of shit that you're talking about.
	Type in Larry Ellison headquarters parks his yacht.
	Parks his yacht.
	Something like that.
	And then go to images if you could.
	So this guy builds his headquarters.
	Oracle put an Oracle, Oracle Ellison headquarters.
	Is ship.
	Maybe type in ship.
	Type in if that comes.
	Maybe go to Oracle's headquarters.
	Okay.
	Just take out the yacht.
	This guy built his headquarters.
	I don't know which one this is.
	He builds a place to put his yacht.
	I'll find it.
	I'll text it to you here in a minute.
	He literally parks his boat in front of the property that he has, whether it's Intel or Oracle.
	It's one of the two.
	But okay, what else?
	So far, we got pool, Infinity Pool on the water at the Pacific Ocean.
	You got jet skis, and then you have a corporate real estate on the water to jet ski from office to the house.
	Yeah, personal trainer, private chef, nutritionist, private chef, dermatologist to live on scene to help me with my skin.
	Dermatologists love it.
	We need these dermatologists.
	Who else?
	I can't even think about it.
	I just know that once you pass a certain amount of money, it becomes a competition as to who can get the most.
	Give me more, bro.
	Go greedy.
	What else is this billionaire going to buy?
	I want more.
	Get creative.
	Okay, what's the problem?
	What kind of billionaire?
	Am I a tech billionaire or am I like a Saudi royal family member?
	Give me both of them.
	Okay.
	I can't even think of anything else.
	Okay, let's just say private jet.
	Is that fair?
	Yeah.
	You for sure have a private jet.
	Let's just say yacht.
	Do you have a vacation home?
	Yeah, in Santa Fe.
	In Santa Fe.
	Oh, no, that's what Jeffrey Epstein had.
	I got to pick somewhere else.
	I got to pick that.
	I scratched that.
	I scratched that.
	I have a vacation home.
	On the west coast of Jamaica, Westmoreland Parish.
	Holy shit.
	Good taste.
	Yeah.
	What else?
	What else do you do to hoard the money?
	Where do you hoard your money?
	You can just sit on it.
	But what do you sit on?
	Well, what a lot of billionaires do is they use their money to kind of like use the legal system, civil court in particular, to bully people who talk badly about them.
	Yeah, but that's like – It's happening to me right now.
	Yeah, I get that part.
	But I'm saying, what do they buy?
	But let's even say that.
	So that means they hire a PR firm and lawyers, right?
	So they hire PR firms and lawyers.
	Okay.
	Do they buy expensive watches?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I mean, I personally wouldn't buy a watch.
	But they probably do it.
	Yeah.
	Crazy.
	I don't know why they do this kind of stuff.
	What else?
	What else do these guys do?
	I feel like I'm being set up right now.
	Where does this end?
	This is where I'm going with this.
	If there's something that I don't know about billionaires, I want you to tell me.
	I tell you what it is.
	Here's how I process it.
	So if they have an infinity pool, does it have to be maintained?
	Yeah, but okay, I see what you're saying.
	There is pool staff that needs to make sure the water goes, there's not too much chlorine going into the ocean.
	Do they have to be maintained though?
	Somebody has to take care of it on a weekly basis to build an infinity pool.
	Rap, how much put average price of building an infinity pool in Malibu?
	Okay, let's just average price of infinity pool building in Malibu, California.
	Yeah, California.
	Let's just say what it says, price point, $250,000, $500,000, $200,000.
	I don't know what the number's going to be.
	Give us a price point on Infinity Pool.
	Estimated costs $65,000 to $150,000.
	That's actually a lot less expensive than I thought it would be.
	And watch what it says.
	In luxury infinity pool, $150,000 can exceed to $500,000.
	That's a lot of jobs that people are going to get paid.
	Okay.
	If you buy jet skis, let's say it's $25,000 for a good jet ski.
	That's a lot.
	That's a lot.
	You're right.
	For a good jet ski.
	You're creating a job.
	And you need to get six to eight so that you and your core employees can commute to work together, like some kind of fleet.
	That's right.
	We got to do it the right way.
	You can't screw around with this one here.
	Headquarters, corporate headquarters on the water.
	Expensive.
	Construction workers, plumbers, electrician.
	That's a lot of jobs being created, right?
	If you have a private personal trainer, that's a job you're creating.
	If you have a chef, that's a job you're creating.
	Okay, I get the point you're trying to make.
	People should be able to get nice things for themselves if they work super hard.
	I'm not the kind of guy who's like, if you work hard, you should give all your money to people who are on the lower income.
	I'm just saying that the specific tax rate should be a little bit higher.
	Not ridiculously higher, but higher enough to where they can have substantial social welfare programs.
	My biggest challenge with that is, is even the greediest of the greediest who goes and is like flaunting a big ass platinum gold chain that they're putting around their neck that they bought for whatever that somebody took three months to build, no matter what it is, the money is flowing.
	Even if they put the money in the bank and they're sitting on it, the bank is lending it back to somebody.
	So money's always working.
	Chase is not going to let money stay in the bank.
	The moment you put money in Chase, guess what Chase is doing?
	Chase is lending it to somebody ASAP.
	They don't want the money to stay in the bank.
	They're not making money like that.
	So no matter what you do, the basis of this question for me goes, who's going to do better with the money?
	Giving it to the government, because you said what right after when I said taxes.
	You said in California, what did you say?
	Let me go back to it.
	You said in California, you know, the taxes that you're paying 45%, but then at the same time, taxes are not being used effectively.
	Right.
	How much of that are we going through right now?
	Well, I mean, on the inverse, and what do you think will solve the problem of the extreme poverty and wealth inequality in the country?
	Well, let's see, California has been trying to do it.
	Well, the thing is, they tried.
	That's the thing is, everyone sees Gavin Newsom as like an enabler for all these destructive democratic policies, but he still makes concessions to conservatives who are like bullying him into not carrying it out.
	For example, let's take the Tenderloin in San Francisco, which was the biggest, it's still the biggest open-air drug zone in the city.
	Been that way for decades.
	He, you know, obviously during the Biden administration and when Newsom was in control, he still is.
	It was a crazy scene out there.
	There were people smoking fentanyl in the streets, people defecating and sleeping in the streets.
	San Francisco.
	Yeah.
	In this particular area.
	Is there a clip you want him to show?
	No, I think we can just overlay it or something.
	But I mean, in general, Governor Newsom was being kind of like shit on for letting that happen.
	But the reality is, and people on the ground know this, there was supposed to be a safe injection site that was two blocks long, two blocks wide that was supposed to be maintained by the state and the city.
	So it made it so people wouldn't be able to use heroin, fentanyl, and meth on the streets.
	They would have to go to a controlled environment where the public and children and people who were living in that community wouldn't have to interact with them and they could have the access to the services they need.
	At the last minute, Governor Newsom didn't build it because he was too scared of being getting another media smear campaign and being made to seem like someone who lets people do drugs in the open, but he still does drugs in the open.
	So with the Democratic establishment in California, there's a lot of hypocrisy and there's a lot of, we don't know where the money is going.
	There's not much transparency as far as what's happening with all these taxes that are being taken away from people who worked hard to make that money.
	We do know that a trillion dollars of wealth have left California in the past four years.
	We do know that cities like San Francisco and LA that are still generating a ton of money, much of that money isn't even being given, pumped back into the city because so many workers have gone remote.
	There's a lot of people working in California that decide not to live there because they can do their work for tech companies remotely elsewhere in a more affordable state like Montana.
	You know, so I think that when you look at progressive policies and you look at poverty and it's not changing, and then you look at the tax rate going up and down, it can be easy to say, you know what, nothing's ever going to change.
	And that's why there's so much a sense of apathy and nihilism when it comes to the billionaire thing.
	That's why people are saying, oh, billionaires are the worst.
	Kill them all on the internet because they've seen nothing change and they're seeing, okay, the cost of living is high.
	There's homeless people everywhere.
	There's so much poverty.
	Yet there's this class of people who are unaffected by it.
	So the question is, then, if we don't raise the taxes, what can be done to change that situation on the ground?
	The taxes?
	No, I mean, the situation with inequality and poverty.
	Yeah, but that's not how it works, though.
	Because to me, here's how it works.
	Okay, let's just say you got three sons and they're all 25 years old.
	Okay.
	And you're 60 years old at this time.
	Could you be?
	Yeah, 60?
	Yeah, 25, 60.
	Let's just say you're 65 years old.
	You got three sons, 25, 26, 27.
	They're all out of college.
	You give each of them $100,000.
	First one, you give $100,000.
	He goes to Singapore.
	He parties, he comes back, has a lot of stories.
	He says, Dad, I tried an opportunity.
	I met with this businessman in Singapore.
	Didn't work out.
	I need another quarter million dollars.
	I'm up to something big.
	Second son comes up, you give him $100,000.
	He takes $100,000, go buys a small condo, gets a nice little job, makes $120,000 a year, doesn't need any money from you anymore.
	He's doing okay.
	He's happy.
	He's got a girlfriend.
	They're pretty serious.
	Third one, you give $100,000, takes $100,000, starts a little real estate shop, turns it into $3.2 million, okay?
	Two years later.
	Now they're all two years older.
	The first son to give $100,000 went to Singapore, comes back, says he wants a quarter.
	The second wants a quarter.
	The third one wants a quarter.
	Which of those three are you more comfortable giving more money to, knowing you're going to get a rate of return on your money?
	The first, the second, or the third?
	Probably the first, right?
	What?
	The first?
	Yeah.
	The guy that went to Singapore?
	Oh, no, not that guy.
	My bad.
	I kind of got lost in the metaphor here because I was going to say, the first guy is Singapore.
	The second guy is a stable guy, good citizen, gets a job.
	Or the third one that starts a business and makes the money grow for you.
	I mean, probably the three because it would be a bigger investment.
	But I mean, aside from a business standpoint, like if we obviously, you recognize that there's a big problem with homelessness, poverty, unaffordability.
	Well, why do you think that is, though?
	What do you think?
	I'm asking you.
	You're in the streets.
	Why do you think that is?
	I mean, I would just assume that because the social safety net is so small here and there's such little being provided for people in terms of mental health services, the broken veterans administration, so many different things, unaffordability.
	Like there's just not enough resources to set up people who are to help people who are at rock bottom here.
	You think we haven't given enough money?
	So to me, when you ask the question, if we don't raise the taxes, then how are we going to fix this?
	To me, the question becomes, the last 30 times we agreed to give you more money, you wasted it.
	Why should we trust you to give you more money?
	Because if I give money to Amazon, if I give money in a company like NVIDIA, if I give money to Tesla, if I give money to Ford or Disney, and I buy the stock and I'm like a believer, here's what's going to be happening.
	I kind of can track publicly.
	There's accountability, there's accounting, there's quarterly earnings, there's calls to get on.
	If I give more money to the government, what is the quarterly earnings?
	Where's the accountability?
	No, I totally agree.
	Where is accounting?
	I agree.
	Why am I giving money to that?
	There's no way logically one would give money to a company or a business that I don't get to see what you did with my money.
	There's no tracking to it.
	I agree.
	I do think that we can both agree that throwing money at things doesn't always fix the problem.
	But you've been around for longer than me.
	If it's not that, if it's not funding programs to provide for people who are down and out, what do we do?
	Because the problem is already here.
	It's not in theory.
	There's 100,000 people who are homeless in LA alone and San Francisco combined.
	So it's like, what do we do?
	What's the solution?
	Do you have any wisdom as to what you think would happen?
	Do you think long-term you'll live in LA?
	You said earlier you're considering leaving, right?
	Well, that's the thing as I love the landscape and the people of California so much.
	Where I live now, I'm an hour and a half from the beach, hour and a half from the Mojave Desert.
	Can drive to Vegas or Tijuana, can get to the Bay.
	In Florida, kind of just in Florida.
	So would you see yourself living there long term?
	We're going to document this because we're going to come back when you come to Florida.
	How's it feel being in Florida?
	I like being in Florida because you can feel like it's kind of like Texas right now where things are moving.
	You can feel people are like excited about new projects and it doesn't have this air of like a, you know, bygone greatness LA has.
	I have an office in Universal City.
	It's my first ever Channel 5 office that I opened four months ago.
	And there's a cafe that's abandoned in the lobby.
	It looks like I moved into like a Ford Motor Company factory in Detroit.
	There's only four people working in this giant building.
	And like, I remember the janitor came by.
	He was mopping the floor and he like pointed at some derelict office and he goes, that's where Michael Jackson recorded Beat It.
	And I was just like, Jesus Christ, you really feel like you're in like a post-Rust Belt decline society.
	Andreas, where are you at?
	I don't want to say it exactly.
	Is it like what part of Universal?
	Like close to across from Universal Studios.
	Oh, shit.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So it's like literally there's this like bygone.
	There's in the air you can feel that the place has seen better days.
	Like by Disney and where Forrest Lawn is.
	Give or take.
	Exactly.
	Okay.
	I had a makeup artist come by when I was having a lot of breakouts or whatever.
	And so she came by and she was so happy.
	And I was like, why are you so happy?
	She goes, I haven't had work in two months.
	She said, before COVID, every single day I was on set for a different awesome director getting to do makeup for the stars.
	And she says, now I have to travel to Poland or Taiwan to find work because Hollywood is moving their productions to different continents just to save money on staff.
	So why do you think?
	Why are people leaving?
	Taxes.
	Okay.
	So why else?
	Why else do you think they're leaving?
	You think it's taxes?
	There's a couple different people.
	Like, okay, so there's Hollywood leaving.
	They're leaving to save money.
	Comedy leaving is because of the culture of the coastal cities.
	Tech left for a little bit because remote work was more profitable, but tech is returning to Silicon Valley.
	So I think tech is still going for California.
	But those three big industries, Hollywood, tech, and then comedy, all left for different reasons.
	But comedy is for sure because of the culture of California.
	So long term, you're kind of open to leaving to Austin or Florida or something.
	Yeah, at some point in my life.
	But I mean, I also just love California.
	I also believe in it.
	I could see California having a second wind.
	I mean, it's obviously...
	How did he get it?
	How do you get a second win?
	I mean, new leadership.
	Like, such as who?
	Is there anyone that you think that could turn things around?
	No, not right now, but maybe a rising star could emerge from the ashes.
	And that rising star that emerges from the ashes, what would you want that person's policies to be on?
	Like, where would you want to?
	Take the money that you're taking.
	Use all of that tax money to provide for people who are sleeping on the streets and dying on the streets.
	Provide robust mental health services, shelter options, opportunities to people who have been basically dejected by society.
	Clean up the street.
	For the amount that we're being taxed in California, it should be a utopian society.
	And when you talk about homelessness, another problem is that people say, oh, there's so many homeless people in California because of the progressive policies.
	But it also has to do with the fact that homelessness has been criminalized so heavily in red states and counties that people are leaving those counties to California so they don't go to jail.
	I don't know if you're familiar with the Grants Pass Oregon ruling.
	It's a rural county in Oregon, which is a blue state.
	And it ruled that if you're a homeless person because of vagrancy laws, you can be taken to jail and cited even if there's no shelter beds available for sleeping in the street.
	And if you get your third vagrancy citation, it's a mandatory 90 days in county jail.
	So a lot of people are homeless, suffering from different mental disorders and substance abuse issues.
	They're like, all right, I don't want to go to jail.
	I'm going to go to LA.
	So then you have all of these mental health and support services being overwhelmed by people who are migrating from red counties and states.
	So I think that the solution is, I wish this was viewed as an America problem as opposed to a Dems versus Republican problem, because when you politicize people who are going through hardcore suffering, it can be easy to overlook their suffering and use them as political cannon fodder if you're Republican or Democratic.
	Yeah.
	And I think you're coming from a very sincere place that you want to improve.
	This is why I said, I can't wait to watch your journey.
	It's exciting to watch you go through what you're going through right now.
	Because in the business world, here's how it works.
	If you have a billion dollars, your name is Bill Ackman, and my name is John Doe.
	I come to you and I say, hey, Bill, I need $20 million from you.
	Really?
	Tell me what your background looks like.
	First deal, I put $20,000 on my own money.
	My dad gave me $100,000.
	My uncle and family gave me half a million dollars.
	I sold the business for $32 million.
	Second company, I put $2 million on my own money.
	It failed, moved on, didn't work out for a year, but I didn't take money from anybody else.
	Third company, I took $20 million, turned it into $180 million, and I sold the business.
	Fourth one is the one I'm doing right now, and I want $20 million from you.
	Will you consider giving me money?
	Yes, right?
	Okay.
	So number one is a guy like Newsom has credibility issue.
	We want to give you more money for what?
	I'm not comfortable with this.
	So liberal policies have lost credibility to get more money.
	Number two, reputation.
	If your policies are so good, why are 27 out of 30 cities in America that are the most unsafest cities in America ran by Democratic mayors?
	That's data, 27 out of 30, right?
	So you have all these years to fix the issues.
	How come you haven't?
	Third one for me is the following.
	Had a friend of mine who, if you ever went to dinner with him, he wouldn't order dessert once.
	He would eat more dessert than steak.
	Like to him, it's like, let me try this ice cream and bring this one out and bring the carrot cake and bring this, this, and bring the tresletches.
	And he's just eating it, right?
	And he says, you know, I'm about to do the stomach stapling here coming up.
	I said, really?
	Yeah.
	I said, shit.
	And he says, really, you're going to say, yeah.
	He goes and staples his stomach, loses 50 pounds.
	Literally, he loses 50 pounds.
	Okay.
	So now he can't keep anything down.
	But guess what he still eats?
	Dessert.
	Same exact thing.
	Key lime pie.
	Keylam pie.
	The whole night, right?
	All of it, right?
	Strawberry sorbet.
	Give me all of it, right?
	So his habits didn't change.
	So even though we stapled the stomach, he still kept doing the same thing.
	So when he asked the question, how do we fix this homelessness problem?
	Money to me is band-aid.
	Money to me is staple in the stomach.
	Money to me is not changing the habits.
	Money to me is not getting rid of the bad behavior that they have.
	It's not going to do that.
	It's standard and protocols.
	So if somebody feels safer, it's like a kid who wants to come and hang out with you and your dad, and your dad smokes weed, but you don't want to be with me because I'm a tougher dad that I don't smoke weed.
	You're like, man, that dad is cool.
	You're not cool.
	California is the cool dad smokes weed with you.
	Texas is like, no, you come to my ass of smoking weed.
	You get your ass kicked out of the house.
	You can bring your gun to my house.
	But that's okay because I feel safer.
	But I will feel safer for some of the people because we're a Second Amendment country, right?
	That's the part where it's the back and forth for me.
	Where if your ideas have credibility that you've done well, let's give you more.
	But they've lost so much credibility where people don't want to raise taxes because you don't have credibility right now to ask for more.
	Yeah, and that's what I was saying about the safe injection site in San Francisco.
	That would have solved the problem of open-air drug use in the area.
	You think so?
	Oh, definitely.
	Tell me why.
	Because people aren't going to get cited.
	They're not going to get, I mean, most of the open-air drugs.
	Is that the mandate, or is that permanently fixing something?
	I mean, if the safe injection site was also had, you know, harm reduction services, had mental health treatment options, had people working there day in, day out, trying to help people get back on their feet, it would not fix the problem.
	There's still going to be drug use and homelessness no matter what, but it would allow for an exit ramp for those who want to make that choice, as opposed to living literally outside of people's apartments, shooting up and passing out.
	You ever heard of Jared Klickstein?
	No.
	Do you know who he is?
	So can you pull him up, Rob?
	Jared Klickstein, I had him on this pod on the podcast three months ago.
	So this guy was in Skid Row for seven years.
	Okay.
	He lived there, homeless guy, heroin addict.
	His mother, Rob, if I'm not mistaken, died from heroin, right, at 14 years old when he was 14.
	And then his dad was a heroin addict.
	He eventually got off of it.
	This guy becomes an addict.
	He starts selling.
	He goes to Skid Row.
	Every day he's stealing $1,000 on the streets, CVS stores, and he's selling it for $300.
	That was the rate.
	And he comes in and he talks about, he wrote a book.
	I don't know what the book is, Crooked Smile.
	Can you, can you, is there a picture of what he did to himself, why he calls it Crooked Smile?
	So he explains, I asked him, I said, tell me what happened there with LA.
	Okay.
	What was the problem with you being homeless?
	And then he breaks down the incentive program of him constantly going through it.
	This guy burned his own lip that he had to do surgery.
	He was so high on drugs that he burned his own lip.
	I mean, he's got a mustache now, but he openly talks about it where he titled the video, Crooked Smile.
	Oh, wow.
	Yeah.
	I think this guy would be a very interesting guy for you in LA to go to Skid Bro to document stuff with him because he can give you a different perspective because he was there for seven years.
	That would be a very interesting thing.
	But can you go to the $24 billion number, Rob?
	I don't know if you follow this number or not.
	California State Audit revealed that a substantial amount of money allocated for homelessness program, roughly $24 billion, over the past five years, was not consistently tracked or evaluated to determine if it was effectively addressing the crisis.
	The lack of tracking and evaluation led to a lack of transparency in how the funds were spent.
	Right.
	So they were actually helping or not.
	And guess what?
	Homelessness from five years ago was lower then than it is now, but they lost $24 billion.
	Nowadays, more than ever, the brand you wear reflects and represents who you are.
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	So we're talking about throwing money at something.
	There was money, but it wasn't being funded to the right places.
	So in theory, there's probably a world in which the money isn't being embezzled or given to the wrong people.
	Why?
	Well, obviously the Newsom's administration.
	Yeah.
	So then, but what side of the political aisle is that?
	I would not describe the Democrats who control California as leftists or progressives.
	What would you call them?
	Liberals, Democrats.
	Liberals and Democrats?
	I think it's different.
	So what's the difference?
	I think liberals are more oriented in maintaining power for themselves, dominating the political landscape of the state.
	You don't think leftists are?
	I don't think leftists have any semblance of political power in the U.S. Why do you think?
	I just think they've been disenfranchised by the liberal establishment, the Democratic establishment.
	I think progressive people's movements.
	Also, if you look at, you know, there's been over half a century plus of infiltration of these organizations by the FBI, breaking them down.
	And we're not just talking about like, you know, communists and far-left stuff here.
	We're talking about people's organizations, Black Panthers, Brown Berets, American Indian Movement, farm workers unions, environmental groups.
	They were all infiltrated and taken down by the government.
	And so you have the Democratic establishment claiming to be a progressive organization, but I do not think that they are.
	So, you know, it makes me think, Anthony Scaramucci said something very interesting the other day.
	Actually, very interesting, where he said, a guy, the way the U.S. system is set up is a guy said, I'm going to go be Congress because I think I can make some changes.
	And you realize you can't do shit.
	I'm going to go be a senator because that's where the powers I can make some changes.
	And you can't do shit.
	I'm going to go be a president because you can't do shit.
	So the American system is built that somebody can.
	So even if the leftists that you think could change something, if they get in, they still have to go through the other people that if you give the money to them, it's not like they're going to personally go count the money and do something good with it.
	The money is still going to go to these institutions that's ran by people that have been there for decades that you can't do nothing about them.
	Yeah, it's kind of depressing.
	And it goes back to the Luigi Maggioni thing.
	When you talk about this deeply entrenched bureaucracy that's halting change, that kind of thing makes sense.
	You know what it makes me think about, though?
	It makes me think about what would you trust more, a bigger government or a smaller government?
	Small.
	Small but effective in actually working for the people.
	So a small government means more money stays with you and I. Leave it in the market.
	I trust you knowing better what to do with the money with a million dollars than the government.
	I trust you instead of paying 45% of, let's just say you made a million bucks last year, 45% went to taxes.
	You kept $5.50,000.
	How many more jobs would you have had if that was only 20%?
	You would have kept that $250,000.
	Realistically, let's just say you had an additional $250,000 last year of tax saving.
	What would you have done with the $250 calculus?
	I would have hired more employees, been able to expand the newsroom at a quicker pace.
	We expanded to the Middle East and Mexico and elsewhere as well, the U.K. and New Zealand, would have been able to do that a little bit faster.
	I was still able to do it, but definitely there's not quite a sting like getting an invoice from the IRS after working your ass off for an entire year.
	And like I said, that sting wouldn't be as bad if they were using the money well.
	I mean, if I was living in a world where there was no traffic, where people were happy and there wasn't this massive working class despair taking over, you could feel it in the air in California and elsewhere in the entire country.
	If that didn't exist, I would probably be okay with a higher tax rate because I would say, okay, well, I don't have to, people at large, the community, this American experiment is progressing in a mutually beneficial way.
	Yeah, but if they were efficient, they wouldn't need to tax us more.
	You get what I'm saying?
	Like if there wasn't such bureaucracy in the government and the IRS.
	Yeah, and so bless you.
	But to me, it's also deeper than that.
	Think about it.
	Like, let's just say I got five C-suites that are working for me, a CMO, chief marketing officer, CFO, CTO technology, chief strategy officer, and chief compliance officer.
	And we have a meeting at the end of the year.
	What's your budget?
	My budget is $5 million.
	My budget is $4 million.
	My budget is $3 million.
	My budget is $10 million.
	Great.
	If a guy at the end of the year had a $5 million budget, but ended up hitting his budget for the year and a BHAG, but they did it on 80% of the budget.
	So he didn't spend $5 million.
	He spent $4 million.
	You're like, dude, good job.
	You saved the company 20% of your budget.
	But if a guy that had a $10 million budget doesn't hit his goal, but asks for $15 million and spends $50 million, you don't have credibility.
	So it's that simple that for me, I would much rather take more power away from them because they don't have a track record of getting good things done.
	They keep making it bigger and bigger and bigger at what expense.
	So that's the part where I think a part of why Kennedy and Trump's are so hated is because the one thing those two have in common is the establishment couldn't stand these guys because they couldn't control them.
	What do they have in common?
	They both have money.
	And they both had the ears of who?
	Some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, and they liked them.
	Trump on the right, Kennedy on the left.
	So it's kind of like that, that relationship where they were both hated.
	CIA, FBI, the Fed, who the hell are these guys?
	Trump's not getting along with the Fed.
	Kennedy didn't get along with the Fed.
	There's some of those commonalities where, now, the flip side of it, guess what Trump and his camp have to do?
	If they don't produce results, guess what happens?
	What?
	Oh, the other side's going to come out and say, you had him.
	What do they do?
	Nothing.
	And that's kind of where I'm at as well.
	Like, I'm obviously not a really a big Trump guy, but if positive things happen for the country during the Trump term in these next four years, I'm going to report on that.
	You know, I'm not going to be, I'm not dedicated to making Trump.
	I know you are.
	No, I know you are.
	Yeah.
	If great things start happening, it's not like I'm going to look for an alternate angle that undermines the success.
	I'm just looking at how average people are living every day, happiness and fulfillment.
	Very cool.
	Chicago, you went to Chicago, right?
	Yeah, back in the day, I covered a music festival called Lyrical Lemonade or Summer Smash.
	I went to Oblock the next day, and somehow that became my most watched video of all time.
	15 million views.
	Yeah, that was sick.
	I love it.
	It's sick.
	Why do you think it was so special?
	Why do you think it did so well?
	Well, Oblock is like the genesis of drill music.
	You must be played?
	Yeah, yeah, sure.
	Rob, go ahead and play it.
	Go ahead.
	You're saying Oblock is the genesis?
	Oblock is the genesis of drill music, which is a sub-genre of rap, which is hyper-violent and focuses on real-life violence.
	It's actually been a pretty destructive cultural force, to be honest with you.
	But, you know, Oblock is where it started.
	So it's kind of like, you know how people would go to Mississippi to document the origin story of blues, or they go to New Orleans for jazz or they go to Nashville for country?
	Chicago and South Chicago is like that for drill music.
	I think that in 100 years, there's going to be like drill tours in the same way that there's like a Kentucky bourbon trail where people will like drink the whole way and go say, this is where Pop Pappy Van Winkle put his 15-year barrel up for sale in 1798.
	They're going to do this in Oblock and be like, this is where Chief Keefe was born in the year 1995.
	And there's going to be people in 2150 like, oh my God, that's so crazy.
	What is that peak?
	Rob, go back on the video.
	At the beginning, there was a peak all the way to the bot first.
	First part, first two minutes.
	Oh, sorry.
	What is that?
	What is that peak?
	What happens here?
	Press play.
	GTK, GDK, GDK, GDK, GKHK.
	Come on.
	GTKGKKHK.
	Both came out.
	Mostly youngest, he came home, he invented that shit.
	To you, like, what is drill music?
	We start the word drill with our music.
	Like, let's do a drill.
	We started that shit.
	Like, how would you explain drill music to someone who doesn't know?
	Music that make you want to kind of get outside and go just be outside.
	You feel that?
	Make sense?
	So, so means what?
	Meaning you can go outside and call some mayhem, kill somebody.
	That's literally what he's saying.
	Yeah.
	It's pretty dark, but I mean, drill has now become like one of rap's mainstream sounds.
	How safe did you feel?
	Pretty safe, honestly, only because, like, you know, people don't understand this now.
	Like, all hoods in America, all like, you know, poor neighborhoods that have music in them and have like micro-influencers, they recognize content as a viable avenue for income.
	You know, back in the day, if this was 2005, pre-Youtube, you could never go to somebody's hood just as a, as a voyeur and film with them.
	But now there's kind of an informal agreement that is, that's why there's so many hood vlogs now, is they recognize that being featured on a predominant major YouTube channel could be their take it out.
	People were going to see them.
	It could be their, you know, it could be their moment for more exposure and attention.
	And especially Oblock is probably the most famous housing project in the U.S.
	And I had a big YouTube channel, so it just happened really fast.
	One of the craziest things you did is when you went to who's the key keys, what was it, Kia's?
	I'll break it down.
	So the Kia boys are a car, a car in the beautiful coastal town of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
	That's right.
	They're in high school.
	For an update, I heard the Kia boys aren't stealing cars anymore.
	Part of that has to do with the security update that was installed in the push to start system.
	They can't do it anymore.
	Yeah, you can't do it anymore.
	Unless somebody hasn't gotten the software update.
	But one of them's in jail.
	One of them just disappeared.
	And the third guy is working at a factory and he bought his own car.
	And it's not IKEA.
	He bought an American-made car.
	That's the real message of this documentary by American.
	Him being in the car, Rob.
	When you're in the car, where is it where you're in the car?
	Well, I should have put two and two together, but yeah, they picked me up in a car and they're like, yo, let's hang out.
	And I got in the car and I'm sitting in the back seat and I thought about it.
	And I'm like, wait a second, this is IKEA.
	Holy shit, I'm in the back of a stolen car with three juveniles.
	Window with a special tool and clears the broken car.
	A little bit before.
	Back up a little bit.
	So this is a crazy scene.
	So back up, like maybe shows what they were doing.
	So they picked me up at the McDonald's carriage port.
	I'm riding with them in the back of this car.
	Sometimes I don't realize what's happening until it's too late, for example.
	And I don't want to jump ahead too much, but when I hop the border, I didn't realize that I had to hop it with the coyotes until I was at the Rio Grande.
	I'm sitting in the back of this stolen, I think it was a Mazda, actually, not a Kia.
	And I'm thinking, holy shit, they stole this car.
	And then I look around, I look in the rearview mirror, and there's a cop trailing us.
	And so I say to these Kia boys, I say, hey, guys, pull over.
	I got to hop out.
	Because I'm thinking, like, I'm 25 or 16.
	I don't know what they're going to charge me with.
	And so landed, Rob?
	And the kid sitting in shotgun named Swervo, he looks at me and he goes, homie, you shouldn't have hopped in the car if you weren't ready to do the dash, meaning, you know, go on a high-speed chase.
	And so they turn the lights off and they just go 105 miles an hour and the cop stops following them.
	Oh, you do play?
	I want to see this, Rob.
	I want to go back 30 seconds, press play.
	Let me hear the audio.
	They said they'd had the car for over a week now.
	That's 105 miles an hour.
	No, no, no.
	Not yet.
	This is before the cops.
	It was getting hotter and hotter to drive by the day.
	No less than two minutes into our drive.
	I began to hear police sirens.
	Perhaps naively, I assumed the Kia boys would just pull over and try to talk their way out of him.
	But no.
	Swervo dipped onto a service road and hit the gas, approaching 110 miles per hour.
	You're sitting outside of your human beings.
	I'm sitting in the back seat.
	He turned off the lights already.
	By some stroke of luck, the cops stopped pursuing us.
	I'm not sure why.
	Oh, now I know why.
	My adrenaline seems to move in hyper high-speed chases with stolen cars because they figure it's such a public safety risk.
	You know what I mean?
	If it's a residential street, they don't want two cars going 105 miles an hour because that could kill a pedestrian or something.
	So the cops, they abandoned us, not abandoned us, they stopped following us.
	And then I told them to drop me back off at the McDonald's.
	And then, so my plan was like, I want to document these guys, but I don't want to be in this situation again.
	So I gave them my camcorder for the night.
	And I said, you guys, I know you guys are going to go steal cars.
	I don't want to come with you.
	I don't condone that.
	But just do me a favor and take this camcorder from Best Buy and just film yourself.
	What a great concept.
	Literally.
	And were they honest enough that they brought it back to you?
	Yeah, you want to watch the footage?
	Do you have it?
	Yeah, it's in this video.
	Where's it at?
	At the end or.
	If you skip ahead, 10, 15 seconds, right?
	Right there.
	Press play.
	Let's see what they goes to put a cheap USB cord into it.
	Let's watch this.
	I think he's got the update.
	He says the car is a dud.
	The driver recently installed the anti-theft software.
	So this is all just a few cars down.
	He locates a 2010 Kia Forte and starts all over.
	After successfully activating the engine with a USB cord, Swervo's on the...
	That's me watching.
	And I'm following close behind.
	Genuinely curious as to what his plan is.
	Swervo begins driving as fast as he possibly can, then comes to a stop and tells me it's time to turn up.
	Let's turn up.
	So, yeah, that's their planet.
	They just start swerving.
	They're really like 16 years old.
	Like they swerve for like 20 minutes and then they just abandon the car.
	You're joking.
	don't go sell the car they just well apparently like they sell it to their like older brothers for i think 250 dollars Then they go to the mall and get shoes and the weed socks.
	And what do the older brothers do?
	Crime.
	Real crime.
	Well, not this.
	I'm not saying this isn't a real crime, but like, you know, robbing people.
	This is low-level stuff.
	They sell drugs and stuff.
	I don't know.
	What was your experience?
	When you're on the flight coming back, what are you saying to yourself?
	Well, I didn't even put this in the documentary, but I guess the cops had still been following us.
	So I go back to the Red Roof Inn in Bridgeport and the cops knock on the door and they're like, do you see anybody with a stolen car around here?
	And I was like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about.
	I don't know what you're saying.
	Yeah, I was.
	Wow.
	I flew home.
	So you didn't get arrested.
	Even when you put this up, cops never got a hold of you.
	No, they might after this podcast, though.
	Thankfully, the Kia boys are no longer stealing Kia's.
	But yeah, after that, that was a classic example of just me taking it too far in the field with the documentaries.
	Like, if I was to look back or looking forward in my own life, I'm not going to get in the back of any stolen cars with 16-year-olds in Connecticut or any other state for that matter.
	Maybe in Fort Lauderdale.
	Maybe.
	Oh, Broward County's got some pretty good drill music.
	I don't know if you know about that.
	Does it really?
	Yeah, it's called 954 Fast Pitch.
	It's like Broward's kind of version of drill.
	They take rap songs and they speed them up 1.25 times.
	So it kind of sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
	But that's like the Pompano Beach, like Lauder Hill sound.
	Oh, shit.
	You got to get one of those guys on the podcast.
	You ever listen to Ben Shapiro?
	I used to, yeah, for sure.
	When I listen to him, he sounds like he talks in 1.5.
	Ben Shapiro talks fast.
	His speed is so fast.
	Like, you know, when you watch a podcast on Spotify, you can listen on 3.5.
	And I can handle it.
	The only person I can listen to 3.5 is him.
	Yeah, he really spins.
	I have to put a 1.5 because he's like.
	I'm like, dude, I can't slow it down.
	We got to go to 0.75 with him because he's so fast.
	In a different world, he could be a rapper.
	He tried to be a rapper.
	Did you hear his rap song?
	I heard it.
	I heard it.
	The guy he did it with is actually good.
	What's the name of the guy he did with it?
	The guy he actually did it with is good.
	He's actually got good stuff.
	But what is the guy's name?
	He is really good.
	The guy right there, bottom second line.
	Oh, Tom McDonald.
	Tom McDonald.
	He's actually good.
	Yeah, Tom McDonald's.
	My favorite Trump rappers are Forgiato Blow, Bez Believe, and Bryson Gray.
	Those are the top three Trumps.
	Bez Believe.
	Yeah, Bez Believe.
	I met him at Hemp Fest.
	He used to sell those weed lollipops that are like metagated with CBD.
	He became a hardcore Trump rapper, but he's still like thugged out Florida style.
	Bez Believe, B-E-Z, Believe.
	He's a cool dude.
	And yeah, he's my favorite right-wing MC right now.
	Right-wing MC.
	You like Lil Pump?
	Yeah, but I wouldn't call Lil Pump a conservative MC.
	Lil Pump is just kind of a product of the bygone SoundCloud rap era.
	If that scene was still continuing, I don't think he would have done the Trump appearance.
	Got it.
	Okay, let's go to the next one, Rob.
	Next one I want to go is the Tesla rally.
	Yeah.
	What was that like?
	Going to the Tesla protesting, the rally.
	What was that like?
	I actually sent correspondence there.
	I sent my friend Albie here to the boycott in Palo Alto.
	I was in Jamaica for like an anniversary trip at the time when this was going down.
	Then I sent another friend of mine to the one in Burbank.
	But yeah, it was kind of interesting, like with the Tesla boycott movement.
	I see it as a broader offshoot of the anti-Elon Stop the Coup movement.
	But then at some point after that began, they started targeting Tesla factories directly.
	And their idea was that if they lower Tesla stock price, that will in turn take away from Elon's economic power, which would disempower Trump in some capacity.
	Right.
	And again, this goes back to the Joker to me because in the movie Joker, Elon would be Batman and Joker would be the guys that are going after him, right?
	It's funny.
	We're in DC.
	Is it January 20th?
	Is it inauguration, Rob?
	Yes.
	So we go to this party.
	Oh, CPAC.
	It was actually CPAC.
	Was it CPAC or inauguration?
	No, because CPAC, because we went after CPAC, we had the invite.
	Okay, so we're in D.C.
	And there's this Doge party.
	And a guy invites us to go to this Doge party.
	And apparently, Elon's going to be showing up.
	So we go to this party.
	I take my 13-year-old son.
	They're upstairs watching.
	If you pull up one of the clips, Rob, of someone else who reported, it was reported all over the place.
	There's a couple of them.
	So we're there.
	We're walking.
	Pause it.
	Pause it, Rob, so we can hear it.
	So we're walking.
	We get outside.
	There's the protesting across the street.
	I decide to walk up to these guys to just talk to them with my 13-year-old son.
	Pretty bad call, I think.
	Pretty bad call.
	I don't think you're wrong.
	Well, watch this.
	This is my curiosity here.
	Go ahead and play the clip.
	Good luck.
	Fascist out of DC.
	Fascists out of DC.
	This is the wrong clip, Rob, because the one is you got to show the clip.
	So that one I can show you guys, but we can't show because it's copyrighted content.
	Just so you know, didn't we record it or no?
	I can look for the best version, is this one right here, but these are.
	You can't show this.
	That's copy.
	Well, why don't you show it so he can see it?
	And the audience, you know, you guys can tweet this and see.
	This is me talking to the guy just to kind of see where it's at.
	The guy in the ball to the right is a federal agent.
	Look what he does to him.
	Look at the spit coming up.
	Look at this.
	Boom.
	Oh, that was a real Loogie, damn.
	Yeah.
	It gives me real nostalgic flashbacks seeing somebody with a MAGA hat next to somebody with an N95 mask on.
	Those are the two real genders.
	Here's a question for you.
	Do you, when you're out there, wow, you've not been out there?
	Maybe you're guys that came back.
	There's always numbers that show up that some of these guys are paid agitators and paid protesters.
	When you've been out there, whether it's the Luigi Mangioni or any of the other stuff, do you ever ask them the question, or did you guys get paid to do this?
	Yeah, it's typically not true.
	Typically not true.
	Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a paid protester.
	I mean, it's a narrative that gets pushed a lot, which makes sense because there is NGOs that organize protests, but they're making that decision to do the protein.
	Like, okay, there are groups that receive funding who decide themselves to protest and they use some of that funding to do stuff like, you know, make signs, but they're still making the decision most of the time.
	It's not like someone like George Soros is like, hey, go over there and have a sign that says Elon sucks.
	It's them being genuinely upset and thinking, okay, cool, let's use some of this funding to have to do something.
	On the other hand, I have actually seen, though, paid protest groups go into places that are more radical, like Portland and Seattle, and disrupt, you know, more direct action movements.
	Like, for example, I remember in Portland, Oregon, during the crazy summer of 2020, there were organizations, I'm not going to say the name, that were basically paid by the city of Portland and the state itself to go into the protest groups and encourage nonviolence.
	So all the protest groups that I've seen that are paid are mostly like peacemakers that are represented by the state.
	I wouldn't say that I think the paid protester thing is like super overbluff.
	Have you asked them?
	Yeah, for sure.
	I just know a lot of them.
	You know what I mean?
	So let me tell you what came up.
	This came out with the AOC rally.
	During the AOC rally, they were like, hey, we had 34,000 people there.
	But GPS data analysis revealed that the number was closer to 20,000, still big, but not record-breaking.
	And it continues saying a whopping 84% of the devices had shown up at at least nine other protests, including Antifa, BLACH.
	Oh, that makes perfect pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Kamal Harris campaign.
	So 84% of them and over 30% of them had attended 20 or more.
	That makes sense to me.
	I feel like people who protested for a living and good.
	Watch the rest of their lives.
	Watch the rest of it.
	Data analysts say the crowd was anything but organic.
	The majority were tied to activist networks like Disruption Project, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, Rise and Resist, and Troublemakers, all reportedly funded by Act Blue and some receiving backing by via USAID optics over authenticity.
	The playbook hasn't changed, just the targets.
	This is from Zero Hedge.
	Yeah, I was at the Bernie Sanders AOC rally doing some interviews three days ago in Bakersfield, California.
	And I just think there's a big difference between NGOs and political groups and parties that receive some level of funding and then decide to go to the events as opposed to like direct orders.
	The people who are showing up, they may be receiving some level of funding in a nebulous way, but they believe what they're doing.
	It's not as if when you say paid protester, it kind of suggests that they don't actually feel that way, that they're just showing up simply because they received orders from the person that's cutting them a check.
	I think there's a mix and it's easy to cast them.
	It's easy, especially when you disagree with someone to think they can't actually think that.
	They must be paid to show up.
	But, you know, the Democratic Socialists of America, they are there with their clipboards asking people to donate and volunteer and sign up.
	But, you know, I think there's some element to organization, but a lot of people just, you know, the protest crowd is relatively small and they show up to everything.
	You think it's small?
	Well, the same people that went to 2020 protests for George Floyd are the same people that were protesting Israel on college campuses are the same people who vote for AOC and Bernie.
	It's kind of like it's a demographic.
	You know, it's kind of like I'm willing to bet that a solid percentage of the people that showed up to a Trump rally here in Florida probably also have been to five or more Trump events in the past five years.
	Yeah, but that's different because what it says is if somebody's been to 20 or more, you don't have a life to go to 20 or more.
	It's impossible to go to 20 or more unless if you don't have a job.
	And if 34% have been to 20 or more, so maybe not majority, let's say 50% is real.
	Let's say 60% is real.
	Let's say 70% is real.
	But the 33% that's showing up who has been to 20 or more, you have to kind of speculate and say, who's paying these guys to be over here?
	Well, I think when you say real, 100% of them believe what they're saying.
	The question is.
	I don't know if we know that.
	I mean, I've been to a bunch of rallies.
	I can't think of a single rally where I've interviewed a protester where they're just straight up lying.
	You think those guys that stepped up to us and they spat on us, do you think they fully believe in what they're talking about?
	Oh, yeah, dude, for sure.
	I think you don't spend enough time around like internet leftists, man.
	They really think that.
	Like, those people are really.
	I don't disagree with you, but also at the same time, when you see the funding, the paper trail of Soros and what he's done with his money, there's plenty of tracking to what he's doing as well.
	What about people on the other hand who are like funding the Trump campaign?
	What about his top donors?
	But to me, the way I would look at that, your counter-argument to that would be, what about the fact that Elon Musk spent $250 million to win Pennsylvania?
	Right?
	Guess what?
	The answer to that is what?
	It's open.
	But the money is what?
	If you do this, here's what it is.
	I just think Citizens United should be repealed.
	It's crazy that corporations can be so powerful that they can speak more than a human being possibly could, even though, I mean, how much, what's the, how many, before Citizens United, what was the maximum amount of money that a person could donate to a political campaign?
	Oh, by the way, I would love that.
	It would never happen.
	Yeah.
	I would also love to get the lobbyists out, but it will never happen.
	It would never happen.
	One of the first steps to it is if they're able to get big pharma from not advertising, that's a first step.
	Because out of all the countries, only two countries are allowed to advertise big pharmas, us and New Zealand.
	Oh, shit.
	Did you know that?
	So in Europe, they don't have commercials for our city.
	You cannot.
	You cannot.
	Yeah, so it says that individual contributions to candidates could only be as much as $2,400 per election to a federal candidate.
	So $4,800 total per cycle.
	And then after the Citizens United is passed, you have corporations who are donating millions and millions, if not hundreds of millions to political campaigns.
	They use that money to then subsidize large-scale advertising campaigns and different PR optics to put themselves in.
	Go this.
	Who do you think gives more money?
	You think the bigger companies give more to the left or the right?
	It depends what you're talking about.
	Because back then, of course, it would have been the left, or not the left, the liberals, the progressives, the Democrats.
	What do you think it is today?
	I would assume, well, there's so much.
	That's the thing is there's a second sort of deep state, I believe, forming.
	This may not help you, by the way, because a lot of, okay, so do you know by company how much leftist companies, big Fortune 500 companies give to the Democratic Party versus the Republican?
	Do you know the dollars?
	How much?
	You ever seen this?
	Is it a breakdown of it?
	Oh, dude, I love the fact that you're seeing this for the first time.
	But I mean, Elon, Zuckerberg, Bezos, they all support Trump, right?
	No, no, but watch.
	Watch what happens here.
	You're going to see where this goes.
	This isn't it, Rob.
	Nope.
	There's one that says, Brandon Humberto, if you guys can send this to Rob, there's one that shows, it's not this one.
	There's another one that shows 98%, 97%, 96%.
	You have it.
	We've shown that once before, maybe eight months ago.
	And we have that chart, but it breaks down by company on what they gave 2024, 2020, 2016.
	You will be blown away by this number.
	So even if we get rid of that.
	I'm curious to see it just because that's just all wasted money.
	Well, but watch it.
	I mean, watch it here.
	Watch to see what happens.
	It's that one right there, Rob.
	The second lane, third one.
	Yeah.
	Zoom in.
	Okay, watch this.
	This is blue, left, red, Republican.
	But I mean, even though even those top companies, like Microsoft.
	If the top blue donor is Facebook, we know that Mark Zuckerberg is now partial to Trump.
	He's not running against him.
	He's not, though.
	That's not about being partial to Trump.
	That's where the money is going.
	So you think that as political companies are not going to be able to do that?
	But just watch this and follow.
	No, no.
	Your argument was the fact that citizens, if they get rid of companies being able to give to big super PACs, and this number is even further opposite side today, that's 2017.
	It's worse today for 2024, Rob, if you do have it.
	Just stay on that one right now to just kind of show that until we go to the next one, and these guys will send it.
	You will see the numbers.
	Look at that.
	Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, IBM, Cisco.
	If you go down, there's also a significant amount of money being given to political campaigns.
	Exxon, Las Vegas Sands, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Delta, Johnson ⁇ Johnson.
	Those are all giving equal amounts, if not more, to cool service.
	It's more to the go.
	Okay, just look at the chart here.
	You have to be able to see it.
	Can you tell me where 50% is?
	I see what you're saying.
	Go to where 50% is right there.
	So go up.
	You're right.
	The bottom what?
	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
	Give more to the right than the left.
	But now let's count.
	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
	21 is left.
	Only nine is right.
	So the control, if they stop doing that, liberals get their money from the wealthy.
	Billionaires support more liberals than they do conservatives.
	As weird as it is.
	No, I actually agree with that 100%.
	And just to clarify, I mostly agree with you.
	Like, I'm not a supporter of the Democratic Party either.
	So, I mean, I just.
	No, I get that.
	But I also see that as you're going through this process, when you're going to it, the one thing that is phenomenal to see is the data to show what's going on with it.
	Eventually, Zuck realized he effed up because I think Zuck's play.
	Rob, when did Zuck come out and talk about the fact when he put that tweet out about Joe Biden and his camp, forced them to take down some content and the $400 million, I regret it.
	When was that tweet?
	Do you remember when that tweet was?
	August 27th, 2024.
	Can you put that tweet and pull it up?
	Do you remember that?
	This, I'm assuming, goes back to his Joe Rogan podcast where he wore the gray t-shirt and he was like kind of admitting that the Biden administration was pressuring him to take down posts on Facebook related to what he saw as COVID-19 misinformation.
	So you see the timing of it, though.
	You know when the timing of that tweet was?
	The timing of that tweet.
	If you can find the tweet, just go to the tweet if you can.
	The timing of it was it's important to see the dates.
	So I think this is the part where.
	So he wrote a letter.
	I have what?
	August 26, 2024.
	To Jim Jordan.
	That's right.
	And he says, what?
	I appreciate the comments.
	There's a lot of talk right now in the U.S. International Medal.
	I want to be clear about our position.
	Our platform is for everyone.
	Wow.
	We're about promoting speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way.
	As part of this, we regularly hear the governments around the world.
	In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree.
	Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take the content down.
	And we own our decision, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement.
	In the wake of this pressure, I believe the government pressure was wrong.
	And I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.
	I also think we made some choices that with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't have made today.
	Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.
	And we're ready to push back if something like this happens again.
	In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russia disinformation operation from about the Biden family and Barisma in the led of 2020 election that fall when we thought it on a New York Post.
	So he's explaining that they effed up, right?
	You know what?
	But what's the date?
	Go for it.
	I don't think that Zuckerberg would have done that if he thought Trump was going to lose.
	I agree.
	Yeah, because realistically, he's doing that as a concession because he's worried about retribution with the new Trump presidency.
	And he's seeing power shift, right?
	And he wants to be on the right side of history because he knows that he's going to lose his financial backing to go against.
	Or could it be that he realized he was wrong?
	Well, I think that if you people always ask me, why do you think Trump won?
	And I think that Facebook censorship in 2020 played a huge role in that.
	I've said it before.
	It was like a collective Teanim and Square moment for so many people who were critical of the vaccine and lockdown mandates.
	Because whenever you're banned from a social media platform, your first logical next step is, I'm banned because I'm speaking the truth.
	Not I'm banned because I'm propagating misinformation that's going to be harmful to people.
	You think if the establishment, if a large social media company takes little old me's page down for, you know, expressing my First Amendment right and saying my opinion about the Moderna vaccine or something like that, whether it's right or wrong, you feel that you're on the, you are an anti-establishment person who is inherently telling the truth that's being censored by the greater machine.
	And so someone like Trump comes along and he's seen by them as being like the arbiter of truth and justice.
	And so Mark Zuckerberg and all those people during 2020 who colluded to deplatform people are paying for their mistakes big time.
	So they were wrong.
	Deplatforming people is wrong.
	No, but they were wrong about the position they took that they didn't allow any argument about vaccine or that the lab league came from China that, you know, forcing military personnel to take the vaccine or else you got to get out or other doctors who are licensed from major institutions who practice medicine who had an opposing position towards the vaccine.
	Those videos were taken down by Channel 5, like literally KKLA or KTL.
	We didn't take it down.
	No, now you put it out.
	Channel 5 in California.
	They were taken on because of this.
	And then today, White House comes out with this.
	The lab league origin.
	Rob, if you can go a little bit lower, I think this is today or yesterday.
	Today.
	The proximal origin of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-2 publication, which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to distract the lab league, was prompted by Dr. Anthony Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 was originated naturally.
	The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.
	Two, data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction to humans.
	This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover agents.
	Three, Wuhan is the home of China's foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain of function research, gene altering, and organism supercharging and inadequate biosafety levels.
	Four, Wuhan Institute of Virology, researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.
	Number five, by nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin, it would have already surfaced, but it hasn't.
	Rob, is there something to go lower to it?
	This is it.
	That's the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
	That's the Huanan Seafood Marketing.
	That's where the pangolin bat sandwiches.
	That's exactly what the story was.
	Yes.
	Go a little bit lower.
	And then what does this say here?
	The gain of function, they broke all of it down.
	Okran Government's overding gain of function.
	Go a little bit lower, Rob, to see what that one is saying.
	Is there anything with data?
	So this is now coming out today.
	So think about it.
	While we're sitting here and you think about Anthony Fauci, who was, we were supposed to be told he was the sexiest man on earth, according to Guardian.
	Who said that?
	You see this type in Guardian?
	Type in Guardian.
	Guardian.
	Guardian.
	Anthony Fauci's sexiest man on earth.
	Maybe he is.
	Maybe our taste is bad.
	Maybe we got to get our act together.
	I mean, you got to look him up when he's younger to see if he's got some more.
	I mean, he's got handsome.
	He's got symmetric.
	Don't question it.
	Listen, I understand you're like, don't question the integrity of mainstream media that says sexy.
	If they say he's the sexiest man alive, just receive it, bro.
	I don't understand this with Gen Z's, man.
	You guys challenge this a little bit too much.
	So anyways, but the part is, this is where America, because you.
	All right.
	I don't know.
	Can the audience see this headshot of Fauci right here?
	This is a Zoolander blue steel face right here.
	That's like, listen, Brad Pitt's got nothing on Anthony Fauci.
	Look at that.
	Ryan Gosling, forget about it, right?
	Robert Redford Young, hell no, right?
	McQueen, you got James Dean, Anthony Fauci, damn, dog.
	Look at that.
	Sexy.
	I wanted to back up just a little bit to a miscalculation that Zuckerberg, Susan Wajiski, and others made during that time.
	Yep.
	Is they forgot that the internet itself is actually free.
	A lot of people, when they talk about censorship, they're talking, they're existing within the big four.
	You know, what back then was Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and I guess it was TikTok.
	But the reality is you can still make a website and say pretty much whatever you want within the confines of free speech protections.
	I can start andrewsopinions.com, and I can say anything.
	It's just a matter of getting traffic to the website.
	And what happened after they removed people from Facebook is in shutting down that discourse, people created alternative platforms that had a huge resurgence and actually emergence during that time as well.
	Gab, Parlor, Rumble, BitShoot.
	And so what you did is you took them away from the public discourse and the marketplace of ideas and you put them into a tighter echo chamber amongst each other to where more fringe beliefs like the QAnon stuff were able to incubate in a smaller focus group and they just kind of exploded.
	And that wouldn't have happened if the surface net was existent as it is.
	Now, you might say that, okay, this may have stopped some of the Q stuff from spreading and infecting the brains of, you know, hundreds of millions of people and was maybe focused on seven or eight.
	But those seven or eight million of people who were under absolute political hypnosis during the 2020 election are still suffering from that to this day.
	Listen, so funny when you say that, we forget up until 2024, up until October of 2022.
	It's not a long time ago, two and a half years ago, mainstream media had a chokehold on influence, period.
	Yeah.
	Period.
	There was a guy named Dr. Mike who was like the YouTuber and he would always have Anthony Fauci on.
	He agreed to come to our podcast three times and he was going to talk to this lady who used to work with Anthony Fauci.
	Last minute he bailed.
	I would never do this and I never agreed to you agreed to it.
	We have the text documentation of immigrants who come to it.
	I would never come to our all this other stuff.
	Okay.
	We were supposed to think he knew it all and that was the way to go.
	We can't question anything with the vaccine stuff.
	No, no, no.
	Fauci's God and we got to go with the lead.
	And then Musk buys Twitter in October 27, 2022.
	Then what happens?
	Trump is back on X, which he rarely uses.
	Trump comes back on YouTube.
	Trump comes back on Facebook and Instagram.
	Then everybody follows lead.
	Then content creators can go back to sharing their opinions.
	Then content creators, a lot of them, were kind of like, hey, here's what I believe.
	For us, we got a lot of strikes.
	I don't know how many strikes you've gotten, but we got a lot of strikes.
	You got one?
	In the era of 2019 to 2022, we got many strikes.
	Our channel would be like, hey, you're one away, you're two away.
	You're one away.
	You're two away.
	And once you get three, they can do a lot of things to you if they choose to.
	Yeah.
	So what happened in October of 2022 when you're saying, when you're saying, hey, you know, they kind of got it wrong and they kind of did this, we didn't have a choice.
	The market didn't have a choice.
	You couldn't speak about the opinions that you had.
	Then when they realized they effed up, then the populace realized, ah, shit, we were right.
	We were right about this stuff.
	Trump wasn't going to start World War III.
	Never did in the first term.
	The economy was doing good until COVID happened.
	Oh, shit, Russia and Ukraine happened under, I thought, you know, Biden was peace.
	Multiple major wars on a guy that's supposed to be peace.
	So that's when the market's finally like, look, dude, I've had it.
	You win seven battleground states and every state becomes more Republican than they were before.
	And the two states that became more Republican are the two states that lost a trillion dollars of what that left.
	So even after they left, they became even more Republican.
	That's like a landslide type of a victory that Reagan had back when he went against Mandel or whoever it was.
	Yeah.
	It's a very interesting time of what happened to it.
	So to me, I think a part of it is also, you know, it's a different social media now the last two and a half years than what it was 2019 to 2022.
	Those were dark times for a lot of people.
	Yeah, definitely.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I think that right now is a pretty good time for social media comparatively to then.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, what was the anti-vax when you went to it?
	What was that like?
	Oh, man.
	So, I mean, the anti-vax rally, the one that I went to was obviously it was taken down by YouTube, but that was the first major anti-lockdown rally.
	Why was it taken down?
	You know, same thing?
	Just like buckets.
	What was the craziest thing that somebody said?
	I mean, it was, this is a pre-vaccine era.
	This is before the vaccine rollout happened.
	What year was that?
	This is in April 2020.
	Oh, my God.
	So peak.
	Oh, no, that Hollywood anti-vax rally is like a year later.
	If you look up coronavirus lockdown protest, August, no breaks, you will find the video that was removed by YouTube.
	Yeah, but that was like at the California state capitol in Sacramento.
	Is that the one?
	Right after it popped off.
	Is this it?
	Yeah.
	Is this the one they took down?
	This is the one that was taken down.
	So it starts with this clip.
	Yeah.
	I want to hear what the first thing is to see what upset YouTube.
	Go ahead.
	I got every problem when the government say we can't go out.
	That's a prohibition.
	It's illegal.
	It's against the Constitution.
	I'm immune compromised.
	I'll put that at risk today.
	I'll put that at risk today because I got to be here.
	Are you scared to die?
	No more scared than I am for anything else.
	yeah so that was like that was when it first popped off You don't have a money!
	You cannot!
	You cannot do this.
	How many people own the news companies?
	How many?
	Well, you tell me.
	Three or four?
	How many does Disney own?
	How many?
	How many?
	I don't know.
	Well, maybe you ought to find out.
	You're in the media, aren't you?
	Yeah, but I'm independent.
	You're independent.
	What?
	Independent media.
	Me and this guy.
	It's called August, No Breaks.
	Your badge.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	That's the idea.
	I don't have a badge.
	This shit was crazy, man.
	I'm giving some flashbacks.
	This is April of 2020, the peak.
	And this is in LA or this is Sacramento at the California State Capitol.
	And as you can see, we were, I was, like, I don't know if you were right how you felt when the, when the thing first happened, but I was definitely nervous, you know, pre-vaccine, you know, all that.
	It was a pretty unsure time for people.
	And I think that that caused many to gravitate toward extreme directions.
	You had people who were like, I'm never going to wear a mask.
	One guy here had a shirt that said cough in my face.
	And he was saying, everybody cough in my face.
	I don't care who you are.
	Young, sick, old, cough in my face.
	I will show you.
	And then you had people who were literally like refusing to go outside of their house.
	I remember in Seattle with the community that I grew up with, right?
	Like if you had a picnic at a public park and you didn't have a mask on and there was five or more people, somebody would walk by you with their phone, take a picture of you, and it would circulate on social media and it would say, this is a super spreader and you could lose your job because of that.
	So there was like a mutual polarization.
	And I would argue that we're still living in 2020.
	You think?
	People's brains have never recovered, man.
	I think the 5%, you're probably right.
	I know, dude.
	Think about it, man.
	Okay.
	So I would actually argue we're still living in the 1960s.
	But if you think 60s, you know, the divisions that were planted there, you know what I mean?
	As far as like Red Scare and then people's movements being anti-it's kind of we're still living if you're breaking it down like that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But I think I think the level of fear that you had in 2020 and April, you probably don't have today with COVID.
	Oh, not the level of fear, but I mean the way people perceive politicians in reality is very 2020 coded still to this day, even if people don't.
	But they divided America.
	Oh, yeah.
	The mainstream media divided America in a major way.
	They convinced Americans that Trump was with Russia until they realized Hillary Clinton funded that whole thing.
	And I think Trump convinced Americans to look at people with masks as like these moronic sheep that are worthy of harassment.
	Well, some of them are.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I just.
	For example, when I remember one time, Rob, can you put up the picture I posted of the lady that was in the car driving?
	I don't know if you have this or not.
	So during COVID, I used to love watching people.
	Let me see if I can find this.
	Where no.
	Let me see if I can find this.
	This is so funny if I can find it.
	But yeah, when I would see guys wearing a freaking mask while they're driving in the car by themselves.
	Is this me, Rob?
	Yep.
	Do it again, go back to it.
	Yeah, this is it.
	That's it.
	I can tell it's going to be a good one.
	What are you doing?
	So this person's not a, you're wearing a mask in a car by yourself.
	You think that's normal?
	The level of responsibility is at the highest level.
	Yeah, they don't even want to get themselves sick.
	But, you know, probably went to Harvard, quite frankly.
	Part of you, doesn't part of you kind of feel bad for those people?
	No, I don't.
	You know why?
	Let me explain to you why.
	I don't feel bad because if, yeah, that's the second picture, Rob.
	If you can put the second picture, I think it's the second one to the left, top left.
	That's the one I think.
	Click on it.
	Driving alone.
	Yeah, this is it.
	Driving alone with a mask on is like going to bed alone with a condom on.
	Like, what are you afraid of?
	You're not going to get an STD.
	But you got to think, like, they're under algorithmic hypnosis like the other half of the country, and they're being told every single day that there's a new variant.
	They're glued to their phone.
	Six hours of screen time is like the national average in 2020.
	So they're constantly being fed this fear stuff.
	Much like people on the far right were also being fed a similar type of fear content, outrage machine.
	Like what?
	Like what?
	Keeping the fear on the right?
	Probably, oh my gosh, the QAnon stuff?
	No, no, not QAnon.
	Give it to me from like from conservative media, like mainstream versus liberal media mainstream, not QAnon people.
	Oh, I mean, that was the dominant team of 2020.
	No, no, I'm just going to stick to mainstream media, what the conservative right was saying that was selling fear porn versus what the liberal left was saying selling fear porn.
	They both sold fear porn, but what was it?
	I think that the democratic censorship on major social media platforms pushed people in the conservative activist movement into small fringe platforms where they were being fed QAnon stuff more so than they were mainstream press, and that was a direct blowback.
	I mean, obviously, mainstream liberal media at the time was telling people not to go outside to social distance and to be wary of anybody without a mask on.
	And also, the right-wing machine was telling people that we're going to turn into a communist country and all your freedoms are going to be taken away.
	There's a cabal of baby eating pedophiles that are connected to Epstein Island who are controlling the entire world.
	So there was just mass exaggeration.
	But on the podcast, yes.
	On the podcast world, when it's coming to what are you saying, the baby eating, what was that?
	What is the thing called that you drink it?
	You age backwards?
	Adrenochrome.
	Adrenochrome.
	Right.
	And so for me, yeah, for sure.
	Some people saying that that's kind of weird when they say that.
	I get it.
	But I'm saying mainstream, mainstream.
	On mainstream, if they said, if you give up too much control, this could be a step away from communism.
	It's partly not wrong if you give up too much control.
	We were told that our kids can't go to school and you're telling us to stay home for a year and a half and people left California, New York.
	Yeah, that's crazy shit.
	You and I don't know what that is.
	When you went to school, you didn't have to stay home for a year and a half.
	Imagine how hard it is on the wife and the mother and a mom and a father trying to make the marriage work and pay bills and get the job and you lose the job and you lose the restaurant and you lose the business.
	That's policies from the left that destroyed all these things.
	So they destroyed America for a year and a half.
	But what did the right do?
	The right was telling you, don't believe it.
	Question it.
	Even libertarians that don't believe it.
	Even libertarians became incited with Trump.
	Some of them did die, though, like Herman Kaine.
	Well, some of them did die.
	Herman Kaine, yeah, there are some that died.
	There's more than just Herman King that died.
	There was a lot more than that.
	But that's not the point.
	The point is, you have a choice.
	If you drive a car on the freeway, somebody hits you, you're going 100 miles an hour, it's your choice.
	You kill yourself.
	You're dead.
	You're dead.
	There's choices that you got to make.
	But if it's all control, you want me to sit here and give you that.
	By the way, right now, like one of the conversations that's coming up here in the office was about, what do you call it?
	The personal ID.
	Are you selling this, the real ID?
	Oh, yeah.
	That's like when you go to the airport now, you can't just give them your driver's license or you got to have this real ID with like the star on it.
	Is that what has to do with like the face scanner thing?
	Right, right.
	Like we're going in that direction.
	Some people are not comfortable with that.
	And these are people that are conservative that are not comfortable with that with Trump that voted for Trump.
	So this isn't like just a community that's all in.
	Like even if I voted for Trump, I'm 100% in now.
	Yeah.
	I think that one of the ways that my logic is thinking is kind of flawed sometimes is that I always have the impression that the conservative side is really united and that everyone's kind of rallying together with their support of Trump and Elon.
	That's not.
	Like what are the major points of division right now within the conservative movement?
	Oh, dude, are you kidding me?
	Like, holy shit.
	Do you know who Steve Bannon is?
	Yeah.
	So do you know who Howard Luttnick is?
	Is he connected to Steve?
	No, Howard Lutnick is what's Howard Luttnick's job, Rob?
	What's Howard Luttnick?
	United States Secretary of Commerce.
	So he's a Secretary of Commerce.
	That's a heavy job.
	Steve Bannon, who was a guy that helped Trump at the beginning when he's coming up.
	Old school.
	Old school.
	Like he's a strategy guy, right?
	Have you seen what Steve Bannon has said about Howard Luttnick?
	I've only seen what Steve said about Elon, which he's like a foreigner or something.
	Yeah, so the point is there is something going on on the conservative side.
	What's this about, Rob?
	This is Steve Bannon.
	He calls, in this clip, he calls Howard Luttnick an unmitigated disaster as the Secretary of Commerce.
	Go for it.
	Play the clip.
	There's a way to have a trading order that puts America first and puts American citizens first.
	And most importantly, starts to bring back high-value added manufacturing to the United States.
	And no, Howard Luttnick is not going to all be done by robots.
	We're not doing this so we can set up so robots have a better life.
	In fact, I don't know why Luttnick's still doing media.
	Let me be blunt.
	Luttnick, who is Elon's pick for Secretary of Treasury, I think he's close to being an unmitigated disaster.
	We should see a lot less of Luttnick on TV.
	Hassett, Navarro, Jameson Greer, the trade rep, and particularly Scott Besson.
	I think Besson's being very smart in choosing and being very selective on the media.
	We have to have a clear message and people understand what the process is, and we have a process.
	It's a very well thought through.
	Oh, by the way, Steve and Miller should be doing more about trade and about this new economic order that we're trying to camera through.
	This guy's got a big following, by the way.
	Steve Bennett?
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Do you know at CPAC after CPAC, who was number one for presidency for 2028?
	Was who, Rob?
	Trump?
	Or no, JD Vance.
	I'm sorry.
	JD Vance was one.
	You know who was 231%?
	Him.
	Really?
	Damn.
	So there's kind of like different factional leaders within the conservative thought.
	For sure.
	There is not 100% unity.
	No, no, there's not.
	Which, by the way, that's good.
	But which issue is most divisive, not just in terms of people they look up to.
	I mean, the issue that's divisive, there's the America first, right?
	Which is like the people that hate the policies that makes us first.
	America first, globalist, right?
	Nationalist.
	We're about America versus globalist.
	There's that part.
	There's a debate on some of these guys that are more, they're kind of like part of the establishment side versus the anti-establishment.
	Like, hey, we voted you in to do these things.
	How come you're not doing that?
	How come you're not going after these three or four or five issues that we voted for you for?
	So, and then the tariffs.
	There is a camp and Republican Party that's not for the way tariffs are going.
	Yeah, I was at the Bernie Sanders rally.
	I told you in Bakersfield.
	There was a guy there in a MAGA hat, and he was like, I just want to hear what Bernie has to say because these tariffs are destroying my business.
	You said that?
	Yeah.
	Well, that would qualify for a paid agitator to kind of throw it off.
	That's just because you disagree with it, man.
	No, but that is the perfect way to confuse the hell out of somebody to come in.
	You know how much it costs to do something like that?
	Hey, I'll give you $200 worth of MAGA hat and just go say this to that guy on the camp.
	He'll use it.
	To be fair, I was confused.
	So mission success.
	Yeah.
	So what I'm saying to you is that's that effective that a guy that gets billions of views.
	I don't know how many total views you got.
	I'm assuming you got hundreds of social media views, if not over a billion total social media views.
	600 million.
	On YouTube?
	Yeah.
	Actually, no, in total, I probably have around a billion.
	No, you got over a billion, bro.
	Don't count YouTube.
	You're TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, X, everywhere.
	So you got over a billion views.
	That worked with a guy like you.
	So these are the things that we got to be thinking of.
	On the Republican side, no, no, it's not what you think it is.
	So, but all I'm saying is, during that time with COVID, dude, they gaslit the hell out of a lot of us, mainstream media.
	Did you ever do anything where you actually ever have a moment where you were actually scared?
	Like, holy shit, we got to be careful with this, where your camera guys will give the word.
	Oh, all the screen.
	Where was that?
	Well, what's the scariest one?
	I mean, personally, probably getting arrested by Border Patrol.
	Oh, we have to do this.
	Can you break down what you did here?
	Because this is absolutely edgy.
	Okay, so the video is called Border Patrol Arrest.
	So let me first, before you watch this, let me tell you the purpose.
	This is when the border was wide open and there was a big migrant crisis happening.
	So I wanted to see what it was like on the Mexican side as far as the final step of actually meeting up with a coyote who was connected to the cartel and crossing the border, specifically over the river, because I wanted to get in the water as opposed to being in the hot desert.
	And so, yeah, we did that.
	I didn't actually, I didn't realize that we were going to cross the river until we got there.
	But then I kind of put two and two together and there was a guy that was collecting tax with a machete that he was like hitting against this tree in the distance.
	And I was like, all right, fuck why.
	I got to get out of Mexico.
	I'm looking at America like, oh, home free finally.
	So, you know, I link arms with the coyote.
	We cross the river.
	I get to the American side and I think that I'm good to go.
	The coyote's like, man, stay down.
	Like, you know, you can still get arrested.
	Like, even if you're an American citizen, you can't just hop your own border.
	And I was like, dude, I can hop my own border.
	I've been here my whole life.
	It's fine.
	So I walk up and then I get up and then the Border Patrol agent is like, you know, stand up.
	I stand up like I've done nothing wrong.
	And he's like, you know, you just, that's a felony, right?
	And I was like, what do you mean?
	He's like, you have to go through a port of entry.
	And I was like, oh, shit, my bad.
	Can I get a ticket or something?
	And he was like, no, bro.
	So he took me to a processing center for migrants.
	And yeah, it was like hundreds of them wearing space blankets in this freezing room.
	They make it really fun.
	Did you record it or they didn't let you record it?
	I couldn't record this.
	So we had a designer do like a 3D animation rendering of it.
	So I go into the room after being processed and like all the migrants, like it was the worst day of their life, obviously, because they've just gotten caught trying to come into the U.S.
	I can hear the audio if you want to mute it because we hear it.
	It made their life seeing a white guy walk into the holding tank.
	All these guys were having the worst day and they'd stand up.
	They're just laughing.
	They're like, what the hell did you do?
	What are you doing?
	And I speak Spanish.
	You have the clip of speaking to the coyotes?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Go to the front ramp.
	I think speaking to the coyotes is where?
	Earlier?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, I would say around the seven-minute mark.
	Yeah.
	So that's the coyote who I blurred out, and he was because he starts talking.
	Okay, right there.
	Right there.
	Right there.
	Right off wire at all.
	It's a non-issue and a distraction.
	Designed to create controversy from afar.
	He says this is the perfect place to cross.
	But he's worried it's too deep You can see my face I'm like, this makes sense.
	But I didn't realize up until this point that we were actually going to cross the river ourselves.
	I was expecting just like a tour of their route.
	But obviously, they had other plans.
	God damn it.
	It was also going to cost us $5,000.
	This was not discussed, but I wasn't sure what to do.
	But I'm going to go to the cuenta hasta uvalde asta angas a porcaya.
	At this point, it became quite obvious that I was in far too deep.
	The coyote told me that after crossing the river, we had to walk from Eagle Pass to Uvalde, Texas, which is over 67 miles on foot.
	How would this be possible?
	According to Apple Maps, it said it would take over 24 hours.
	We had no water.
	Plus, we apparently owe these guys $5,000.
	Looking back, I would have asked to turn around, but we were in far too deep.
	And while they're being pretty cool, you never know when a switch could flip or something.
	The younger coyote asked me to duck down because a border patrol boat was speeding by How you getting this footage?
	We got that from just YouTube.
	They publish, they do this, sweeps everything, 30 minutes.
	How do you feel at this moment?
	Anxiety or no?
	You look pretty calm.
	Yeah, the thing is, I don't really feel anxiety until I'm looking at the footage.
	It's funny.
	In the moment, I wasn't nervous, but watching this now, I'm nervous because I realized this is like a bad idea.
	So, what's about to happen next year?
	I'm about to cross the border and get arrested by Border Patrol.
	Cool, go to the Border Patrol part when he's talking.
	Do you record when you're talking to Border Patrol?
	Yeah, go up.
	Yeah, right there.
	Go back a little bit.
	Look, is this it?
	Okay, press play.
	This is now in the U.S. Coyote's telling me to be quiet.
	Tírate, tírate al suelo, tírate al suelo, tírate al suelo.
	Right there.
	Roly-poly for him.
	Hands up!
	Come here, you!
	Speak English.
	Hands up.
	Speak English.
	Get up.
	Let me see your hand.
	Got any guns on you?
	No, sir.
	Face away from me.
	We're journalists.
	You haven't paid five grand yet.
	You two, you speak English?
	Yeah.
	Stand up.
	I couldn't believe it.
	Border Patrol had been watching us the entire time since we entered the forest.
	Yeah, I can clearly hear him swimming.
	And set up an information on the American side to apprehend us.
	You two, face away from me.
	Walk backwards over here.
	Hey, Mempacaway.
	Immediately, my coyotes jumped back into the water, swimming back to Mexico.
	Come back, come back over here.
	Come over here.
	This left us alone in Border Patrol custody.
	There was one guy here.
	He obviously ran back.
	And then the two USCs right there.
	And then watch.
	He grabs the camera and it's still rolling.
	He doesn't even realize it's rolling.
	That's a Border Patrol agent.
	No shit.
	That's perfect footage.
	Yeah.
	That's golden.
	Dude, right?
	Wow.
	Look at this.
	He's doing a great job.
	Honestly, this is pretty much a, this is a commercial for the U.S. border.
	This is like, these guys are great shooters, literally.
	Yeah, look at this cinematography.
	He's holding it like at a perfect eye level here or hip level.
	We're sitting in the back of the car there.
	You can't see us, but.
	Come on, bro.
	Good for it.
	You should have given him the $5,000.
	It doesn't get better than that.
	No, wow.
	So now what happens?
	You go to jail?
	Yeah.
	Well, I went to a processing center and they just held me.
	This is the one you're with.
	A couple hundred other guys that got caught.
	And they put me in a solitary confinement cell for like three days.
	Did somebody say like, what were you thinking?
	Yeah, they understood, but like the immigration court system was so bloated because of the crisis that I couldn't get heard by a judge for like three days.
	As soon as she heard that I was an American citizen, they just gave me a $10,000 fine and dropped me off at a gas station.
	Did you pay the fine?
	Yeah, I paid it.
	So you didn't pay the $5,000 to the coyote, but you paid the $10,000 to the government.
	I probably should pay the coyotes back.
	I should pay the coyotes back.
	I never thought that.
	I can't tell somebody.
	Well, listen, man, that guy's probably upset.
	He's like, look, dude, I did my job.
	Yeah.
	Well, to be fair, I mean, I got arrested.
	They were supposed to help me get into the U.S. You're not arrested.
	So he didn't fulfill his commitment.
	No, not at all.
	That's disappointing.
	That's a good point.
	You're a businessman.
	You want things to get done, and then I'll pay you.
	Definitely.
	I'll think about paying you.
	Dude, it was horrible in there.
	It was the most depressing place I've ever seen.
	What's the worst part about it?
	Just seeing like little kids covered in water from the Rio Grande with sticks in their hair crying hysterically with their moms as they're being detained by Border Patrol and put into freezing rooms where they're just screaming all night.
	And in my cell, they had a TV and the movie The Matrix was playing, but it was just the loading screen.
	I couldn't adjust it.
	So it was like play special features and it was the same song over and over again.
	And I finally got the jailer to change it to a different movie.
	And they played the movie Marley and Me, the Owen Wilson film about the dog who passes away, spoiler alert, over and over again.
	So I had to watch Marley and Me for three fucking days.
	She's like, it was like that in my bed.
	At least it's a decent movie, but I don't know for three days.
	I know every scene by heart.
	And so I get out and my mom calls me and she was like, you're taking years off my life.
	You can never do that again.
	So not good.
	So when are you going to Iran?
	Should I go?
	Well, I mean, listen, if you really want to give your mom three years back, yours back to her, you know, go back to Iran on the safest places.
	Are you a fan of Iran?
	I would love to go back, but if we go to Iran, you would be arrested by guilty of association with me.
	Oh, they don't like you?
	No, they don't like me.
	But they would entertain you.
	Your family grew up there like I grew up there.
	I lived there 11 years.
	Yeah.
	After 79?
	78 through 89.
	So do you have a memory of that transition?
	Vivid.
	Jeez.
	Yeah, I mean, I remember the war.
	Maybe not the transition, but I remember the war.
	I remember what it was like.
	You think that conditioned your thinking as an adult a lot?
	Do you think that conditioned your way of thinking a lot?
	Just experiencing such a drastic reason?
	I value freedom and I'm extremely paranoid with the government having too much power.
	And you know, who I had here on the podcast three months ago, I had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard founder.
	Wow.
	I had him here.
	This is a guy whose direct report while they're in a building together.
	He's on the fourth floor.
	His direct report's on the first floor of the building in Iran.
	The direct report goes and puts a bomb, kills the president of Iran and the prime minister, and then claims he's dead.
	This guy claims that his ashes are everywhere.
	The entire country mourns for the president and the prime minister.
	You know, who's the people that they killed, Rob?
	It was the president and, anyways, they killed the two leaders that they have.
	Two weeks later, they find out the killer's not dead.
	So the ceremony, anyways, this guy wants to have it in our podcast.
	We're having a conversation together with him.
	I said, what's the first thing you guys did when Khomeini took over Iran?
	He said, we have to confiscate everyone's weapons.
	I said, why is that?
	He said, well, it's the natural thing.
	We have to make Iran safer.
	I said, so you take the guns away from citizens, scare the crap out of them.
	Now you have the guns?
	Yeah.
	That's the part where, for a person like me that lived there, where I saw what happened with a beautiful country that fell all of a sudden like this, because Iranians never thought this was going to happen, ever thought this was going to happen.
	And what's happened to the Middle East since then?
	It's been a shit show.
	What were the main promises that Khomeini promised to keep as far as like transforming Iran into a different society?
	Are you ready?
	Free food, free rice, free phones, free gas, free housing.
	Sounded like Bernie Sanders.
	So it was the promise of free services without having to work for them.
	Everything was given.
	Take the money from the rich and give it to the poor.
	And I've heard that message here many, many times.
	You know how many times that's been tried?
	Many times.
	It always fails.
	Why?
	Because a person eventually gets so much power, that power they start abusing.
	And when they start abusing, it's not like, yeah, I can do whatever I want to do.
	The rest is history.
	So, you know, for me, I come from a different life that I witnessed what happened.
	And they got rid of this guy, Shah, who made Iran an incredible place to be at.
	Where Frank Sinatra performed a concert in Iran in 1975.
	You probably don't even believe that.
	No, I do.
	I mean, the same thing in Havana.
	It was Vegas 2.0.
	It's called the God Play.
	That's right.
	So similar stories.
	Iran and Havana is actually a good combination.
	Good comparison, Cuba and Iran.
	So do you think there's something about human nature that just, you know, once people hoard a tremendous amount of power, they just naturally gravitate toward corruption and human rights abuses?
	You plan on having kids one day?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	It's one of the greatest gifts in life.
	There's no love like how a kid loves you.
	Nothing.
	Not mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, girlfriend, husband, nothing.
	Nothing like a kid liking you.
	And you like girls or you like guys?
	What?
	Oh, girls.
	Are you gay or straight?
	Nothing, girls.
	I mean, you're pro-gay.
	I thought maybe you're gay.
	No, Are you fully, you're a girl?
	I've got a girlfriend.
	She's a girl, real human woman.
	But is she like a girl that guy that identifies as the girls?
	No, no, no.
	She's a straight-up lady.
	Hair and everything.
	Fantastic.
	Yeah.
	Congrats, bro.
	Part of the same camp.
	I'm proud of you.
	I appreciate the respect with which you ask that question.
	You're like, wait, you support gay marriage?
	Are you gay?
	Listen, you can't assume nowadays, man.
	That was your number two.
	Imagine if you were like, what's her name?
	And I got really offended.
	Hilarion.
	Are you serious?
	Why was you saying?
	No, she's a girl.
	And she's probably watching.
	Yeah, but when you have a kid, let me tell you what happened.
	The way you're going, you're going to make a lot of money.
	You're going to make a lot of money.
	Again, if you don't screw it up, but the way you're going, you're going to have a lot of great opportunities for you.
	Because you're likable.
	You have that it factor.
	You got the charm, charisma.
	You're very interesting as well.
	So when money comes, probably by the time you're 45, you're going to be worth anywhere between 20 to 200 million dollars.
	Okay.
	That's going to be your network.
	Whether you like it or not.
	That's going to be your network.
	Could be higher, but that's a number that you're going to have, right?
	You're not going to just say, hey, kids, when you turn 18 years old, mommy and daddy is going to give you all the money.
	You're going to put some controls in place, right?
	I want to make them work as a regular job.
	Thank you.
	So that's the part.
	They're going to have to earn a way to go while daddy worked.
	Daddy put his life on the line, went to Mexico and freaking tried to swim over and almost got killed.
	That's work.
	That's not easy.
	You risk a lot of things, right?
	To me, a part of that with here where we are, I think we got to be, you know, the system of socialism and some of the ideas that they had, it's tough if we don't expect people to have to earn it themselves and kind of give things out away to them without having to earn it.
	It's a troubling place to be.
	It's a challenging place to be.
	And I'm overly paranoid if we do end up getting there one day.
	That's very reasonable giving you life experience.
	Yeah.
	And that's the part, you know, and I kind of wanted to know what your family life was when you said your parents used to be conservatives.
	Your father was conservative.
	Oh, no, no.
	My parents were never.
	I mean, so I grew up in Philadelphia.
	I moved to Seattle when I was 12.
	But my grandparents were, you know, fiscally conservative.
	Grandparents.
	Reagan era.
	But you got to think, too, their parents were World War II veterans who after the GI Bill were able to build homes in suburbia.
	And so the baby boomers were the first suburban generation who got to experience that life with no wars until Vietnam.
	But it was a solid 15, 20 years of real American prosperity for them where everybody with a good job was able to afford a house and live a fulfilling life.
	My parents were probably a little bit more conservative oriented when I was really young, but I think that the war in Iraq really transformed that perception.
	The war on terror post-9-11, I think the early war on drugs and U.S. intervention in Latin America as well really changed their perspective on things.
	So they were big time Al Gore, vegetarians.
	Even today, they're not very political, but my early political thinking was definitely more progressive.
	When I moved to Seattle, I started hanging out with a bunch of anarchists in more left-wing circles in high school.
	I went to school in the South.
	I went to New Orleans for college.
	And I got to know a lot more conservative-leaning people, learned about the Second Amendment and stuff like that, and got more exposure.
	And now I've lived on the road and between different cities for a long time.
	So I'm definitely, like I said, more left-leaning, but I'm very open to all perspectives.
	And also, I think that most people are generally well-intentioned.
	And I think that also as a country, what we need to be able to do is let some of the stubbornness go a little bit.
	When you've committed to a certain way of thinking for a long time, it's very, it's kind of an ego blow to change your mind.
	And I think that's kind of where we're at, where a lot of people don't want to accept new information or different ideas because they've committed and they have so much emotion and passion behind this way of thinking that they've kind of nursed for a long time.
	And so like I said, if something positive happens in the next four years, I'll report on it.
	I just know that maybe communism, socialism isn't the way to go.
	Probably not.
	I don't know.
	I just know that what's happening right now isn't really functioning that well.
	And so I think that's why there's so many different political ideas happening right now.
	In my opinion, there's more diversity of political thought now than there's been ever.
	And guess what?
	I love that.
	Yeah.
	That's why I say I'm excited about what you're going to be doing.
	I think you're very important.
	And I think you're going to inspire a lot of younger guys that are going to want to do what you're doing as well that are interested.
	My 13-year-old son would be fascinated by you.
	Literally, my 13-year-old son would have a 30-minute conversation with you and enjoy it because of where you're at.
	There's a lot of guys nowadays that are going to look up to you.
	12-year-old kids that are looking up to what you're doing because it's entertaining.
	It sounds fun.
	It's a little edgy, but also you're in pursuit of something.
	Let me see what they're going through.
	Anyways, do you want to tell us about the documentary before we wrap up, Dear Kelly?
	So Dear Kelly was my first independently released film.
	I did it direct to Streamer, dropped on January 15th of this year.
	And so the whole thing was I didn't want to go through a studio.
	I wanted to just drop it so you can rent it for $5.55 or buy it for 15 and 55 cents at www.dearkellyfilm.com.
	It was a project that I've been working on for a really long time.
	It's kind of a project about radical right-wing stuff during the Biden years, not so much now.
	It's an interesting angle, though.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that the if you want to tell the audience who the individual that influenced you at a time that you needed.
	Yeah, so Kelly J. Patriot, Kelly Johnson, is the protagonist of the film.
	And he's someone that I documented over the course of three and a half or four years.
	I first met him at a White Lives Matter rally in 2021.
	And I just, his instantly, his story resonated with me because he was kind of spouting off the typical talking points of that time, you know, like Fauci's Evil, Jeffrey Epstein, Suez Canal's block, child trafficking, all the 2021 Flashpoint stuff.
	And then the second part of our conversation was all about a personal vendetta that he had against a guy who gave him a loan named Bill Joyner, who was like this guy who he took a loan from.
	And Kelly felt like he got his home stolen because of the situation.
	And I felt it was so interesting seeing how his personal vendetta and the collapse of his core needs split into a greater spiritual political battle in the country.
	And so the documentary itself is documenting his journey throughout the course of these four years, as well as his family's intervention attempts to get him to turn the page.
	What a timing to follow for three and a half years.
	Yeah, I think the best documentaries, in my opinion, are the ones that are shot over a long period of time.
	It's very hard to create an amazing, compelling piece of documentary work when you only have three and a half months with a subject.
	I mean, you can make it entertaining.
	You can add music and supplemental media to make it pop, but time is the true essence of a great film.
	I agree.
	And that's why I'm excited to follow your journey.
	Yeah.
	And I look forward to having you on next time to see what you're going through.
	And by the way, for those of you that are not watching, you're listening.
	We're going to put the link below in the description.
	But those listening, it's dearkellyfilm.com.
	Again, dear, like D-E-A-R. Kelly, as in K-8Kfilm.com, dearkellyfilm.com.
	Put the link below as well for them to go watch if you love it.
	We just hit 3 million subscribers.
	Oh, congratulations, buddy.
	That's sick.
	He just said it right before the podcast.
	We're 50 away.
	Boom.
	3 million subscribers.
	3 million subscribers on 149 videos.
	That's a good feeling.
	Sick.
	Congratulations to you.
	And happy early birthday.
	So again, go to the site, support him.
	Andrew, it's been a pleasure having you on.
	This was amazing.
	Thanks for having me, man.
	I appreciate you for coming on.
	And I look forward to doing this again in the future.
	Yeah, I'll see you when I'm 35.
	I look forward to it.
	Take care, buddy.
	Thanks, man.
	Take care.
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