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May 25, 2024 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
01:01:29
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 46 — Trump in the Bronx? Heretic Pope? Dead Lobster?

In this week’s ThoughtCrime Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Andrew Kolvet, and Blake Neff answer many important questions, including:-Is Trump's obsession with campaigning in New York and New Jersey wise, or a waste?-Is Red Lobster's bankruptcy a tragedy, or just really funny?-Is the Pope Catholic?THOUGHTCRIME streams LIVE exclusively on Rumble, every Thursday night at 8pm ET.Support the Show.

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Okay, everybody.
Happy Thoughtcrime Thursday.
I am back.
Thank you guys for filling in last week.
They're collecting your communications.
Okay, everybody.
Happy Thought Crime Thursday.
I am back.
Thank you guys for filling in last week.
Excellent work.
Today we have producer Andrew, we have Blake, Neff, and Jack, who is traveling and a lot happening away from the world.
We are going to be concurrently streaming the Bronx Trump rally.
I think it just might have ended.
And let's dive right into it.
So Blake, your reaction, and I believe that is our top story here.
Donald Trump storms the Bronx.
Yeah, Charlie, so I remember us, we raised an eyebrow when this was announced just a few days ago, because we've had this discussion, is it a good thing for Trump to be, he has a strong fixation on the New York metro area, he did that huge rally in Jersey, he's done this rally in the Bronx, there's all these stories we've all heard, Trump, he seems to genuinely be interested in, like, winning New York, winning New Jersey.
He thinks he can pick up these states in the election.
And we sort of think to ourselves, okay, objectively that's probably not going to happen.
But, and so conventionally you'd say this is a waste of time, it's a waste of resources, don't campaign or you're not going to win the election.
I'm starting to change my mind on it.
There's a huge amount of viral energy around it.
I think New York in particular has such a huge amount of cultural gravity for Americans that Like everyone pays attention to what happens in New York.
It kind of creates a vibe.
It creates a lot of energy.
There's nothing really bad about it happening.
It makes more people watch it.
So you know what?
Trump's instincts are really strong and they've been really strong ever since he became a politician and I think it makes sense that Trump Trump's instincts would tell him, I should campaign in the most famous city in the world that is America's biggest city, and I should go there to campaign to people.
And so yeah, maybe it will work.
Maybe this will pan out and he probably, he still is not going to win New York, but maybe he will improve with all those groups that he, the polls show he's improving with from this.
Yeah, I want to just get my thoughts here.
Then Jack, I want you to chime in really quick.
Let's just be very clear.
Trump is not going to win New York.
If Trump wins New York, then hallelujah.
450 electoral votes.
Yeah, exactly.
He will win.
The state of Washington before he wins New York.
Let's just put this in context.
He'll win Illinois before he wins New York.
However, I don't think Trump should open up a field office in New York, but he's basically on house arrest and he's exhausted and he has to spend time in what he calls the ice box.
And as someone who's constantly complaining about temperature, I laugh all the time when Trump is complaining about temperature.
I'm like, I totally get that.
He's in this like super cold room.
They're trying to ice him out.
And so he's left with a few choices.
He'd get on a plane, he could fly to Michigan and he's planning to do that obviously throughout the summer, exhaust himself, come back to the ice box or he can kind of go down the street and campaign in the very neighborhoods that he grew up in and around.
I mean, the Bronx is not exactly Trump country.
It is the more dangerous neighborhood of New York.
Here's why I love it.
I don't love it necessarily from a, oh, we're going to get New York's electoral votes.
I love it for a couple reasons.
I love it because it's purely ballsy.
It's like, I'm going to go into a dangerous Democrat infested neighborhood of the people that are trying to throw me in prison, and I'm going to do a rally, and I'm going to show you how many people can actually show up.
That's number one.
Number two, I think that if this is going to be his energy, it's very similar to what we talked about earlier on our program.
It's him accepting Joe Biden to win a debate.
It's, I'm going to take it to the left.
Sure.
How many debates do you want?
I'm not going to just sit idly by and act like I'm entitled to the presidency.
So I don't think we should try to delude ourselves like, oh, Trump is going to win New York.
That will not happen.
Okay.
Let's just be very clear.
If it does, he wins everything and America is going to enter a pox Americana.
Era, however, considering the circumstances, the viral nature of this, the amount of people that have made this now appointment viewing, Trump going to the Bronx, Trump going to the Bronx.
I agree, Blake.
I think it's a super smart point, is that as John Lennon said, New York is the center of the world.
It's less so that, but it still kind of is.
People from Saturday Night Live to 30 Rock, New York has a very special place in the memory of America's cultural understanding and Trump going in that unfriendly territory and drawing a massive crowd.
Now, you cannot buy the advertisement.
Fox just took it uninterrupted for an entire hour.
CNN doing live hits from it.
Millions of people watching online of minorities that are attending this event.
So I'm with Blake.
I actually think this is a net win, not because it's going to boost our chances in New York, although it could actually help with some House seats.
Yeah, Charlie, I mean, largely agree with everything you and Blake just said.
John Lennon, of course, the quote was, you know, if I were alive 2,000 years ago, I would be living in Rome.
with everything you and Blake just said.
John Lennon, of course, the quote was, you know, if I were alive 2,000 years ago, I would be living in Rome.
And because I'm alive today, New York is the new Rome.
And so that's where I'm going to live.
He, of course, was murdered there later by a crazed fan.
New York is a piece that we touched on, but we didn't really dig into.
This isn't — New York City isn't just where Trump grew up.
It is the city where he became Donald Trump, where he became a household figure, where he became the name who was a cameo in movie after movie, in TV show after TV show.
I mean, for 30-plus years, his name was synonymous with Mr. New York.
And this is a huge — you know, some people have actually kind of been debating this recently, that because there's sort of Florida Trump now and New York Trump, And people notice that when Trump's in New York, he seems to have a little bit more swagger in his step.
His jaw is a little bit more set.
His eyes are a little bit more focused.
And it seems like he's drawing energy from the very streets of being there.
Now, Florida, of course Florida's late.
did we lose jack we just lost oh no uh we just lost jack um where is he where is he hold on i think jack is making a really interesting point here which is like trump in uh new york is very similar to jerry seinfeld when he visited his parents at del boca vista it's kind of like retirement and everything's slower and he goes back to new york and it's very like new york energy and everything's quicker and has more velocity and rapidity
and he goes to New York and he's Donald Trump and he runs the city.
Andrew, your thoughts from a PR perspective.
Just what this seems to really be, as I would say, as hot as a pistol on social media.
I mean, it's full spectrum conversation monopoly right now.
The whole nation is talking favorably.
Well, I mean, to a certain extent, at least looking favorably upon this event in the Bronx.
And by the way, the aesthetics are beautiful.
Yeah, I think from a PR standpoint, it's a 10 out of 10 win.
I think, you know, we talk about this in the same way we talk about sometimes the House being a little bit feckless, like, oh, these impeachments aren't going to work.
These hearings aren't going to work.
I am always the voice in the room saying I don't care.
I want the headlines of the Democrats playing defense.
And when you have AOC out there, saying, well, this is really dumb, and he's on house arrest.
It makes him look ridiculous, first of all.
Secondly, when you take a look at the pictures that are coming out from this event, and you see, like, you know, you've got the Puerto Ricans and the black dudes, and you've got just the minority look.
You have this Puerto Rican guy that went up on stage in broken English.
You had some of the rappers.
You realize that this cross-cultural coalition that is ready for change is building a momentum, and those sound bites...
those pictures that are going all over the Internet, all of that builds up.
And you're giving more and more of an opportunity and a permission slip to people that otherwise wouldn't ever support a Republican to break party lines, to break the picket line and come over and join the family.
So I love this.
Yeah, I'm looking on internet just like you are, Twitter, Instagram.
It's Trump clips everywhere from the Bronx.
And in a speech that didn't make a lot of news on its substance, made a tremendous amount of news just by its very existence.
And it's not dissimilar from the philosophy that we at Turning Point Action are doing with Detroit and our upcoming People's Convention, which I want to encourage you guys to go to tpaction.com slash peoples tpaction.com slash peoples and get your tickets.
So Blake, you and I are in full harmony and agreement and you and I kind of have this running joke like, okay, stop saying you're going to win New York.
However, There is a brilliance of, okay, they're trying to take you off the field and you're using it as an advantage.
The bad guys thought that on May 23rd, 2024, if you told the Democrats that Donald Trump would be standing trial in New York, He would probably be like defeated, angry, and just like complaining, not doing a rather joyful, uplifting rally in the Bronx.
Blake, your reaction?
Yeah, it's very funny.
If you look at how the most deranged Trump haters frame Trump, he's always extremely angry.
He's always seething.
They build this whole universe where he's lurking in his lair right after he's gotten off the phone with Putin, plotting his treason.
It just drives them insane how they can never actually beat the guy.
I don't want to say he keeps getting away with it forever, but he certainly looks like it.
He just keeps doing his thing.
It seems like they go after his businesses.
They get him banned from everything online.
They do everything they can to destroy Trump, and Trump persists.
And another thing that stood out to me about the South Bronx rally, it reminds me a lot of the 2016 vibe where there's a latent absurdity to Trump, like, oh, this guy we've seen in movies and on this reality show, he's running for president and he's got huge crowds and it's very strange crowds.
It's almost like...
Do you ever did you watch that movie Happy Gilmore where they get like upset that there's there all the hoi polloi are showing up at at their golf events and I think Trump rallies have a lot of that energy for for people who are very serious about politics and they take it all very seriously and they're just revived a lot of that I think it was it was a very fun event and Fun is a good excuse to do a political thing that otherwise might not make the most sense in a pure get ballots in boxes in the key states sort of way.
So yeah, like we say, this doesn't matter because it will help him get to 270 because he flips New York and that makes his electoral math work.
And if he gets too fixated on that, I think that would be a mistake.
And now I do think Trump genuinely thinks he can do this.
That's just how Trump operates.
Trump thinks he can win every state.
He could flip California.
He could flip D.C.
That's just how he thinks about things.
I don't think that will happen, but the fact that he genuinely feels that way, and it causes him to go and just campaign with the energy others don't have, campaign towards groups that other Republicans don't go for, that's what gives him a lot of this positive, winner vibe energy.
It's why you increasingly get the feeling, I don't want to say a Trump win is inevitable, No, it's not.
Democrats have that sinking feeling in their stomach like, oh God, it's happening again.
And so I want to throw to Jack here.
I think we finally have it.
I totally agree with that, Blake.
And to be honest, the Democrats went super hard, super early, and they threw a lot of lawfare at Trump and they thought it was going to be a bitter primary.
And they are not happy where things are in May 2024, May 23rd, 2024.
But I'm going to say, no, no, no, Blake.
It is, we are still the underdog.
They control everything.
They control the apparatus.
They're out-raising us, out-spending us.
Jack, we have you back.
Jack, this feels 2016 energy.
Donald Trump in a open-air rally, like outside, in a park, where it's kind of verboten to go to the Bronx.
This is not the take it easy 2020 playbook where Trump was walking around with a mask and his team told him he had to do that to win.
This is a whole new energy.
What's going on, Jack?
So you're kind of... Trump is in his punished and his... I don't want to say the word revenge.
I don't want to say the word revenge.
He's punished and it's the retribution era.
He's in for his retribution era.
And everyone is for their retribution.
Everyone, people want retribution for what they've done to New York.
People want retribution for what they've done to our country.
They want retribution for what's been done overseas.
They want retribution for what's being done at the, uh, yes I am making a Battle Gear salad reference, Blake.
They want retribution for what has been done at, um, at the gas station and the supermarket.
People want retribution.
And so suddenly he goes to New York City because of course he goes to New York City.
He's Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is culture.
MAGA is culture.
New York City is culture.
This is all part.
People forget the MAGA movement was born on Fifth Avenue at Trump Tower when Donald Trump came down the golden escalator.
There is a certain quintessential essence to that that you're just not going to find or get anywhere else in the country.
And And you're certainly not going to get it if you're walking around like wearing masks and telling everyone to be socially distant at rallies and saying, oh, we're going to be checking it.
No, it's it's the I'm just going to say it.
All right.
The MAGA movement is is the quintessential American movement because it's two middle fingers up in the I think that's right, and let's just be clear.
This is not about New York.
This is almost... Think of it this way.
This was a television production, and it was a masterful one.
That's how this country was founded and that is how this country will be restored.
I think that's right.
And let's just be clear.
This is not about New York.
This is almost, think of it this way.
This was a television production and it was a masterful one.
This was a made for TV moment where it wasn't just about, it was you're going into a cultural place.
And if you go on the side of the street, everybody has a memory or a connection or some sort of understanding of New York.
It is the center of the planet still.
And after COVID, it's lost its cachet a little bit there.
And Donald Trump was always Mr. New York.
And I think this is important for another thing too, which is that we say often, One of the ways that we disempower the bad guys is that we do not show them that we are weak when they throw everything they can at us.
They are throwing everything they can at Trump, and then he shows up at the Bronx.
That is not the Woke Right playbook, right, Jack?
And I want to throw it back to you, Jack.
What would the Woke Right playbook—and tell our audience what the Woke Right is.
That is a phrase that you are popularizing.
Is that on the deck, by the way?
I can't see the topics.
Are we talking Woke Right today?
I don't know, but I want you to own it because I think it's really great.
But really quick, Jack, just the woke right would instead, they would stay in their hotel room, be afraid to go out in public because they want to play by the old orthodoxy.
Compare and contrast here, Jack.
Well, yeah, I mean, the woke right would be saying that Donald Trump should be huddling with his legal team and he shouldn't be out doing rallies and he should be, you know, be very careful in sending out lawyers to go and make the, you know, strong legal arguments in his case.
And they would be saying that Trump should be challenging people to academic debates and they should be putting on some kind of intellectual social salon over what the best philosophical aspects of modern history and the developments thereof Would be to restore America and defeat wokeness because essentially the problem with the woke right is that they're kind of half woke.
They're not like all the way actually committed to a clear vision for restoring America along its original lines.
And which, which, as I said, is just that huge two middle fingers up to the establishment saying, no, we are going to do this our way and we don't care what you guys say about it.
This isn't a debate.
We're not in a further discussion anymore.
We're not going to sit around in the library.
We are going to go.
It is a, I would say an aggressive bias towards action.
And when I say action, of course, obviously you have to say, oh, no, I don't mean like Sam Alito and the insurrection flag or Mrs. Alito, right?
You know, obviously a complete hoax that they put out right now.
But this is why the MAGA movement is doing so well right now is because people are actually seeing that they stand for something rather than just talk, that they can give tangible results.
And the woke right was sort of the Washington generals, the team that plays against the team that plays against the Harlem Globetrotters.
They get paid to lose every single night.
They show up every night, they play, and they get paid to lose because the left dunks on them again, again, and again.
Remember, these are the guys saying, we should never do anything.
We should just talk about the Constitution and how great it was and blah, blah, blah.
No, Donald Trump isn't like that.
Donald Trump was the guy who saw that the Wallman Ring, which he talked about tonight, which is one of this this just great public goods that he did for the city of New York was totally behind.
And he said, look, I'm a private businessman.
I'm going to come out of this world, do something for the public because I'm sick of looking at this.
And my daughter wants to go ice skating, comes in, fixes the entire thing in three months.
So it's the site of a city that was, by the way, totally crime ridden in the 1970s and 80s, gets cleaned up by Giuliani.
The broken windows theory, which we've discussed many times here, gets turned, you know, they turned Times Square into like an amusement park.
They turned it into Disney World.
And Donald Trump, of course, building and investing in Manhattan when everybody told him not to.
And then fast forward just, you know, a few years after that era, and you can't talk about New York without pointing out that it is also indelibly the site of America's greatest I would say modern tragedy, and that, of course, being 9-11 and the 3,000 people who died there and in the other spots, but the loss of the Twin Towers.
This is why the Twin Towers were intact, because they were symbolic of America's greatness.
It's also why, by the way, that Donald Trump back in 2011 was arguing that we should just rebuild them, possibly 10 stories higher, but looking exactly the same, because he understands the power of cultural symbols and the cultural valence that they carry.
building a new tower, okay, that's nice, but it's not the same thing as restoring our powerful symbols.
So he understands symbols because he understands branding, he understands cultural valence, and he understands the ability of those symbols to move mass movements.
Look, and I think we all know this, and I think everyone understands that in the same way that he looked at that ice rink and saw that it needed fixing and it needed somebody who wasn't a politician to get involved, That's basically just a microcosm of what he's trying to do with the country now.
So we have a, we have a double whammy on this one.
Uh, so it is the fourth anniversary of, uh, George Floyd this weekend on Saturday.
And so we have, we have two things.
One right here in town over at ASU, they have an art exhibit depicting our new modern St. George, George Floyd, as, as Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns.
He, he died for our sins as they say.
And And the other breaking news we have is they are going to be making a George Floyd biopic titled, Daddy Changed the World, which he did, I guess.
Did he have kids?
Uh, he had five children.
I can't remember by how many different women.
It was a number greater than one.
Um, and I just keep thinking, I wonder how they're gonna portray the scene where he, like, holds a woman at gunpoint or where he, you know, participates in the adult film industry or...
You know, where he decides to rob local small businesses of, you know, their, you know, using fake money.
But I'm sure they'll figure all of that out because he did change the world.
But the... Do we have that?
Show that on screen again with George Floyd in the crown of thorns.
It's, uh, let's see.
The art exhibit is titled Twin Flames, the George Floyd uprising from Minneapolis to Phoenix.
And it includes imagery and narratives that elevate Floyd to a mythical status.
Uh, Eliza Wesley, known as the gatekeeper of George Floyd square, delivered a speech where she compared George Floyd to Jesus Christ and described him as the quote, chosen one who died for each and every last one of us.
Hmm.
So I have a thought here.
It's very laughable, obviously it's heretical and it's laughable in that sense, but if you are a If your religion is the religion of anti-racism, this actually makes a lot of sense because Floyd was supposed to be the moment where we entered into the anti-racist AD and prior was BC.
For the neocon warmongers, World War II was kind of the crucifixion resurrection event, meaning that was like the change of everything, that the neoliberal rules-based order came in after World War II and it's all we can talk about.
For the anti-racists, it is the death of George Floyd.
And so they look at him as a quasi-messianic figure that allowed a new covenant to almost come forward.
And the new era that we, again, they're failing because DEI is now being defunded in North Carolina and CRT, but that is how they view him.
they view him as this martyr that was wrongfully accused or killed or whatever, and or overdosed, however your opinion of events are, that then enters us into this new covenant of anti-racism.
Your thoughts, guys? - There's another quote. - It's A-D, Anno Georgias. - There's another quote from the speech.
Had not George Floyd died, we wouldn't be here.
God chose him.
He was a chosen vessel.
Many are called, but few are chosen.
Wait, wait, let me ask you this though.
Are they wrong?
Are they really wrong?
You know, I'm not sure they are wrong, and I think what is interesting is, remarking on it as, you know, this, you know, before and after, you know, BF and AG, it's, uh...
It's interesting because I was looking the other day, actually just yesterday, I was looking, you know, they've been dutifully maintaining the database at the Washington Post and on Wikipedia of, you know, young black men shot by police.
And this has continued to happen since 2020.
There have been cases Some of them, some of them much more sympathetic than Floyd, to be honest, of, you know, young black men being killed by police.
And they've, like, occasionally had these false starts at trying to re, you know, build it up again.
Just a few days, a few weeks ago, you might remember that group of four kids who died in a car wreck where they were being pursued by police and they tried to make it this huge national atrocity.
And everyone pointed out, well, they, I think it was a stolen car or they were like driving wildly too fast, something like that.
And it's like, they've failed at it.
Like, they can't actually do this anymore.
And you compare this to before Floyd, where we had Trayvon Martin, then Michael Brown, and you'd get, like, Philando Castile.
And I think that he's a good example of one where they're more sympathetic.
But you had a new one every few months, or at least every year, every couple years.
And it's like, after Floyd, that's it.
That's the final one.
They haven't been able to get another one off the ground since then.
And I think it shows that what was once this building movement has crystallized into a cultic thing where you either believe in St.
George or you're just not a member of the religion anymore.
And like there's no new prophets.
Just like Jesus was the end with Christianity.
There's no new prophets coming after St.
George.
And I think it does indicate how 2020 was like the culmination of what they were doing.
And it's sort of, it's lost energy after that.
It's now just stuck with their one saint.
But this is very important, is that Marxists are not shy about appropriating Christianity for their purposes.
I mean, communism seeks to spiritually murder the individual so he can be reborn a communist.
That has been a fundamental part of Marxist doctrine.
That's why they're always targeting family, faith, and property, because those are like the guardians of the soul.
And so George Floyd, when he's saying, I can't breathe, the anti-racists look at that and they say, that's him saying, go and make anti-racists of all nations.
That was like the Great Commission to them.
And they're failing miserably because their fake pagan anti-racist religion is deeply unpopular and is built on resentment And greed and bitterness and doesn't build anything.
But the religious undertones, you look at that at face value and you should get outraged.
It's silly.
It's stupid.
It's heretical.
But it's actually fitting for how the Marxists view their role.
And it's constantly trying to take the successful story, motifs and symbols of Christianity and appropriate it for their causes.
Jack, your reaction?
Well, I mean, Charlie, it's, you know, what can I say?
I have a book about this that I just finished writing.
It's going to drop on the 4th of July.
Pre-orders are up.
By the way, if you want an early copy, make sure that when you come to People's in Detroit at Turning Point Action, we're going to be doing the Unhumansbook.com is where you can get access to this and of course this is called Unhumans the secret history of communist revolutions and how to crush them and we talk again and again about how in many instances
not necessarily the appropriation of Christianity, which of course we see so much in liberation theory, but we also see the suppression of Christianity and the replacing of Christianity with a new religion.
You see this of course in the French Revolution, you see this of course in China, you see it in Spain, you see it in Russia, Blake Neff and I did a whole series about this over the Christmas break, talking about how religion is constantly targeted.
Not because, by the way, they say they're targeting it in the name of being anti-religion because they are freeing people from the oppression of religion and the opiate of the masses.
However, they are replacing it with their own religion.
And so every new religion, every conquering power always seeks to subsume and destroy and obliterate the previous power and replace it with their own.
And we talk about how this is done time and again.
It is a playbook.
It is a playbook that has been run all over the world.
It's been run for hundreds, 250 years in some instances.
And so we're just seeing the version of it that's playing out now that we refer to as an irregular communist revolution, because it happens in drips and drabs, but then there are also spikes.
You saw a flare-up, of course, of this in the leftist campus protests that just, you know, really just kind of died down as school let out.
But in 2020, like we're talking about, there really was the pseudo-theological infrastructure created for a new type of religion, which of course justifies the revolution.
And that's always what they're seeking to do.
They must justify the revolution, they must justify the things that they are doing, the horrible, evil things they are doing, and they claim it is in the name of George Floyd, they claim it is in the name of justice, they claim it is in the name of equity, but really all it is are petty, envious, cruel, disgusting people trying to destroy the world. cruel, disgusting people trying to destroy the world.
Charlie, we just want to brace you.
This next news, Jordan Peterson's in shambles.
Red Lobster is going bankrupt.
It's dead lobster now.
They have literally, they infinite shrimped themselves into oblivion.
Sit up straight with our shoulders back to trigger our serotonin.
How will we ever be able to get adequate tryptophan without Red Lobster?
Charlie, you brought up this last week.
You were like, well, what about the lobster flu that's coming?
It's about to sweep through.
Even Media Matters wrote it up.
I was like, oh, is this the lobster flu?
Did it just hit Red Lobster?
Is that what happened?
Tiny Violin for Media Matters, by the way.
They had to lay off like a dozen staffers.
Tiny Violin.
Tiny Violin.
Where will we get our free marketing for the show?
That's our PR department, basically.
Let me understand.
I am a Midwesterner, so I'm kind of very well-versed in mediocre, like, multi-purpose chains.
So, I know them all very intimately.
What's your favorite one?
Chili's?
Applebee's?
Chili's.
Not even close.
Outback or Chili's?
Good answer.
Chili's is great.
Chili's is great, but Outback is... I'm an Olive Garden guy.
What about Culver?
Do you have Culver's?
Of course Culver's is not, Culver's is a fast food place.
It is not a medium tier restaurant.
That's a totally different category.
Again, that's a different category.
That is like West Virginia, Upper Plains.
I'm talking about a place where you sit down and you get asked, okay, what are you going to eat?
You get served.
Okay.
So Outback, Chili's, TGI Fridays, Olive Garden, Red Lobster.
Us Midwesterners are experts in such things.
When I go to like, I travel to Scottsdale, all of a sudden they're like, yeah, we're gonna go to like a local restaurant.
I'm like, what's wrong with you?
You're going to a restaurant that isn't Chili's?
Anyway, so- Okay, hold on, hold on, Charlie.
Erica just said she's totally with me on Olive Garden.
I just, everybody, bottomless, you get all the soup you could, you couldn't eat all the soup, endless breadsticks.
Charlie, serious question.
Charlie, have you eaten at the Olive Garden in Times Square?
No, but I have eaten at the TGI Fridays.
I have eaten at the TGI Fridays in Times Square because there's nothing more American than going to New York and eating at TGI Fridays.
Applebee's is a step down though.
Let's just be clear.
So there's a hierarchy here.
Applebee's is a step below.
Let's just be clear.
So there's a hierarchy here.
Applebee's is a step below.
It goes Applebee's, TGI Friday's, Chili's, Outback.
There's a hierarchy.
I have to see what the chat is saying.
What is the chat saying?
The chat agrees that Culver's is amazing, and they're correct.
Culver's is the nectar of the gods or the ambrosia of the gods, whatever the Greek gods were eating.
And cheese, cheese, obviously.
Obviously, obviously, it's great.
They come in both white and yellow cheese.
You got to have both.
Um, but I was going to make a point.
Let me, so just out of all of our six different choices that we had in the Midwest and Blake knows exactly what I'm talking about being from the Midwest, like going out, going to Chili's, right?
It's just like a very Midwest thing.
Okay.
Is that we would never dare to go to Red Lobster.
Let's just, it's just, it's just, you take your life in your own hands.
This whole idea of mass producing mollusks, And acting as if that there's no downside to that?
It's just... That's all I got.
Mass-producing mollusks.
I just want to make sure you hear this story, Charlie, because it's a funny story, and our viewers should also hear this story, which is that we don't know this is true.
This is a hypothesis.
It's probably false, but you know how it is.
If a story is funny enough, it is more likely to be true.
Everyone's debating why Red Lobster's going under, why is it going bankrupt, but a big part of it is they offered this bottomless unlimited shrimp deal, and it used to be a time-limited deal, but they just made it permanent.
They were like, permanent, you can get endless shrimp for $20.
And they lost their butts on this, because it turns out shrimp is expensive, you can learn this if you go to the grocery store, and so if you offer unlimited shrimp, you bring in customers Who want to eat unlimited amounts of shrimp, and when they're allowed to eat unlimited shrimp...
They eat an unlimited amount of shrimp.
This is a problem.
So what's going on here?
A theory that has been propounded.
It turns out one of the major owners of Red Lobster, they might even be the only owner, is Thai Union.
And Thai Union, along with being an investor in Red Lobster, is, I believe, also their shrimp supplier.
And so the thesis that is going around is They already they run the numbers and they said Red Lobster is not going to make it.
It's going to go bankrupt.
And when it goes bankrupt, we're going to lose out to the creditors.
They're going to get the first call on assets and all of that.
So how do we get value out of Red Lobster?
Shrimp.
We make Red Lobster buy as much shrimp as possible from us.
And so, it is possible.
It is possible that the bottomless shrimp deal was Red Lobster's owner going, we need to get as much value as we can out of this dying corpse.
Shrimp.
Just nothing.
We're gonna market shrimp.
We're gonna commission songs about shrimp.
We're gonna sell unlimited shrimp to everyone.
We're gonna buy the shrimp from ourselves.
And then, we just go until this ship hits the iceberg and sinks.
And if that was their plan, it apparently succeeded because they lost tens of millions of dollars on shrimp.
The numbers used to work.
And I want to just first say, I admire the idea of Red Lobster, which was we are going to bring a luxury item that is largely regional in Maine and Massachusetts.
And we want the everyday person to be able to have lobster.
Because in the country that I grew up in, you guys know this, and still it's the case, like lobster is a big deal.
And to be able to afford it and cook it, I don't know if you guys have ever actually had to eat a lobster with your hands.
It is disgusting.
It's gross.
You need to like take two showers afterwards.
I spent a lot of time in Maine.
A lot of time.
Oh no, you know what I'm talking about, right Jack?
It is, it's not for the faint of heart.
Like afterwards, like what am I eating?
And it destroys your gut.
It's like not fun at all.
Lobsters are actually insects.
I thought they were mollusks.
I didn't know that.
It is, it is a form of insect.
I think a common ancestor, if you accept a controversial theory that we won't get into here.
And so what I'm saying is that the idea of Red Lobster, which economically worked for a while, which was, we're going to bring the unreachable insect to the everyday American, just turns out those numbers don't work.
And I can't imagine inflation crushed them.
I mean, I have to think that.
It did.
I mean, I would say... Oh, you can go.
No, they have 719 locations.
I mean, this is not a small closure.
55,000 employees.
Go ahead, Blake.
Well, I think I would take the optimistic view, which is, I think you're correct.
These are the Midwest staples of, you know, if you're in a town of 15,000, 20,000, even like 100,000 people, for a lot of people, the nice restaurant in town is Red Lobster or Applebee's or Chili's.
But I think that's changing, and I don't think it's because accessible restaurants are becoming inaccessible.
I think it's actually probably the opposite.
As we've heard from every liberal, the only reason to have immigration is so you have unlimited ethnic food.
I think I would say, in the last 20 years, I think restaurant food in America has gotten better.
And so what I think is actually happening is a lot of these, the most generic restaurants, are getting just out-competed by restaurants that specialize more, or are just more interesting, more distinctive in how they prepare their food.
So, like lobster.
Yeah, we're losing Red Lobster, but if you drive literally half a mile down the road, just away from where we are, there's a place, Angie's Lobster, and you can buy a lobster roll for like $9, and that's even more affordable than Red Lobster, and it's pretty good.
It's well-prepared.
And I think you can find that in a lot of things.
So I think what we're actually seeing is it's gotten so competitive that really, genuinely really nice restaurants, you can go to them for about the same price point that you would get at Red Lobster.
So why go to Red Lobster?
So I take an optimistic view of this thing.
I think food is, restaurants are always going to be here.
We're a rich country still.
No, I agree.
I look at Red Lobster, so I actually went to Red Lobster growing up, and I was always so excited to go to Red Lobster because they had pizza at the buffet, like the bar.
The salad bar actually had hot food and endless pasta, so I would just eat pizza and pasta the whole time.
But I look at Red Lobster like I look at Malls, you know, like that we're always hearing about the death of malls.
It's just like a shifting purchasing power.
And it's like, you know, when these things sprung onto the scene back in like probably the 80s, it was new as novel.
It was this this sort of elevated cuisine that that had some kind of catch to it, whether it be like, you know, endless food, you know, all you can eat or whatever.
And it's just kind of outlived its usefulness.
Like we're that's not the eating habits of Americans anymore.
We're talking about health food.
We're talking about You know, getting stuff locally, seat to table.
Even poor people still think about this stuff.
They hear about it at least.
But the point is, you know, it's just outlived its usefulness.
Now, there's probably inflation hit it, some other things hit it, but it's just tacky now.
I mean, that's, I think, what we all think about when we think of something like Red Lobster.
Do you really want to get your seafood from a mass chain?
I don't know a single person who would be like, yay, let's do that.
Yeah, so I suppose there's some silly racial angle to this too, is that right?
MSNBC says, why Red Lobster's downfall hits differently for black communities?
I'm sorry, someone else has got to take this.
Of all the restaurant chains where I think of that's where black America spends a lot of their time, is that Is Red Lobster very popular?
I'm like trying to I'm going through like my woke Olympics, you know, iterations in my head.
I'm like, how do you even get to?
There's other fast food chains that I would totally I'm not going to say them, but you guys can guess.
I want to read the subhead here because it's hard to read.
Restaurateur Bill Darden's decision to treat all diners the same should not have been a radical proposition.
But it was and it mattered greatly to black people eating it.
I guess I guess they might be referring to like the founder of it.
So maybe it was a place that integrated before others.
But the implication of it is also that like Red Lobster was like holding the line against segregation or something.
I guess if he genuinely was a pioneer in desegregation in the 60s, it says Bill Darden opened the first Red Lobster just south of Orlando in 1968, shortly before MLK Jr.' 's assassination.
So, okay, if he was a pioneer in that, good for him.
Good for him.
I don't want to degrade that, but I suspect the actual reason it hit harder is apparently, I guess, Black people like shrimp.
Black people like crab.
Maybe Red Lobster was a place they were likely to get it.
I think they'll still be able to get it in other places.
I can see that in the South, for sure, that if that's, you know, that seafood gumbo culture, you know, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, I just, I struggled to think, when I think of Red Lobster, I think of Like white midwestern family celebrates graduation in northern Iowa and they drive 35 minutes and wait 20 minutes for a table and giddily get served lobster.
I'm not even accusing them.
Like that's what I think of red lobster.
I don't think of the hood.
Yeah, so I think this is really, like, obnoxious for a lot of reasons.
I think there's two things.
I do think, actually, as communities have shifted and neighborhoods have shifted, I just randomly, in, like, my memory, I'm remembering three or four Red Lobsters, one being where I grew up, was kind of in an okay part of town, but as, like, the town has shifted, it's now in kind of, like, the hood.
Like, it's just not as nice in that area now, so maybe there's more Minorities there, I guess.
I'm imagining that trend is probably taking place at a macro scale where Red Lobster locations have not, not aged well.
Okay.
So I have to, according to, uh, our resident, um, urban expert, uh, when he, this is Beyonce's song when he F me good, I take his, To Red Lobster, because I slay.
Apparently that's a thing.
Apparently, you know, when it really goes well for Beyoncé, she takes him to Red Lobster.
So what you're saying is Beyonce hasn't been in Red Lobster in a long, long time?
Oh, this is pre-country phase.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just saying.
So apparently it's a thing.
I learned something new from...
If we want one final angle to this, I have noticed this...
Apparently just a huge number of restaurants are...
They're basically just going to app delivery only because people don't like to go out to restaurants if you're a neurotic Taylor Lorenz type person and can't eat out and...
And then also like the rise of crime in America means there's more likely to be like fights in restaurants.
I don't know, but that would be the last possible angle on it.
Hold on, this is my last thing I'll say.
This is why I find it obnoxious.
Let me get to my point.
Bill Maher actually, what was he on?
He was on Gutfeld, and he said something along the lines of, it was remarking on Joe Biden's commencement speech at Morehouse.
And he was like, basically, you know, black men have to be 10 times better at their job in order to get noticed.
And they were asking, Bill, what did you think of this?
He's like, well, listen, I don't think it's good to be talking about your country in a way like 50 years ago might've been appropriate.
We're not there anymore.
And Bill Maher actually even said, nowadays being black can actually help you get a job.
Can we just be honest about that?
I thought that was great.
I mean, Bill Maher's a raging liberal, he hates Trump, whatever.
That's a good point.
I still think, when you see articles like this, though, they are all channeling this, like, America's still this, like, dystopian racial, you know, nightmare and black people can't get a seat at a restaurant.
That's obnoxious, absurd.
It's dishonest.
It's just phony.
So it's like, okay, you don't got the local Red Lobster.
It became this like classy sort of like, you know, maybe black people reclaimed it as their restaurant or something in the last 10 years.
I don't care.
Don't act like they can't get a damn seat somewhere.
That's just a silly thing to write down and put ink to paper.
Blake, can you navigate us through this final topic?
I know it roughly, but not that well.
For sure, for sure.
And I just sent the video clip, so hopefully we'll get it soon, but I'm just gonna narrate what it was.
So Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater, former Navy SEAL, who we also just talked with recently.
He was also on Tucker's show.
And Tucker, they start talking about unmanned drones, which have become far more prominent in the Ukraine-Russia war.
And Tucker asks him, in 10 years, what will unmanned drones be able to do?
And what Eric Prince says is, as an example of what they can do, is you could load a face into a drone's network, just like a person's face, using facial recognition.
And it could use network surveillance, other forms of available data, to just find a person, and it just flies into their brain and kills them.
Or, you know, pops them in the head with, like, one little bullet out of a little thing.
Like, you can have a drone, you know, the size of a cell phone.
And do this.
And that's basically the future is you can just have a drone.
They can all hover wherever.
They have a lot of battery life.
They can fly a long time.
And you can basically just have robots fly around and pop people in the head.
And the ramifications for this are actually insane to think about.
Let's just list a few of them.
Like one, if you can do this, you can just have, you can build a drone for the price of an iPhone.
And use that to kill an enemy soldier in the front line.
and you can just send thousands of these out.
Thousands and thousands of drones.
And so you make it...
You could just win a war with nothing but machines.
You make it so if you're a neocon who wants to do interventions, it's way easier to justify sweeping interventions if you're basically just sending a bunch of guys playing a video game in real life to pilot some drones to go blow people up.
It makes various forms of horrifying tyranny a lot easier.
Your China-style government can just have their drones patrolling everywhere, and they're run by AI, and they use visual surveillance to track people.
And, for that matter, it's probably way easier to imagine a criminal use of this.
So, let's imagine someone who hates Donald Trump, and they make their little cell phone-sized drone, and it just zooms past the Secret Service, pops Trump in the head.
Easy to imagine.
And that is the technological reality we are hurtling towards as quickly as possible.
Yeah, I mean, so I guess what is the deterrent there?
And let's just first, let's play the clip.
Let's play Cut 145.
Do you think going in 10 years?
What will that look like?
You could load a face and between network surveillance and that the facial recognition on that drone find one person and fly into that person's head that fast.
Seriously?
Yeah.
So identity management, privacy will become even more essential.
You think about how many cameras, how much data is being constantly collected everywhere from street cameras, from doorknock, from doorbell cameras, from facial recognition at the airport.
Privacy is really under attack.
Well, I've noticed.
So Jack, your thoughts on this?
You're a military man.
Yeah, so there's another part pretty early on in that same podcast, which I just listened to all the way through.
I listened to a couple of his recent podcasts, and they've just been fantastic.
He's switched now to a long-form format, which I think is fantastic.
It may have been that Vladimir Putin kind of pushed him in that direction, given his 30-minute spiel there.
But what Prince says is that in the history of warfare, you have step changes.
You have changes from the stick and the rock, to melee weapons, to projectile weapons, bow and arrow, etc., which leads up to mortars.
Then, obviously, you go from the sword to the firearm, and the firearm, and then we just have more and more advanced firearms.
A tank is essentially just a mobile firearm.
A lot of what aircraft do are essentially just airborne firearms.
But what a drone does is significantly different because it is a, he essentially compares it to an IED.
He said, what was the enemy's most effective weapon in the War on Terror?
It was the IED.
Now, you have IEDs which are airborne.
They can be directly flown through these FPV drones to the drone.
So that's first person view.
That's not the gimbal camera that's usually on the bottom of the drones.
This is a, you know, you're as kind of like what you're saying.
It's like you're playing a video game.
They actually use Xbox controllers and people can make flying IEDs that fly up to someone going 90 miles an hour.
They've calculated.
And these are things where you've got a charge now, an explosive that's the size of a Can of soda.
And that's enough to kill somebody, or that's enough to severely mess up a tank, because most tanks are not designed to actually protect against aerial attack.
It's just not something that's ever really been done before.
So the armor on the tank, this is a huge issue that people are doing in the war right now.
They're putting up netting and they're putting up these like this like caging on the on the tanks, because most actually all of the tanks on both sides were not designed for this type of drone attack.
But the bigger question then is that the tanks aren't effective anymore.
Now we're just back to trench warfare like World War One, which everybody realizes totally sucks.
And it was chemical weapons that were unleashed in that just absolute hellscape of the Great War on the on the Western Front.
And this became a huge game changer of World War I in the same way It's going to change everything.
to lead to the point where, and as Blake is saying, imagine it's not just warfare, right?
Imagine when criminals get this, imagine when assassins get this, imagine when terrorists get ahold of this, which, and the technology is so cheap, it's so readily available, it's so easy to use.
This is going to change the way we do everything in the world.
It's gonna change everything. - Blake, your thoughts? - Yeah, I think he's right.
Another thought I've had is, it's almost upsetting to think about.
We had our first run, like you said, you go back to World War I. When you think of the traditional like traditional masculine military virtues, you know, being like, just like physical strength and steadfastness and leadership, like all these things that used to make a soldier effective, they were hurt a lot when it just suddenly warfare was like, Oh, a giant artillery shell drops on you and you just all get blown up by it.
IED blow goes off.
It just blows you up.
It doesn't matter how brave you were.
It doesn't matter how strong you were.
It doesn't matter how tough you were or how well trained you were.
You just got randomly blown up by a bomb on the side of the road.
And this is like a creepier, even more extreme version of this, where it's like no matter how hard you've trained or for that matter like how quality of a person and soldier you are, a robot run by AI or just piloted by someone who's essentially a video game player can just be vastly superior to you.
And I suppose it's just interesting to think about the ramifications for that.
Like we talk about the decline of the U S military because the U S military just loves having trannies now.
And they talk about their feelings and all the, all the old values of the military that won world war two are just getting totally blotted out, but maybe it won't matter because it turns out that trannies are really good at playing video games.
And what we actually just need is a bunch of people who can fly a robot at someone's head and blow it up.
So what you're pinpointing here, Blake is very important and it's very similar to Churchill in one of his books.
And, And I think it was the Darvishes, I never pronounced this correctly, Blake will correct me.
Like a whirling, like a dervish?
Like the Islamic warriors?
Yes, dervish, yes.
Yeah.
So he witnessed, and he wrote in one of his 50 books, how brave and courageous they were, and they were pumping themselves up, and the British Army basically had machine guns, and they would just mow them down.
And the casualty ratio was like 200 dead dervishes to one From Britain.
And Churchill wrote, he's like, this is huge.
This is a big problem.
He's like valor, courage, training preparation matters less and technology matters more.
I think we're now living through another sea change of that where you're exactly right, Blake.
It doesn't matter if you're this like super alpha Navy seal as much anymore that has sophisticated training.
There'll always be a place for that.
It takes, Valor out of war and combat, which then asks the question, we're probably going to get more war.
If we can now declare war with just machines and robotics and the human cost can be minimal, the neocons are going to go crazy.
Right, Andrew?
Now it's basically a glorified Call of Duty game where You're just watching a screen and you're so disconnected from the price of war.
Wouldn't we get more war?
And I guess the provocative question for the panel, is this a good thing for humanity or a bad thing?
You can make an argument either way.
You'll get more war and potentially even more civilian death if they so choose.
Or you make the argument it's actually a better thing because you'll get less people actually dying in a theater of war.
Andrew?
I actually think if you lower the price of war, both from a technological standpoint and from a human cost standpoint, yeah, you probably will get more war.
simply because, at least in the short term, because this is going to be a disruptive technology, certainly, but then defenses will get more sophisticated on how to detect these drones, how to defend against them, how to neutralize them before they get to you.
So, you know, and that's happened in every single new technology of war, except for possibly, you know, nuclear power, right?
Because how do you neutralize that exactly?
But so there will be a countermeasure to this.
But I'm less thinking about neocons and I'm thinking about, you know, some random, you know, tribe, tribal dispute, you know, in Africa.
And then, you know, the Iranians fly them in some drones just to cause a skirmish.
And the next thing you know, you've got massive casualties at an unprecedented scale because they can just fly a drone into some, you know, some village.
But maybe you're right, Charlie.
Maybe what the neocons, are they going to say, is say, Look, we need even more war-making powers, we need even more weapons to now defend against these defenseless groups all over the world as the Iranians and the Russians are flying in drone technology.
I don't know.
Maybe it justifies the neocons spending more in their mine and we will get more war.
But I just think about the short term.
Eventually, this will be neutralized by some sort of countermeasure.
But in the short term, you're going to get a lot more war, I would think.
Humans want to wage war.
That's as old as time.
Final thoughts, guys?
Well, we definitely have to answer...
Oh, sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I think we were going to do the same thing, but someone has an important question for you, Jack, and it's got to be answered.
All right, let's do it.
What is it?
Well, here, you ask me the question, and I'll answer it.
All right, I will ask this on behalf of, it looks like some sort of bizarre Polish word that I can't pronounce, so I'm going to intentionally say it wrong.
CurzaJules4DJT asks, Jack, hey, Poso, are you coming to NASCAR?
Oh boy.
Are you coming to NASCAR with President Trump on Sunday?
And they've got a checkered flag.
Is Jack going to NASCAR with President Trump on Sunday and is that why I am in Charlotte, North Carolina right now?
Let me just tell you something, guys.
Yes, I am.
I'll be there.
I'm in Charlotte now.
We were already planning to be here.
And I'm here right now with my dad for his 70th.
And we've just been going around.
We were going around today meeting, meeting people.
And I mean, this is MAGA country.
Every single person we've run out to, and we were going by the campers and the RVs, and we went to Michael Waltrip's taproom for dinner, and there was a huge meet and greet going on there.
And people just keep saying they want Trump to win.
They want Trump back.
They want to know how to get involved.
And it's a huge cultural.
I've been going to NASCAR since I was 10 years old, and this is a really, really cool event.
It's amazing that the president's going to be here.
I never took you to be a guy who would love swerving to the left, though.
See, you drive to the left so you can crash the people to your left.
Okay, that's fair.
That's fair.
Alright, that's a good answer.
It's an acceptable answer.
There will be another left turn.
Is it like, eventually you turn left so many times you go right?
Hey, isn't NASCAR woke now?
I thought that NASCAR went woke.
Yeah, did they finally get rid of all the nooses everywhere?
Yeah, NASCAR itself as an organization definitely needs to be taken over and reconquisted, threatened NASCAR need to reconquista because they did this thing to, or not only did they go woke, they started telling people like certain flags you're not allowed to bring.
They started telling people that, Oh, we're going to have, um, they have mandatory break periods now at like certain labs.
Whereas before a lot of what it comes down to is this.
And yeah, I know the knock on it was like, Oh, you're just turning left.
And, but something that I got, I actually going to The NASCAR races is that back in the day, it used to be about the strategy of, okay, what tires do you use?
And when you change your tires, how much gas do you have left?
And then all of these different little these different requirements that you have to dig into then.
Okay.
When do you make your pit?
How aggressively do you raise this guy right here?
Dale Earnhardt was probably the most aggressive racer ever in mainstream NASCAR.
And so you, and obviously the greatest champion of all time and number three, baby, number three, And the idea that they're going to just, you know, lay all these restrictions on that and lay restrictions on the audience.
It's ridiculous.
It's awful.
Absolutely awful.
But have a fun time, Jack.
And I think the fans by and large are, we're going to make sure that vote.
Yeah.
And, uh, that, that I'm real at president Trump going, uh, is a very smart move.
And, uh, you're going to have what, how many people attend Jack hundred thousand plus, is that right?
Minimum easily, easily.
Yeah.
And that is MAGA country.
Yeah, and it's a no-brainer.
It's just like entering into another rally.
North Carolina matters.
And Charlotte, let's not fool ourselves.
There'll be a lot of Georgians there, too.
A lot of Georgians making the road trip to Charlotte, North Carolina.
So, all right, guys.
Thank you for watching today.
Make sure you subscribe on Rumble and watch our respective shows.
Jack Posobiec every day on Human Events Daily, our program at 12 noon Eastern daily.
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