Michelle Malkin and Dave Smith dissect the erosion of free speech, tracing how "free speech police" marginalized diverse voices while homogenizing political discourse. They critique the Libertarian Party's focus on minor regulations like hair braiding licenses instead of addressing massive government spending on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Malkin argues that anti-war sentiment is a more potent unifying issue than immigration or trade, noting how the national security apparatus betrayed conservative principles by prioritizing Israel and corporate interests over American workers. Ultimately, the discussion suggests that recognizing this betrayal between rank-and-file Republicans and independents is essential to rebuilding effective coalitions against endless foreign interventions. [Automatically generated summary]
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Heshy Socks Smell Good00:01:26
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Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm very, very excited for this Wednesday one-on-one.
I can already hear the, feel the smell the snowflakes melting away.
We're going to trigger some people with this one, which I always love to do.
Very happy to be joined by Michelle Malkin, who is a journalist, a longtime political commentator.
She's written several great books, been on Fox News many times, had her own show on CRTV for a while, and has never shied away from controversy, which are always my favorite people to talk to.
So, Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Well, thank you for having me, Dave.
I guess we were destined to collide at some point, and here we are.
That's right.
So, we like which, which I love about these days is that a lot of these kind of connections and these shows come about through random Twitter interactions.
And so, you tweeted out something about my show with when I had Nick Fuentes on and shared the link to it, which I appreciated very much.
And then we went back and forth, and it was actually somebody who was, you know, of course, because a lot of people, when I had Nick on, a lot of people are, you know, giving me flack for that.
And they were like, Dave, someone, some maniac online tweeted out.
They were like, Dave Smith went to hang out with Michelle and Nick Fuentes at the America First Pack, and this is what he was doing there.
And I was like, none of this is true.
I've never met Nick in person.
I've never met Michelle in person.
And then you responded, like, hey, why don't we do a podcast or something?
And then I invited you on.
So, this is the beautiful thing about today's culture: because of this maniac and his ridiculous claim, now we have you here on the show.
So, that's that's fun.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's magical.
I suppose it's some sort of guilt by bit and bite association, you know?
Yeah.
Um, but for me, that's always been the magic of the internet.
And as you referenced, I've been around a long, long, long time.
And the very first website that I put up on the internet was in 1999.
And back then, the communities where people would have vigorous discussions were places like, I don't know if you remember this or if you learned about it, but something called the Well, which was based in San Francisco.
And it was mostly leftists.
But, you know, these were like the early days of internet forums.
And unfortunately, there's been this inevitable trajectory of what happens where you establish these free thinking spaces.
And then at some point, it's too much.
There's too much free thinking, Dave.
And some set of self-anointed thought and free speech police, speech police come in and ruin the thing.
And that happened to the well.
I think in large part, it happened to a lot of the blogosphere.
And I was one of the OGs of the early blogosphere.
I was one of the OGs of YouTube back in the day in 2006 when it started.
There were essentially two political entities that had a major presence.
There was me and my group blog, Hot Air, which was a video site creation site.
Of course, we were a little too early because nobody was watching video on phones because you weren't able to.
And the other entity was the Young Turks.
And these were the, you know, these were the two places where, you know, people could at least choose or whatever.
And then YouTube devolved.
And then Twitter was magical.
And I was one of the first, you know, early adopters of that.
And look what's become of that.
And then now, you know, you're able to survive there now.
But, you know, I think the question for a lot of people last couple of years has been, how much longer?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's certainly a question on a lot of our minds who are people who are on these platforms who are constantly saying things that could potentially get you get you kicked off of them.
It's always been, you know, I was I was talking about this a bit when we had Nick on the show too, though.
It seems to me like it's always been, and this is the like tragedy of it to me, is that it's always the most interesting voices that end up getting kicked off.
And I mean, this way before the online stuff.
I mean, this was always, you know, like on the left and the right.
And most of the time, like I don't agree with, you know, everything that some of these interesting voices are saying.
Sometimes I really find some of their views very objectionable, but there's even people like, you know, it always seemed to me like the interesting left-wingers would always kind of not get invited into the major publications, onto cable news, things like that.
I'd always rather hear from, you know, like even like Phil Donahue, who I'm sure I didn't agree with a lot, but he got kicked off MSNBC.
I was always more interested to hear from him than I was in Chris Matthews.
I was always more interested in like a Noam Chomsky or some kind of like intellectual lefty who would kind of get like alienated and pushed off to the side.
And then on the right wing, I always thought like the most interesting people always got kicked out of, you know, the movement.
I mean, you know, like the John Birch Society guys just were always more interesting to me than the Bill Buckleyites.
You know, like they were always like, now, I think they were wrong.
People labeled them as like being racist or something.
I just thought they were just a little kooky and conspiratorial, but they were kind of interesting.
And then, you know, the kind of Pat Buchanan, Paul Godfrey, Murray Rothbard, all these guys who had really interesting perspectives all kind of got pushed aside.
And then what you're left with is this kind of bland, boring goop of I could tell you what you're going to say before you even open your mouth.
And now they're trying to do that with the internet.
And I hate it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I totally agree with you.
And I've always had sort of a grassroots dissident sensibility, even when I was in con Inc., but not of it.
And so I never felt fully comfortable.
And there were many times over the years, and I was a Fox News contributor officially for, you know, almost from the time that Fox News was born until a couple of years ago.
And there would be times, and I'm dishing because I can, because I have the freedom to do it, where I would say something that I thought was, you know, somewhat anodyne.
And then, you know, there are different ways that these corporate media entities will handle troublemakers or dissidents.
And, you know, they want to send a message without ever saying anything explicit, if you know what I mean.
And it would never cause me to back off anything I ever said.
And one of the, I think one of the benefits that I had or one of the assets that I had was I had already established myself as an independent media presence, unlike a lot of the people that are on Fox News that, as you say, are these goopy, boring, mediocre, subpar people.
And I'm not even talking about their character.
I'm just talking about their level of sort of originality and intellect.
And, you know, to be a company person in, you know, to fill a Fox News contributor role, there's, you know, you have to stay in a certain lane.
It does make me admire the people who have hung on for a long time, who are able to push the edge as much as they can.
And I still have a lot of friends that I think are doing incredibly important work to try and bring along sort of, you know, the herd, you know, Tucker being one of them and Lou Dobbs,
who for my purposes and the things that I care about with regard to sovereignty and immigration enforcement and fighting mass migration is really that, I mean, that truly is an OG when it comes to being targeted and many times being the subject of failed deplatforming efforts.
And it's so interesting how that word deplatforming is so common now.
And we only think of it in the context of social media.
But, you know, you can go all the way back to, you know, Rush Limbaugh, who is now in the twilight of his career.
Free Speech Squelching Alliance00:03:05
Most young people don't, you know, really think of him other than as, oh yeah, that boring guy that my parents listened to or grandparents listened to.
But he was the original smasher of the gates.
And for that, I will always pay homage to him, even though, again, he has not been sort of at the forefront of the type of America first, you know, platform items that have been at the forefront of my career for so long.
Yeah.
So what, no, you're absolutely right about that.
And you still see the absolute hatred that the establishment has for Rush Limbaugh.
Like they will, they just will never get over that.
Even though, as you said, he's almost become at this point, just kind of a symbol of conservatism, your father's kind of conservatism.
It's not like he doesn't really represent a threat, but my God, the way they were attacking him when he got that medal at the State of the Union.
It's like, for God's sakes, the man is dying.
Like, what is so like, anyway, there's something to that that always like that really rubbed me as like just strange and kind of sick.
Yeah.
And, you know, I hate to sound like a grandma, but I think that the historical context is interesting, you know, when we're dealing with the types of campaigns that are being waged against dissident voices across the internet, because these were methods that were perfected decades ago after the Oklahoma City bombing.
It was Bill Clinton and the entire Democratic machine, the foundation that was laid for Soros's move on, for example, that tried to pin the blame for that domestic terrorist act or whatever it was.
I mean, there's still a lot of unanswered questions about that, but tried to pin it on right-wing talk radio.
And they tried to weaponize that.
And you see the same thing.
It's, well, well, your free speech was dangerous and it had some sort of nominal link to this mass murder.
And therefore, your free speech is not free speech.
It's actually hate speech and should be criminalized.
And then we had this whole entire episode.
And some people have never given up on instituting the so-called Orwellian fairness doctrine.
And so, you know, this is essentially, you know, the battle that we're fighting now and people losing their bank accounts and being kicked off of Instagram and Facebook or whatnot.
It's just, it's just the latest in a long line of this free speech squelching that is the result of an alliance between the left and the right that have squelched these interesting voices that you talked about at the very beginning.
Yeah.
And as we talk about a lot on this show is that the left and right that are in the, you know, in the approved allowable opinion zone really are very similar.
Minimal Party Differences Alarm00:05:33
I mean, there's like really not much difference between them at all.
We used to joke about this all the time, but what the establishment kind of wanted in 2016 was Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton.
And if you really go through it, it's like, tell me the major policy difference between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.
You could maybe say like they could have a passionate argument about whether the top marginal tax rate should be like 39 or 35 percent.
That's basically where you are.
And they'll act like that's a huge difference, but there's really not too much.
That's right.
And literally they call each other siblings.
Jeb Bush, when he gave some sort of medal of freedom to Hillary Clinton at some event in New York City, said that he considered her his sister.
So I mean, so for free thinkers who arrive at this conclusion about the kabuki theater of modern American politics, that there's so much sound and fury over such a little band of actual policy differences.
Where do you go to, you know, sort of seek fellowship and to learn new information?
And so, you know, when I think about the trajectory of my own life, and like I said, I've always had grassroots and dissident roots.
I don't know if you know this, and I've mentioned it before a couple of times, but I voted for Harry Brown in 1996 because I could not stand the idea of casting a vote for the swampiest of swamp Republican creatures, Bob Dole and his running mate, Jack Kemp at the time.
And so, So, you know, I had my dalliance with libertarianism.
And I, you know, when I was in high school, of course, read every Ayn Rand novel.
And I still have some, you know, libertarian leanings and principles on certain public policy issues.
But when it comes to the, you know, the main issues of America First, I mean, to me, there's just no question that we can't even talk about anything else until we get this under control.
And so when you think of the minimal differences between the top establishment of the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, and that was the theme of the last book I wrote, Open Borders Incorporated, it is rather alarming because so many of us on the right voted for Donald Trump, who did not represent sort of many of the core mainstream normie conservative values that I've embraced over the years,
but held out the, you know, the only hope there was out there that he would elevate this mission of enforcing our borders and supporting interior enforcement and doing something to stop mass migration to protect American students and workers and families.
And yet, you know, not only does he have to combat all of the usual forces on the left, but many of these people are embedded in his administration, you know, at the highest echelons of power.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there's a lot that I think is really interesting that I want to ask you about there.
By the way, it warms my heart that you voted for Harry Brown.
I didn't know that till today when I was reading that interview that you were in.
And maybe that is part of the reason why you now find yourself at odds with conservative ink, because you kind of always did have some kind of contempt for the establishment of the Republican Party, even when you were, as you mentioned, kind of a part of conservative ink.
But let me ask you this.
Do you think, like, do you think you changed since the days where you were more just kind of in line with the conservative ink movement, for lack of a better term, whatever it was at the time?
Did they change?
Was it both?
Like, what do you think happened?
I think that's a really good question.
I think on some core issues, I have never changed.
And since I started out my newspaper career in Los Angeles, my concerns about mass migration, the effects of illegal immigration, at least at the time in LA, were so visceral and so palpable.
And that was not something that was talked about in the national media.
And it was in large part because you weren't allowed to talk about it.
And the National Council of La Rossa and groups like that were incredibly effective in weaponizing the whole hate monger type thing.
And obviously, I think I had some sort of layer of immunity because of my skin color and my own ethnic heritage.
It certainly never fully immunized me against all of the slings and arrows and the ad hominem attacks that have followed me.
And now, of course, this next generation, in my case, for the last 25 years, it didn't deter me.
And so when I moved up to Seattle, it was a different set of concerns.
And so the same underlying principles that I've always believed in with America First, but just a different manifestation of the problem.
So I made a lot of friends with Border Patrol and ICE agents along the northern border.
That opened my eyes.
And then when I wrote Invasion, obviously September 11th was such a wake-up call.
And I know it's cliché to call it Pearl Harbor.
And of course, Pearl Harbor history has all of its own separate unresolved questions there as well.
iTrust Capital Crypto IRA00:02:35
But at least, you know, there was this sort of awakening of a basic sense of at least what appeared at the time, sort of patriotic, bipartisan agreement that immigration should be treated as a national security issue.
And then over time, again, it's not so much that like I switched or something.
It's just that my views had evolved on other aspects of what was wrong with our immigration system.
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Mass Migration Nation Peril00:11:38
And so I've said this a lot to normie audiences, you know, in my sort of role as a in Con Inc. when I did a lot of, you know, Lincoln Day dinners or speaking to Republican groups or campus groups to try and get them to understand that just merely critiquing illegal immigration was, you know, only half or less than half of the problem.
If we weren't really starting to think about the demographic consequences of all of the other guest worker programs, massive refugee resettlement, and what this meant not only culturally and civically, but if you're just some calculating sort of utilitarian Republican strategist, what it meant electorally as well.
And I think that, you know, for the most part, and in my experience and having lived and worked, you know, literally from coast to coast and in between, that most rank and file Republicans are really good-hearted people that don't want to be seen as racist.
And this has been capitalized upon by Open Borders Inc.
And so they can't even get themselves to think about these things without feeling guilty about it.
And so maybe that answers one part of your question.
I would say that I would say that over the years that since my own awakening as a, as an, as, as an out of the closet conservative happened on a college campus, very liberal college campus, Oberlin College in Ohio.
And there were really no sort of other options to find.
See, the thing, there's no internet, right?
So I couldn't just sort of Google the things that I had questions about.
And the main DC-based entities that were courting conservatives and offering them, you know, alternatives.
I can't remember the name of the group, but there was a group that was founded by a former U.S. Department of Education official, Chester Finn, sort of kind of like a standard neocon dude.
And they would send you Milton Friedman's books for free and subscriptions.
So, you know, of course, if you're on a college campus, you always got a free subscription to the New York Times.
I don't know if that's what happened, you know, where you went to school.
So they would sort of counterbalance that.
So what would you get?
Well, the Wall Street Journal, right?
And commentary, the national interest and the public interest.
And so at the time, that's what it meant to be a dissident, right?
I mean, well, everybody else is, everybody else was against the war in Iraq.
I'm going to be against that because I'm not for groupthink, you know?
And a lot of the issues that the battles that I fought were on campus were against multiculturalism.
And so then you can see where like the seeds are planted for a lot of these DC-based groups, whether it was mine when I was in college in the early 1990s, all the way up to your TPUSA and YAF type groups, that it's like it's central to prove your bona fides as a conservative who is not racist.
Like that's so important.
That's number one.
And then number two was fealty to this idea that Israel is our greatest ally.
And, you know, here we are getting into this territory.
But like, it was sort of like an unthinking thing.
Well, of course, of course.
And so, you know, to the extent that I, especially in the last couple of years, started thinking about how does this fit into being America first?
I guess that's where, you know, you started getting into dangerous territory.
And I had always, you know, been at the forefront of warning about the dangers of dual loyalty, especially in the wake of 9-11.
So, of course, the easy thing to do, if you weren't, because you weren't stepping on certain toes, was to talk about the threat of dual loyalties of, for example, Muslim soldiers in the military.
Then Fort Hood happened and it was like, well, see, I told you so.
The guy himself was holding briefings with his Pentagon supervisors, telling them that it was a problem.
Or when I wrote a very controversial book, and I know a lot of libertarians didn't like it.
I think in large part they didn't even bother to read it or understand what my point was.
But I wrote a book about the internment episode during World War II.
And one of the underlying points that I was making, again, that I think is relevant now in many different contexts, is that when you have mass migration and you have a lot of people who have tribal allegiances that get tested, especially in times of war, that this can put a nation at peril.
Yeah.
Well, so there's a lot there.
The point about 9-11, I mean, obviously, like that, it really is kind of crazy that that wasn't taken more seriously as an immigration issue because really what the 9-11 attacks, and it wasn't an illegal immigration, it was our legal immigration system.
I mean, these guys came over with permission.
And that it's crazy that, and I think a lot of this is the neocon thing, where it's like, well, no, the lesson we have to learn from that is that we have to always have a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan because Afghanistan is the place where you plot terror attacks for some magical reason or something like that.
And it's, you know, it's because you mentioned the neocons there.
It seems to me like one of the big, and of course, this goes hand in hand with the Israel stuff.
Now, I know you're not, you know, you're not supposed to talk about dual loyalty when it comes to, you know, people and who, you know, neocons and stuff like that.
And it's funny, maybe it's because in the same way that you said, you know, because you're a woman of color, so maybe you had a little bit of protection.
Although I never really got the vibe that you had that much protection.
You were pretty, you were, you know, they were pretty quick to call you all of the typical names that they'd call any of us.
But maybe because I'm a Jew, I'm allowed a little bit to talk about this stuff, but I'll also just blatantly talk about it.
There's not a debate whether there are some Jewish neocons who have dual loyalty.
They will tell you that they have dual loyalty.
I mean, you don't have to watch that much Ben Shapiro before he'll just tell you that his priorities are America and Israel.
And fine if you want to say that, but then we should be allowed to have a conversation about that.
Much in the same way that these Democrats will openly tell you that this brown wave is coming and is going to guarantee them electoral victory.
It's like, okay, well, if you can brag about that, then don't, you know, like, don't be surprised when people who are against you are also against the demographic changes.
Like that, that just seems kind of nutty to me.
But there is this thing where you're like not supposed to talk about, like, like you said before.
Now, I don't know if I agree that it's like these conservatives who are just like, it's out of their goodness that they don't want to be called racist, but they certainly don't want to be called racist for strategic purposes, if nothing else.
And so they find a way not to, you know, to avoid that.
But it also does seem to me, and this is where I think a lot of people, and I'm curious your take, but I know a lot of people, like I've read Ann Coulter talk about this.
I know Tucker Carlson has talked about this.
Pat Buchanan was way before them on this, but people got kind of disillusioned with the neocons, who I think for a lot of time people were like, oh, yeah, no, they're good conservatives.
And after 9-11, we're like, no, they're just kind of doing the right thing.
And they would think these lefties were crazy when they were like, these guys just want to fight every single war and they don't care if it destroys our country.
They definitely don't care how many countries they destroy in the process.
And I've heard both Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson, who were on board, were on board with the war in Iraq and all this stuff, go, you know, those guys who I thought were crazy lefties were actually right when they were talking about the neocons.
And it's hard after a while to not see when you see the disaster that the regime change in Iraq was, the disaster that the regime change in Yemen was, the disaster that the regime change in Libya was, and then the disaster that the attempted regime change in Syria was.
And they're like, you know what?
We need regime change in Iran.
And you're like, how insane do you, how insane can you be to think that we should keep going on this path?
Where do you fall into all that?
Yes.
And I've talked about it publicly as well.
And I have a Telegram thread on this that I did a couple of months ago.
And I've also talked about it on Twitter.
Obviously, I can't talk about it on Fox News because I haven't been on Fox News in a long time.
And so I'm grateful that, you know, someone like Tucker, especially in the wake of all of the, you know, the Syria theater was able to express these feelings and thoughts as strongly and with as much clarity as he has.
I was one of those people.
And largely it was motivated by my support for the troops.
And I know that sounds so cliche, but I think, you know, when you're steeped in this, you know, this just sort of militant, anti military environment on a college campus, it just seems like the right thing to do.
And like I said, that's what, you know, that's where my sort of like knee-jerk support for the invasion of Iraq when I was in college came from.
Okay.
So then, you know, all the way up until, oh, when did I go to Iraq?
I went to Iraq in 2007.
And I went there with a cameraman for my video blog, Hot Air.
And we had gone at the invitation of some of the architects of the counterinsurgency, which had not yet been announced.
So this was January 2007.
And, you know, I was infused with patriotism.
I had a lot of friends who had, and friends of friends who had died in the crash at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers.
And so there was that visceral sense.
And I think, and I, and I, and I do not blame at all people who were right at that time for rolling their eyes at how long it took me to get to where I am, especially when I think about, you know, the thousands of young American men whose lives were sacrificed, not because it was in our national interest, but because it was some other country's national interests.
And I will say that, you know, at the time, I was very naive because I wanted to believe that this idea of these counterinsurgency techniques and restoring civil order by having, you know, our best and brightest and strongest men distributing sewing machines and soccer balls and American flags to Iraqi was going to work.
I was very enthusiastic when these Iraqis dipped their fingers in purple ink and woohoo, you know, democracy was going to stick.
School Choice and Racism Rant00:13:26
And then, you know, over the years, I had to, you know, be reporting and blogging on, you know, all of these wasted lives.
Families would contact me that, you know, their sons or their husbands who were big fans of mine had died in some green on green violence attack in Afghanistan, for example.
And that's really painful.
And there's nothing that I can do to apologize for it that would ever make up for it other than to, you know, the only way that you could compensate is to acknowledge your errors and get other people to open their eyes and to listen to people who were right in the first place and try and do everything that I can as long as I have the platforms I have to direct people who are free thinking enough and brave enough to say the truth.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, it's like, look, I appreciate that.
And I don't, you know, I'm not like trying to rake anybody over the coals for what they got wrong in the past.
I've gotten a lot of things wrong in the past.
And, you know, like these things happen.
And I understand how people are manipulated and how they react against certain groups.
And like, I get all of that.
But I do think like that's one of my like major, almost like my gripes with the America First crowd.
You know, like I don't have the problems that everyone else has with them.
I'm not like, oh, they made a racist joke or, you know, they did this or like one of them's a Holocaust denier or something.
Like, I just don't care about any of that stuff.
Like, I'm, I, I'm very confident the Holocaust happened.
But like, if someone believes it didn't happen, like, I don't, I don't understand why this is so consequential.
Like, it's okay.
You got one kind of goofy, stupid view or something, whatever.
But what bugs me about them is their either disinterest or at times disdain.
Um, for free markets libertarianism, all of the stuff that I really love, and I wish that some of them would at least acknowledge that.
Like it was kind of the good libertarians, like Ron Paul was right about all of this stuff in real time and not from a goofy leftist you know America's responsible for all the evil in the world, like I hate the i'm burning the flag.
No like from a guy who served in the military who's like a country doctor, married to the same woman for 50, 60 years or whatever it is now.
Like an American conservative family man who's like we should.
Who would tell the world this is liberal policies, this is not a conservative foreign policy, this is Woodrow Wilson Fdr.
Like LBJ.
This is their idea that we go around remaking the world, making the world safe for democracy, and I just you know I I wish the libertarians would get a little bit more credit for having been right on this issue and that yeah, this is a problem of big government.
You got all of these deep state organizations lying to people, propagandizing them, and and the troops are the ones who end up suffering.
So I I understand where you were motivated by, like a compassion for the troops and wanting to support them, but they're the ones who end up suffering.
Uh, for all this stuff right, and?
And look at every one of these theaters, we have nothing to show for it.
After all of this, after all of the trillions of dollars, the thousands of lives that we've sacrificed, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of lives of people in these regions who have been, you know, just slaughtered um, and we have nothing, we don't have one even quasi victory to show for it.
And they still go on.
Yeah, i'll say this.
I mean I, I think it's Steve Sailor who um, sort of distilled uh, everything that's wrong with neoconservatism um, with the phrase invade the world, invite the world and uh, you know uh, over the years, you know, going through my libertarian phase and this sort of, you know mainstream uh, free market, conservative.
You know Americans For Prosperity phase, and we can talk more about that.
Uh, you know, in a second um, to where I am now, you know, firmly on the side of America.
First, I think that um, we need to stop sending soldiers overseas to countries that hate us and we need to stop importing people from countries that hate us.
Um, and it's really that simple, I think.
Um, with regard to.
You know free market economics and and certainly that's where I came from, like I said, you know being bred on um Milton Friedman and uh, you know sort of essentially the WALL Street Journal take on things.
You know, when I was an early columnist for the LA Daily News and the Seattle Times, you know, I was very gung-ho on writing columns about, you know, local hair braiders who were oppressed by regulations and such.
And I was a big cheerleader for school choice, for example, which is one of the biggest pet projects of DC-based libertarian groups.
And then I realized what was really going on.
And it goes back to this idea of the virtue signaling of creating the semblance of conservatives.
When I said that a lot of them are motivated by good faith, I'm talking about sort of like the rank and file, right, who are donating to these types of groups, right?
But the project is it is sort of a prerequisite to being in conservative ink that you have to, you know, prove your bona fide to someone who is not quote unquote racist.
And of course, you know, the definition of that is really what's at the heart of the problem here with Con Inc.
And, you know, I'd think about, okay, why?
Why is it?
Why is Cato pushing the hair braiding thing?
And why is Foster Freeze and TP USA?
And by the way, Donald Trump, of course, made it part of his state of the union, right?
School choice of all the things, of all the things.
And to me, I'm horrified to think of what this actually has manufactured.
Because again, there's a sort of this guilt factor that your average white Republican faces when they question all of the donor class agenda.
For example, I was at a meeting in Texas where Foster Freeze was, and he came into a group of Texas grassroots moms and dads who've been fighting what is still, you know, they call it, they say that Common Core is dead.
It is not.
Okay.
And here's where I think that libertarians and, you know, America Firsters, when I call myself America Firster, I'm not talking just about national sovereignty.
I'm talking about parental and family sovereignty.
I think these things go hand in hand.
And I think that the subversion of parental and family sovereignty by Khan Inc., which is the Republican Party and all of these large corporations working together, is one of the most sort of little noticed and unfought battles.
People really don't understand what's happening under the rubric of school choice.
It's really a way of exploiting this partnership between these corporations and big government.
And so what you're doing is you're robbing parents of the ability to defend their own kids, or in the case of small business owners to say, well, what about us?
Because you have to show that you're for the hairbraiders and the inner city kids in Milwaukee.
Does that make me racist to say it?
No, because when I'm sitting in a room of parents that are largely white and working class or middle class and have the same aspirations for their kids to achieve the American dream as the ones that are favored by these libertarian groups, it makes me wonder who the real racists are.
Oh, no, I mean, look, I agree with you on that.
I mean, on many different levels, number one, it's just if you are a libertarian, it's such a petty issue to spend all this time on.
Like, I'm against the government licensing.
I'm against all of it.
I think it's stupid and it does hurt people.
But it's like the government's about to spend $5 trillion.
It's like the biggest government in the history of the world.
And when people start on these, oh my God, it drives me crazy.
And I got to say, I mean, I think his father is like a hero.
But even when Rand Paul starts going on about how we spend $3 million researching like fish DNA or something, and you're like, come on, man.
Like you have a microphone and a platform.
Talk about something that matters.
Like there is just such huge, such, you know, way more important issues.
And I do think that there is something about, look, just like I've said this before, and I've gotten in trouble for this, but I guess two things.
Number one, I don't understand, and this is something that is out there.
It's not amongst all libertarians.
Some of them are more based, if you will, and some of them are more want to like appeal to the social justice warrior wing, which will never accept you.
I just don't understand the idea of trying to, like, you will never be accepted by the left.
It's like, oh, okay.
Oh, are you, are you saying you're for trans rights or something like that?
Oh, well, you're against Obamacare, then you want babies to die.
It doesn't matter.
Like you're still, you're still going to be a Nazi to them.
So don't, like, don't even waste your time.
But the libertarian kind of fixation on perceived racism, which is this intentionally broad word used by statists.
I mean, like, you know this.
You know, the biggest statists amongst us love calling everybody a racist.
Now, if when you mean racism, like, what do you mean?
Do you mean slavery?
Do you mean genocide?
Do you mean like some horrible state action?
Okay, then great.
Let's all be against that.
But if you're talking about someone's like personal preference, who they want to hang out with, who they want to live around, who they want to be, well, first off, libertarian, you've got a problem because that's a free choice and you're supposed to believe in freedom of association and people have a right to prefer what they want to.
So there's a problem.
But why are you obsessing over this as like the big concern?
And the only answer seems to be what you're saying, that it's like this attempt to virtue signal to try to be like, hey, look, I'm not one of these bad people.
Meanwhile, the ones who, you know, like, like, I'm one of these people who's been anti-war for over a decade now.
Meanwhile, the policies of, you know, the Hillary Clintons and John McCains who call everybody else racist is actually to slaughter people in brown countries and get our own people killed at the same time.
Maybe that should be like a little bit more of an outrage.
And the other thing I'll say just real quick, and then you can respond is, also, by the way, just stop it.
If you're going to talk about racism, fine.
But how about that?
Like, be consistent.
If you hate racism, how about the hatred of white men that is just pushed on our culture and completely accepted?
And by the way, libertarians, just even whatever you believe, it's not a great strategy.
You're like 97% white men.
So maybe you shouldn't go along with demonizing what is your entire base, just for marketing purposes, if nothing else.
Yes.
All right, guys, let's take a quick break.
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Exactly.
Exactly.
Yes, there's so much there.
And the first thing about the obsessive policing of associations, just that alone.
Winning Issue Popular Opinion00:06:37
When I first joined Twitter, it was pretty cool because you could follow interesting people who didn't agree with anything on you about and actually have really interesting conversations.
And I remember this came up once because I got really mad at an episode of Jimmy Fallon where they had Michelle Bachman, the former Republican congresswoman on.
And Questlove played some song.
I can't remember what it was because I'm just not hip enough to know, but it was some sort of subversive message that was really misogynistic.
And I went on some rant about it.
And this Questlove, it turned out, had been somebody who'd been following me on Twitter and responded to me and continues to follow me to this day.
And he, even though, you know, he sort of defended, you know, this subversive attack on her, defended following me because he just wanted to know what I had to say.
And so, you know, this idea of just following someone who doesn't agree with you, well, what the hell is the point of Twitter, right?
And that's what it's become, just this incredibly boring, soul-sucking echo chamber.
And, you know, I've said at some point, I'm just going to, you know, completely pull the plug.
I still think it's useful because to the extent that, for example, you're still on and, you know, we'll still be able to have this conversation and air it.
And, you know, you had your conversation with Nick and those conversations are continuing, you know, at least on some level, hanging by a thread on YouTube.
It's worth to still maintain a platform for me that, you know, I had built up organically and I know has been suppressed for at least 10 years, but to still leverage it as much as I can to make sure that dissident voices are heard.
With regards to libertarians, just to revisit this again, and again, having voted a protest vote for Harry Brown and having hoped that the Libertarian Party would actually become more of a force.
Now, if we had a system where we were able to have, you know, if we were Britain, for example, maybe they would have more potency and efficacy.
And I was, my husband and I were somewhat active in Libertarian Party politics in Washington State for a while.
And it was, I mean, I don't know how much you hang out with actual official LP people, but it's just, there's so much drama.
It's just ridiculous.
And it's not effective.
It is not an effective movement.
I mean, if they could just, you know, do the Alinsky thing and freeze one target, just pick one target, like say the Department of Education, where you could build a broad coalition of people who hate the Department of Education and the encroachment.
For example, you could get teachers unions to ally with you because they don't like it.
And, you know, people who actually do believe in limited government.
And then all of these parents who are incredibly concerned about the data mining that's going on and the exploitation of their kids as products for Silicon Valley.
But like, we can't even do that.
Yeah.
No, it's really, it's unbelievable.
And also a lot of times it doesn't, it's not even the leaders in the Libertarian Party, as I've seen.
I mean, there's some of them as well, but it's like these like kind of members who just want to like kind of have drama within the party.
And to me, the big one that I've like I've been preaching for a while to zoom in on is war because that's like really the one that look like like what the conservatives, what America first kind of has going for it is like, okay, so there's this the issue of immigration, right?
Like you guys won the opinion poll.
Like you guys won the opinion.
There's no debate about that.
Try running open borders versus closed borders in the Republican Party.
Closed borders will win 10 out of 10 times.
Like this is the popular opinion is on your side.
And Trump proved this.
But if you look at like the three big issues that Trump had, right?
Like he was like, we're going to deal with immigration.
We're getting ripped off on free trade and these wars are pointless and stupid.
Okay, you're not going to get a libertarian coalition on the immigration or the trade one for sure.
But the war one, like the libertarians are the ones who have been out, you know, kind of like ringing the bell about this for a long time.
You could probably just bully the left into being anti-war because they're like always like think they should be.
And some, even though they're not really as anti-war as they think.
But it's like, that's the winning issue.
So focus on that because it really matters.
It's like a trillion dollars a year that we're spending with everything accounted for.
And it's the worst government policy of all.
Like I'm not even saying, okay, if there was a war where we were really, we were being invaded or something like that, or it was, it mattered.
But let's get real.
None of these war, none of these countries pose any threat to America.
They have no threat.
The war is way more of a threat than the countries ever were.
So that's what I think they should focus on.
But yeah, Department of Education would be a good one.
We're just, we're not good at that.
Yeah.
And but here's where there is a nexus between the AFers and the libertarians, at least in my experience, and at least the way that I articulate it.
And, you know, at AFPAC, there certainly seems to be a consensus that these two things, limiting mass migration, protecting people here at home, protecting American workers, and caring more about the wages of American workers than illegal alien laborers or H-1B workers from India or China, number one.
And number two, making sure that if we are going to fight a war, that it is in our national interest.
And for the most part, none of them have been.
So bring them home.
So we're like, we're in complete agreement here.
So why is it that, you know, if popular opinion is on the AF side on immigration and, you know, there's an alliance or nexus between AF and libertarians on war issues, why aren't we getting our way?
And so then it really does come back to following the money and finding the truth.
And a lot of people still are not willing to go down that trail or accept the truth once they see it.
And so then when you've got these kids who go to, you know, the TPUSA and YAF events like they did last fall and start to illuminate the answers, well, they pose a danger to everybody.
Following Money and Truth00:15:21
And so that's why I was so encouraged when you had this conversation with Nick.
And I see that because, you know, rather than demonize people who are on your same side on this particular issue, who's really deciding where our soldiers are going to go to war and what they're defending?
When you tread on that dangerous ground, you're going to be run over and you're going to, your life is going to be ruined.
And that's why it really was, you know, it was a pivotal moment in the career that I've had for the last 25 years.
And you can see what happened, even the like, whatever, the two minutes that I spent on this anti-Semitic smear that I've faced, by the way, which I faced even before, I, even before the Groyper Wars, even before I knew who Nick Fuentes was, because I talked about how, you know, George Soros, who happens to be a Jewish billionaire, was, you know, behind demographic conquest.
That was at the start of my book tour in September.
The immediate first thing that people did, many Jewish publications and many neocon, con Inc. publications did, was compare me to the tree of life synagogue shooter.
So I think it's really important to widen that Overton window.
And, you know, you've done it very bravely.
And I commend you for that.
And it's really why I'm grateful to be talking to you.
Oh, well, thank you.
And I mean, you know, it's just, it doesn't, you know, maybe, maybe once I face more of the consequences, I'll be like, oh, yeah, that was kind of brave of me to do.
But it just doesn't seem like that brave.
You know, a lot of people do really brave things in this world.
And it's like to just call out the situation for what it obviously is.
And I guess I do also think it's, it's partly maybe my, you know, family history and stuff like that that I just go like, I get offended, to borrow a lefty term, offended by the idea that people would like use the idea of violence against Jews to just attack anybody who's critical of our foreign policy relationship with Israel.
I just, it, it drives me nuts.
But I do think there's something, you know, it's like, I guess that what the way I see it is that the lesson that I wish, like I thought there was something like really interesting.
It's part of the reason why I wanted to talk to Nick and have him on the show.
I think it's a really interesting conversation.
And I think what was going on with the Groyper Wars and all that was I was like, wow, there's something really kind of cool happening here.
Now, that doesn't mean, of course, doesn't mean I agree with them on everything or I agree with Charlie Kirk on anything.
But it's just like, okay, there's a lot of energy.
They are furious at the neocons, at the conservative establishment.
And okay, so let's see what's going on with this group.
Now, what I wish, which I wish I would see more of in the America First Group, is that they would come to the realization that Pat Buchanan, that Paul Gottfried, that a lot of the kind of predecessors of the America First current movement realized was that your only option here is going to be essentially to embrace philosophically, not like political party, but some type of libertarian ends to get to where you want to be.
Now, I understand you have your goals that you want to use the state for.
Everybody does.
You know, like the Democratic Socialists want people to have good health care and they think the state is the means to achieve that, which is just, you know, crazy, but whatever.
You know, it's like you might want to protect American workers.
You might want to like, you know, restrict immigration, like all of these things.
The issue is, and this is what Paul Godfrey and Pat Buchanan understood.
You need to smash the managerial state.
That is your only chance because when you have the government the size that it is now, just don't be surprised when every time that you get someone in there, you get your Donald Trump in there.
And what are you going to get?
You're going to get everything Israel wants.
You're going to get everything that big corporations want.
It's not going to work.
The mechanism is designed to not work for you.
And this is what I just wish a little bit, like they would get a little bit more, that this government apparatus has to be drastically reduced, localized.
Something has to happen to reduce the size and scope before you're going to get your way.
Because I mean, just look at it.
Look at every time you get in there.
And it's the same thing.
The left deals with the same thing.
The left deals with the same thing.
They are like Barack Obama because he's Mr. Progressive and he cares about people.
And like, oh man, it's so weird that banker profits were at record highs through Obama's administration.
It's almost like Goldman Sachs has more influence on the government than the people do, you know?
And so what you were saying before, yeah, of course, you have this mandate.
Obviously, Trump won.
There was a mandate to limit immigration.
Doesn't really seem to matter.
Just seems like this is, you're spinning your wheels.
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's a cart and horse problem here, of course.
And one of the reasons why I was one of the early champions of the Tea Party before it was the Tea Party, before it got hijacked by Con Inc.
And, you know, what people forget is it was not merely a response to Obama.
It was a response to the failures of big government conservatism.
It was a response to the aftermath of Bush signing the TARP bailout for billions of dollars and the AIG bailout and for nominating as the next Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, who supported a $300 billion mortgage entitlement program.
That's what the Tea Party was supposed to be about.
And I think, you know, that was the most tangible of like a libertarian, limited government movement to reduce the size of government.
And it all failed.
And we still have the same people in power, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell and all of Paul Ryan's heirs and all of the people who've duped, again, I think the large majority of good faith rank and file Republicans who actually believe in reducing the size of government.
And they handed hundreds of millions of dollars over to these GOP entities so that they could form nonprofit groups that are essentially pay-for-play lobbying organizations in DC now.
And they're living fat and high off the hog.
So, okay, so we have to, we have to elect new leadership and we have to elect some new breed of Republicans or I don't know what they're, whoever it is that believes in like the libertarian platform who are actually going to reduce the size of government.
Like, who is that?
I mean, and so, right?
So then there's this, hi, that's my daughter.
I am a mom.
I'm doing this podcast thing, babe.
You can keep it in there.
And so then that's not happening.
And every year we have these continuing resolutions.
They keep getting approved.
They keep packing.
I mean, everything is growing.
Everything is growing.
I pointed out that the CDC, which of course now has $8.3 billion in new emergency funding, even though they've proven themselves incompetent every single time in order to manage outbreaks and do their actual, they have one job, disease control, and they can't do it.
They keep getting rewarded.
And their budget now is 200% more than it was in 2000.
And it doesn't matter if Democrats or Republicans are in office.
Okay, so then so then, like, what are your priorities for America first?
It's stopping the hemorrhaging and it's stopping the inflow of all of these people who are exacerbating all of the dire domestic problems that we already have.
And so, you know, maybe the argument for me with, you know, or whatever perceived disagreement there is with me as a representative of America First, and I certainly don't speak for every one of the kids, is what do we do first?
Like, this is triage.
And this is something that, you know, we elected this president to do.
And of all of the things, it should be easier to limit the amount of people coming in than it is to do the job of reducing the size of government, which we haven't been able to do for like, at least in our lifetimes.
Yeah.
No, I mean, look, I kind of get that.
But just to counter that, I mean, how have we done it limiting the amount of people who come in?
I mean, that doesn't seem to have been much more effective either.
I mean, this has been going on my entire lifetime.
There was a huge amnesty under Reagan.
They kept flooding in under Clinton.
They were coming over.
George W. Bush basically was just as bad.
I mean, there's been nobody.
And then like around election season, you got people like, you know, John McCain's like, build the wall or whatever.
But does anyone really think if John McCain?
Yeah, like, does anyone really think John McCain would have cracked down on immigration?
And by the way, I would just say from a libertarian point of view, and I'm not like one of these open border libertarians, but I actually think from like a pure libertarian natural rights philosophical point of view, you could make a strong argument that the current system is like the worst violation of human rights that we have because you have these things where it's kind of like these de facto open borders with then these patrol agents waiting.
So it's kind of like a lot of people are going to get through.
And then if you get caught, you're going to get thrown into one of these like holding, you know, facilities for like a while.
And then it kind of encourages all these other people to go on this crazy journey.
It's an insane system where everyone's got like being like there's this welfare magnet that draws everybody up here.
And then there's like these like, you know, border cops that can only catch a small fraction of them.
But truthfully speaking, from a libertarian point of view, you could make the argument that completely closed borders with like a wall would be a more libertarian solution.
At least that way, you don't have to have this terrible situation of like, you know, look, I mean, I know the left uses this in their own way, but it's terrible to see these people in these detention centers and things like that.
It's like this system is horrible.
So I don't know what the answer is, but I just like, I get what you're saying.
It's very daunting, the idea of taking, actually rolling back the size of government.
There's so many entrenched powers that will die before they let that power be taken away from them.
But at the same time, I see Donald Trump get elected and, you know, he tries to do one thing on immigration.
It's going to be contested in the courts.
It's going to be drawn out for years.
There'll be all these protests or resistance to it.
It just doesn't seem like any of it is a very easy fix.
Some of it's working.
And I'm trying not to be totally blackpilled here.
You know, when you think about the fact that the head of the Department of Homeland Security in his previous career was a lobbyist for Indian outsourcers, for example, and that you've got people embedded in the West Wing who are lobbyists for increasing H2B.
And you've got people who are top Republicans who are perceived in both the Senate and the House as being border hawks who are behind the scenes right now lobbying for a massive DACA deal for the 800,000 so-called DREAMers in anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling before June.
You know, I think pretty much everyone agrees that they'll. rule it unconstitutional and then this will set the plate, set the table for a so-called DACA deal that both sides want.
And again, that gets back to this idea that we talked about at the beginning that there's a lot of hue and cry about how different, you know, how miles apart the parties are, but really they're this much apart.
And that's going to be a huge screw over to all of these MAGA types who were voting exactly against that.
They didn't vote for Tim Cook.
They did not vote for Jared Kushner.
They did not vote for Ivanka Trump and all of her friends, you know, the Salesforce CEO and everyone else in Silicon Valley.
And so that's the discussion that's going on right now, I think.
And to the extent that any America First movement is going to produce a concrete result, it will be stopping that deal.
And, you know, to answer your question about, you know, whether the movement before it was called America First, you know, in the 2000s had any effect at all, it did actually.
And we did stave off the Bush Rove amnesty that they tried to push through in 2006 and 2007 and 2013.
So Lindsey Graham is now having meetings with Donald Trump.
He's the one bending his ear right now.
And I think it's up to people on our side, which is why, of course, I endorse everything that's happened over the fall and why I support, especially many of these young men who are very thoughtful about how to turn it into something more than just something that's on the internet, and an actual concrete movement.
My frustration has always been with all these DC-based groups, and there are many of them.
I've got many friends in the immigration enforcement community that are supposedly grassroots that won't put their boots on the ground.
And there's always this feeling.
Again, it's a conning feeling.
Oh, well, that's not what we do.
We don't protest.
We don't do that.
Great.
So you just leave this huge, wide vacuum for all of the abolished ICE people to intimidate and bully ICE agents and to have Antifa running around sanctuary cities.
I tried to do it in my own little way.
When I was on my book tour, I did these stand with ICE rallies.
A lot of people were scared.
And yet, maybe a total of about 2,500 people in a half dozen cities came out to ICE facilities that had been targeted, like the one in Seattle by the Antifa guy who firebombed it and then was, you know, shot to death, but could have killed, you know, hundreds of employees there.
I think that I think that getting over the fear of using these same types of protest tactics is something that Connie never wants to do.
I mean, look, TPUSA has a $22 million budget.
Young America's Foundation has assets worth $70 million.
And they brag about being at the front lines of the so-called culture war and drape themselves in America First.
And, you know, there's Charlie Kirk getting retweeted by President Trump, who's pimping his book.
And it's like, well, what are you doing to put your body and your boots on the ground to defend your principles?
And that's the main difference between the America First movement and these other posers and pretenders.
Proud Boys Criminal Behavior00:15:08
Yeah, there definitely is a dynamic where it's much easier to get like the left protests much quicker than the right does.
And there's some obvious reasons for that.
Like right-wing people tend to have families and jobs and things that like kind of keep you from wanting to go protest.
But that was one of the things that was so special about the Tea Party that you'll have like the gun protest.
Sometimes that's one that'll get conservatives.
You come after their guns.
There's some conservatives who will get out on the street for that one.
But it's very hard to get them.
And that is, I think, part of the reason why the right continues to lose the culture war.
Like if you look at it in like a six-month window, you might be like, oh, we had this victory or this victory.
But if you look at it five years at a time, 10 years at a time, 20 years at a time, the left wins the culture war every single time.
It always gets moved in their direction.
And it does seem like it would take some group actually being willing to go out and do something.
So you mentioned the America First, the Groypers, whatever, this kind of group that Nick Fuentes seems to be one of the representatives of.
It certainly was interesting to me that you kind of stuck your neck out there to defend those guys.
And part of that is just because it doesn't, it seems like you were doing yourself no favors for doing it.
You know that you're just going to get you're going to get a lot of heat.
You're going to get called horrible, you know, awful things.
You're going to get more of the conservative ink kind of focused on you in a very negative way.
You get attacked for it.
You've written your books and you've had your shows and you've kind of made your money.
You could probably just stay out of this and save yourself some of the headache.
So I'm curious what made you decide that you were like, I'm going to kind of put my neck out there for these young guys and try to defend them.
Like what motivated you to do that?
It was watching the actual question and answer service answer sessions when it first started spreading on Twitter.
And of course, you know, I had given a speech at CPAC a year ago where I sort of called Con Inc. to the table on these issues.
And it's exactly the kinds of questions they were asking that I was hitting on in my speech.
And so, you know, I've been doing this a long time and I've always tried to find allies and I've always tried to use my position and my platform to help other dissidents.
I've tried to be a mentor because I benefited from that myself, not from Con Inc. necessarily, but in my newspaper journalism career and always felt that it was sort of an ethical obligation to try and pay it forward.
I've been really, really blessed.
I mean, I cannot complain at all about the success that I have had in the free market or con ink or whatever you want to call it.
You know, I've never had to get government subsidies for people to listen or watch or pay attention to me.
I've never had to use coercion in any sense or manner or rigged algorithms to get people to pay attention to what I say.
And I'm so grateful for that.
And so there's two things going on.
And one is that these kids were under attack for asking these uncomfortable questions.
They were unfairly smeared as racists and xenophobes and anti-semites.
And what it was doing was distracting from the substance of their questions and also the galling responses of these thin-skinned elites, the smears.
And there were a couple of things.
And I've known so many of these people.
I've worked with them.
Yaff, I had done speaking events for for 17 years.
In fact, in September, just less than two months before the Groyper Wars erupted, I was at the Reagan Ranch and everything I had said in my speech then was everything that I had said two months later.
But all of a sudden, it was worth a disavowal because of the people that I had endorsed, the brave people.
And it was more than just the Groypers.
It was more than just the questions merely about immigration.
It was also about the questionable decisions that many of these TPUSA people have had in promoting so-called brand ambassadors of something that is not conservatism, not social conservatism.
And so I had written a column where I talked about the fruitless amount of money that's been spent on these types of groups when there's all these ragtag young kids, mostly men, who've been able to accomplish so much more in challenging the GOP establishment.
So the Groypers in America First War one and the Proud Boys were another.
And I've been friends with Gavin for several years and have followed many of these horrible, horrible prosecutions that have led to young men being thrown into Rikers for defending themselves.
And in the case of the New York Proud Boys, having been convicted, even though the supposed victims were not cooperating with the police and refused to take the stand.
I mean, this is like Pyongyang or like the Soviet Union or something.
And Khan Inc. really didn't like that.
And in fact, when YAF issued its bizarro disavowal of me where they wouldn't name me, they condemned me for, let's see, I can't remember the exact, you know, group of deplorables, but it was like something like Holocaust deniers, racists, and street brawlers.
And David French was one of the people who had also specifically gone after me for defending the Proud Boys.
And, you know, maybe they haven't been perfect in their tactics.
And, you know, they have nobody supporting them.
But like you look at what's going on in Portland and, you know, there's no conservative.
They'll complain about it, right?
They'll tweet about it.
They'll get tons of traffic for tweeting some video of, you know, my friend Andy No getting beat him bloody.
And so, you know, they'll profit from it because they'll, you know, get more website eyeballs, but they won't do jack to actually help the people who are out there on the front lines.
Yeah, that's, that's for sure.
And I think that, you know, I love Gavin.
I've known him for years as well.
And he's, he's a great guy.
And he's like, he's, he's wild and kind of crazy.
And like, and he's like says off the wall things at times.
But like, it's like, it's like, are we not allowed to have people who are fun anymore?
Like these kind of fun iconoclasts.
And then he'll make some points that are like really great points that you're like, oh, wow.
Yeah, that's, that's actually a really interesting way to think about things.
I think one of the big mistakes the Proud Boys made is I think they just underestimated what they were going against.
You know, like, I think they did not realize that it wasn't, you know, like that this whole system was going to turn against them.
And it was going to be like very, very dangerous.
And I, you know, I agree, you should be allowed to say, hey, if any of these Antifa guys come, we're going to defend ourselves and we're going to go beat the crap out of them.
But, oof, man, it's real tough.
And then you start saying that on podcasts and they can just clip things up and kind of take them out of context.
And then you have a fight.
And it's really, it's terrible what happened to some of those guys.
I know it was like really horrible situation.
And it's also horrible what happened to Gavin.
The idea that they paint him out to be this like Nazi, I don't know, Nazi.
Everybody's a freaking Nazi who the left disagrees with, it seems like these days.
He's one of the sweetest, sweetest, funniest human beings.
I got to meet his parents and to think about, I mean, I'm sure he would never say it this way, but there are so many people like him and Proud Boys, the suffering that these men are going through while the, you know, anti-fash Gordons of the world are able to utilize Twitter and the government isn't doing anything about it.
And so here's where like, you know, libertarian, great, but, you know, this, this is criminal behavior.
And Antifa is a racketeering organization and it is a domestic terrorist organization.
And they're using the double standards and their ability to organize and dox peaceful people who are using social media platforms.
And then they ally with these prosecutors with an enormous amount of power to rob people of their freedom.
And it would seem to me that, you know, that more libertarians would be outraged by all of this.
And instead, what I see is a lot of both con anchors and sort of establishment DC libertarians either shrug their shoulders or, you know, join in on tossing these young men under the bus.
Yeah, no, it's, it's really, it is terrible.
And they've, it's, it's an outrage and it's unfair.
And I, I got to say, I mean, the libertarians who I see who, you know, go out of their way to like criticize, you know, the alt-right or whatever they perceive as the alt-right these days, but are silent about Antifa to me is like just mind-boggling.
I mean, here is a group of people who are, I mean, first off, they're straight up communists.
They walk around with hammer and sickle flags.
Like they are, they're not like even lying to you about who they are.
And they go out and disrupt people exercising their freedom of speech by smacking bike locks over people's heads in black masks.
I mean, if a libertarian can't be like, yes, that is, it is the antithesis of what anyone who believes in liberty should stand for.
And it's unbelievable the pass that they've gotten in the national corporate press compared to the alt-right, which was basically the problem was one incident with a few hundred people, you know, where a young woman died and it's terrible that she died.
It was this crazy scene, a melee.
By the way, Antifa was there too and was probably equally responsible for the whole thing.
I mean, I don't know the exact details, but certainly there was a big mob of Antifa who were pepper spraying and attacking people too.
It's not as if it was just like one side there.
Also, probably the worst side of all of them were the police who led them into the Antifa crowd in that whole incident.
But the alt-right is like in Joe Biden's campaign ads and like they're just like, you know, if you get labeled with them, it's the worst thing you can be in the world.
Yet you have Antifa over and over and over again showing up to any right-wing event where they just want to have some speakers and intimidating, assaulting, destroying property.
I mean, it's an absolute outrage.
And yeah, like you said, I mean, I've gotten tweets from the, you know, New York City Antifa chapter, you know, looking for addresses where people are and stuff.
It's, it's an outrage and is vastly, like you said, it's, it's very reported on Twitter.
Like if you go on Twitter, you'll see the videos and lots of people are watching, but it doesn't make the corporate national news at all.
No, and there's another problem too.
And it is, it does show the impotence of the current administration.
So a year ago at CPAC, there was this announcement of an executive order by Trump to protect conservative free speech on campus.
Remember this?
And so the threat was going to be, oh, well, you know, if you're a campus that is endangering the free speech of conservatives, we're going to exercise the power of the purse and, you know, cut off funding.
And Trump brought out a young man who was then associated with TPUSA.
I don't think he is anymore, named Hayden Williams.
And he was one of, he was in that famous viral video in the middle of Sproul Plaza, I think at UC Berkeley, where someone, he was tabling, right?
He was just out there sort of expressing his views and debating with people.
And someone came up and just literally just punched him in the face, right?
The punch a notch, punch a notch Nazi strategy.
And so there was a big deal made of this and Hayden was, you know, got to meet the president and hug him and all that.
And a single thing has been done, even though we have had outbreak after outbreak of violence against conservative students on college campuses.
Now, compare that to another executive order that got a lot of attention, the anti-BDS executive order of Trump, which is basically the federal version of these state anti-BDS laws that were adopted in Florida.
I mean, I think there's been a dozen states of this.
And I don't know if you've waved in on this.
And I'd be interested in your thoughts because when I actually read the Florida law, and I only did it because I had heard one of the Groiber kids ask Dan Crenshaw about it.
And so immediately it was like, oh, you're, you know, you're such an anti-Semite and blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, well, maybe what does it actually say about free speech?
And I was shocked by what it actually limits.
You know, it's not just about discouraging BDS.
It's about discouraging any criticism or any use of so-called tropes of Jews.
And it's this special carve out.
Well, last week I noticed that there was a story that I can't remember which campus it is, but now they are going to be under federal investigation as a result of violating this executive order.
Well, there you go.
There are the priorities.
Yeah.
No, it's really, really creepy.
And there was another, I'm blanking on his name, but there was a great, a great clip of one of these older Fox News conservative type guys.
He's like got the beard.
He's an older guy.
Yes.
He was being confronted about like hate speech.
Does he believe in hate speech laws versus can you criticize Israel?
And he starts bragging about his degrees in philosophy and all this stuff.
And you're like, wow.
So you are exactly what you're claiming to oppose.
You have the exact same thing.
It's just your hate speech is anyone being critical of Israel.
And that now has, no, listen, I'm a libertarian.
I believe that, I mean, I'm not for government sanctions per se.
I don't think we need to sanction Israel.
Dual Loyalties National Security00:13:00
I think we could just stop giving them billions of dollars.
That would be a good enough sanction for me.
But the idea of boycotting and divesting, I mean, absolutely.
I think that's a natural right of all people to not send their money to any group or government that they don't agree with.
And, you know, divest, of course.
If you invested in something, you have every right to take your money out of it.
And it is like, to me, just, yeah, I mean, I think just outrageous.
And I thought one of the, in the Groyper Wars thing, one of my favorite moments was when there was one young guy who asked a question of, I believe it was Charlie Kirk.
It was one of the turning point people.
And he said, you know, because he was claiming to be like America first.
And he said, if there was a situation where Israel's interests conflicted with America's interests, what side would you err on?
And Charlie Kirk basically pretended that that situation couldn't exist.
Like he was like, well, Israel's the only democracy in the region and blah, which like, by the way, I'm not even a big fan of democracy.
I could care less if they're a democracy in the region.
But they go, Israel's the only democracy and the woman and the only place in the region that has gay rights or something like that.
And therefore, blah, blah, and it's like, wait, wait.
You're telling me you can't entertain the hypothetical of Israel's interests and the United States interests not coinciding.
Like, first off, I could give you 25 examples in the last 10 years when that's happened.
But if you're really, you really want like Syria, Iraq, Libya, like, I mean, there's so many examples, Lebanon, there's a million examples where our interests don't align.
But you can't even entertain the possibility and then say, yes, we should act in our interests if those interests conflict with Israel's interests.
You just have to, and I thought that was like, wow, just the idea that you couldn't even like, you can't, it's such an easy layup question.
Like I figured even he could just be like, well, yeah, we'd act in America's interest, but I think right, like it would have been reasonable for him to say, yes, if our interests conflict, we'll act in America's interest.
But right now, I don't think our interests conflict.
Like, fine, fair enough.
Diffuse the situation that way.
But he couldn't even acknowledge the possibility.
No, there is, there is real craziness when it comes to the question of Israel and conservatism Inc.
Like you're not allowed to question the relationship, which however you feel about it has certainly been a very consequential one.
Maybe you could argue that it's for the good, but it's certainly been a very consequential relationship.
You should be allowed to talk about that.
Same thing.
This is what I've always said.
Even in a lot of these issues where I don't have as strong an opinion, I've always said that what, and this, this, you know, I got in trouble, I guess you could say for this early on when like the alt-right first became a thing.
And, you know, I'm a Jewish libertarian.
Like I'm not in the alt-right.
I don't, you know, I'm not one of those guys.
They don't want me and I don't want them, you know?
I actually like the Gripers a lot more than I liked those guys.
They just seem a lot cooler.
But it's like a thing where you go, look, they should, people should be allowed to talk about some of these issues.
You can disagree with them, but demographic changes are a big deal in this country.
However, you know, like whatever you think about, that's a really big deal.
People should be allowed to talk about this.
And it seems like the rules are you're allowed to talk about the brown wave if you're celebrating it and how it's going to lead to democratic victories.
But if you're skeptical, you're a Nazi.
Those are kind of like, that's the range.
And I just think that's, that's bullshit.
Yeah, absolutely.
One of the other things that's interesting, at least in, uh, for me the past six months is more Jews who identify themselves as nationalist Jews, America first Jews, I've met on college campuses.
I've corresponded with on email and Twitter.
My husband is Jewish.
I've mentioned that.
And, you know, he has had his own journey and evolution on these matters.
And it's because he's been able to access information on the internet and books that are out of print, for example, to think more deeply about things that we had only sort of had reflexive views on because of our sort of place in con Inc.
And, you know, and it's especially interesting, just going back to this raising this issue of, you know, dual loyalties, although dual loyalties is actually funny because sometimes the loyalty is just, it isn't one loyalty.
It's just not ours.
And, you know, for as long as I've been writing syndicated columns, for example, or been in the blogosphere the last 20 years, if I challenged, you know, the dual loyalties of Mexican officials, for example, or Mexican-Americans, professors, Maldeaf activists, for example, that was okay.
And then after 9-11, like I said, talking about Muslims.
And then, you know, people would try to do a gotcha because they'd say, oh, well, you wouldn't think the same way about some, you know, what's your immigration stance on Filipinos coming to this country, you know, as if that was some sort of gotcha.
And it's like, well, you know, if they were Muslim Filipino young men from, you know, the Southern Islands where, you know, the 9-11 plot was, you know, purportedly hatched.
No, I don't want them here, you know, you know, and so it's, it's, it's always okay to talk about loyalties of every other nationality except for one, which is, it's just curious.
And I think more and more people are waking up to that, which is why it's very interesting.
It's really difficult now to find the videos of these group or questions.
They're like falling into a rabbit hole.
And that's very intentional.
And I think that that takes an alliance of both the left and right to make that happen.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
For sure.
I didn't know that those videos had disappeared.
I mean, I saw like a bunch when they first came out, but that is, and of course, Nicolas Fuentes' YouTube channel is taken down.
And, you know, it's, they don't want to show these guys up there.
Just it's, it's not just that, you know, it's like almost a weird thing where you're like, I was almost shocked at how bad Charlie Kirk and those other guys were at managing the situation.
Because you would just think if you're like a professional at this, you would at least be able to kind of think on your toes and give some type of answer.
Like you're almost like you could be a better like neocon than you're being right now.
Like just give a give a decent like response to this.
At least like don't just get outraged when your whole reason for being is being against the leftist outrage culture.
It's it's you know that all that stuff was just really it was bizarre and and interesting and really fun to watch it all happen.
But I do think like from my perspective, it seems like so much of this revolves around like what's acceptable always seems to be what will push the kind of military industrial complex into the direction that they want to go.
And I know the military industrial complex, sometimes you talk like that.
People on the right think you're like, oh, this sounds like lefty talk.
Or if you talk about imperialism or things like that, it's like, oh, that's like what, that's what the communists call us, imperialists.
But, you know, it's also what Pat Buchanan calls us.
It's also what he said, you know, the whole book, Republic, Not an Empire.
There's also, Ron Paul says it.
There's some really good right-wingers who really see what's going on here.
And they say the same thing.
But part of the reason why conservative Inc had no problem with going after Muslims after 9-11 was because it's like, oh, that's going to whip people up into supporting these wars.
They were all fine with that, you know, like stuff.
You know, what other on the left might call bigotry or whatever.
They were all fine with that when it was fueling the wars.
But just like you said, the neocon thing is like invade everywhere, let everyone invade here.
All of a sudden, if you're like some group in Britain and there's Muslims immigrating there and then you start demonizing Muslims, well, that's not helping us sell a war.
That's just helping like whip up this nationalistic like fervor.
Oh, no, now you're a racist all of a sudden.
So if you wanted to be in 2004, if you were like, oh, radical Islam is a problem and that's why we got to go bomb the crap out of insert Muslim country here, that would be fine in conservative, in conservative ink.
But as soon as you go, hey, I don't want these Syrian refugees coming over here.
All of a sudden, those same people are now telling you you're a bigot.
And it's like this weird.
And so, of course, that's why the Israel dual loyalty question isn't allowed to be raised, because what's the next step?
Like there's one step away from being like, oh, and wait, why are we involved in six wars right around Israel's border?
And like all of these neocons are like running our foreign policy still somehow?
Like that, you know, that's like, so that's why that type of bigotry, if you will, is not allowed.
It always seems to come down to this question of, you know, the warfare, national security apparatus versus those who are outside of it.
And the other thing, and we are coming up against the end of time here, but this is my big thing to conservatives in general is like you, you can like just realize that it really was the neocons, the Bush administration that sold you guys out.
It's not just that they sold out all of their promises on, you know, like, you know, limiting government and all that stuff, but they sold these wars to so many right-wingers who realized that they disproportionately bore the brunt of these wars.
It's not like these left-wing, you know, like Portland liberals who were sending their kids to go die in these wars.
It was all these people in the middle of the country, all the deplorables.
They were disproportionately sending their kids over to go fight in these wars.
And the other thing is that, and I think this might be a little bit of a bitter pill to swallow for some people who, you know, have been conservatives for a long time, but the whole national security apparatus, the whole FBI, CIA, NSA, all of this stuff, look what they turned around and did when you got Donald Trump into the White House.
This is the same apparatus that show, and this is like the thing that I think, you know, I know you did Hannity's show for years and years, but the moment I make fun of him about all the time was when he goes, so you had like MSNBC is, you know, and Rachel Maddow are like, you know, all of a sudden they're like the fine men and women in the FBI and the CIA, like they've become that.
And then I remember watching Sean Hannity and he goes, and this was around when those text messages struck and those guys came out and how they were trying to, and he goes, for the first time in American history, the FBI has been politicized.
You're like, I know.
All of a sudden, they just went from being these apolitical moral actors.
It's like, no, I'm sorry.
You got to swallow this bitter pill, which is that those organizations that you guys were championing for all those years, look, look what they did.
Look at the monster that was created from all this.
That's got to be rolled back if you're ever going to get anything done.
Oh, you're definitely preaching to the choir on that.
And I can tell you, at least from my vantage point, again, of being in the mainstream of the conservative movement, that more and more people are realizing that.
And there were, you know, many sort of discrete moments, especially in the last 10 years when that became clear.
For example, the Obama weaponization of the IRS against Tea Party people, immigration hawks, and pro-lifers, for example.
And then obviously the weaponization of many of these agencies against journalists under Obama as well.
And, you know, with regard to military families that are your sort of rank and file Republican families, they've gotten there too.
Why is it that you think that Donald Trump made that part of his platform to bring these men home?
I live in Colorado Springs, which is a military community.
It's the home of Fort Carson and the Air Force Academy and Triver Air Force Base.
And many of the people who identify themselves as Republicans and increasingly now as independents are exactly where you are and where I am now.
And yes, it took me longer than a lot of people.
It certainly took me a lot longer than where many of these America First kids are as well.
And again, it is that nexus.
And I think maybe that's a good place to end on.
And it really is a matter now of having recognized that there is this nexus, there is this natural alliance, and then figuring out how to capitalize on that, how to make it something that is actually a movement within the limits of this two-party or rather uniparty system that we have to suffer under.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that is as good a place.
Oh, I'll ask you real quick before we wrap this up.
Did you happen to see the Hillary documentary on Hulu?
I have not yet.
Let me tell you something.
And I'm speaking to all my audiences as well.
I recommend it.
Go watch it.
Oh, man.
I'm only halfway through it.
Hillary Documentary Recommendation00:01:27
I started it last night with my wife.
It is a complete pro-Hillary puff piece from her point of view, run by her people, and it still makes her look terrible.
Like they just wanted to humanize and make Hillary Clinton look great.
We were about seven minutes into it.
And my wife leaned over and goes, I think she's the devil.
I mean, like, she is just, though, she's not human.
I don't know what type of lizard person sent from a foreign planet to rule over us Hillary Clinton is, but it was really amazing.
Like I'm only halfway through, but I really enjoyed it.
I recommend people go watch it.
If you hate Hillary Clinton, there's plenty of material there.
Well, Michelle, thank you so much.
I would love to do this again sometime.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
People can go to michellemalkin.com.
That's your website, correct?
All right.
Very good.
And I'm fascinated to see what you do next going forward with your career.
I really admire your courage and how you've always you've never shied away from controversy, from worrying about what, you know, what insults are going to be thrown at you.
And you stand for what you believe in.
And I really appreciate that.
Thanks again for coming on.
Let's do it again sometime soon.
Absolutely.
I enjoyed it, Dave.
And you keep up the great work too.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And thanks, of course, to everybody for listening.
We will be back on Friday, assuming we're not all dead of the coronavirus by Friday.
We will be back on Friday with a brand new episode.