Nick Fuentes and Jordan Peterson dissect their upcoming debate, analyzing how Peterson's recent "rat" comments clash with Fuentes' critique of his hypocrisy regarding cancel culture and Gaza. They explore the fracturing right-wing movement, where figures like Charlie Kirk face donor pressure over Israel policy while independent voices like Fuentes survive platform bans through resilient digital strategies. The conversation exposes deep ideological rifts over Jewish identity, Holocaust narratives, and the dangers of escalating violence, ultimately warning that unchecked polarization threatens to dismantle democratic norms and fuel future conflict. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why We Debated00:04:02
Nicholas Fuentes, how are you, sir?
I'm good.
How are you doing?
Doing good.
Doing good.
Thank you very much for doing this.
Thank you for traveling to do this.
I really appreciate it.
We've been, you know, I've wanted to do this for a while.
I felt like this was a show that was supposed to happen, which I don't often feel.
But I've been feeling this way for a while.
So I really appreciate you doing this.
You know, we, me and you, we were just talking about it outside.
I believe it was 2019.
You did my podcast.
We were like Twitter had convinced their, I think it was something like people on Twitter were like, you'll never debate Nick the knife or whatever.
And I was like, you know, in my mind, I was like, I'm scared, Nick Fuentes.
Okay, I'll go debate.
And I didn't know much about you.
I thought we had a really good show.
We ended up not really debating.
I ended up just nerding out on the stuff that we both enjoy.
And then you came back on my show.
It was like right after you had got kicked off YouTube, I think.
So that was like the thing.
And then and then we did a debate, like a very broad kind of authoritarianism versus liberty type debate in, I want to say it was, I think, late 2020.
Yeah, that sounds right.
Because it was right at the end, I think, of the year.
We were like talking about the year of the lockdowns and stuff like that.
So that was five, five years ago.
And both of us in the last five years have really pretty dramatically risen in stature, you know, whatever, much bigger audiences, much more, you know, just bigger audiences, more big moments, more, you know.
And so it just kind of seemed like a thing that should happen.
And also, on top of that, we are both, you know, we, I don't know exactly like what percentage it would be, but I think we have a lot of overlap in our audience.
Like I hear a lot of people who are like, you two are the guys that I listen to.
And we both kind of had this weird thing where, so like after I had you on, again, even though you were not nearly as big as you are now, but it was still like, you know, I got all this, you know, outrage.
I was constantly asked to denounce you.
And then given my personality, I was always like, fuck you.
I denounce you.
Like, what?
And then, of course, more recently, you know, when you were going on Candace's show, I was a topic of conversation there.
So, and as I said to you when I first reached out to you about doing this, you were like, well, yeah, I mean, everyone's always asking you about me and everyone's always asking me about you.
So really, it seems like we probably should just be talking to each other.
And I kind of, in a weird way, and this is something where I just feel like I know this about you, when I first thought I was like, oh, I think we should do this.
And I think we should do it in person.
And I think we should do a long, I knew that you were going to say yes.
I just kind of knew, like, I was, I knew you were going to be like, fuck yeah, let's do it.
I appreciate that very much.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Likewise.
No, I feel the same way.
I mean, and we both are from the Israel critical side and always have been and kind of representing different factions, I think.
Yeah.
Because you obviously, your stories, you were the Ron Paul revolution guy, libertarian, and you come at it from the perspective of the wars, that the neocons are pro-Israel and they're driving the foreign conflict.
And I come at it from the far right Trump revolution.
So it's like a generational thing.
It's an ideological thing.
And I'm also Catholic.
You're obviously Jewish.
So there's a religious element, an ideological element.
And it's interesting how in this moment when everyone is talking about these issues, we kind of represent maybe two different sides of that or like a nuanced difference in the Israel critical side.
So it is, I said yes because I think it's going to be just a really great conversation.
I think that you're super intelligent, know the relevant facts.
So do I.
We have some disagreements, but I think we agree on far more than we disagree about.
But yeah, so I really just thought it'd be an excellent conversation.
Yeah, I think in many ways, particularly amongst young people, me and you, in a sense, represent the spectrum.
It seems to be of almost like where young people are going, whereas like on it, there is no pro-Israel spectrum.
Peterson's Credibility Crisis00:15:34
It's like, are you like a kind of non-interventionist type or are you more of an identitarian, non-interventionist type?
It's not really, that kind of seems to be the thing.
And, you know, I was.
I'll tell you this, okay?
I'll start.
I'm starting by making the pettiest of points, but I promise it's in service of making a real point.
But so, because it, you know, it might come up, like you've been doing a lot of big shows lately.
You just did Patrick Bett David's show, did Glenn Greenwald's show, several others.
And it may come off like, that's why I'm now having you on.
But just to be clear, as you will back up, I had reached out to you before you had done those shows.
And this is actually when I started thinking about it was it was when Jordan Peterson went on the Joe Rogan experience, I believe the last time he was on.
And it was it was a couple days after I had debated Douglas Murray, which still to this day is the most viewed show I've ever done and might be for a very long time.
I mean, it got like, I think it was like 5 million views on YouTube and then got another 10 on Spotify and then clips everywhere.
I mean, we'll see if we can beat it.
But I don't know about that.
That was a high bar.
But so there was this big thing and it kind of became like, you know, the topic of conversation for a little bit.
And so then Jordan Peterson comes in.
And so I was real interested in that because, you know, obviously he's working at the Daily Wire now.
And so it was like, I know this is going to come up.
I'm kind of curious what his take on this is going to be.
Now, I bring this up literally.
I'm not trying to trash Jordan Peterson.
I respect Jordan Peterson.
I think there's many aspects of his work that were very valuable.
I mean, I have a baby brother around your age, not a baby, but I still call him that.
But I bought Jordan Peterson's book for him.
Like I thought his work was great for young men.
And obviously I don't love so much the stuff he's been doing lately.
But so Jordan Peterson comes on.
I was curious what his take on the debate was going to be.
I knew he was going to get asked.
He kind of dodges it.
He goes, oh, everybody involved did a really good job, which first of all, no one on the face of the earth thinks everyone involved did a very good job.
There are the ranges, insane Zionists who think Douglas Murray won and everybody else.
There's no, nobody thinks he did a good job and he did a good, but okay, so he dodged that.
And then he just goes on a thing about the Groypers.
Now, he mentions the Groyper.
He starts going off on psychopathy and who needs to be kept out and who can be allowed in.
And okay, so first of all, it just, I mean, the obvious that to me, I was like, well, first off, if we're talking about psychopaths in this context, that's where we go to.
There's people who don't like Jews.
I mean, like, okay, man, maybe we'll argue about this a little bit later.
But like, I, okay, leaving that aside, that's the, because, you know, there's the, there's the destruction of a people.
I mean, like, like Nikki Haley is signing bombs that are about to be dropped on human beings.
And you want to have a conversation about who's a psychopath.
And then also, I thought, like, to invoke you without mentioning your name, but to mention Groypers, like those are your fans.
Like, it means your fans.
So just mention the guy's name.
It'd be like if you were like, yo, there's a real problem with people who listen to Dave Smith's podcast.
Yeah.
I'm like, well, then say, and so I just, I remember just kind of thinking like, that just seemed like really unfair.
You were not a participant in the thing.
It wasn't even like a question about, and so it was like kind of, and then just being me, I was like, my first thought was like, yo, Jordan Peterson should, if he's going to say that, he should sit down with Nick Fuente.
And then I was like, you know what?
I should sit down with Nick.
Like it's been a while.
And then it was something I just kind of kept thinking about.
Anyway, it's just a bit of a rant, but that really was what got me first thinking like, we should do something again.
Yeah.
Well, in that debate, I think raised a lot of interesting questions, you know, because it is kind of it is the thing of the moment, which is that there's been this explosion of inquiry and conversation about Israel, about the Jews, conspiracy surrounding that, the nature of it.
You know, the big question I always get asked on my show is like, what is it?
What is this thing that's going on?
And the reason that this is happening is because the taboo has gone away.
There's a few things.
There's simultaneously the censorship around the topic has dissipated.
And then I think right after the taboo went away, largely because of the war in Gaza.
I think people were so outraged to kind of blew the lid on that.
And now that kind of is the central question of the role that these personalities play in mediating that.
Because I think there's at this point a recognition by everybody on the whole planet.
There's no denial anymore.
You know, nobody can avoid it.
Even Netanyahu, who's doing damage control with Shapiro, I think that was yesterday, that everybody is talking about this.
Everyone's furious.
Everyone is not, does not have that conventional pro-Israel thing anymore.
And now I feel like there are people like a Peterson or a Shapiro or even a Charlie Kirk, which I'm sure we'll get into, that are trying to kind of, they recognize that the reality has already changed.
Yeah.
But they are in denial in a sense, trying to negotiate like what that's going to look like because they recognize the old consensus is gone, not coming back.
People are not going to be pro-Israel like they were.
The genie's not going back in the lamp, you know, the proverbial lamp.
But they also recognize that, is there a limiting principle to the conversation?
Is there something outside the Overton window?
And if you've lost all your credibility, how can you now step in and say, okay, we were lying before, but now go no further?
And I think that's, it's an open question where it goes from here that everybody's asking.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I think there's, you know, with a lot of those guys, it was, I think there was just a moment that, and I didn't plan on the Douglas Murray thing being that.
You know, I'm in my, you know, I'm a libertarian, so I'm half autistic.
Like I'm a day walker, which is why I'm the best libertarian, but I'm half that.
And so I just went, oh, dude, we're going to debate the war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine.
This is great.
Like this is going to be a huge show.
It'll be out.
And I did not expect it to become a referendum on experts and the new media, partially just because it was such a bad strategy for Douglas.
I mean, it was, it was a way to avoid the debate that I think he thought he couldn't win.
But it wasn't, it was obviously not going to work out well.
But one of the things that was kind of interesting in seeing all of these people, especially kind of why Jordan Peterson coming in was interesting because he is really, to a lot of people, like he's almost, especially with young people who's the core group who Israel's losing.
Well, this is a guy who really shaped a lot of young people's minds.
And so if anybody was kind of positioned to be able to reel them back in, it might be him.
And even that didn't kind of work.
And I think something fundamental to it was that it was like with all these guys, with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, your whole calling card was we have these conversations.
We don't shut voices out.
You have to win the argument.
We're against cancel culture.
And then they're like to watch them going on these tours of like, Rogan shouldn't have Daryl Cooper on anymore and all this.
You're like, yeah, but come on, dude.
Now, what are you?
You just kind of, you exposed yourself for being exactly what you claim not to be.
And that is something that people don't get over easily.
Right.
Well, and no one's really on their side on that, you know, because Douglas Murray, when he said, well, have you been to Gaza and all these other types?
The appeal to authority, it's like, in a way, this is just another chapter and kind of like a larger saga that goes back to COVID, Ukraine, Trump even, which is that, you know, we're led to believe that these institutions are, they have the authority to tell us what's going on and what to think and what's acceptable.
And we know that they lied about all that, lied about the facts, the opinions.
They were probably not even in good faith.
And now they want to come out and tell us, well, you know, but like you said, we can't have that conversation or Daryl Cooper's too far.
Or, you know, they're doing the same thing to him that they did to you, where they said, well, you're not a historian.
And it's like, okay, well, neither is really anybody.
Does anybody have a, you know, the right to critically think, you know, or to read books or to offer an opinion?
Or are we literally just going to be told, this is what you're allowed to think?
Cause, you know, we're the experts.
Well, it's also the other thing, dude, because I'm like, I got in this, well, I guess not.
I mean, you were, you were doing your thing, I think, at the time too, but for whatever reason, I got in like at, not really in, but I was, I got, I was doing shows at Fox News for a while.
There were like a few particular hosts who were really good to me and had me on.
It was really, it was like Kennedy and, you know, she, she had a libertarian show there, so it made sense.
And then Greg Gutfeld used to put me on Tom Shalou, used to put me on.
So it's like back even in the day.
And then I've done a bunch of their shows since.
And it's like, one of the things that just bugs me about the whole conversation too is you're like, look, I'm not saying there's a lot of garbage online.
So I'm not like defending, you know, there's, there's dumb political commentators online.
But when you're talking about like the elite level, or like I'm just saying, objectively speaking, I used to do those panels.
If you go back and look at any of the panels I was on, you're out there somewhere.
It's just always me carving everybody up because they don't know anything.
Like it was, dude, me and you are compared to the old guard, elite, elite, elite level.
Like they maybe would occasionally get someone in there.
You know, occasionally you'd have Pat Buchanan on a segment.
You'd have someone who like Ron Paul or someone who really knew what they were talking about.
But like every day on cable new.
So the idea of being like, well, you're not an expert.
Daryl Cooper's not an expert.
Do you know what you're hearing on cable now?
Do you know how much more Daryl Cooper knows than 99.99% of people talking about the topic?
So there was something about that that really bugged me.
But I also think specifically with Jordan Peterson, I just thought it was like, dude, you're talking about a young man.
You know, you're talking about a following of young people.
I thought your whole thing was like sticking up for them, not calling them the Tetrid of Evil or something like that.
And not like as if you've done something unforgivable that you are now.
I thought like it just seems like, okay, so then if you're saying, if you're saying that Nick Fuentes is leading these young men down the wrong path, well, then, okay, maybe they could use some Jordan Peterson in their life then, right?
Right.
Like what, maybe, maybe you should take that.
Maybe it's really important.
I thought you're supposed to speak up for the voiceless and get all emotional and all that.
Like, where did all that shit go?
All of a sudden, there's one thing that's like a subject you're not allowed to talk about.
And I just think that's bullshit.
Yeah.
Well, and Jordan, he even took it a step further.
I don't know if you saw his tweets about me, but he called me a rat.
He said, Nick Fuentes is a rat.
And then he came back and amended it and said, no, wait, he's not a rat because rats are odious by their nature.
He said, Nick chooses to be a rat.
He's lower than rat.
And it's like, and by the way, isn't this also his whole thing like about totalitarianism and like dehumanizing people?
And, and, and I said to him, I, I really was more just like astounded, like you said, because he is different than the others.
That's like, he's always been different.
Jabiro is like an insane Zionist, like operative of Israel, whatever you want to say.
But Peterson, like you said, he really was very influential for young men.
And I know that because I was one of them at one point and I had close friends that loved his Bible lecture series, his podcast, Maps of Meaning, which was his original book.
Pulled a lot of young kids away from atheism.
Major, yeah, and towards Christianity and towards conservatism and all of it.
And you're right.
His claim to fame was that he was supposed to be this like lodestar for the disaffected young men of the Trump generation.
And who represents that more than me?
I'm kind of like that archetypal guy leading those people.
And I agree, if he's got some issue with me, first of all, why not just call me out?
It's this weird like thing that the left does where they say, we don't want to platform him.
We don't want to give him attention.
But like you say, what then happened to that whole deal where it's like, it's a free marketplace.
We have to just talk or else we'll fight.
We have to, you know, have this marketplace.
So there's just layers of hypocrisy and no one's buying.
Nobody's buying into that nonsense.
And it's sad because I think he lost a lot of credibility.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And I agree, it's sad.
You know, and I think, and I'm not saying this again to pick on Jordan Peterson.
It's just like, I think it's he's an important figure.
It's an important topic.
And, you know, it does, and this kind of goes to the heart of, you know, back in the, before I ever, we ever met, I mean, we just met in person for the first time, but before I ever had you on my show, I had had like, I had talked to some of the alt-right guys, like had I had Christopher Cantwell on my show, I think a couple times, and I had Richard Spencer on and I had like some of those guys.
And people at the time, it was like a, you know, it was a somewhat risky move.
It was still in the world where you were like, oh, we might get, I don't want to get my channel banned and stuff like that, at least at the moment, that feels a little bit safer.
But one of the reasons why I liked talking to those guys, or one of the reasons why I did the shows with them, was that, well, first of all, I did kind of find the ideas interesting.
And I'm about like, I'm interested in the ideas.
That's why we do these things.
You know, that's why we do what we do.
And there was also, I guess I've always thought there was like from my perspective as like a libertarian and like a right-wing libertarian, I think.
And at least compare, you know, comparatively speaking.
I always thought that there was this weird, like I used to talk about this way back in the day when I, in like 2012, I was doing podcasts.
No one's listening, but I was doing podcasts.
And I used to talk about this.
This is like totally in the pre, you know, it was before wokeism really became a thing.
And then, of course, before the reaction to wokeism became a thing.
But even back in like 2012, I used to always say that like, you know, the president of the United States could like drop a bomb on a third world country on a wedding and like kill 70 people.
And then the same day he could say the blacks instead of African Americans.
And the latter would be a bigger scandal than the prior.
Like there's something fundamentally wrong with that.
Like that is a really, that's a really sick thing about your society.
And there is this, this almost like, and I think has been for my entire lifetime, maybe before that probably, that there, there's almost this unspoken cultural value that clearly is a left-wing value that puts at the absolute top of the hierarchy of outrages, bigotry.
Like bigotry is supposed to be up here at the absolute, that's the worst thing in the world that you can be.
When in fact, like that is just not my moral outlook on the world.
You know, bigotry is something we all have in excess.
I think it's bad.
But there's much worse things than that.
And one of the things that I always found very interesting was that the alt-right guys were really anti-war.
And this also for you and the Groypers are very anti-war.
And so to me, in my world, like war is really a much worse thing than racism.
I'm not sure how there's a counterargument to that, although we treat it like war is just, that's just policy.
And this is the worst thing you can do.
And so I immediately rejected that.
And so in fact, you know, with the Jordan Peterson thing, I'll leave him alone after this, but it's like, you want to talk about psychopaths.
The Cost of Tolerance00:14:55
Like, sir, you were on record saying give them hell.
That was your response.
And, you know, for the guy who talks about hell all the time.
Yeah, right.
You know, there's, oh, you don't think hell really exists?
It does.
You haven't met enough.
Yeah, go to Gaza.
Hell does exist.
You said give them hell.
And that's exactly what they got.
Like, so, you know, maybe examine yourself before you're saying, oh, but he said a thing about the Jews.
So he is the dark Tetraf.
But then it just seemed to me on top of that.
So that's like my worldview.
Like, I don't actually think bigotry is the worst thing.
I think it can be bad, but I don't think it's the worst thing.
But then even from like, say, a liberal worldview, like, isn't like Daryl Davis like your, the, the big hero story.
And I'm not like claiming that that's what I'm doing with you.
It's not right, right.
But like the idea of like, you're like, even the guy who you say is the famous guy who like converted all the clansmen.
Well, he did it by talking to him and being decent.
Just be cool.
That's like rule number one.
Like always, and that always seems so obvious to me, particularly as a Jewish person, you know.
I just like as a Jew, I would say that.
But that you're just like, oh, there's these people who hate Jews.
I was like, well, I should probably be cool.
It's kind of hard for people to hate someone who's cool to them.
And it's just so weird to me that everybody else's opinion is like, no, this is the one thing that's unacceptable, bigotry.
Anything, oh, the government just passed a law that says they can detain you without charges, whatever.
But like no one's being a bigot about it, right?
They're doing it to whites and blacks equally.
Like, okay.
And then number two, like, what is this thing that we ought to shut people out of the conversation?
It seems so counterproductive and stupid.
Well, and it's not even just bigotry.
In particular, it's words.
It's not like you even have to do a bigoted thing, like you beat up a black person for being black or you discriminate actively.
It's like if you have said something that sounds racist, is racist, that is worse than murder, war, et cetera.
And, you know, that was kind of like a phenomenon this summer because I was so outspoken against the war in Gaza and the clips were going around on TikTok and Instagram.
And a lot of liberals are saying, wait a second, even he is saying this is evil.
This is a guy we're supposed to hate.
You know, maybe the broken clock is right twice a day.
And I was on my show reminding people like, yeah, maybe I'm racist.
Maybe we disagree on issues of race, but I'm against murder.
I'm against genocide.
And like you said, is that not the actual moral paradigm?
Is like killing, war, famine, are these things not the real evils?
And maybe bigotry is somewhere further away from that and saying things that might be bigoted further even still from that.
And we live in a society now where it seems like if you have ever uttered anything that's bad, it haunts you.
Yeah.
You know, it's like I, you look at my Wikipedia page and it's like, he's a racist, sexist, homophobe, Islamophobe.
In 2018, he said this.
In 2020, he said that.
And I go on shows and in the news reports, they list like things I have said.
It's like I do a talk show.
I talk three hours a day for a living for 10 years.
And sometimes it sounds controversial or provocative or offensive, but doesn't that kind of go with the territory of freedom of conscience?
If we can think, should we not be able to speak?
And if we speak, can we not be wrong?
Can we not be funny?
Can we not be insensitive or bombastic?
And I guess this gets to something about, because you think, well, society shouldn't be this way, but why is it this way?
People are hanged by their words selectively.
This is like, these are tools of reputational destruction.
They don't like where you're pointed.
So then they look for things that are going to hurt people's feelings and say, oh, well, you shouldn't listen to this guy because he said this.
And I bet you don't like how that sounds, huh?
Because when you look at, I brought this up on PBD.
Ben Shapiro in the year 2000, I think, wrote an article about ethnic cleansing.
It said transfer is not a dirty word.
And he's arguing for literal ethnic cleansing.
Now, I have never argued anything close to that.
I've never made the argument that we should ethnically cleanse blacks from the United States.
But if I did, I'd be hanged by that forever.
Is Shapiro?
Why and why not?
He is not reminded of that every time he goes around, not because he apologized for it 20 years later, but because he has all the correct opinions.
He's not a target.
He's got backing.
And so that kind of tells us that, and by the way, the same applies to all other kinds of scandals.
If we want to have an open society, and that's ironic coming from me, but we do need to.
Libertarian Nick Fuentes.
Yeah, sort of.
It's like you do need some level of tolerance, actually, to inoculate yourself from using reputational destruction for political control.
Cause that's what I've come to realize about it.
Dude, you're 100% right.
I used to, I used to talk about this all the time because, you know, as you mentioned, I was a big Ron Paul supporter when he was running for president.
And when he was running for president, which is looking back at it now in 2025 is so goddamn funny.
But they'd always bring up the racist Ron Paul newsletters, the racist newsletters.
By the way, if you look at that, it was so tame compared to like anything.
Like, I mean, it was literally like, I think one of the things was they said some one guy in the newsletter said the LA riots only stopped because they needed their welfare check or something.
Right, right.
Which is like.
Anyway, anyway, but so you're just, and they would, and they would, Ron Paul, of all people, to try to paint him as a hater of some, a dude who does not have like a hateful, it's just like a Christian baby doctor who's been married to the same woman for 60 something years.
Like just the, but they would try to pull that up.
And then you'd, you'd notice like, oh, okay, but like, you know, look at the things Joe Biden has said in his day.
Look at the things Hillary Clinton has said.
Look at all the, oh, no, they don't ever get hit for that.
In fact, the greatest libertarian theorist of all time, Murray Rothbard, in one of his most controversial articles, and we talked about this, I think, the first time we podcasted together, but he wrote this thing about David Duke.
And he was making the point how they're like, well, why is it that they hate David Duke so much?
And I go, oh, you say, because he used to be in the Klan?
And go, well, Robert Byrd.
Yeah.
The lion of the Senate.
Like, he used to be in the Klan.
No one has a problem with that.
And so you realize, yes, oh, this is, you make the rules so vague and so narrow that they apply to everyone.
And then you choose who's going to get hit.
And who always happens to get hit?
Very coincidentally, the people who don't support Israel and the permanent warfare state.
Always, always.
It's even like with the woke right term.
You know, the definition they're working off of is you awoken to something that makes you woke.
And by the way, here's a list of all the woke right people.
And they completely coincidentally happen to be all of the right-wingers who don't support Israel and don't support the warfare state.
That's always what it is.
It's the one common, and that's another, it's a real problem of the kind of the racist thing being what you ruin people over.
Because again, we're all a little bit racist.
People just don't want to admit it.
But that's one thing growing up in New York City, you learn when you're around different people.
It's not, it's not, racism isn't something that belongs to old white men.
It's something that every group has.
And actually minorities in this country are quite willing to be open about it, which is something that is, you know, not discussed in like liberal academia.
But like you go over to like your Asian friend's house and his dad will tell you exactly how black people are, how Latino people are, how white people are.
Anyway, so, you know, even when I was talking to those alt-right guys back in the day, and part of the reason, and I never, you know, I did always find the conversations interesting, although I didn't, I mean, I always thought like the, I always thought the ethno-state thing was just like a retarded non-starter of like a, you know, you're going to turn America into it.
Like, what?
But I guess, I don't want to say this the right way because I know people will judge me for saying this, but in some ways, I kind of thought that the alt-right and then in some ways the Groypers, in a way, they were the most honest expression of the Trump moment.
Yeah.
Because I think there's through years of, you know, kind of like political correctness, the post-war consensus, like all of these things, it's almost like the older generation was, there was an inability to just say it because it was perceived as racist in order to say it.
So there's always code words.
It's like we have too much illegal immigration.
We have too much of that.
And when really what the issue was about was that America was being transformed racially.
I mean, that it was being transformed from a majority white country, which it's always been through its entire history.
And that's being changed.
And it just seemed to me that like, it's pretty obvious that any, you know, if you, whatever, like the things the alt-right guys all used to say, if you went to Italy and said, hey, we have some demographic projections, this place is going to be 90% French in a few years.
Isn't that wonderful?
I think most of them would go, no, that's not wonderful because we want this to be Italy.
And so, and you have this drastic change that was completely forced on the American.
There was never a choice.
There was never a referendum on like, should America become a majority minority country?
And that referendum wouldn't have done too good in 1960, you know?
Like if you had asked those people or 65, whenever the bill was, if you had asked those people, it would have been everybody, including all the black people, would have been like, no, we don't, you would have gotten 99% voting against it.
This happened against the will of the Americans.
And during that, it's not even like they're like, hey, the people never asked for this, but we're transforming your society anyway.
But we're going to be really cool about it.
They didn't even throw that last one in there.
They went, you didn't ask for this.
It's happening anyway.
And fuck you and everything you hold dear.
And also your son's a girl.
It's like every, like on every level.
And I think that was that was guaranteed to create a pushback.
And I think it's crazy to not engage with that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I agree.
That's how I interpreted the Trump Revolution.
When I was 18 and Trump won the election, we, well, and by we, I mean me and my followers at the time or whoever I considered a fellow traveler, we viewed the Trump Revolution as an implicit white identitarian movement.
And that is what was loaded behind every slogan.
Make America great again.
Okay, when was America great?
Was it great 15 years ago or are you talking about like the 80s?
And what was America like in the 80s?
You know, it was a different color.
Was it a different flavor?
The, we're going to say Merry Christmas again.
Okay, what does that mean?
Who doesn't say Merry Christmas?
Liberals and all these people that practice different religions, Muslims and Jews for that matter, although Trump was always pro-Israel.
And we saw Trump as basically just an implicit expression of that.
And over time would become more explicit as the changes became sort of ignorable, the demographic changes, the cultural changes.
And I do agree with your point because as someone like myself, these were the conversations I was having as maybe like a higher IQ.
Obviously, I'm not just like a resentful, angry white man who doesn't like change.
I was looking at this and saying, like you said before, it's not maybe desirable that America changes.
You recognize this is in progress.
It is happening.
It in some sense has happened.
And as maybe a young person, though, and being precocious and also impulsive and immature, I was trying to find the vocabulary and language to talk about these things.
And I was interested in opinions on this.
And I did talk to people at the time who were willing to engage in me.
They were few and far between.
And they would say, Is it really practical and ethno-state?
You know, and clearly there's going to be diversity, but how are we going to live with that?
How can we preserve some semblance of our way of life?
And I feel like if there was more of a recognition that we deserve that, that we deserve engagement, a conversation, recognition, you know, that our grievances are valid, that it's okay to not be okay with the things that are happening, maybe the movement would have taken a different direction or maybe it wouldn't be so much rage and conflict and division.
But it's like you said, people were told, this is the way it's going to be.
Your neighborhood is destroyed.
It's irreversibly changed.
If you have a problem with that, it's because you're a bad person.
If that makes you angry, we're just going to take away your voice.
And if you riot, then we're just going to throw you in jail and ruin your life.
And it was just kind of like, I said this on my show, doubling down, always doubling down, ignoring intolerance.
I know that's like trite at this point, but ironically, you know, the proponents of tolerance were intolerant of anyone that wasn't on board and anyone that didn't look like the new American they wanted to make.
And I think that in some sense, maybe my ascendancy in the past couple of years as well, and this is accompanied by and maybe caused it, the Overton window moving to the right on everything on race, on Israel, on crime, on immigration.
Now that people are kind of like banging on the door of the liberal elite saying like, get out, now they're willing to have the conversation.
Now they're saying, all right, all right, all right.
Okay, maybe we could talk about turning some of this stuff back.
And I've said on my show, I just hope this is a moment when there's introspection and we do talk and we find a resolution because my fear is that we blow right past that and the worst elements with the worst impulses, because they are vindicated in some sense, are going to take control of this.
And it is going to be a lot of populist anger, real resentment, real rage, real hatred, cruelty, because I think that's a distinct possibility.
Yeah, I'm glad you say that.
And I completely agree with you.
And I do think, I think it's a moment that there should be introspection for everybody, like myself included, you and your audience included, and also those liberals.
I mean, because it's just, you know, like, and perhaps part of this perspective is just that I'm older than you.
Not that I don't need to like play that as a card, but I just, my point of reference, like I was born in the 1980s.
And so I grew up, I was born in 83.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s.
And this was a different country back then, you know?
And I think one of the things that's been interesting, I'm really interested to get your point of view on this.
One of the things that's been interesting for me about, say, like the cultural transformation, the most recent one that we've lived through with the woke insanity being rolled back and the censorship being rolled back, which are very related, I think.
Nostalgia for the Past00:02:01
And I think there's certain things you could point to that were like big moments.
Like I think the Bud Light and the Target campaigns were like a big moment.
Like it was one of the first times that like big corporations got a black eye over this.
And even if they gain that money back in their stock, it's like you lose billions of dollars.
That starts getting people thinking about this stuff.
And then obviously Elon buying Twitter and then just kind of Zuckerberg wanting to be cool or whatever it is exactly.
The government pressure being taken off.
I don't know if we know exactly what it is, but like we're in, but one of the things that's been interesting is like, I think for people like my perspective, being 42 is that I think a lot of us were like, oh, good.
Like we can go back to not having everything so racialized and having everything so, you know, like just, you know, I just think that stuff's not good.
And then, you know, that is not at all what's happened.
And in fact, I think, you know, like it's been kicked into higher gear.
And one of the things I've been thinking about a lot with that is that, you know, it's probably just from my perspective, being my age, it's much easier for me to go, all right, let's just go back to like what the before time when thing was before this woke insanity, things weren't that crazy, at least culturally.
Whereas I think your audience and partial, part of mine, but more so your audience, which is younger, naturally, they lived through it in a different way than I ever did, you know, and they're, you know, you know, you think about like that, what was the kid's name?
Sand, Sandben, Nicholas Sambin.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The guy they tried to ruin this kid's life for the crime of being an angel.
I mean, could not, dude, Nick, man, I am lucky that there wasn't social media or podcasting or any like shit when I was a kid.
But I remember saying on that show, man, if me and my friends, when we were teenagers, if those black Israelites, because we were just little fucking hooligans from Brooklyn, like we were like, if they had come up and started talking all that shit to us and then they were, you guys are colonizers, we would have immediately been like, that's right, bitch.
Yeah, we took your shit, didn't we?
Identity Politics and Race00:06:48
Oh, yeah.
You go, you raped our women.
Oh, and you didn't do shit.
Like, we would have just immediately started talking shit back to them.
It would have probably been a fight.
This kid does nothing.
Just a Catholic kid who's like in there for a right.
So he just smiles and just stands there and smiles.
And they tried to ruin his life over that.
And I think, you know, for a lot of people that you talk to, you know, these are like, I'm not, I'm not saying they were black people growing up in the Jim Crow South, but they really were.
They really did come up under a system that was overtly bigoted against them.
Where it was like, hey, it is, it is the law of the land that you will be denied opportunities.
We're looking to put women and people of color and everything except you, straight white man.
We're looking at everything else.
Your university hates your guts.
Hollywood hates your guts.
The media, the political class.
And it's a big ask after all of that when you get, you know, the leg up to go, can you be cool now?
And so I understand where that's a tough thing, you know, to ask.
At the same time, I do think, as you mentioned, we're not going to live in a white ethnostate.
We can't go back to 1965 and undo the Immigration Act.
And this is going to be a multiracial society of some sort.
And we ought to think about like, okay, how do we move forward in a way that's conducive to peace and prosperity, which is kind of what we all on some level want?
Yeah, it's a difficult question because I guess it comes down to multiracialism itself, because we do live in different America.
There was, I'm told, the consensus in the 90s and the early knots where people describe race relations as generally good.
And, you know, we could talk about why that is.
I mean, people say that that's only after there was this intense anti-crime intervention, the crime bill and Giuliani and Stop and Frisk and all that.
You know, but people say things are pretty good.
But America was also a lot less diverse.
And so we've undergone this political transformation.
And on the other side of it, we do have a much different America.
And the question is, now that we really do have like these large groups of different races in the country, can there be a brand new political order that's based on understanding?
And it comes down to the question of that in itself.
And to me, all these little things that they were talking about 20 years ago or 10 years ago, representation, microaggressions, opportunity, it's really about power.
That's ultimately what it comes down to.
It's about who will predominate, who will be preeminent.
When you're talking about, for example, DEI, that's saying we want the spots at Harvard because you know who is scouting Harvard talent?
The biggest corporations, law firms, and we want to be in the law firms.
We want to be on the boards of the biggest companies because we want power.
And we want power to help ourselves.
We want that for black people.
We want that for Hispanics, for Asians.
And so it does come down ultimately to power sharing and power sharing and even wealth sharing.
It comes down to the distribution or allocation of resources.
It's contentious because whites are necessarily losing power.
They used to have all of it and now they're sharing it.
Now they're going to have half of it or a quarter of it.
And what's more is if another group has power over you, there's like an inherent suspicion because it's like, well, this guy's not really looking out for me because he doesn't look like me and he didn't come from where I came from and he's not like me.
And the problem with this is after there's so much conflict, the non-whites don't trust whites and the whites are rightly skeptical of the non-whites because the non-whites seem to have license to hate whites.
Non-whites have like inherent distrust, basically like a veiled hatred and resentment.
And they're totally, they feel completely able to express that.
And so the fundamental question is how now do the races share power in a way that isn't contentious?
How do we find an understanding?
And I don't know if that's even possible because the concern from the alt-right was always in a, in particular, in a democracy, in an open society, when politics gets racialized, it basically just becomes like a race war.
It turns into like a soft form of a racial war.
And, you know, now they're saying woke right.
I think the reason they're doing that and they want to, you know, just kind of get rid of identity politics and find a consensus is because they want for the whites now not to fight the non-whites.
They want a situation where, like you said, we're going to have happy liberal whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians all living together.
I just don't know how possible that is at this point.
And that's where people start to talk about, can we disintegrate?
You know, we were forcibly integrated with immigration and after the Civil Rights Act.
Can we now go our separate ways?
I don't know that that's actually even a good thing, though.
I don't know that that's even like a good answer.
But I would say where it starts is just with honesty.
Ultimately, there's got to be a recognition that there are legitimate grievances on both sides and they're illegitimate grievances.
There are legitimate voices expressing those grievances that actually, because I said this on the Charlie Kirk show, after Charlie got shot, I think there was a real threat of like war.
I think there still is because left wingers are shooting people and blowing stuff up and eventually a right winger is going to retaliate.
And then is it going to be like the 60s and 70s?
That's a question.
But I said on my show after Charlie died, the important thing is let's get a new consensus of people that don't want that, that don't want war, that don't want their opponents to die, that don't want to murder each other.
I said, I'm Christian.
I don't believe in murder.
I don't believe in revenge.
I said, and not all people are Christian and not all Christians believe that, actually.
And so I think moving forward, there needs to be an uncomfortable coming together of people that have grievances, legitimate grievances with each other, but who both want harmony, want to live in peace, don't want bloodshed, leaders from both sides to come together.
But I'm not optimistic.
I think that the most cynical, calculating people rise to the top.
They will incite and exploit the divisions and try to vie for control.
And I think conflict is more likely than peace at this point.
Yeah, it's very hard.
It's very hard to keep those because it's so easy.
It's so easy, you know?
And by the way, just because you mentioned it, and I did say this publicly a bunch, but I really did appreciate your episode after Charlie Kirk.
Thank you for that.
You know, it reminds me, I was on Piers Morgan debating that Brandon, Brandon Tatum, the cop guy.
Speech vs Incitement Limits00:08:49
And that was what he was talking.
He said, I was a terrible person for giving you credit for that show.
And then his whole argument was like, he goes, he's like, Nick is disingenuous.
He doesn't mean that.
And it's just like, you know, whatever.
I didn't even like spend that much time on it in the thing, but it was just funny.
It was like in my head, I was like, wait, so in your worldview, like Nick is this disingenuous, he's the leading neo-Nazi.
It's like, okay, so the leading neo-Nazi is calling for peace.
Like, is that not, we at least acknowledge that's preferable to like the other outcome?
But on the broader topic, you know, you're, I agree with your assessment, unfortunately, that it's kind of less likely that this has a positive outcome than a negative one.
But I do think that, you know, I look at it like, like I was born in 1983, which, you know, to me does not feel like that long ago.
I still feel like you, man, except my knees, my knees really don't feel like you.
But, you know, so I was born in 1983.
This is 20 years, less than 20 years, 19 years after the Civil Rights Act, right?
So it's like, it kind of does make sense in a way that perhaps there was like a different outlook only 20 years after the civil rights.
And now it's 2025.
Like this is actually quite a bit further.
This is 60 years after the Civil Rights Act now.
And I do think that like in order to move forward, the only way to do this would be to declare, man, I hate saying this word, but actual equality of some sense.
Like it would actually have to be like, look, nobody's getting discriminated against under the law.
Either nobody has a right to have their special, their group interest, their group, or everybody gets to do it.
I think the way the way it worked, like when I was a kid, it's almost like there was a gentleman's agreement.
And there was a gentleman's agreement where it was kind of like, look, we know like bad things happened to minorities in this country in the past.
And so we're not going to say, you know, like some of the things that we obviously know.
And we'll even allow you to say a little bit about us.
We'll kind of, that was kind of the gentleman's agreement.
And at a certain point, it was like the progressive left particularly just broke this gentleman's agreement.
And they were like, well, no, we're going to say everything that we want to say.
And then eventually I feel like, you know, the young white men were kind of like, okay, well, then screw it.
So then there's no gentleman's agreement anymore.
And, you know, part of the, I remember, I remember, I'm sure you, you saw this when Scott Adams had that comment a couple years ago, I guess it was, that went super viral.
Scott Adams, who's unfortunately is, I think, very sick these days.
Me and him have argued a few times on Twitter, but I was sad to hear that.
But he said the thing, he was like, my advice to white people is just don't be around blacks.
Like just move away, move to a different neighborhood where they're not there.
And I remember first hearing that and going like, yo, that's fucked up, dude.
And then like the second after I went, oh, that's fucked up.
I went, this is exactly what I did.
That is exactly what I did.
You know, I mean, I remember me and my wife were looking at the town that we ultimately moved to.
And it's just like, like, there was like a grading thing, you know, when you look at towns and they're like, schools, A plus, like this, A plus, this, A plus, crime, A plus, this, A plus.
And they go, diversity, D minus.
And I was like, cool.
I mean, and it's, again, it's not like I don't care, but it's like those other things are important to me.
And they do seem to be attached to this one.
And so it's like, I think in order to kind of put this fire out, you would have to just, there would have to be some type of system where it's like, look, like white people are there, they can't be discriminated against under the law and they can't be discriminated against in other ways either.
And they have to also be allowed to say what they want to say.
And to your point, there are legitimate grievances that black people have.
I mean, there is no, and I, this is my own bias, I guess, but much of it doing with government policy.
Almost everything that's handed to them from the state is absolute garbage.
And their schools are really bad.
And, you know, there's, there's like legitimate grievances there.
I also think like welfare has done enormous damage.
But you kind of can't just blame all your problems on white people and racism.
I mean, that actually is not really what's holding black people back in this country.
And I think we have to be honest about that if we don't want things to go in an ugly direction.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I would say that a lot of what occurred under wokeism, I don't think it was all bad necessarily, because I think that, you know, as I get older, I do recognize it's sort of funny.
Like when I was a teenager, we were getting called racist for everything.
Everything was racist, everything.
And I feel like a lot of people started out saying, what?
How's that racist?
I remember I used to, like you said earlier, if you called them black and not African American, like 2012, that was the problem.
Or colored instead of person of color, whatever.
And he'd say, I don't hate anybody for their race.
I feel like people have kind of gone full circle.
And now 10 years later, people are like, they actually hate non-white people and go, yeah, I'm racist, so what?
And I, I don't know, I feel like maybe that's a mistake in a sense.
I mean, I've said I'm racist, but like actually genuinely harboring racial hatred is bad.
I think it's good as a society.
We move past that.
I think it's good as a society.
We move past a lot of prejudice.
And I think I agreed that the new consensus just needs to be just like you said, that basic conception of fairness, equality.
And I would, it really comes down to specificity with the language.
Like everyone now talks about, are you racist?
Are you not racist?
I say, yeah, I'm a little racist.
I think everyone's a little racist.
Yeah, we're all a little prejudiced and we all believe in stereotypes.
And what does that even really mean?
But do I believe in cruelty, hatred, violence?
No.
And I usually like to use those words because anyone who knows me, the number one racist, knows I'm not a cruel person.
I'm not a hateful person.
I'm not a violent person, unless I'm put in a self-defense situation in my front door.
You know, let's not say, because that is, you know, tends to happen, you know?
And I think that as a country, we could survive being racist.
We can't survive like ontologically hating each other and not wanting the best for each other and wanting to kill and destroy each other.
And that's why I think it's really important.
It's like I said after that show, like we are going to need to fight.
I do believe there is going to need to be like an intense political battle.
And people are going to need to choose what side they're going to be on.
And what side I'm not on is the side where someone gets shot in the neck and you celebrate or someone gets stabbed in the neck with a knife and you make excuses for it.
Or even in Gaza, people are being blown to smithereens and you say, give them hell.
They deserve it.
Whatever.
It's like we need to find a way where, and I'm Christian, of course, but we need to take most of the right and some of the left even against the kind of nihilistic element on the far left because I really believe they are the problem.
I think they are driving a lot of the issues here.
Yeah, well, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
And I do agree with you that there was something, you know, it really, it was one of those examples that really pushes you up to the limit of like speech versus inciting violence.
But like there is something like what you do.
There was just a major political assassination.
This is a dangerous moment for this country.
And you're just making a video about how great it was.
And that, and I 100% agreed with your say, I think it was on Greenwald or Patrick Bitt David, one of those two shows, where you were just like, yeah, they should get fired from their job.
And like, yeah, I mean, I'm sorry.
There's like, there is a level.
And yes, you do have to like, you have to work out your own hierarchy of moral outrages or whatever.
But I, again, it's sometimes these things are somewhat arbitrary.
I shouldn't even say, I guess exactly where you draw the line feels kind of arbitrary.
You know, in the same way, like we all know, like, okay, a six-year-old can't drive a car, but a 25-year-old has to be able to.
Like, I don't know.
There's somewhere you got to draw the line.
And like, if a woman is getting fired for posting All Lives Matter, that's insane.
But like, if you're getting fired for, it's like, I don't know.
You know, I had a friend of mine, a buddy of mine who made a, um, he got fired from his job because he made a video singing uh Kanye West's Heil Hitler song.
And I was like, well, yeah, dude.
You know, I don't know.
Yeah, a lot of employers are going to look at that and be like, yeah, dude, you can't, I can't have people do that.
And that's not nearly, nearly, nearly as bad as celebrating someone who just got murdered.
By the way, I know you're friends with Kanye.
Got to say, dude, Kanye's album, College Dropout, spoke to my soul.
It was the year I dropped out of college.
He made this album, College Dropout.
Fueling Real Men00:03:02
And I always loved, there's this one really beautiful song on there called Family Business.
And I heard it earlier today.
And man, it hits different after cousins.
The whole story is about his cousin.
I always thought it was such a nice song.
But after cousins, you're like, man, this one has a whole different tone to it.
Anyway.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So I did, okay, I want to, this is something else because I texted you.
Blowing Up Body Brain Coffee00:13:12
I wanted to talk about this.
And so I wanted to kind of, because this was another thing that I heard you bring up recently, and it's one that particularly frustrates me.
I remember one time back in the day, Glenn Greenwald, this is when he broke the Snowden story and he went on Lawrence O'Donnell's show.
And Lawrence O'Donnell said to him, he was like, you know, Glenn, I've read all your reporting and honestly, like, I just don't care.
Like, I got nothing to hide.
Like, I don't care if the government wants to look through my phone.
I got nothing to hide.
I remember Glenn was talking about it.
And he was like, he was like, there was something about it that just made me so angry.
And I kind of couldn't figure out what it was.
And then it dawned on me that it was like, well, yeah, obviously you have nothing to fear, Lawrence O'Donnell.
It's only the ones, it's only the journalists who do real journalism who have anything to worry about, you know?
And there's this dynamic that I see building up on the right.
And I will, and again, these are not people who I have anything personally against, but like Matt Walsh, Tim Poole.
Tim's been very good to me.
I consider him a friend.
But they've all kind of taken this line of like, I don't care.
I don't care what's going on with Israel.
Like, why are you guys so obsessed?
You know, why are you so, and there's something so particularly enraging about it.
And I think part of it is because I really genuinely believe like guys like me and you are like, we'd love to not talk about this.
That's kind of our whole argument.
Yes.
Our whole argument is that this shouldn't be a thing we even have to talk about.
But saying, why are you obsessed with it?
It's like, it's like in 2006, I'm sitting here and I go, look, I'm a non-interventionist.
But why is everyone talking about Iraq?
Like, why do you have to, well, because that's where we're intervening.
So like, how can you sit here and be like, I'm a non-interventionist?
Like, like, you're taking the correct policy position from my perspective.
So I at least give you credit for that.
But the thing is, we are intervening.
We are, we are currently being interventionists.
And also like, if your whole thing is like, I don't, I want to focus on America.
I don't want to go fight other wars.
Well, who's pulling us into wars?
It ain't Lebanon.
You know what I mean?
Like, so like, what, how do you, how, it just seems like cowardice to me.
Like, how do you get, and it does seem like that message is resonating with like some people.
As I just think it's profoundly unfair.
Like the whole thing, the whole point of all of this is that it is an American destruction of Gaza.
This isn't Israel doing it.
Netanyahu goes around and brags about what Israel can do.
Israel can't do shit.
Israel can only do things because they have the full backing of the United States of America.
So like, sorry, if you're in the world of talking about these things, you don't get to pass on this one.
Like you got to have an opinion.
Yeah, I saw that too.
And it's become very popular over the past year and a half.
I see a lot of the young men, they watch Matt Walsh, they watch this other stuff and they say, well, yeah, I just don't really care about Israel that much.
I care about America.
And I saw Matt Walsh say that on Tucker.
He said, and you could tell that it is like a rhetorical innovation because let's be honest, this is an issue that people like Matt Walsh don't want to talk about because he works for Ben Shapiro and he knows like Candace Owens, if you drift too far on that subject, you lose your job.
And he likes having a job.
So you get it.
Now, this is an extremely contentious issue also.
And it's very topical.
It's in the news and he knows the question's coming.
Are you pro-Israel?
Are you anti-Israel?
There's people who feel very strongly about it.
And you could tell this is like a rhetorical device.
It's a cop-out where you can say, I'm not pro-Israel, but I'm not anti-Israel.
I just don't care.
And that really pissed me off because it seems like you're feigning ignorance.
You're either intent, you're either lying or you're really ignorant.
And the reason why is because be that as it may, that you don't care about Israel.
We happen to be supporting their war and it's actually hurting us.
And there's other things too.
Obviously, it's a big subject.
There's a lot of this stuff going on.
And so people say, well, well, let them kill each other.
If you've been paying attention, one side's doing a lot more killing.
We're paying for it.
We're, you know, on the hook for all of it.
And, you know, so when they say, well, all that stuff, we don't care about it, whatever, be that as it may, it is going on.
And until it stops or changes, we can't stop talking about it.
That's, it's like you said, we don't want to be obsessed with it, but if you talk about it, you get canceled.
We have to talk about getting canceled.
You have to talk about the thing in itself.
And when that changes, similar on the same vein, people like Matt Walsh say, well, we should just end all foreign aid.
It's like, okay, but they get like all of it.
And it's not ending anytime soon.
So you could sit there with your arms folded and say, well, I think we should end the foreign aid, but like it's not really a big issue.
Well, then you're in favor of the status quo.
And that's kind of the whole point is like, even if you're accusing yourself or you're complacent, if you're doing anything other than actively opposing, you're passively supporting the ongoing status quo.
And that needs to be said.
Right.
And it just seems like, as you said, there's a price tag to be paid for opposing Israel.
And you don't wish to pay that price.
And I'm like, okay, I understand that.
But your entire worldview, even down to the non-interventionist, clearly says you have to oppose this, but you don't want to pay the price.
And so you'll just go like, oh, you guys are obsessed.
You guys are obsessed with this issue.
It's like, yeah, it's a pretty relevant issue.
And like, you know, and it's a disaster for the Trump base.
Right.
I mean, it's like it's like just politically, it's a disaster.
It's a disaster for the Democrats also.
It's a huge part of the reason why they lost in 2024.
And not just because their base was so against the thing, but because it really, it sucked all the energy out of the room that they needed to be in opposition of Trump.
They needed young people to be their shock troops like they were in 2016 and 2020.
And all those young people were protesting a genocide.
And they just weren't going to turn around and be outraged by Tony Henchcliffe, you know, doing a routine at Madison Square Garden after that.
It's just impossible.
So it was devastating to them, but they're still going to support Israel no matter what.
And now Donald Trump, you know, they say, oh, look, you know, they're destroying the Trump coalition.
And it's like, well, we're kind of not budging on this one.
So I don't know what to say.
Like, you know, this is not, look, it's, it's not just, first of all, just for moral reasons, like, I'm not budging on an issue of genocide.
I'm not doing that.
But on top of that, just for sovereignty reasons, for the obvious, you know, I mean, look, at the very least, even if you don't go nearly as far as me, let alone as far as you, Benjamin Netanyahu is a neocon, at the very least, right?
Like at the very least, he's a guy who testified before Congress advocating we fight the war in Iraq, in Libya, and advocates we fight a regime change war in Iran.
If that guy, if a guy with that trek record was appointed as secretary of state or as the defense secretary, every non-interventionist has to be against that guy.
So how can you, you can't be for him?
Like it's just, and I do think that, I mean, you know, I think there is, there's like, they don't want to pay the price of being an Israel critic, but I think there's a new price that's going to come from not, you know, taking a stand on this at all.
I totally agree.
And I have kind of made that my mission.
You know, like people hate the Groypers because the Groypers swarm on the internet.
They sure do.
They sure do.
Even among my good friends who happen to be Jewish, they swarm and they make people upset and they're applying pressure.
And that was something that I did very intentionally in 22.
I did my AFPAC 3 conference.
We invited Joe Kent, who was running for Congress, and he was America first.
He's from the Intel community, anti-war.
I think his wife tragically was killed in Syria.
And by all appearances, seemed to be a good faith critic of the war machine.
Well, we invited him to our conference.
He didn't show up.
And then the next day, even though he wasn't even there, he disavowed me and said, I disavow Nick Fuentes.
That's not populism.
He said, particularly his views on Israel.
And I said, see, that's the problem because, and this is going on to this day, whether it's Kent, Trump, Biden, Charlie Kirk, if you go against Israel, they make you pay a heavy price.
You know, APAC is coming in with the berserkers, the ADL's coming in like you're going to pay.
So what do you do?
Hey, I got to get him off my back.
I got to disavow you.
I have to, I have to sign the letter.
It's easier.
It's the path of least resistance.
I said, we have to create an opposing force and push in the other direction.
We need people to know that if you go too in favor of Israel or condemn the Israel critical right, you're going to pay a heavy price too.
You're going to get, and we don't have money power, but we got people power.
You're going to have somebody in your district asking you about Israel at every stop.
You're going to have stickers put up.
We're going to make a website.
We're going to do this.
He lost by 2,000 votes.
He lost by like less than 1%.
Biggest upset in the midterms.
Now, maybe that was us.
Maybe it wasn't, but you can't know for sure.
Now, looking back, would he have made the same remark?
Maybe not, because he says it wasn't worth it.
And I'm a big believer in we got to get serious.
And this was the idea behind Grey Per War II.
This was the idea behind the, what do they call them in Michigan in the Democratic primary?
They voted like no preference.
We need to make it visible and known.
Like, yeah, AIPAC has the money.
We have the votes.
And like you said, we can't budge on that.
Okay.
So here's where maybe I would slightly disagree with you.
Although I get your point.
I certainly get the point about like making there has to be a price tag also for this.
But to be completely fair here, you also have painted yourself into this position where you've, and look, I'm not like being judged.
First of all, as I said, this is something I think just as a society, we're going to have to figure out going forward.
Now that everybody's online all the time, people can't be ruined over what they said in their fucking 20s.
It's just too crazy.
It's too crazy.
Everybody says, like, whatever.
Anyone interesting has said crazy shit in their fucking 20s.
That being said, it's not disavowing you.
It's not just the anti-Israel shit.
There's also all the Nazi shit on top of it.
And I don't mean like you're a Nazi.
I mean, okay, a lot of it might be sarcasm.
A lot of it is that you kind of are the best at channeling like the energy of like talking shit on an Xbox controller.
So like when I was a kid, we didn't have those, you know, you didn't talk on video games, but we talked shit like that.
Like I know that energy and I'm fond of it.
But I could see where like anybody who's got to get anywhere in politics is like, listen, I have to, like, I can't take all that baggage.
So in other words, there is a difference between say disavowing just the anti-Israel position and disavowing like all the extra shit on top of that.
Right.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
And I get what you mean.
But in that particular case, he went out of his way.
Like he wasn't even associated with me.
You know, we had, we did happen to be talking privately, but it wasn't known.
And my point is that it's so, it's this idea that disavowing is cheap.
It's the path of least resistance.
And maybe that might be a bad example because it's a little contentious.
You're right.
But to signal allegiance to Israel, it's easier to signal my allegiance because he said in particular, I disavow Nick Fuentes and his views on Israel.
If he said he's too extreme, he's a Hitler lover, that would have been one thing.
Like you said, no politician can be forced to accept baggage like that, trying to win in a purple district.
But said his views on Israel, an alarm bell went up and I said, no, this won't do.
Because, and in particular, the Matt Walsh faction, I'm sure he's a good guy.
I don't hate him as a guy.
He's Catholic.
He's white.
He's very conservative.
I'm sure he's a nice guy, but he represents a faction of like quietists where they're going to go with the Israel-controlled right to get where they need to go.
And I think that that's part, you know, name of the show.
It's part of the problem.
That's a big part of the problem.
There needs to be a faction, sadly, that is dedicated to strictly, explicitly, America first.
Because like you said, I mean, what even motivated me is that tension where Trump said, no, the new doctrine's America first, not small government conservatism.
It's this.
And I said, yeah, but there's one glaring exception to that, it seems.
And they're trying to tell us, well, forget about it.
Except that's the most important exception.
That's the exception that proves the rule.
So that's why I'm very insistent and militant on the right wing that people kind of make it known where they stand because it's a betrayal.
Well, I do.
Well, I agree with that.
I mean, I think that there's got to be, there's got to be some type of pressure because there's otherwise it's all going in the other direction, you know?
And I agree with you.
Public Feuds and Concerns00:14:38
And I try my best.
There's like even when I say with Jordan Peterson, like I think that I think Matt Walsh is as silly as it is, I thought like the what is a woman thing was really important.
You know, it was like did a lot of good for the culture.
And so you try to give those people credit, but at the same time, yeah, you're right.
I mean, this is a very big issue of national sovereignty and American interests.
And he's, you're right.
He's quite willing to go along with it.
And I do want to, you know, I'll say that.
And I swear, I'm not just like saying this to preface it, but so there was, because I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, the stuff that we, because we kind of had a bit of a public feud.
No, no, like, and I don't care about like feelings and stuff, but I want to talk about the issues.
But I will say this, right?
So when I did the Douglas Murray debate, you know, I had always, you know, I've been doing big shows for a few years now and I'm always taking the controversial issue of whatever the current thing is.
And it's not because I just want to be a contrarian.
Like, I don't know.
It's just always wrong.
And it's always like, when it was the COVID lockdowns, I was against that.
When it was the vaccine, I was against that.
And when it was the Ukraine war, I was against that.
And I would go on like Rogan's show right when it was a white hot issue and be making the case against it.
And so I'd get a lot of like pushback, but I was kind of like used to the level.
But then after the Douglas Murray one, I mean, I really rose up on Israel's most wanted list and I was swarmed and in what seemed to be kind of coordinated, but I don't know.
But there just all of a sudden, like my Twitter experience changed and it's everybody with, you know, like everyone with Hebrew, you know, letters in their name is furious at me and all this.
And it was, I had never really been like, I had never quite had that before.
I'd never quite had like a mob after me like that.
And here we are.
I'm when I'm, this is happening.
It's this year.
I'm 42.
I was under no real concern.
You know, like at this point, it's like the censorship regime seems to have been rolled back.
Joe Rogan's got my back.
Tucker Carlson has my back.
I'm kind of fine.
Like I never actually thought Douglas Murray was going to get me canceled, you know?
So like I'm fine.
I'm 42.
I got a great job.
I'm making really good money.
I got a hot wife.
I got beautiful kids and I'm Jewish.
I'm as inoculated against like falling into this as you could be.
And I will tell you, man, like there were moments where I just found myself Fucking like, dude, it's like by the time you're having the most disingenuous, annoying fucking like rabbi, like just and doing like the dumbest thing ever.
You know, they attack you and then if you defend yourself, they go, he doth protest too much.
You know what I'm saying?
You're like, fuck you.
And it almost feels in a way like they, it almost seems like that's the point of their existence.
Yes.
You know, like it almost seems like like Rabbi Shmooley, you're like, what fucking character from Adolf Hitler's play did you spring to life in and like become and so, okay, so if I'm going to be completely honest, it's like, I see that.
And then I go, well, let me try to put myself in the perspective of like, like when you were talking, it really hit home with me when you were talking to Patrick Bitt David about Ben Shapiro quote tweeting you and like, how fucked up that is, dude, to like go after someone.
So you're so young at the time.
And like there is, so like I understand like getting pushed to the level of like, fuck the Jews.
Like I get it.
And I understand why people, I've seen lots of people get like pushed to that.
And I would also say, in addition to that, one of the things that's been kind of interesting to me is that there's been one of the parts of the campaign against me since then, which Douglas Murray himself penned in a, in an op-ed for the New York Post and every Zion bot or a Zionist account on Twitter has said, is that I'm not really Jewish.
Douglas Murray said in his article, he goes, Dave Smith claims some Jewish ancestry, which is just like so bizarre.
And then a bunch of these people are like, they're like, well, he had one Jewish grandfather, but that doesn't count because his mother wasn't Jewish.
So he's not a Jew, which is like the weirdest goddamn thing.
And okay, so I'm starting this conversation with two pretty big concessions, but I mean both of them.
And I will say that that did kind of open my eyes a little bit to go like, well, look, why is it that they want to take that away from me?
You know, like, why is it that they must first remove that or at least attempt to remove that?
And that is because there is a layer of added protection that you get.
There is, it is, and look, part of this is natural.
It is tougher to convince people that a black guy hates black people.
Now, you could be a black guy who hates black people, but it's just like a lot less likely.
You know, we all kind of giggle at, what's his name out in California, the black face of white supremacy type shit.
But I certainly would at least concede that there is at least a layer of protection to being a Jewish guy who criticizes Israel and that that's bullshit.
Like that's bullshit.
It shouldn't be like that.
Any American, I was even going to say any American taxpayer, but that's stupid too.
Any American.
It doesn't even matter if you're a net tax drug.
You have freedom of speech and you can say what you want to and you can have opinions about a foreign government.
You can have opinions about a people.
Like you have the right to have that.
And so I will concede, number one, I understand where there's a tendency to like kind of blame Jews.
I also understand that there's an unfair degree of protection that you get.
However, I think you were also very unfair in the way you came at me and saying that the only reason I'm on these shows is because I'm a Jew or something.
I mean, it seemed to me, and again, I say, like, I like you.
I've always liked you.
I say, it seemed insane to come at me over that.
Like, your issue you said on Candace was that I didn't deny the Holocaust or something or that I wasn't willing to question World War II, which I've been pretty famous for defending the biggest questioner of World War II.
I think 40% of my interviews are just asking me about Darryl Cooper.
And so I guess that I just wonder, like, what was it that you were trying to, like, what was the beefo?
What was the disagreement?
Well, the beef started, and it was about a year ago.
So I don't remember it exactly, but the beef started that, of course, the thing that is happening is that everybody's now permitted to talk about Israel and the Jews.
And everybody also knows that, and I know the world doesn't revolve around me, but I famously got like martyred for that in a sense.
And I'm not being dramatic.
I mean, I lost PayPal, YouTube.
I mean, they made it so that I could not have a career and I couldn't make money, couldn't have a bank account was part of that on some level.
I mean, that had a lot to do with January 6th, but I mean, being banned from PayPal is a pretty big deal, you know, and the rest of them, Venmo, like I can't get reimbursed if I buy a friend dinner or something like that.
And got blacklisted from all the circles, CPAC, all the shows, Republican Party, whatever.
And I recognize that it's not only my criticism of Israel, but the way that I do it.
But of course, that's at the center of it, is that in principle, I'm against Jewish power, influence, the Israel lobby, et cetera.
And I guess the biggest anxiety or insecurity about this, which I've talked about on my show, and we talked about a little bit earlier too, is this idea that now they're going to step in to kind of mediate this conversation.
And in other words, they're going to try and draw a big red line that keeps me on the other side of it.
And not just me.
I would describe it.
I'll give you a concession because I think you're being fair and you're being honest and I'm being honest.
There's a big insecurity.
And by insecurity, I don't mean like I'm not the prettiest girl at the ball.
I mean insecurity in the sense of there is this mass awakening.
This is a moment where we can really get these issues into the conversation and someone like myself is in the Overton window, let's say.
And not just that I can have a career, but my ideas can really take off.
And the biggest concern when this was happening and what it appeared to me to look like is that you and a few other more elevated Israel critics were going to kind of slam the door shut behind.
They were going to kind of bring you in.
And the reason they would bring you in is because you're Jewish and that's part of it.
Well, who was bringing me in, you think?
Like you were on Joe Rogan.
But I was on Rogan long before October 7th.
But to talk about this.
Yeah, but I was always talking about this shit on Rogan.
I mean, like, look, I mean, I may have not been as focused on it because fuck, you know, this became the thing to be focused on.
But all the stuff that I'm talking about and how even how involved Israel was, I was talking about, you know, before that.
Like, Joe's a friend of mine.
He's been having me on since 2016.
I don't think he had me on because I was Jewish.
No, not that he brought you on like, hey, I need to invite a Jewish person, but it's like, let's be honest, you did the whole circuit.
You did Tucker, Candace, Piers.
I think you were on Tim Pool.
Oh, yeah.
These are all shows I was banned from.
And what was, you got to look at it from my perspective, maybe to see my state of mind.
You know, last year when Candace got kicked out of Daily Wire, her live chat was lit up every day.
Bring on Nick, bring on Nick.
And she was deliberately ignoring that and didn't want me on.
Now, I was banned on YouTube, but I'm also more extreme.
Now, the same is true of like Tucker, all the Tim Pool.
People have been trying to get me on his book.
No, no, I've never seen it.
Yeah.
Right.
And so, and why am I not allowed on?
Of course, it's, it's my view that I was canceled for this issue.
And so to see you go onto the show, you know, and people say it's jealousy.
Maybe there's a little resentment there too, but it was a bigger concern that as a Jewish person, and also, by the way, not just that you're Jewish, but as a libertarian, you come at it from a different place.
You're a non-intraventionist, a Ron Paul guy.
And I even have this disagreement with Tucker on some level too.
So it's not just you.
My big worry is that is the conversation going to stop at we need to end all these wars and like the neocons of the problem.
Because my critique goes further.
And it says that it actually does have to do with Jewish identity.
Jewish identity is so powerful and so potent.
Jews refuse to assimilate.
They're so powerful.
They're so tribalistic.
They're loyal to each other.
Not all of them, but a lot of them.
And that is actually where the Israel loyalty proceeds from.
It's this anxiety.
We need Israel because what happens if it goes south here?
We need to be powerful in America to prevent a majority from rising up against us.
And it's kind of that identity issue, which, and that's why I'm open to talking to you or even somebody like a Bill Ackman or a Sean Maguire or a Shapiro and say, I recognize Jews are a part of America.
They always have been.
And they're some of the finest Americans, actually.
But people recognize it cannot go on this way where we have an open society, but they have this loyalty and kind of play by a different set of rules.
And anyway, so my concern is that what it looked like to me is you're being brought onto the shows and they know maybe that you'll never go that far as a Jewish person or maybe even as a libertarian.
And a big red line was being drawn and saying, but you are still an anti-Semite.
You are still banned on YouTube.
You are banned on the shows.
Fuck you.
You're all the way over here.
And that's why I like you and I respect you and I think you're brilliant.
And I didn't mean to attack you as a guy, although maybe I crossed the line here and there.
But you did become a very central and you do recognize an influential figure in this big conversation.
And I looked at you maybe as like whether you intended to or not as a mediating force or a mitigating force in the conversation.
That's where I came at it from.
Okay.
So a couple things on that because there's a lot there that's very interesting.
So first of all, and I just tell you some information on this, right?
So with Rogan, like we're good friends.
I've also been on the show a bunch of time.
About half the time I've been on, he asks me to come on.
About the other half, I ask to come on.
I asked to come out the first time to talk about Israel.
The last time I'd been on, it was all about Ukraine and all about, you know, like whatever else the story of the day was.
And I, he had had a couple pro-Israel guys on.
And I was just like, hey, Joe, can I come on and like break this shit down?
Because I like know a lot about this.
So I think it'll be an interesting fact.
And he had me.
And then, you know, so it's just with Rogan, it's certain, it's just not true that there was any with Tucker, me and Tucker became friends from, he sent me, he reached out to me, got my number from Greg Gutfeld, I believe.
And he reached out to me after I had been on and did a thing breaking down the war in Ukraine.
And he goes, dude, I think this is the best concise breakdown of the war in Ukraine ever.
And then we just started texting regularly.
And as soon as he never had me on the Fox News show, but as soon as he was off, he wanted to talk.
But again, if you go back and look at the Tucker thing, at least back then, like, cause this was earlier in the, you know, in the conflict, whatever you want to call it, I was the one who was bringing it up constantly.
Like he was dancing a little bit.
Like, I think he was still at the thing like, I don't know if I want to go this close to the sun on this one.
Whereas I was like, no, we are driving right to the sun and that's where we're going.
Candace, I mean, like, again, this is, we're getting into like what's in people's heads.
She had already, she had me on Daily Wire, which listen, whatever beef you, I will never stop being grateful to Candace Owens for just having me on at the Daily Wire.
I just know that makes Ben Shapiro so furious.
And I love that so much.
I think she did that partially for that reason.
But she also, at least what she said was she loved my Ukraine breakdown and wanted to talk more about that.
And I think also part of that was, and I'm pretty sure this is right, but I don't think, I just think she was hearing a lot of this stuff for the first time from me.
Like she had, she had just broken with Israel.
And I think she had Norman Finkelstein on.
And, but, you know, he had broken down like, you know, the conflict with the Palestinians and the UN resolutions and stuff like that.
But I was the one telling her about the clean break strategy and all this.
And it was like new information to her, I believe.
And so she was into that.
And as far as like the other shows, you know, Tim Poole, all the, like, I just, I, I don't actually think it's correct that I was being brought on because I was Jewish.
These were all relationships I had had.
I think I just wouldn't shut up about this issue.
And honestly, I don't think Tim Poole's trying to bring me on to talk about this, although not that he wouldn't.
But also, I would just say personally, you know, which is, again, not the most important thing, but I understand you saying there's a lot of people that closed the door on you, but I'm not that guy.
I'm the guy who had you on right after you got kicked off YouTube.
And I also think like I was, anyway, that was certainly not what I was going to do.
Opposing Israel Not Jews00:15:23
Now, as far as the other stuff, which is a more interesting, broader conversation, I guess the counter to this would be that, as we were saying before with the racial, the like racial hatred and things like that, it's like the other way to look at it is that, yes, I am criticizing Israel.
I am criticizing the Israeli lobby.
And I am criticizing the most, what I see as the most relevant faction of that, which was the neoconservatives.
And I'm also very critical of the people supporting what Israel is doing.
But you are correct in the sense that I'm not saying it's the Jews, which does certainly seem to be, you know, like, I mean, racialism is like catnip, man.
Like, it's like, you saw it during wokeism and you see it during this iteration.
I mean, people love going into that.
But if I'm being completely honest, like, I don't think that's healthy for society.
I don't wish to cross that line.
And let me say it like this.
Because I apologize if I'm rambling long.
No, no.
I'll let you speak uninterrupted.
I talked a lot too.
We're both long-winded.
But so, all right.
So Alex Jones, mutual friend of ours, you might be more friendly with him.
I did a show once.
He was very good to me, which I appreciated.
And I don't bring this up to bash Alex Jones at all.
I'm just making a point.
I keep saying that, but I'm bashing people.
Anyway, whatever.
I guess I kind of am.
But so Alex Jones, as you know, well, had 100,000 conspiracies.
I mean, so many of them didn't come true.
You know, he gets a lot of credit for it.
And some of them did.
So to his credit, like some of them did.
But I mean, he had theories that were like he was telling people that they were going to depopulate the earth for a while.
He said it was all about one world government.
He said it was all about the, I mean, like, even as far as him pointing at like, which he would constantly point at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
And you were like, that's not even where the action is anymore, dude.
Like, he totally missed the clean break and was fucking was over here chasing all this other stuff that had nothing.
And like whatever, you know, people get things wrong.
It's fine.
Now, they used Sandy Hook as the excuse to silence him, right?
It was years after the Sandy Hook thing.
He had had a million conspiracy.
But why did they use that one?
Why did that one resonate with people?
Well, the reason why they used that one and the reason why even people who like Alex Jones may have like a little bit of a disgust impulse when they hear about that is because that one was unique to all his other conspiracies.
Because every other conspiracy, the bad guys were the ATF.
The bad guys were the feds.
The bad guys were, you know, like if you blame the ATF for something and you turn out to be wrong, like whatever, they deserve it anyway.
It doesn't really matter, right?
But in this case, the target was people.
It was just regular people and regular people who had just lost their little children.
It's like, geez, you can't miss on that one.
And so I do think one of the things that concerns me with what you're doing, and I guess concerns me with the fact that I think you're winning in a lot of ways.
And I don't, you know, but I do, I do worry about this disaster there is that I do think so much of the energy you're harnessing does get pointed at just regular people.
Like just, you know, until the Jordan Peterson clip, when I first started realizing we were going to have to do this, I had kind of just been like, the reason I was like, I don't think I'll do another podcast with Nick was never because I didn't like you.
I always liked you when we talked.
I always thought the conversations were really interesting, as this one is.
The thing was just like an incentives issue almost where like, well, I don't know, everyone on this side is going to lose their goddamn shit.
And then I have to answer a million questions about that.
But fuck them.
So that's not enough to get me to stop doing it.
But then half your audience is just going to call me a fucking Jew anyway.
And so it's like, what's the point here?
And I think that like, look, and I want to get into this more, but like, yeah, yeah, there are questions of Jewish identity.
There are questions.
Obviously, there's there's a relationship there.
But the fact is that say, look, the worst thing in my lifetime that Israel's done to the United States of America, I'm not sold on the 9-11 stuff.
There's some questions there, but I think it's far from as conclusive.
I think people are way out over their skis saying they know for a fact Israel did 9-11, but that's a topic for another day.
But it was the war in Iraq.
The war in Iraq is no question, or Coleman Hughes can try to argue with me about this.
There's just no question that the neoconservatives and the Likud Party and the whole Bush administration, you know, this was pushed in a direction.
It's not the only factor, but it is more than what made the difference.
Like the war does not happen without the neocons and without Netanyahu.
It just doesn't.
And yet at the same time, Jewish Americans were either the best or one of the best groups on that issue.
Jews opposed the war in Iraq way ahead of the general public.
And like right-wing Christians were like the worst group on that.
And so, but again, my target isn't them.
My target isn't the people.
My target is like the people who propagandize them into believing that.
And so if the thing is like, hey, I stopped short at like actually naming the Jews, it's like, well, yeah, because I don't think that's right.
And I don't like, yes, and we can get into more of this, but like, no, like Barry the dentist has nothing to do with any of this.
And he, you know, like, and I think on some level, maybe I'm wrong, but I also don't think you're really trying to gin up hatred toward that guy.
And so maybe that's why I stopped short of blaming the Jews.
I think it's sloppier and not as accurate.
Well, I'm glad you said that because I think it's important just on a basic level to say that we don't agree on everything.
Like we are distinct.
And you, and I wouldn't even say it's about further or closer.
It's just that we are coming at it from different places.
You believe it's the neocons and it's in particular the war party and Israel and how those interact.
And me as an identitarian, I do think I do look at the world through an identity-based lens that you've got whites, blacks, Jews, and they all have political interests.
They all identify as these groups.
They group up based on them.
And then those groups have conflicting interests.
That's what politics has become is like meeting out those interests.
Like, is it in the interest of white people to go to war in Iraq?
No.
But for Jews, yes, because they have this connection, Israel.
And same about all these other things.
And so, you know, even getting back to our beef, yeah, we could quibble about, you know, I don't think that there's some conspiracy.
I don't think they got together and said, let's invite Dave because, you know, he's going to like maintain censorship and Jewish control.
Like, I don't believe that.
But I do believe that you clearly take the more moderate position, or even I would say the more liberal position.
As a libertarian, you're like a lowercase L liberal in the sense that you think that it's, like you said, it's not Jews in themselves or Jewish identity in itself.
It is particular people in power, in particularly the state, that are doing these violent policies.
Whereas me, it is maybe a more radical rejection of liberalism.
And I think that, you know, maybe you're informed by your Jewish identity or you're just ideologically believe that it is a more moderate position and they platform that because that's the version they want.
That's the version that is safer for a Tim Pool or whoever.
That's the version that the system is maybe comfortable with.
That's what they might be willing to accept.
And they don't want to take it to the place of the Jews for the reason, maybe for the good reason you described.
And by the way, I'll give you another concession because I want to be objective.
There are people that are legitimately hating Jews right now.
And I saw in Florida, they're pulling up on Jews with like water pistols and spraying them with water.
And I got on my show and I said, fuck that.
Yeah.
I said, I appreciate that.
Yeah, because I don't believe in that.
I'm not a piece of shit.
If I saw Ben Shapiro on the street, I saw him on the street and I said, hey, man, why did you do a speech?
You need to say my name.
I didn't run up and try and fight him.
You know?
And I don't believe in attacking.
You made it out like you did.
Yeah, right.
Like I attacked his kids or something, human shields, right?
He picked up his kid when he walked across the street.
It's like, okay, bro.
But, you know, like, I don't believe in picking on random people.
I'm not a cruel or hateful guy.
And you do see that.
And that video bothered me in particular because if people start to think it's okay to do that, you know, the ADL isn't necessarily wrong about the idea that it is slippery slope.
You know, you pull up on somebody with a water pistol.
Okay, what if it's a paintball gun next time?
Is that really okay?
That people are going to be harassed and like shot at with a airsoft gun or a paintball gun.
No, that's bullshit.
And that's denying basic dignity, basic rights.
That's not Christian.
That's not American.
And there is an excess of that.
And I agree that it should be sort of contained.
But I think there's a fine line between that and saying that it is a bigger issue than the neocons because, you know, when it comes to these influential Jews, like Larry Ellison, let's say, he's not religious, but he's tight with Netanyahu.
Jeffrey Epstein was tight with the left in Israel.
And to the extent that you're right, Jews were the biggest critics of the Iraq war.
In many cases, yeah, there's liberal Jews, but they're liberal because that's a strategy for Jews to succeed.
They have these debates.
What is best for the Jews?
And like Brett Stevens at the New York Times, he mentored Barry Weiss.
He says, Oh, God, I hate him so much.
I hate, yeah, and he sucks.
You know, he's a neocon, case important.
Yeah, I got in a big fight with him on Gutfeld's show years ago.
He was such a smart prick.
Anyway, whatever.
Oh, God, it's the worst.
The worst.
Yeah, but he, so he says in 16 or 17, he goes, Trump is bad for the Jews because he is opposing the liberal values that have been so good to us as Jews.
And it's like that sort of encapsulates when like the ADL, for example, gets criticized.
They say, well, the ADL is making Jews look bad.
Or they're going after people like Shapiro and protecting people like Ilhan Omar.
In other words, they're attacking Jewish Zionists, but they're not hard enough on the progressive left.
And what I see there is still a distilled Jewish self-interest, which is okay because we're all people and we're all advocating for the most for ourselves.
But in America, we just need to do a better job of managing that.
And I think that the Jewish community is out of control is basically it.
Well, I would say, so in kind of like in a similar sense to if, because me and you both, we've both been accused of getting the call over the last few weeks, which it turns out was just us calling each other and being like, I don't think there's any evidence that is real good.
But like, so, okay, so when you, when you come out on your show and you go, look, guys, I'm not seeing any evidence that Israel was behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
And then people go, oh, it looks like Nick got the call.
You're like, okay, but like the much easier answer is that he just doesn't see any evidence.
Right.
And like people, it's like you're jumping to a conclusion.
And I will say, I think you might be guilty of doing a little bit of that too.
If you, when you go like, well, look, they want the conversation controlled.
It's like, or an easier answer might just be that like they've seen your hits and they go, yeah, well, I don't want to bring a guy who's saying Hitler has aura on the ship.
Like I'm open to, I do think what's horrible, what's happening to the Palestinians, but like, no, I don't think we need to go like that.
So I think there's like probably, you know, look, dude, there's you make your bed.
You were nobody, I don't think that I know is denying that you were like horrendously mistreated when you were very young.
But also since then, like there's an energy that you harness when you when you do that shit and you know what you're doing with it, you know, and that's not to say you're being disingenuous.
I don't mean that at all.
I just mean like you understand kind of like harnessing this radical energy of like, nah, dude, I'm staking out this position all the way over here.
But it's a double-edged sword and that also sometimes can turn a lot of people off.
Although, look, you're moving the needle in a met in a, in a clear way.
And so that is becoming more and more acceptable.
I guess my point is that I don't know actually that it's possible to do that without having the excesses of, you know, the water gun thing.
Or perhaps much worse.
I mean, look, as we've both figured out, man, I hate saying this out loud because it's against our interest, but a lot of people are kind of dumb, man.
And a lot of people like can't really follow the nuance of all of that stuff.
But to the broader, like kind of Jewish conversation, I mean, look, I'm not, I'm not saying it's like strictly the neocons, or I wouldn't even say that like, obviously, the neocons, the majority of whom were Jewish, it's not just like, I'm not claiming like, oh, they just happen to be Jewish.
Like their Jewish identity obviously plays a central role in why, you know, they feel the way they do.
And there's no question that Jews, I think, and this is something I've, you know, spent a lot of time speaking out against because I just think it's really, there's a sickness in Jewish culture that I think is unhealthy.
I think it's, it's, part of it is fundamentally built into the religion that like it's, it's about past suffering, you know, is like a big part of it.
But the Holocaust looms so large in particularly like my parents' generation and up.
I think not as much with the younger generation, but it looms so large and there is this kind of like feeling of like, look, the Holocaust happened and then we created our own state so that it never happens again.
And anything short of that means another Holocaust happening, you know, and it's just, it's not right.
Like it just doesn't make any sense.
There's no reason to think, and I've been saying this for years that I'm like, look, like I'm, I'm a Jewish American.
I've never had one obstacle put in my way because of my Jewishness, like never once, you know?
I've had people say, literally, your fans saying shit on Twitter.
It's the greatest struggle of my life for being Jew.
You know, I've had greater struggles, but not because I was Jewish.
And I think what's appropriate when you, even if the story is like, oh my God, you know, your grandparents were so horribly mistreated in Europe and then you came to America and now Jews are 2% of the population.
They're overwhelmingly successful.
I think the attitude should be like, well, we're really grateful to America and we really love this country and we should have nothing but loyalty to it.
So like I'm against the fact there is something like that in Jewish culture.
But then again, I think it's only reinforced by people, you know, like when they see people who they perceive as being like neo-Nazis to be like, see, that's proof.
That's proof that in fact there is this huge threat.
And I think in some way, it seems to me like it's almost in some ways you and the Zionists have accepted a fundamental framework that I think a lot of the rest of us are trying to like push back on, which is that like to oppose Israel isn't to oppose Jewish people and that that's kind of stupid.
This is an actual government.
Now, also, I should add, like, all these things are complicated and intertwined.
There is no question that part of the reason why Israel has become so dominant, you know, like say the Mosad has become so dominant is because there was a diaspora.
It was an advantage that almost no other intelligence agency had, that you had pockets of people who you could reach out and touch who could at least somewhat reliably, if they were called to do something for Israel, would take that as like, okay, I'm, you know, in some way preventing another Holocaust.
Like that was a huge advantage for them.
And so like, again, I'm not saying like there's not, there's, there's more complex and interesting questions.
Evangelicals and Organization00:14:58
I guess, you know, again, I'm not trying to like big brother you or anything on this.
No, yeah.
I guess it's just like even that message that you were just sending of like, hey, we're not trying to target, you know, people.
I think like if you, if you are to win the day on this and we want to avoid something really bad happening that, you know, I think none of us want to see, I think stressing that is probably important.
And also, you know, it's just.
Like you see it.
I mean, I know because you talk about it, like the low IQ slop shit, where it's just kind of like, dude, this is, this is, okay, I know forever you weren't allowed to touch that button.
And so you're touching the button because you weren't allowed to.
But a super point is like, you're allowed to touch it now.
And it's just not that impressive.
It's kind of like a silly argument.
Although I will admit, it's quite funny.
Well, yeah, I mean, the edgelording, even for me, has lost its appeal.
It just seems passe because 10 years ago, you couldn't say that stuff.
And that's what made it provocative.
And now you can't say it.
And also, it's been done for 10 years.
So internet edgelord, oh, you've never met someone like me before.
It's like, we've all seen that.
But I would say that here, here's how I would characterize the issue because I hear that a lot, that the Zionists and the anti-Semites are sort of in the self-reinforcing loop.
And I would say that how I would characterize the problem is that, you know, in some sense, the Jews are rational.
The neocons are rational because what they're saying is that there's kind of two answers to the Jewish question from the Jews, which is we need to return to the land because only when we have another Jewish kingdom will we have sovereignty and be able to protect ourselves.
There's another answer to the Jewish question, which is if we push liberal universalism, everyone will tolerate us.
If we push religious tolerance and racial tolerance, then people see us as themselves or the greatest among the nations.
These are two strategies and they're both rational because after the, by the way, there was anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.
Maybe that's, that's, that's, I got the call to say that, but it's true.
You know, the way things are.
Is that a controversial thing?
It might be.
I don't know.
Not even the Holocaust is anti-Semitism.
Yeah, yeah.
They weren't so fond of them.
That's for sure.
But it's like in Germany, but also in Russia, but also in America.
There are quotas in the universities.
Emerging from that time, it is like we say, the world's made up of races.
They have these interests.
It's in the Jewish interest to do these things.
So Soros takes up the cause of the Open Society Foundation.
And open society is based on this philosophical premise, I think from Bertrand Russell, which says we have tolerance and openness and egalitarianism.
And the Laikud Party, or the Haganah, the security element in Israel, they work to get power.
And they say that to make the world safe for the Jews, we need Israel.
To make Israel safe, we need control over everything west of the river.
To do that, we need to destroy all our enemies in the region.
Like there is a rational chain of law.
When they say Israel has a right to exist, they mean we can't exist if we're staring down the barrel of 10 countries that hate us.
There's a logic there.
And I would say that in some sense, that's a legitimate way to think.
It's legitimate interest.
But I distinguish myself as a white person, as someone from Christendom, as an American.
And I'm looking to disentangle the Jewish interest from the American interest and say that, you know, when you say it's bad to say Hitler had aura, I disagree.
Well, I'm not saying necessarily it's bad to say that I'm saying that you understand that like that is going to be something that might make a lot of people go, oh, yeah, I don't want to deal with that guy.
But here's where I would push back in a sense is, you know, as a white person, like, why, why is it that the Holocaust is so toxic?
It's because, you know, Jews sort of made it that way.
Like we don't look at the Holodomor the same way.
We don't look at China.
And you know all these arguments.
Well, that's no, I think that's a totally legitimate argument.
It's something I've been saying for years, too.
I think the idea that Jews have a monopoly on World War II is like insane.
Or that anybody should, you know, like prioritize past Jewish suffering over other sufferings.
I mean, like, yeah, it's a horrible thing happened, you know, but so.
Oh, wait, can I just say, yeah, sure, go ahead.
So, you know, when I say Hitler had aura, I'm trying to basically set a new paradigm where, you know, it's like as Americans and moreover, as white people, it's like that doesn't have the same impact on us emotionally.
Not necessarily.
We only feel like that way because of movies, because of museums, because of propagandizing.
And, you know, so when I look at like Larry Fink, Bill Ackman, David and Larry Ellison, I look at them as part of a corporate entity.
Like they're not individuals that happen to be Jewish.
They are the Jews.
They're organized.
They work together.
And as an American, I basically want to take power from them and give it back to Americans.
And that necessarily is going to make them weaker and more vulnerable as a community.
And, you know, so when they say that's anti-Semitic, it's like, of course, everything that's taking power from them to give it to us is going to inherently like bolster the narrative that they're becoming more vulnerable.
But it's a necessary part of getting power.
Yeah.
I kind of get what you say.
Like I used to say it like, I used to say that as long as you like, if you translate the words right, that like Hillary Clinton is telling the truth, you know, like in a sense, like when you go like they'd be like, Hezbollah is a threat.
And the truth is that Hezbollah is a threat to Israel's ability to occupy southern Lebanon.
Right.
But they leave that part out of it.
You know, or if they say like Iran is a threat, it's a threat to the American empire.
Like it's a threat to, yes, this is so in that sense, you know, like Hillary Clinton had the famous one where she said, I think it was that Vladimir Putin has put his troops right up on NATO's doorstep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It just shows you like the mentality, but like she's not lying in a way, right?
So I would say this is how I look at it.
I think that in the same sense that right-wing Christians in America were convinced that it was in their interest to go overthrow Saddam Hussein because, you know, he was going to give the nukes he didn't have off to the terrorists who weren't friends with him or whatever the line exactly was.
I think a very similar dynamic's going on with Jews and Israelis.
I think that there really, if you look at the position Israel was in, say, three years and a day ago, they have by far the most sophisticated, most advanced military in the Middle East.
They have the support of all the most powerful governments in the world.
They have a bunch of atomic weapons.
They have now engendered so much hatred around the world that they're probably in the most vulnerable spot they've ever been.
They've done it to themselves.
So I think in a very similar sense, it's really actually not in Jewish interest.
And I think that's kind of bearing out right now across the culture.
Like this was all, this was terror.
It's the worst thing you could do if you cared about like protecting Jews or not stoking up hatred against them.
And so I look at it more like even when you're these guys like Bill Ackman or George Soros or people like that.
But yeah, you're pointing to people who are in the club.
I mean, George Soros is essentially a wing of the CIA.
I was literally just the other day because I was looking up what I was doing, an episode on General Wesley Clark in response to the latest hit piece on me from the free press today, or preceding it, I guess.
And I was like, I was like, I got to look up Sudan.
You're like, that's the one country on this list that I just haven't read enough about.
Like I've read a little bit about it, but not nearly enough, like though, which is the, for people like me and you who read books, which by the way does put you in the top 1% of political commentators already.
But the thing is, you're just always behind.
You know, like there's just always 10 books you're supposed to read that you haven't read yet.
And you're like, God damn it, you're so aware of what you don't know, you know?
And then someone who knows absolutely nothing is like, you don't know what you're talking about.
You're like, I know, I don't know what I'm talking about.
I know, but you know nothing of what you're talking about.
But anyway, so I was like, I literally just Googled it.
I was like, so what?
I know that they broke off.
Like, and I didn't even know who was involved in it.
I know the southern part of Sudan broke off and there was a civil war.
There's like, let me have someone like Southern.
So I just like literally Google Sudan, secession, civil war, something like that.
Like the first thing Google gives me is like the George Soros, open society, why southern Sudan needs their independence.
And you're like, oh, okay, here we go.
But if you really, when you look at it, right?
And this is true in the Israel lobby itself.
It's not all Jews.
It is an overwhelming large amount of Jews.
And like the neoconservatives were like 80% Jewish.
I think, you know, there were Catholics and even some Protestants in there.
But even the neoconservatives, right?
Like they were essentially all of George W. Bush's men.
You know, like he had Jews all throughout his administration.
They were all neoconservatives.
But like the boss was George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, I think really was the boss.
Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Colin Powell.
These are all non-Jews.
It seems much more to me that there's a big club.
There's a lot of Jews in there and there's non-Jews in there as well.
And that they are screwing everybody over.
So it just seems to me to be more accurate and precise and not carry any of the baggage that makes people think like you just are animated by racial hatred.
And it's just more precise to just be like, no, it's these guys.
It's this network of people.
And even when you're looking at like, you know, something like, it's difficult.
And we are all guilty of this at some point, of like assuming the conclusion, of starting the argument with the end result that we have.
So even when you look at like, okay, well, this Jew is pursuing this strategy or this one is pursuing this strategy, the overwhelming majority of Jews are pursuing the same strategy that most people are pursuing, which is like, I want to, I don't know, I want to raise my kids.
I want to have decent health care.
I want to have a decent life.
I want to hang out with my buddy.
I want to, I don't think they're pursuing these grand political strategies.
I mean, no more so than anybody is who just like, they have their pre, you know, disposition of like, I'm liberal or I'm conservative or I'm this.
Certainly, I would grant that Jews are probably less likely to go down a path of Jew hatred for obvious reasons, but I just don't, I think that it's, it's much more like there are these group of powerful people.
They are, by the way, the entire machinery, I think, is actually, I don't know if I want to say it's, it's more based on business than ideology, but business is like a huge, huge factor in all of this, right?
Like it's not as if the Zionists weren't able to gain so much control of the American military machine because simply they tricked everybody or something.
It's because it was good for business.
And you can watch this.
I mean, they went, all the neocons went and they made their independent relationships with the military industrial complex.
Look at all those Bill Crystal think tanks and you know, who's funding that think tank?
Oh, look at that, Lockheed Martin.
Ain't that a coincidence?
And so in the same way that, you know, like there are, say, thinkers like John Rawls or John Maynard Keynes who are like beloved figures in Washington.
But it's not because any of them read the books or care about the argument.
It's just that they prescribed more power for Washington, D.C.
And so Washington, D.C. is like, you made an excellent point.
You know, it's like, it's not like anyone there was like, they were reading Hayek or something and then reading, you know, Rawls and going, this guy's arguments are superior.
It's just good for business, man.
That's a big part of it, at least.
Well, and I don't disagree at all because that's sort of the nature of institutions.
They're self-perpetuating.
You know, they'll prescribe themselves bigger budgets and more missions and things.
So I totally agree with that.
That's the professional managerial class that they do.
But where I would push back is saying that, you know, let's say, for example, like Larry Ellison.
Larry Ellison is second richest guy in the world.
They're buying the media.
Him and his son are buying TikTok.
They're buying CBS.
Who does he put in charge of CBS?
Barry Weiss.
Barry Weiss was helped by Hazzoni and Brett Stevens.
It's like that very clearly is a Jewish club.
And they're cutting through society.
And yeah, they run in other elites circles.
And yeah, they have their accomplices that are not Jewish.
Even, you know, look at the Trump administration.
Trump brokered that deal.
He's a Gentile, but he got money from Miriam Adelson and his grandchildren are Jewish because his son-in-law is Jewish.
And it's like, it's almost like that exception doesn't prove the rule.
And you're right about the Vulcans, you know, Condi and Bush and all them.
They're Gentiles too.
But it's like, it seems that society is always being pushed by this organized minority.
Because you're right, there are Rawlsian liberals that are white and there are, you know, evangelical Christians that are white that are neocons.
But it just seems like the Jews being, because by definition, they're organized in a way that nobody else is.
Like Bush is not organized as a white guy or even very much as a Christian.
But you do have like a World Zionist Congress.
You do have a World Jewish Congress.
You have the, you know, Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations.
I don't even think people realize the extent to which Jews are organized in community centers by Chabad, in university with their fraternities, in business, in their localities.
It's like they're extremely organized.
And as far as the average Jew is concerned, yeah, they're not running the banks.
I don't think your average Jew is like a spy, but I do think that your average Jew is inherently distrusting of like patriotism and nationalism.
It's like Sarah Silverman said when she saw her white boyfriend put a American flagpole on her lawn, she said it reminded her of Hitler.
How many Jews is that attitude prevalent?
When they saw Trump, they thought the same thing.
Fascism.
They said it could not happen here.
It's sort of that same attitude.
And I think here is what I will concede.
I think that we, me, by we, I mean me, if my movement wants to have power and really put America first, it means we are going to have to sideline, by definition, Jews that put the Jewish nation first.
And Christians too, for that matter.
I mean, like, I think American Christianity is the same.
Well, I'm saying Christians, I'm saying Christians who put Israel first.
Oh, yeah.
Which there are plenty of.
And look, it's a huge, a huge part of this because you talk about the kind of organization, but I think that's very true for evangelical Christians who are constantly having preachers tell them that like this is your duty is to have this political outlook.
There's tens of millions of them in the country.
And like, look, you can always, again, you can always say, well, that's the Jews manipulating them.
But again, it just seems like this is presuming the conclusion.
We are, are we not being manipulated, though?
Trust Issues with Josh Hammer00:14:55
Of course.
Of course.
No, I'm not denying that.
I'm just saying it's not just Jews at the top of the doing the manipulation.
And I agree, but that's where that's where I have to come in as a Christian white American and say we have to disentangle these things and say, and yeah, wake up the evangelicals and say, look, this is not, you're American.
You're Christian.
They are not Christian.
They are not American.
It is not in our interest.
We have to take our own side.
I think that there's the perhaps because you're Christian and I'm Jewish, but when you go, when you're talking about evangelical Christians, although not Catholics like yourself, you go, well, we got to wake them up and make them realize that.
And I feel the same way about Jews in general.
It's like we got to wake them up and be like, yo, you're not about to be Holocaust and you don't need to support this in order to avoid one.
And that's much tougher to do when everybody on Twitter is saying the Holocaust never happened.
But if it did, it was good and it should happen again or something like that.
So that would be that let's let's do I just always completely lose track of time on these things.
Let's talk about Charlie Kirk a little bit because there was me and you both, as I mentioned, have gotten a bunch of heat for not like immediately jumping to these conspiracy theories.
Although like as I've said the whole time, I'm like, I'm open to it.
Like show me what you got.
I do though think, and I've talked about this a bit on my show.
I know you have on yours as well.
I do think that the story of Charlie Kirk though and his relationship with Israel is really interesting.
Yes.
Like, so aside from the conspiracy stuff, and I guess that my friend Candace, who your dear friend too, she just last night released evidently some screenshots of a group chat where Charlie had said, you know, he was very frustrated with a Jewish donor who I guess had pulled some money from him.
And he had said something about like, I'm going to not be able to be a Israel supporter anymore.
Certainly doesn't tell you anything pointing to his murder, but it does certainly show you that like if that's true, and I'm assuming Candace like isn't posting a screenshot that's made up.
I think Candace has more integrity than that.
So if that's true, man, Josh Hammer and these guys have been being really dishonest about what really happened with Charlie Kirk.
And I will tell you this story.
I don't know if you've heard this before.
I apologize to the fans because I have told them this before.
But so my only experience where I debated Josh Hammer twice.
I think I was telling you this outside and then we got distracted.
But so the second time I debated him is at this Charlie Kirk event.
And the whole time, Charlie Kirk was just like, look, I really want to keep this civil and not be a mudslinging thing.
And I go, absolutely, no problem.
I think I'm very much like you.
In that sense, I think we're very similar, that we're both kind of guys who actually really do care about the ideas and the issues.
And if you approach us with like, let's debate these, it will 100% of the time be a substantive conversation.
However, if you want to be vicious, like we're also okay with playing that game.
Like, and you're like, I will be more vicious than you.
I mean, maybe not you, but just about everybody else.
You're not going to, you know, and like, maybe I should be a little more mature than that at this age, but that is how I am.
But so I went, sure, no problem.
So we go in the back.
We're in like the green room.
It's me and Charlie and his, I'm blanking on his name, but his guy, who's the guy on his show now, who's kind of like his right-hand man.
That Andrew Colvin?
Yes.
Yes, I believe that was him.
So it was the three of us and we talked for a while.
And then Josh Hammer came in and we're just talking, you know, everybody's just being friendly and talking.
We were kind of talking about every issue except Israel, you know, because like we're about to go debate that.
So you're talking about immigration and start talking about family stuff at one point, just like everyone having a nice conversation and Charlie, you know, and it was like, okay, we're going to go have this debate.
And I also, I was not sure what I was walking into there.
Like it was, which it was very, very interesting because like half the crowd might have been like your people.
I mean, like it was like, it was at a Charlie Kirk event.
It was striking that it was like, I mean, or I should say my people, but I came out.
The first thing Charlie says when I come out onto stage, he introduces me and goes, oh, we got a lot of Dave Smith fans here.
Like he was kind of surprised that like half the crowd was thrilled to see me there.
And then like 20% of them hated my fucking guts, but it was 20% to half.
Like it was clearly the majority was, because it's young people, man.
And that's where they are right now.
But so Josh Hammer goes out there after this and he has the first opening.
And the final thing he says in his opening is that he's disgusted to be sharing a stage with me.
And I just thought there was something about that that I was like, what a fucking snake you are.
If this is the last communication I ever had with Charlie Kirk was me texting him.
What a fucking snake that guy was after all that.
And then Charlie just said something diplomatic back here, but was like, it was aggressive or something like that.
But I just thought on like a dude level, and I guess maybe this is part of the reason why me and you always kind of had like a mutual respect and liked each other.
There's just something where you're like, who does that?
Yeah.
Like, who the fuck does that?
Like, you're so comfortable being duplicitous that you'd sit down.
Like, if I were about, if I was about to go on a show with you right now and do this and be like, I'm disgusted that you're across the table, I wouldn't have had that 20 minutes of nice chat chat with you.
It would have been like, no, we're doing it like that.
So anyway, I say all of that to just say, I don't trust that guy one little bit.
I'm curious, what do you make of the new revelations or this dynamic with Charlie Kirk?
It's a weird spot for you to be in being such a like, you know, rival and an antagonist of a person.
And then they're killed in this horrible way.
And so it's a weird spot.
It's awkward.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What are your thoughts on this latest?
Well, you know, I agree with how you said it, which is, look, I mean, if someone other than Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk, I'd, of course, be very interested in that, but I just don't see evidence for that.
And people are trying to, it's like anything.
In hindsight, you can look at every person's reaction in the crowd and say they're a decoy or an operative, whatever.
There's really nothing hard or conclusive that proves anything other than that happened yet.
And I'm open to possibilities.
What is interesting, but a different conversation, maybe related, is the Israel thing.
And I think very clearly, as you and Tucker and Candace and others have said, and Max Blumenthal have said, there's ample evidence that at the minimum, there was something dynamic there.
He was a pro-Israel guy for many years.
Now seems like that was in flux.
And a lot of the evidence has kind of been knocked out.
This Bill Ackman retreat, you know, Bill Ackman produced the texts and Charlie arranged the whole thing.
And it was a forum where I'm sure disagreement was expressed, but it showed generally they were still aligned.
More interesting was his interview with Megan Kelly, where clearly he platformed Tucker and you.
And it seemed that supporting Israel was in contention, which they hate that that's even on the table because it matters how you set the table.
It doesn't necessarily even matter what your position is, but they don't want that to be up for debate.
Do we support Israel?
Not a question they want people to ask.
Especially when you're losing the debate.
You know, I mean, that doesn't help either.
Yeah, especially when you get booed and killed in the debate.
They don't like that either.
And so even that, they were really pushing back on Charlie, threatening, I guess, the new revelation is they took the money.
They took the $2 million.
It's a pretty big organization, but that's not a negligible chunk of change for Charlie in Turning Point USA.
And he goes in the group chat and assuming, like you said, that it's authentic, you know, that is, I think, the most stark thing we've heard from him on the record where he says, I have to leave the Israel camp.
And I would say that's even different than what he said on Megan Kelly.
Because on Megan Kelly, he said, oh, you're going to call me an anti-Semite?
He goes, he sort of stopped himself.
He said, well, you're going to lose me.
That's what he was going towards.
And then he's not going to lose me.
He goes, but I'm going to be deflated.
In that text, he says, I'm out.
And I would characterize that as I was his rival, and I'm very cynical about him.
He was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.
He was really in the middle because, like you said, it's young people.
They are Israel critical.
And he had to go and defend the bullshit to them at the campus in the arena, in the pit.
You know, so it's easy for them in the Ivory Tower to say, yeah, we love Israel still.
He's actually having to get the shit.
And 100 Grouper's on the line saying, why do you still love Israel?
And I think that he recognized it became a liability and started to try and accommodate everybody, Tucker and the other side, Candace and the other side, the Groypers, so to speak, or the Dave Smith people and the other side.
And the other side wasn't halving it.
They said, you better get the fucking line or you're, we're pulling the plug.
And I think he defiantly said, I will not be bullied.
I thought that was, it would have been interesting to see where that would have went, but sadly, we'll never know yeah, no, I completely agree.
And I've always, you know, I kind of took, I, I took what he was saying in that thread like a little differently than I guess some people did.
Like, I thought, I always thought the dynamic with Charlie Kirk was kind of that, that it was like, look, he's the guy who has to keep the young people on board.
And he's by definition, he has to be a big tent guy because he's trying to win.
You know, he's in a different game than me and you are, you know, like there's, it's a, it's a whole different thing to be like, like we're in the business of telling the truth as we see it.
We're in the business of breaking down the ideas and how we view them.
And as you said, at times, even like stretching the Overton window and maybe even accepting that like, I'm going to be speaking to the remnant here.
I'm going to be speaking to one group of people, but hopefully this group will move the broader conversation.
A very different thing to be doing a get out the vote campaign.
You need everybody involved.
And I think that he like, I think Josh Hammer is not lying when he says he was doing everything to keep you out.
Like that was, that was the goal is like, we are going to cut the line here.
But just with the new dynamics of where politics is now in this real, like a revolution in media that we've, me and you have both been living through and being, you know, active participants in, it was like, okay, but you're, you're big enough at this point that like, okay, cutting Nick Fuentes out and then everything else is a big tent.
Okay, you maybe could pull that off.
But you're asking Tucker and Megan Kelly too.
And I think Charlie just realized the tent now is like there's no way this works.
And so I almost took it when he was saying, I have to do this as going, I'm going to have no other choice to keep turning.
And of course, this is the rock in the hard place, right?
Because you couldn't be anti-Israel and run an organization like Turning Points, but also you couldn't be pro-Israel and run an organization like Turning Points anymore because you need the kids and you need the donors.
And so there's this, this, and I think that, you know, like it's, it did seem that essentially like his calculation, it seems to me, I'm speculating a little bit, but that his calculation was like, okay, well, I'll, I'll have Tucker and I'll let Dave do this debate.
And then I can be seen as like, hey, look, I'm, I'm facilitating the conversation.
I'll do all this.
But that was way too far for the bagger.
They were like, yo, what are you kidding me?
Like, I mean, these are the people who like they thought when Mamdani say a million things about the guy, he's probably going to be very bad for this city that we're currently in right now.
You know, and also is just like very cringy and awful in a lot of ways.
But the fact that he said, which why this is coming up in a New York City mayoral debate?
Do you favor a one-state solution or a two-state solution?
Like, what the hell does this have to do with New York City?
But he goes, I favor one state with equal rights for all.
And they went, Adolf Hitler.
Did you fucking like that was supposed to be the god?
Like, in what world is the bad guy the guy who's going, I think everyone should have equal rights?
It's just, but, but so to them, there is no distinction between any of us.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's all kind of the same thing.
And yeah, I don't know.
It is, it is very interesting because there's something, you know, there's something revealing about the fact that even say people like Megan Kelly and Charlie Kirk will get that this same type of treatment when they step out of line.
Right.
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
And people are, I think, misreading it a little bit.
Like he was this, it's such an important point you made that we do something different.
Because when we go on our shows, we say, I think, I feel he didn't really have that luxury.
Right.
Because he was not in the business actually of telling it like he sees it.
He was in the business of it was more political, getting everybody to vote, keeping everybody happy, pushing directionally towards the right.
And so when people say he was going to be this rebel, he had this epiphany.
He just had to get it out.
I don't think that's it.
I think, like you said, he was put in an impossible situation because the underlying reality had changed, the underlying political dynamic.
The right-wing youth are what they are and the donors are what they are.
And as a matter of fact, I don't think he left Israel.
I think Israel left him.
And that's sort of what the tech said.
He said, they leave me with no choice.
After they pulled the money, they said, we cannot tolerate, so we're taking the money.
And he said, well, I'm not going to be held hostage by your money.
I have to side with the ever-growing tent to people that are either indifferent or critical or anti- or whatever.
And so that is how I read it.
And I agree.
I mean, to the broader point, even the earlier conversation, Israel is in a lot of trouble, it seems.
I was sort of skeptical, but this is very much in flux because it is the right-wing youth.
It's Tucker.
It's Meghan Kelly.
It's Charlie Kirk.
It's France.
It's Portugal.
It's UK.
It's Canada.
It's like most of America.
And, you know, I guess the question is what's on the other side of it?
If they win, well, they will have unprecedented power with Iran out of the picture.
There'll be an enormously powerful, maybe the regional power in the Middle East.
If they lose or if they don't get everything they want, then they might be in more peril than ever before.
And I guess the remaining thing is kind of where it goes from here with Trump, you know, because it's so weird how everything, in a sense, I don't believe that they killed Charlie Kirk and yet his death by revealing what it did is going to play a big role in this conversation.
Because like you said, it shows that the right wing is literally breaking up over this.
Like this issue is forcing this contradiction and that contradiction is splitting the right, which is the ruling party in the middle of the UN meeting, in the middle of the peace deal that's about to blow up.
It's like, I think when all is said and done, we look at this two-year period, it will contribute to that larger conversation.
And then, you know, where's Trump going to go with this?
Because he's an insider.
Well, that's right.
And I thought it was so interesting, like the 12-day war, as it's been dubbed, which, you know, we seem to be at halftime of.
A Dangerous Media Environment00:06:33
But there's, you know, like, that was such an interesting dynamic because I've just never seen anything like that in politics before.
And I've, you know, I've been paying attention to politics for almost 20 years now.
And I've read a lot about, you know, before that time that I was paying attention.
And like, it would be on the level of like, if Barack Obama launched a war and Rachel Maddow and, you know what I mean, all that were like, hell no, we are not supporting this.
Or George W. Bush and Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity were both like, screw that.
And you just never really seen a dynamic like that before, where what can you do here?
You're actually kind of limited in your options.
And so, yeah, I mean, it's, there's just so much of this stuff is like, we're just, we're in a new experiment right now.
We've never really had this level of uncontrolled, you know, media.
And I just do think that support for the Israeli government and not the existence of an Israeli government, but support for the current Israeli government and what they do was totally dependent on a controlled media environment.
It simply can't survive in an uncontrolled media environment.
And I do think that, you know, these young people, you're talking to them, none of them get their news from the corporate media anymore.
They are all listening to our shows.
And it's almost like no matter what corner of, say, the internet media that you're in, you've, I mean, you've just seen the debates have happened so many times.
Like Piers Morgan has hosted so many of these debates.
I did one on Joe Rogan.
There's been on Lex Friedman on Zip.
I saw you debated Dinesh D'Souza.
And every single time, it's almost always the exact same thing.
I mean, like, I watched your, I'd seen clips of it, but I watched the full thing earlier today.
And it was just such a one-size-like, I mean, and by the way, Dinesh, his stock went up in my book just from like the way he handled it.
You know, I thought like I appreciated that.
But like on the substance of it, you just, it's not even fair, man.
Like, it's not like, you're like, one of these times I should have to switch and argue your side because it's just too ridiculous.
Like, it's so fucking indefensible.
And you got to sit here and pretend like it's just, I'm sorry, you're not going to.
And so we're just left in a situation now where, you know, the young people have just, they've all woken up to this shit and there's really no putting it away after that.
Yeah.
And what's what's sort of unnerving is like, you know, if they can't put it back in the bottle, which, you know, they're going to try and they are trying.
That's what this TikTok and CBS and even, you know, they're not even taking it at CBS.
Like everybody knows what that is.
Everybody, I saw all the presenters on like 60 Minutes were leaking to the press how much they hate Barry Weiss and they don't want to go along with all this.
It's like it becomes almost scary because Netanyahu's been in power for almost two decades.
And in a sense, it's like, this is sort of a modern situation.
The war on terror, the Middle East, Netanyahu, the ascendancy of Laikud, the neocons, this is like the past 25, 30 years.
And it seems to sort of be sunsetting.
Like Netanyahu, if this war ends, for better, for worse, he's going to be out.
And he will not, whoever his successor is, will not be able to keep the coalition together as well as he did.
So maybe their influence diminishes there.
The media environment is not centralized anymore.
So they don't influence that either.
In the last legs of whatever this period can be called, that this Gopher Broke moment, what scares me is how desperate they're going to get.
And I think that's where maybe it makes sense they killed Charlie Kirk because there's some recognition they are that desperate.
Like it is, that is a desperate hour for them when they're losing absolutely everybody, isolated.
They're not winning the debates.
They can't win it with the soft power, censorship, suppression, the rest of it.
Do they then resort to total chaos, crisis, you know, these kinds of operations?
That, you know, because it's sort of like the emperor has no clothes.
Like you said, in our lifetimes, we've never seen something like this.
Can they lose?
Will they tolerate losing?
What does that actually look like?
And I think that's going to be resolved in the next like six months.
So it's going to be kind of freaky.
Yeah, it's like the example I use is that they say like when a woman in an abusive relationship tries to leave the husband, that's the most dangerous time.
Like that's when he might kill you is when you try to leave.
Even though it's the right thing to do, you know, it's like that is the most dangerous time.
And so you do, I mean, I think something we should all be kind of aware of is like how do you manage that situation exactly?
And, you know, you always kind of want to, even in these really awful situations, you want to kind of leave the door open in a way.
Like, you know, you have to find a way for Netanyahu to be able to declare victory or whatever and say, you know, save face to stop kind of doing what he's doing.
But it is, look, it's, it's, like you said, there's just no, you know, I remember thinking this when they were really trying to cancel Rogan during the COVID stuff because he was like heroically telling the truth about it.
And I remember even thinking, you're like, so what, let's say this works.
You get Joe Roe.
What do you think?
All his listeners are going back to Don Lemon.
Like whether they take you out, they take me out, whatever.
Do you think all the people we talk to or what's their next step?
Like, it's not like they're going back into the Matrix or whatever.
Like, that's not happening.
And it is, I think, because I want to talk about Trump a little bit too.
And JD Vance likes to talk about the kind of future of the Republicans a bit.
But it is just this weekend, this past weekend, we lived through like a real interesting little moment where Donald Trump, in one more example, where he's clearly frustrated with Netanyahu and, you know, goes and finally says it, you know, after all this time, finally says Israel must stop bombing Gaza immediately.
They've now, I don't know, I know they're claiming, because I was like reading up the latest of this stuff, like Dave DeCamp is always the best guy to read for what the latest, you know, news on the ground is.
And they're claiming they've stopped some of the bombings, but like they did still, there was a lot of offensives going on over the weekend.
They killed like something like 70 Palestinians on Saturday and then 40 on Sunday or something like that.
Investing in Precious Metals00:03:06
And so you're like, okay.
But I think I was saying this on my last episode.
I think in a way, the more revealing thing is that, first of all, we likely assume Israel is just going to continue doing what they're doing.
But even forget that, we know for a fact that even if they did, nothing would change.
Even if Donald Trump says, you must stop doing this now, nothing will change if they continue to do it.
And that to me is so obviously indefensible that like you have a country who is propping up another country and that this country's commander in chief has zero influence over telling them to stop what they're doing.
They don't even feel, you know, there was, I'm blanking on who it was, but it was someone high up in the government who said, they said, well, we have no ceasefire in place.
Essentially, meaning we could keep doing this.
We have not made a deal yet.
And it's like, yeah, but the president of the United States told you to stop and you're dependent on him.
So stop.
Like, you know, so that's an outrage.
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Compromise and Dissent00:15:33
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All right, let's get back into the show.
More broadly speaking, because I find this to be kind of interesting.
So you, me and you are actually opposite in terms of, I think you voted for Trump in 16 and 20, not in 24.
I didn't in 16 and 20, but did in 24.
Although I think we have a lot of the same critiques of him.
We kind of saw that different.
But how do you, I think at this point, I think you've been very, what's the word I'm looking for?
I think you've been very unhampered about your criticism of Donald Trump.
It seems to me like that's the appropriate thing to do now.
I mean, I think there were like a few things where, you know, I felt like when Donald Trump first got in, or right after the election was won, I tried to lead this like no Pompeo thing of like being like, no, Pompeo, because that was like, he had spoken at the last Trump rally.
And so I was, and I, I was talking to like Tucker and like all these other guys go, and I was like, dude, we should all go all in on this.
Like Pompeo and Haley and all these awful people came out.
And then he signed that letter saying Pompeo and Haley won't be in it.
And then I was like, okay, not enough.
All the neocons got to be kept out now, you know?
And then Donald Trump Jr. like quote tweeted me and was like 100%.
I'm on it.
Blah, blah, blah.
And there was a moment there where I was like, fucking maybe, you know, like, I actually maybe want to believe.
I mean, and part of it, and I know, I mean, I'm a libertarian.
So like, I know that I've been through this, but I, you know, I know all the talking points and how nothing ever changes.
There's no government solutions and blah, blah, all this.
But I was like, you know what?
They did try to arrest this guy.
They did try to do more than arrest this guy.
Maybe, again, I'm not like, I'm not trying to jump to a web, but there were some things about that that really just don't add up.
I'm still very, you know, skeptical of the official story on that.
But I was like, maybe, maybe there's actually something.
But, you know, after continuing to back Israel, the Epstein thing was a big one.
The Iran thing was like a death blow.
It was just like, and at this point, it's not like there's another election coming up.
We already kind of know what the Trump thing is.
We've gotten some small wins.
I shouldn't, the border control is a big win.
I shouldn't say that.
That's not a small thing.
He really did turn that around.
He deserves credit for that.
But everything else, Nick, everything else has just been a disaster.
And so I don't know.
I think we're in a similar place where it's like, no, fuck this.
I mean, you can't, you just can't tell me that it's like, we have to just blindly support this while our country's still falling apart.
Yeah, I mean, there's just no argument anymore.
In 2024, one of you guys just grabbed me a water.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, no, in 2024, there was at least this argument to be made that maybe it would be different this time.
And like you said, you articulated the reasons why they tried to kill him.
You know, they impeached him.
They charged him.
So the question was, is it going to be different this time?
Did he learn?
Is there going to be better people?
And I get that.
So I didn't like begrudge people that did vote for him, but there were signs.
You know, Nikki Haley endorsed him and he said we were going to go to war with Iran, basically.
He said they were going to bring in the H-1Bs and all this stuff.
And, you know, and then they appointed the cabinet within like three weeks, Rubio for Secretary of State.
And I guess the interesting thing I have to say beyond what is obvious, you know, which is that it's kind of crashing and burning is I look at a guy like Kurt Mills, you know, Kurt Mills, Dam Con.
And, you know, he seems like he's a good guy.
Like he's 100% on board, maybe more with you than me, but like he knows irrelevant facts.
And I remember watching him during the negotiation between Trump and, or I should say, Witkoff and Arachi or whoever it was on the Iranian side.
And he would go on Steve Bannon every week and say, any day now, like they're going to make a deal.
And Netanyahu is going to be put in his place.
And I'm thinking, have you ever seen anything in history?
It never goes that way.
And it never goes that way because, like you said before, it's sort of axiomatic.
Trump is not willing to shut them down.
He's just not willing to resist them or go there.
He doesn't care enough or whatever the reason is.
It's hard to know what's in his heart or in his mind.
He won't do it.
And then, you know, I think it was like three days before we went to war.
He goes, you know, it's not on radar that Trump is going to attack Iran.
That's not on radar.
It's like, buddy, read the tea leaves.
Like, of course he's going to go and bomb Iran.
So, and I kind of get where you're coming from about the Pompeo.
I was even skeptical about the Pompeo thing because I said, they got a list of these people they're going to put in.
And that's why I'm a big believer in like this.
It's not even, people say, are you going to vote for a Democrat?
We got to think beyond that.
To me, it's just about rejection.
They set the table and you can't really choose what's on the table, but you could choose whether to eat or not, whether you're going to play the game.
And so my bigger idea is just reject.
And I like what you said.
It encapsulates it.
It's bullshit.
No, thank you.
You know, you're promising stuff you know you're not going to deliver.
When you put the stuff out there, the big, big, beautiful bill, $150 billion for border enforcement.
They're not deporting even a thousand people a day.
Like it's nothing.
And so I just look at these guys like Dan Caldwell crying on Tucker, at Kurt Mills, all that kind of stuff.
People saying, we're going to hold their feet to the fire.
We're going to pressure them.
And I'm like, aren't you tired?
We did that already.
We did that in the first term because I was kind of in that place in the first term where it's like, we're going to control the personnel.
We're going to do this.
And I knew people in the admin.
I knew people on the campaign that didn't get hired because they were on the campaign because the people in the admin were from the Rubio campaign or the Bush campaign.
And it's like, you know, we just need something that at the end of the day is what we want, not a compromise.
I know it's not how politics works, but we just need something that is going to, that is promising and intends on delivering what we really care about.
And Trump was never that, in my opinion.
Yeah, no, I agree.
And it's, you know, it's a shame in a way.
My friend mine, Scott Horton, always says, the country needed Ron Paul and we got Donald Trump, which is, you know, kind of how I see it.
Maybe you would say more like Pat Buchanan or someone like that.
But, you know, I think both of us would take either of those options if they were on the table.
But it is, you know, and I do think I thought the Epstein one was a particular, you know, it's interesting how much that really was devastating for Donald Trump.
And it was more than just the Epstein story.
I think it was like what that symbolized.
What that, you know, that it was like right at the heart of his political raison d'être, which was draining the swamp.
And it was like, come on, man.
What's a better example of the swamp than this?
Oh, we won't touch that.
Okay.
All right then.
So I guess we know how serious we are about this.
And I got to say, I mean, I see nothing promising about JD Vance.
I think my view of it seems to be that I do think that he's like maybe kind of sympathetic to like, you know, my foreign policy views.
And I think that he does seem to air more on that side.
But I just don't think he has anywhere near the stones to like stand up to anyone.
I think he wants to be president more than he wants to care about that.
And that right there is the, that's the deal breaker then.
Okay, then.
So you're not.
And again, to your point, I think, which I would just maybe modify, and I think you probably agree with this too.
It's like, I'm not even against compromise, but there's got to be a compromise.
There's got to be like a reasonable compromise.
Like I am willing to compromise on a few things, but the compromise can't be, I have to bend over and grab my ankles.
Like that's not, that's not a reasonable compromise that I'm trying to sign up to.
So it's like, I just don't, and I wonder, because, you know, like there's always two ways to look at this.
And like the conventional political thinking, the Charlie Kirk thinking would be like, well, any dissension here only helps the Democrats.
Right.
So if we're not all rallying around them, then we get the Democrats who are the worst, you know, biggest threat.
But of course, I think our rejoinder to that would be that like, well, no, not releasing the Epstein files is what gives the, or when I say file, you know, just not getting to the bottom of it.
That's what gives them that.
And what is JD Vance going to run on?
I mean, how is he going to capture that energy that Donald Trump had?
We're furious with the system.
The system is so corrupt and so dishonest and so such a betrayal to every American that we want someone to go in there and be a wrecking ball against them.
How is JD Vance possibly going to capture that energy?
Right.
When there's nobody's believing it anymore.
Well, and with Trump, I feel like a lot of people just forgot really what he was.
Because I feel like not a lot of people actually voted for him in 2016 that are around now.
And you and I know because we both, I mean, you're around longer than me, but we were both around then.
And I feel like there's a lot of young people and maybe even like big supporters of Trump now that weren't really with him in 16.
And so what I'm trying to say is for a lot of people to have amnesia, they think that he's a Republican.
He's a conservative.
Like, because that's really what he's become.
That is what he was in 20.
That's what he was in 24.
He's against the radical left.
He's against the Democrats.
But in 16, he started out fighting the Republican establishment.
And he really ran as like an independent.
And I always go back to the proposition of Trump.
This is my basis for not voting for him last year, which is not I'm better than the Democrats, which is the minimum.
You're Republican.
Well, he's better than Kamala.
Okay, isn't that a given?
Like, shouldn't you be?
It's not that he's a conservative or anything like that.
He said, the system is rigged and it's broken.
I will break it because I'm rich.
I'm so rich, I don't need to take their money.
And if I don't have to take their money, I can actually deliver real change because I don't have to worry about upsetting them.
That, in a nutshell, was the premise.
And that was his appeal.
He would go up on the stage and like you watch this now and you're like, where's this guy?
That famous clip where he goes, they're booing him.
And he goes, that's all donors in the audience.
I don't want their money.
I don't need their money.
And everyone resonated right, left, and center said, yeah, fuck the system.
That's true.
They're bought off.
That's why nothing ever changes.
He's rich.
They can't buy him.
That was the idea.
Obviously wasn't true.
Then now in 24, when he got 200 billion or 200 million from Tim Mellon and from Elon Musk and Ken Griffin and Mark Andreessen, the usual suspects.
And with JD Vance, like you said, it's just even worse.
It's disgusting that anyone's even considering voting for him to me, because it's like, at least Trump had kind of a claim to be that guy because he was this like bombastic billionaire from the private sector.
Vance is like your prototypical political artifact, like a creation in a lab, like fake career, fake name, fake book, patrons in the CIA.
Like he's a nerd.
He's not even really that conservative.
You know, the fake conversion, maybe he's a real convert, but it seems too convenient.
Like he's everything that Trump ran against.
He's like Jeb Bush.
He was calling Trump a Nazi and voted for McMullen.
And it was a never Trumper.
So, and I'm not, I'm just unloading my case against him, but it's like they could not be more different.
So to your point, how are you going to sell that?
I don't know how any MAGA person is buying it, but I think they will.
And there's another thing where like, you know, the vice presidency, you know, the role, it's an interesting job because there's really not a job exactly, but it makes you kind of like, oh, you're the next in line.
But if you just remove that for a second, who would have ever thought JD Vance could carry a national election?
JD Vance is not Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the most famous human being who's ever lived who's bombastic and charismatic and just like owns a room like no other.
Like really is like as a unique gift in this way.
Unfortunately, all of these gifts are only for like marketing and promotion and running for that.
It's not like he's not, he has no governing, you know, ability at all.
But like JVance doesn't have that.
He doesn't have that factor, the Hitler aura, as you would describe it.
You know what I mean?
But like he just, and so it's, it's, you're just looking at this and you go, so look, if you're telling me that like the radical left Democrats are the real threat, which granted they are, it's like, it seems like we're staring at them having a chance.
Now, I guess the only thing, and again, this is an interesting dynamic, one that I've never really seen before in my lifetime, is where you see when Donald Trump support like plummets, it doesn't seem to give any boost to the Democrats who are still kind of just like in the in the tank.
And I think part of that is just because they failed so miserably over the last few years.
But I do think like to your broader point, and I'm not even like saying 100% one way or the other, but it's something that like I think people who are, you know, dissidents, broadly speaking, of this system and are, you know, in opposition to the current regime need to think about a lot.
Because, yeah, like if our vote isn't a given, our support isn't a given, then it has to be worked for, you know, and also that it's things aren't always so clear.
You know, like you, you could say Kamala Harris would have been worse than Donald Trump.
Now, in this particular example, just on the border security, probably we're better off, all things considered with Donald Trump.
But at the same time, in a lot of ways, I think you could argue for right-wing America, it was better that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
Like things improved in a way that you really could not have imagined them improving under Donald Trump.
And I mean, culturally speaking, like even after Donald Trump won in 2016, the culture didn't swing to the right.
The culture swung even further to the left.
The culture only started swinging back to the right when Joe Biden was in.
It actually was easier when there was a brain dead president who represented the Democratic Party and we had the wins, you know, in Twitter and the stuff I was talking about with like Target and Bud Light and all this stuff.
And so like, it's just not so, you know, it's not always so obvious.
What's, you know, white men can't jump quote.
Sometimes when you win, you actually lose.
And sometimes when you lose, you actually win.
And so I just think that, you know, I would hope, like, I hope maybe like Thomas Massey will run in primary hammer.
I would at least hope that there's something that kind of like gets the conversation over like, no, actually, how about we expect you to be this?
We expect you to actually be good.
And nothing crazy.
I'm not like even asking for it.
This is why I corrected you on the no compromise.
Like I'll compromise.
Okay.
But like, don't get us in another stupid war.
Like, like, you know, make policy dictated off what's best for America.
We have to do something about this debt problem.
Like, we have to at least attempt to tackle it because we're drowning it.
And the answer can't just be continue to debase the currency because it's destroying our country.
It's like, and don't have a wide open border.
Like, it's just like so few things.
Like, if you could just be good on these few things, I'd be like, okay, I'll hold my nose over the rest.
But there's got to be some way.
And especially now with the new media landscape, with the amount of influence that me and you have right now, I don't know.
We've got some opportunities to say like, hey, no, no, we're not just going to go along with this.
Avoiding Stupid Wars00:13:37
We ought to plant a flag at like one reasonable point and go, we're not bending on this.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think we need to throw our weight around and we'll have a much better opportunity to do that because in 28, it's an open field on both sides.
In 2016, 20, 24, Trump was like the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room, immovable.
Like you, me, all of us put together, like no one was going to knock him off that trajectory, which is why maybe it was naive for me to like withhold the vote outside of like reasons in principle or for rhetoric.
But in 28, we can shape the race because like you said, I don't think Vance is a shoe-in at all.
He's not a national figure.
Very good chance he goes away at DeSantis where it's a failure to launch, you know, it's a crash and burn situation.
And then it's wide open.
And I would say that, you know, people say that I'm like a Democrat or like I wanted Kamala to win.
And it's like, you think I don't know that Trump is better than Kamala.
Everyone knows that.
But I love what you said about these like knock-on second order effects because you're 100% right.
Biden winning and like Trump getting banned from YouTube and all that.
That's probably why Elon bought Twitter.
Like that maybe doesn't happen in a universe where Trump won the 2020 election and all the other downstream effects that took place.
Trump being president now is sweeter than it would have been from 20 to 24.
And you could have never predicted that, like you said, that Biden winning would force the pendulum to swing in the other direction.
I think there was something true about, you know, Trump and Kamala in 24.
If Kamala inherited the war in Gaza and the Ukraine war, would we get something insanely radical in 28, like a real reset?
Maybe.
You can never know.
What I would say, though, about 28, and this is maybe new, is like when you look at what Trump is doing, he's creating a lot of tension right now.
The ICE raids, the militarization of law enforcement, the war everywhere in Venezuela, Ukraine, Iran, the advance of AI and technology.
It's like if a Democrat wins in 29, I'm moving to another country because whoever comes into power from the left is going to want blood because they're going to want vengeance for all.
If they regroup, that's sort of presumptuous.
If they regroup and reorganize, they're going to kill us.
Because like in Chicago, I live right by where this is happening.
They set up this detention facility.
They're rounding people up, putting hype edits of it on Twitter.
It's pissing liberals off.
Liberals are going to the place protesting.
The cops are beating the shit out of them and laughing and taunting them.
More protesters come.
Now they're ramming cars into ICE cars.
Cops are shooting them.
Now they're bringing in DHS.
It's like we've gone so far up this escalation ladder in like three months.
And what I fear is that Trump is not going to finish the job.
He's not going to assault the Earth and destroy Antifa.
So all he's doing is pissing these people off.
And that means it's the violence is going to get worse.
They're going to organize.
We're going to get like Mamdani for president in 28 or, you know, something along that vein.
And that's why I think it's really important that like a Republican does win, but it just can't be Vance.
So like that's kind of how I'm thinking about it because they're really barking up the wrong tree in my opinion.
They're not, they're signing checks.
They're can't cash.
Yeah, I mean, like, I wouldn't even like, I wouldn't entirely close the door on Vance.
I'm just like, he's got to show me something.
I got to see something that makes me go like, okay, I can get on board with this at least, which I just haven't seen yet.
And I do worry about that a lot.
I think it's like, it's something that, you know, like you should pay attention.
If you think about, say, like kind of the way the culture has shifted over the last few years, which really is hard to like overstate how crazy it is, dude.
Like me and you talked five years ago.
We were living in a different world when me and you talked five years ago.
It was not that long, you know?
And you could obviously see right now, like looking at where the culture is, you're like, oh, the whole progressives really overplayed their hand in a lot of ways, right?
And then there's a lesson in there to be learned that like things can change very quickly.
And I do worry about that.
You know, you worry about like how far the Democrats went last time they were in power and what they might do again.
It's also important to know that there were like a couple, for as much as I always say, like the American system is pretty broken and the Constitution is pretty destroyed, but there still are some things.
And I think people don't appreciate enough the fact that two major ones that got shut down.
Number one was the OSHA vax mandate.
Joe Biden had legislated that every company with 100 or more employees must fire anyone who doesn't get this vaccine.
This would have been a huge event and massive control of a government, you know, particularly, you know, okay, not explicitly targeting right-wingers, but who the hell wasn't getting the vaccine, you know?
And then the other one was the Ministry of Truth, which ended up getting shut down.
Now, both of these ended up getting struck down, but man, might we be living in a different world had they gone through.
And so who knows what they would try to do again.
Also, as you talked about before, which is like kind of a broader theme, is that there is this, you know, Netanyahu's snapback about controlling the media and how he was just openly bragging.
I really couldn't believe he was openly bragging.
I said on the show, I just go, I said, I think this video is supposed to be a secret recording where he's talking in Hebrew.
Like, is he actually just on camera saying this in English, really?
But so they're talking, but I do wonder, and I wonder how you think about this, because I, and this is something that concerns me, particularly about you and the Groupers and more broadly, just kind of the Twitter culture or what's on social media.
It does seem to me like I'm slow motion, almost like watching this movie play out, where it's like, it would have seemed impossible five years ago.
You know, five years ago, or I guess six years ago, the second time you were on the podcast, you had just been kicked off YouTube.
It was just ramping up that like, hey, you simply can't do these things on YouTube.
Even like, I'm going to put this up on YouTube.
I guess we'll test it.
We'll test where they're at now.
But I just see you're doing other interviews that are up there.
I figured, why not?
I think it's okay.
We're in a, like, you can say things on Twitter now that you couldn't have dreamed of saying.
But now that the censorship regime has been rolled back and like Nazi shit is just flooding in, it does seem to me like, oh man, this is like setting up the pretext.
It's setting up the pretext for like, hey, you guys wanted to have freedom of speech.
Well, here's what it actually looks like.
Now can we all agree that this must be shut down?
And like, I'm not saying I know that's going to happen, but it's a real concern of mine.
And I wonder what you think about all that.
I totally agree.
And the first time that that kind of was clocking to me was when I think it was on Fresh and Fit.
And I love Myron and I like Fresh too.
But it was on their show where I think some like ghetto black woman said like, fuck F the Jews and we love it.
And it went like super viral.
And like, I think I saw this this clip.
The social suspects seized up on that.
And it's like, and I didn't say anything to him privately, but you could see where that's going to go in very short order where there's no shortage of stuff like that you can find, you know, that certain people are putting out there on a daily basis.
And it's not measured.
It's not nuanced.
There's no point.
It's just vulgar.
It's vulgar.
It is hateful.
It definitely probably crosses the line.
It doesn't like serve the conversation.
Like it's one thing to say Jewish identity, blah, blah, blah.
It's another to say F these people.
Like that's different.
And I 100% believe there's going to be another censorship push and they're going to use shit like that to justify it.
So that's why I've really tried and I'm not the most disciplined person, but I've really been trying this year to be more restrained and measured.
And that, you know, and the audience, they perceive everything as cucking.
If you're not sprinting towards the most vulgar, extreme fanatical, they say that you got the call.
But it's so important because there is a window of opportunity here.
And you and I have been around long enough to recognize that because you're right.
It was a different country in 2015, completely different country.
And we don't want to squander that.
But then again, you wonder how much of it is even in our control.
Will they do it anyway?
No, no, I think that's right.
We should control what we can control.
No, I think that's right.
And I think that, you know, it's something for us to even, you know, always keep in mind too, because it's hard, like when you start growing.
I know you've, I'm sure, experienced this, right?
But it's like a diff, like when you, when you have a show and it's getting like 10,000 views a show, you can kind of know your audience.
You're like, I know what my audience thinks.
When you're getting like 500,000 views in a show, it's like, if 50,000 people are furious at you, it's like the whole lot.
But actually, no, that's not the whole.
There's a much bigger audience.
And like, even as you've said, as you've been trying to, not moderate isn't the word, but like just be more careful or just be more mature, I guess, which is natural for all of us.
I'm still a big child in a lot of ways.
But you kind of realize that it's like, well, as you're doing that, actually, your audience is growing.
It's not like you're losing your audience.
It's not like they're abandoning you.
I do just think that there is, you know, like even what you were saying with that, it goes, the problem with, you know, because who the hell cares what some ghetto black chick says on Myron's show, you know?
And I like Myron.
I've done a show before, but who cares what one of these fucking chicks says on there?
But the reason to care is because that is the type of thing that will convince normal, reasonable people that, yeah, you know what?
In fact, you're right.
This is too fucking insane.
Like they're, they're praising Adolf Hitler.
Like this is too, and so you just like, I don't know, like in the same like vein of these second and third order effects, it's like, I just think people, you want to try to encourage people to be smart.
You're right.
We can't control what our audience says.
And me and you have experienced that in the last couple of weeks.
Very, you're very, a very clear demonstration of that.
And that's good.
Our audience shouldn't just be taking our orders or anything, but we, but we should exert influence where we can and go like, hey, think about this.
Just like be smart and think about what you're setting up here.
Because of course, like there is, look, there's no question that they're thinking about plugging up this hole.
Now, what they're going to be able to do about it, who knows?
You know, it is, it does feel to me like, hey, maybe this thing's gotten away from them, but it's not like they don't have a few tricks up their sleeves.
And so we should.
I mean, I think we should just think about these things and what the response to it might be because they're certainly planning.
They're very aware of this.
You know, that's one of the things that was interesting about Netanyahu's meeting there.
It's so interesting that, I mean, I know you must have just been cackling, laughing like I was at this, but the fact that Netanyahu had to deny that he had Charlie Kirk murdered multiple times is like, like, they're aware that things are different.
You know what I mean?
Like, it really is just so hard to imagine.
Maybe because I'm a little older, it's like even more hard for me to imagine because it's just like, yo, this is so, I mean, this is so unthinkable.
It's so unthinkable when I was younger that this would be the case today.
But it is, and they've got their eye on this as well.
So we're, like you said, we have a an opportunity that feels almost like a trap.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Like, you know, like it just like has that feeling like, wait a minute, this whole thing has been lifted and we're all cool now.
It's like, wait, we all agree it's retarded to trans kids.
Everyone agrees.
Okay.
That's kind of interesting.
But at the same time, it does feel like, okay, the second act is coming or the next act is coming.
And I worry about what that's going to be.
Yeah, I totally agree.
You're waiting for the next shoe to drop, you know, because we've experienced this like suffocating political control that seems like they almost know every permutation of how things are going to end up.
And now it's like, so Mark Zuckerberg decided free speech is good now?
Like I don't believe that.
I don't believe that there isn't an ulterior motive.
And I think that I'm always just in favor of doing the thing that's unpredictable.
Because if to the extent that they have power, it's because they can predict what will happen next or how we'll behave.
And so that's why I try to just surprise people and do the thing they're not expecting me to do.
Like if they bring me back on Twitter and maybe there's an angle, it's because they're expecting me to be what they think I am, which is a troll or a hater or whatever.
So maybe walk it back or be restrained or, you know, and I think that we really need to be intentional and cautious.
Like after Charlie died, I called up a lot of people that I know that are like influencers.
And I was like, we just really need to be careful to not step into a trap because it seems like whenever there's a crisis and you never think it's going to happen, but when there's a crisis, you get kind of riled up and you act in ways that are not smart, you know, and by you, I mean anyone does.
Me, you, anyone, because emotions are high, rationality goes out the window.
And it's easy to forget all the hard fought lessons we've learned over the years that have, you know, produced bad results for us.
So, you know, with all the violence, chaos, the uncertainty, unprecedented nature of where we are, we just have to be extremely cautious, vigilant, intentional about what we're doing, what we're saying.
It just can't be sloppy, you know, because if we're sloppy, the thing about Netanyahu and them is they are really smart and they are catch.
You think they don't know?
They know.
Like you said, they know astutely.
Even to the extent that Matt Walsh says, let them kill each other.
That's a brilliant innovation because they knew the pro-Israel thing was losing.
And you think they're just going to keep pressing that button until it doesn't work anymore.
No, they switched up quick and said, we can't get them to support.
Free Speech Under Attack00:15:04
We'll get them to say this line about, well, we don't want Muslims here.
They reinvent all the time.
So the game is not over.
That's what people need to keep in mind.
You run through the finish line.
You run through first base.
It isn't over.
And I like what you said.
They always have something up their sleeve.
So you can't presume that we're running away with it.
We get careless, sloppy, do a victory celebration.
It's still in flux.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
All right.
So I wanted to ask you a little bit about this because I think this is a topic that I find very fascinating.
And I think you're kind of like uniquely like a perfect example of this.
But so you, so 2019, you got your YouTube channel taken.
And then was that around the same time you got like, got kicked off everything else?
Or was it like Twitter?
Like when did you get kicked off of that?
I know you ultimately got let back on, but like there was a period where you were gone.
I was banned from YouTube in February 2020 and then Twitter in July 21.
Okay.
All right.
So there's a real interesting dynamic to me.
And I watched this happen with people who I know, people I'm friendly with.
You know, like I knew like Gavin McGinnis, a good example of somebody who got canceled off everything and really hurt him, really sidelined him.
Stephan Molyneux kicked off everything, really sidelined him.
Like it's almost like they're not in the conversation anymore, at least the way that they were.
Milo, a great example of that, where he was really seemed like he was about to break through to mainstream success and they squashed that.
And somewhere along the years, it seemed like that started backfiring.
I thought Andrew Tate, I thought was an interesting example.
I had never heard of Andrew Tate until he got canceled from everything.
And then that, and then all of a sudden it was just like dominating the algorithm and he was everywhere.
And I think you were one of those guys too.
So like even like you got back on Twitter and I'm sure that helped, but you were already kind of surging before, I think, if I've got that correct.
Like, was there a period?
So you're out there in the unpersoned world.
And was there a time where you were like, oh, this is actually working here in this world?
And like, what were you, what were you streaming on?
I was on Cozy TV, which is my own site.
Oh, you just made your own thing.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, yeah.
So I was just like, I haven't heard of that.
But so that was, and did you start getting numbers there?
No, no, I was languishing.
It was tough.
I mean, the thing about deplatforming is it works.
When I got banned from everything, I was not getting great numbers.
It was when I got back on Rumble that I really, that I got on Rumble in the first place.
Rumble seems like it was a big deal.
Because they were the first one who really started doing numbers.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, you know, it was a live streaming platform.
I, for a period, I was banned from all live streaming platforms from roughly 21 until Rumble, I think, opened up live streaming to everybody, which maybe was like 2023 right around there.
That was the wilderness.
I literally could not stream my show unless I made a website, which is very costly and time consuming.
And, you know, what helped was being prolific and having like a core of supporters.
I do a show every day.
There's a parasocial relationship.
They are, it's a cult-like following.
But a lot of these guys, they either stop making content like Malinu.
They upload it to a platform that doesn't work.
Like BitChute was pretty rough in the early days.
And Gavin put all his stuff behind a paywall.
And that's just, in my opinion, a bad business model because it's like, you got to give out the free samples to get people to walk through the door.
Right.
And when it's to pay to get in, you just, you don't get the conversion.
You don't get new listeners.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So I had a strategy where I said, I'm going to take a financial hit.
Like I made no money for two years, but I knew it's like, if I keep people coming through the door, eventually things will change.
I could still make a little money if it's free and if it's good.
And that's how I was able to just kind of like survive, but I'm still dependent on platform access.
Yeah, but it does, okay, fair enough.
But it does just seem like, you know, like whatever, if the goal was to shut you up, well, that certainly didn't work out very well for them.
And there does seem, I think there's just something interesting about the fact that it seems at least like we were just saying, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it seems at least for the time being that the cancel thing just stopped working and actually started like kind of injecting more life into the people who were getting canceled.
Like I thought, like, obviously you're saying these years were rough, but on net, I think you may have benefited from that.
And maybe I'm wrong because maybe if you were just on YouTube and Twitter this whole time, you lost out on a lot from that.
So like maybe I'm wrong about that.
But at the very least, it seems to have not worked or something like that.
And I thought Andrew Tate and Alex Jones too were like kind of examples of that where it was just like, ah, that's not, you didn't remove them from the conversation.
They're more like all three of you guys are more present than ever.
Whereas some of those other guys just like never kind of got back to where they were.
I guess Gavin is back on Twitter now, I think.
I think just last week, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To me, it's more, in my opinion, a function of your strategy and just kind of, it seems that the people that have survived the longest are the people with a show.
Only because if you have a show, people know when to tune in.
It is every day, you know, like Alex Jones does three hours every day.
And he's on radio, which really helps because I don't think he ever got censored from there.
But I was never a believer in the Streisand effect thing because it's like, I can't process credit cards for my business.
There's like, there's no Streisand effect where you can't make money.
You can't have a bank account and all that stuff.
So it really, in my opinion, was Trump got banned from everything.
And I think venture capital and private equity, they do what they do best and they looked at him like an undervalued asset.
And they came in and said, hmm, this guy's banned from everything.
We can actually upset Silicon Valley and the market there if we make censorship proof Rumble.
It's like if I'm banned on Twitter, no one's going to build a new Twitter around me.
But if Trump is banned on Twitter, he actually can build a Rumble at True Social around him.
And in a way, that explains to me 2024, because that is who came in.
Little tech, you know, it's Andreessen Horowitz.
It's the Teal Club.
It's Elon Musk.
He was kind of like their guy commercially and politically.
And then I think the rising tide lifted all the boats.
That's kind of how I interpret it because we were headed towards like total annihilation of free speech.
Like my listener base shrunk dramatically when I was in the wilderness.
Yeah, wasn't it wild seeing like everybody flip out about the FCC chairman threatening Jimmy Kimmel?
Free speech is finally at risk in America after like the last five years.
And you're like, really?
Oh, really?
Was this the one?
Which, by the way, was a stupid thing for the FCC chair to say that.
Totally like talk about seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.
Like, oh, okay, now you handed them a talking point.
This guy is dying in the wilderness, you know?
This is a couple other things I want to talk about.
I want to talk about censorship, and then I want to hit like Tucker Candace and some of that stuff.
But so there's just been a lot of questions that are raised over the censorship stuff.
And like I said, there's some areas that I struggle with myself, like how exactly if you, I think I kind of landed about where you were on the Charlie Kirk thing.
Like, look, like the government shouldn't be involved.
They're not technically inciting violence, but like there really should be consequences for this.
There should be some type of social consequences.
And in fact, I'm a big believer in social consequences.
But what do you think?
Like in terms of, you know, I think I heard you say something like, look, the right's in power now.
When the left gets back in power, they're going to be censoring people.
So maybe we should be doing things like that now.
But like, what, what do you mean by that?
Or what, like, do you think the FCC chair, I mean, you seem to agree with me when I said that, but like, should the FCC chairman be threatening Jimmy Kimmel and people like that?
No, I think that was just tactically dumb.
But I agree.
I do believe that we are in like a war, basically.
We are in a race.
And we know that because like you said, under Biden, like they were engaging in censorship.
It was coming from the press office.
It was coming from, I don't know how many departments and agencies, but it was quite a few of them that they were giving orders, take this account, that post, take that down, the OSHA stuff.
And they wasted no time in doing that.
Like Biden got in and it was just a whirlwind of J6, censorship, everything you can think of, a naked power grab.
And I do believe that if Trump leaves office and a Democrat comes in, they're going to do it again.
And so I'm a big believer that the right wing needs to really disempower the left institutionally.
Like if they weren't, if they were doing it under a different pretense, I would like what they're doing at Harvard and Columbia.
The problem is they're doing it.
It's not on behalf of America.
Right.
For some other reason.
But it's like, yeah, like we should work to disorganize the left.
We should work to go after their radicals.
Like Antifa, we should put the pressure on them hard.
We should put the pressure on the far left.
We should put the pressure on their funding mechanisms, their stuff, because if we lose, they will do it to us indiscriminately.
They have no qualms about it.
And they'll be more competent about it.
And like, then they'll make the country the way they want it to be.
So yeah, I'm a big believer in like we should use the levers of power.
I don't know about like censoring them on Twitter, let's say, but institutionally, yeah, we should be playing to win.
Yeah, you know, I said on my show, and this is, you know, from my, my particular strain of libertarianism or whatever, but I was like, I basically said the same thing as you.
I was like, look, I don't find, I don't view it as a free speech violation because like Jimmy Kimmel isn't a person anymore.
Like you're part of the regime.
And I know it's a little bit of a gray area of where you draw the line when someone, I'm not going to say, hey, you pay your taxes, therefore you're part of the regime.
But like, no, when you just become what Jimmy Kimmel is, you're no longer a citizen expressing their views.
Just tactically, it was such a blunder.
The guy's already done.
We're killing him already.
So like, what do we even do?
Me and you get better numbers than these guys.
So like, what do we, why do we need to make them a free speech martyr?
Like, it was just like, but I do think that, and it's one of the great disappointments of the Trump administration is that, you know, for all that talk about like Project 2025 and how he's going to be like permanently, he's going to overthrow democracy and all of this.
It's like, okay, well, that was no, but there should have been like this time, this time, like conservative and right-wing America should have been like, hey, we have to do something that like dismantles their mechanism.
And I do think like, you know, look, again, all of government's a, all of college is a government program.
The whole thing is a government program.
All of that, it's like, yeah, we should be shutting down as much of this stuff as we can.
Just destroying it.
So I don't really think, and maybe this is where me and you disagree, but I never believe that right-wingers are going to be able to capture and use these institutions.
I think bureaucratic institutions are progressive by their very nature.
They're egalitarian by their very nature.
It's like, but you can smash a lot of it, you know, or at least attempt to, some attempt.
I mean, maybe you get struck down by the courts, but like at least try.
There seems to be no attempt to even be like, how do we make sure this doesn't happen to our guys next time?
And in fact, I think part of that's because Trump doesn't really even view them as his guys.
Like, you know, Donald Trump, I thought one of the, and you were there on January 6th.
So curious to ask you a little bit about that.
But I thought one of the most disgusting things I ever saw Donald Trump do was when he threw the January 6th guys under the bus.
Yes.
Like days after it, or maybe the day after it even.
And okay, ultimately he pardoned them after letting them languish in prison for years.
Okay.
So you don't get like that much credit from me for that.
But like, look, man, I never bought any of all the leftist claims about January 6th were always like hyperbolic insanity.
You know, like it wasn't an insurrection and Donald Trump didn't incite violence.
But at the same time, if you're a leader and you told everybody that they just stole this election from me, like, and then you said you're going to go there.
And then your people did what would be reasonable to do if the election was stolen from them, right?
Like it is not the claim, just like the Democrats were making the claim with Russia.
It's like, well, then we should be nuking Moscow.
Like according to what you're saying, we should be at war with them now.
Well, according to what you're saying, Donald Trump, you should storm the Capitol if that's the case, if that's the case.
And so he kind of led his people into this.
And then literally, because at the end of the day, it does seem that really what motivates Donald Trump is his own ego, his own greatness.
And if it, they were like, oh, you're going to get impeached or removed or you're going to get this if you don't go to.
So okay, fine.
And then threw his own people under the bus.
I thought that was like disgusting.
Yeah.
And he had the full power to pardon them in the first place.
Right there.
Right there.
Could have done it.
He had three weeks to do it or two weeks, I guess is what it was.
And yeah, at least for me, I was almost charged with conspiracy.
They were considering charges against me.
That was in the New York Times.
And, you know, and other people obviously did go to jail.
And I was there because Trump told me to be, you know, like Trump.
And by that, I mean, I was going to be at the speech.
I was not going to be at the Capitol building.
The speech was at the ellipse.
Capitol was miles away.
And Trump said, we are going to the Capitol to make our voices heard.
I said, oh, well, Trump's going to be there.
I guess it's cool.
So I went there.
And if I had been in jail and other people were, is that not his fault?
He saw no responsibility.
And that is kind of his MO.
I mean, he throws a lot of people under the bus.
He is, I think, motivated by vanity.
And here's the problem with that.
If he's not in it to win it, then he is creating, he's activating the enemy with no intention of following Trump.
That's right.
He got in office.
He's like, oh, I won.
So it's not that serious for him.
And he can pardon himself when this is all over.
And he's rich, so he can go.
But if the country turns upside down, we're all going to be paying the price.
And so that was, that was my big beef with him, among others, in 24 is like, look, you guys don't understand.
He did not learn his lesson.
He never does.
He hasn't changed at all.
If anything, he's just more tired and cares less.
And as a consequence, it's going to be just as inefficient as the first term, in which case we shouldn't even bother.
In which case, we're better off not poking the bear.
Let's just let Kamala catch the hot potato and forget about it because he's going to start something he can't finish.
That was kind of my problem.
Yeah, in a weird way, it's kind of true about the people who stormed the Capitol building too.
Like you're like, yo, I don't think you realize what you're doing.
I know you think this is funny.
Like, I know you think it's funny.
Oh, you fart on Nancy Pelosi's desk?
That's really funny.
Hey, you know what government is?
It's not your friend.
You know what I mean?
Like, these are the biggest, most powerful gangsters in all of the land.
And like, they are going to crush you and lose no sleep over it.
The Inefficiency of Trump00:08:32
And, you know, I was, like I said before, like, I voted for Trump in 24.
I didn't vote for him in 2016, but I was rooting for it.
Like, I couldn't help, but I mean, like, the 2016 election day coverage will forever go down.
It's just like the greatest thing ever.
Like, the montages of MSNBC and the Young Turks and all this stuff was like, which, but I guess I'm friends with the Young Turks now because we all, we're all against the genocide or whatever.
But like, at the time, it was just like so amazing.
2020, I wasn't even rooting for him because I really did feel exactly that, especially I was just so furious at him for the year that was 2020.
I mean, like, talk about just like, my God, what a failure.
Like, in the moment of your life, you were in the seat of power and failed so hard.
Um, and just, you know, instituted totalitarianism in the United States of America is like the craziest shit ever.
And I did feel exactly like you felt, which if people could remember back, I mean, 2020 was such a crazy year with the mass riots in the streets and the censorship and the lockdowns and all of this.
And I was just kind of like, what do we get for this?
Right.
Like, we're, yeah, it's okay.
Like, we're like, we're kicking a hornet's nest and without a plan associated with it.
Like for top marginal tax cuts or something like that.
Like, what is the, and it just seems like what you get from Dick Cheney anyway, you know, like, so it did just feel like that.
And I think that's a really wise observation that like you never want to, you know, like it's the same, it's the same way I feel about January 6th.
Like, what are you doing?
Are you overthrowing the U.S. government right now?
Because if you are, you better fucking be prepared to do that, you know?
Like, it is not wise to do that.
Oh, you're just doing it with no strategy.
Oh, we'll just take selfies inside.
Like, okay, all right.
That does it.
I don't think you guys actually realize what you're dealing with.
And I think particularly in the United States of America, where we have this kind of, you know, we're a very, very wealthy country and we have an enormous powerful government, the most powerful government in the history of the world.
But generally speaking, like if you don't cross them, they're fairly polite to you.
You know what I mean?
Like they're not like, it's like, hey, you get your taxes.
Like, listen, we're taking half your money.
You have that in on time to us.
But as long as you do that within reason, you know, you can kind of, and people get very comfortable and kind of like, uh, are a bit removed from what the real nature of government is.
And you don't understand that it's like, look, man, like John Brennan might seem fine when he's on TV, but you cross that motherfucker and he will kill you and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
Like these are people who will launch wars on false pretenses.
These are people who will back both sides of a war and just let the killing happen, you know?
And man, you really want to be careful about crossing them.
Okay.
So the January 6th stuff is where these accusations of you being a Fed have come from, which, you know, full transparency here, I do not believe that you're a Fed.
I don't fucking know.
Who the hell knows?
Everybody, you're a Fed.
Everyone's a Fed.
I don't know who's a Fed and who's not a Fed.
But I know that this was something that, you know, Tucker had said, and I think you were very upset by this and understandably so.
I think that that's it's a particular type of accusation that is a very frustrating one, I think, in a way, because it's kind of like, oh, you're just everything you said is undermined now, right?
Like I don't have to deal with anything.
And I think that, you know, anyway, I understand why that upset you a lot.
But I think from what I've heard, a lot of this comes from the January 6th stuff and the accusations that you were encouraging people to go into the Capitol.
So what's the deal with all that?
Well, it even goes back to something else, which is the Joe Kent story, which I brought up before, because, you know, I was at January 6th.
And at January 6th, I got up there and I gave a speech.
And in the speech, I gave speeches at all these events, by the way.
I went to the Atlanta state capitol, Harrisburg, Phoenix, Lansing, and even D.C.
And I gave speeches at all the, at governor's mansion, state capitals in D.C. before.
And J6, you know, we thought it was going to be the speech on the ellipse.
And then we were going to maybe do something at the actual Capitol building, although I wasn't going to be there.
But there were plans for there to be stages there.
And, you know, so like I said, I went to the speech.
Trump said, go to the thing.
We went to the thing and somebody said, you got to give a speech.
So I said, okay, find me a megaphone.
I get a megaphone.
I jump up on a thing.
And we're like 500 feet from the Capitol.
We're not even near the building.
We're like on the street next to the lawn.
And in the speech, I said, we're taking the Capitol back.
Keep moving.
Take down the barriers.
And then we left.
You know, we didn't go in.
I wasn't even close to the building.
And this video had been out there for a long time.
And people knew I was there and didn't get charged.
I got my money frozen, although I was in public about that.
I got on the no-fly list.
I went public with that, went public with the money later.
There was never an accusation until like about a year later.
And then people started to create this story that, you know, that I was leading people in and I didn't get charged.
Now, where it started with Tucker is with Joe Kent, because now like two years later, I make potentially Joe Kent lose the election.
And Joe Kent was a close friend of Tucker's.
Joe Kent is in the CIA.
And that is how we attacked him.
We attacked him on that basis.
And of course, it was in self-defense.
He said that he disavowed me, condemns all my views.
We're keeping you out.
And I looked at him as very threatening because like we talked about before, he's kind of boxing me out intentionally.
So we made him lose.
And it was a couple of months after this.
This is where I first got the inkling of it.
Michelle Malkin, who's a good friend of mine.
Yeah, I know Michelle.
I've had her on the show before.
She's great.
She's amazing.
And she's married to a Jewish guy, so you can't remedy her.
Good woman.
And he's great too, actually.
He's pretty based himself.
But so she communicates to me through a mutual friend that she gets this really weird call from Tucker.
She says that Tucker never calls her.
Sometimes she texts him and he'll give her a thumbs up, but they don't really talk.
She says, but he calls her out of the blue asking about me and asking about Kanye.
Did Nick make Kanye go crazy?
Did Nick try to take Trump out at the Kanye dinner?
I don't think anyone can hold you responsible for that.
Yeah, you can blame me for a lot, but that's...
No, this one rests squarely on the shoulders of Pete Davidson.
We all know that.
We all know that.
Get your family stolen by Pete Davidson.
You're going to lash out.
You're going to get radicalized.
But so he's calling her asking about all this stuff and about J6th.
And she said it was very strange.
Like it felt like he was reading from a script.
He was asking these questions.
And she just told me to be on alert.
Then I get a call from Anya Parimpal, the wife of Max Blumenthal at Gray Zone.
They're doing a piece about me.
And she asked me about the Capitol.
And I tell her the story.
I said, I was 500 feet away.
I testified.
I got subpoenaed by Congress.
I said, I testified under oath.
I did not talk to law enforcement.
She publishes this three-part hit piece about me saying that I'm basically what Tucker said, that I'm here to make America first look bad, that I'm a fed, that I made Joe Kent lose.
The only reason I made Joe Kent lose is because I'm a fed trying to whatever.
And so I do a big stream reviewing the hit piece and debunking basically the whole thing.
Then I get a call from Bryson Gray, the MAGA rapper, not as a Christian rapper.
He's working for a company called Influenceable, which they pay influencers to push social media campaigns.
He goes, my wife just got a new campaign from Influenceable.
They're paying people money to post a link to this article with the hashtag FedFuentis.
And there's like a whole spreadsheet or a whole like readout.
It said, the campaign is Fed Fuentis.
Post the link to this article and say these things and you get paid.
And someone posted it.
This like state representative in New York.
I forget his name a long time ago, but he was the only one who had posted it.
I put them on blast.
Influenceable calls me up.
Please stop talking about us.
We will take it down.
We promise.
Everyone's trying to broker this big truce.
That's how, because I was pro-Tucker.
I was a big fan up until that point.
Paid Influence Campaigns00:15:16
And I said, huh.
So clearly, because him and Blumenthal are tight, he was fishing because he knew Michelle for this story.
Blumenthal's wife wrote it.
And that was like a coordinated hit shop in retaliation for their buddy, Joe Kent, who lost.
And anyway, so that's kind of where the rivalry started.
And by the way, I know for a fact that at a recent dinner, Tucker, even before he talked shit about me in July, he was pushing that script to anyone who would listen to other e-celebrities, to students saying, yeah, Nick is this gay kid.
He's trans and he's a fed and he's here to make us look bad.
So this was in private and he was kind of suggesting that on a show and then he explicitly said it this summer.
Well, I guess he implied it with me because I heard people on Twitter saying this.
So it was, you know, which I think I think I don't remember exactly the details of this, but I think you had said something that pissed me off.
Whatever, it's water under the bridge, but I think you had said something that pissed me off.
And so I just didn't respond to it.
And just like the way people were coming at me was like a little disrespectful.
So I was like, fuck you.
I don't have to answer this.
But he said when I was on the show something, like we were talking about Ray Epps.
And then he was like, there's someone else who was on camera and says, and he kind of put the words in my mouth.
He went, as I'm sure you know.
And I did not, honestly, I did not even pick up on that until like people were showing me the clip of it.
And I certainly never thought he was talking about you.
And he never said anything to me about that.
But then, of course, right, I did see with Candace where he did explicitly say it.
And I think, you know, I guess, I think, I guess maybe the thing about it is that it does seem just on the surface of it.
And I'm not accusing you of being a fed at all.
Like, I don't think you're a fed.
But I guess just on the surface of if there's a video of you advocating people go into the Capitol and the way they were just getting everybody.
And it does seem like, although you're obviously a lot bigger now than you were then, you still would have been a pretty nice scalp to be on their mantle.
You know what I mean?
Like it would just be like, oh, wouldn't they go at you for that and try to find some charge or something like that?
But is it the case that there's just nothing to charge you with or what?
Yeah, there was nothing to charge me with.
I mean, they looked at charging me, but I didn't trespass.
I wasn't violent.
And wouldn't that be inciting?
Yeah, but My lawyer told me I'm protected by the First Amendment for that because it wasn't like the language was such that it wouldn't be, and also no one else got charged with incitement.
The charges were trespassing, conspiracy, all things that didn't apply to me.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
Fair enough.
You know, I think maybe, you know, it's like, and I think maybe this is partially why you get that rap, which I think is unfair.
It's unfair to call people feds, you know, unless you really have fucking detailed, like, I have the evidence and I'm willing to show it.
It's just like, it's an unfair accusation.
I think like, you know, when Ray Epps, well, by the way, do you think he was a fed?
I don't know, to be honest.
I'm skeptical, but it's possible.
Yeah.
I always, I lean toward thinking he was.
It's just the way the Democrats were defending him seems so bizarre to me.
And, but anyway, so like there's that famous video I'm sure you've seen, everyone's seen, where Ray Epps is in the crowd and he starts saying, we're going to storm the capital and everyone immediately around him starts screaming fed.
Now, in that moment, they have no way of knowing that he's a fed, but it's just like, dude, that's what feds do.
That's what feds do.
They come in here and do this.
And I think the reason why you might get some of that is because in the same sense, I think there's a certain feeling of like when people are opposing Israel and opposing the warfare state.
And then someone else goes over and they're like, no, and we got to attach that to Nazi shit or something like that.
Not that you literally say that.
I'm using these terms loosely.
But like there's a feeling of almost like that, like just like with Ray Epps going, hey, come on, man.
That's what they're trying to cast us as, not as this.
And I think the other thing, and I want to preface this because I really do.
I am not.
Look, I'm 15 years your senior and I do the same shit too.
So I'm not like, like, you know, I had, there was one with Dave Rubin recently where Dave Rubin was just talking shit about me on some show.
Like it was, I don't know why my name came up.
Some, some, someone asked him a question and asked and mentioned me.
And then he goes, I think Dave Smith's a moron who doesn't know what he's talking about and blah, blah, blah.
And so I just publicly challenged him to a debate.
Now, truth be told, I don't really want to debate Dave Rubin.
Who the fuck wants to, like, what is this?
But it's just like, I don't know.
We're in this game.
And like, what do you do when someone who has millions of followers is saying, I'm a moron and I don't know what I'm talking about.
You're weaponizing your audience against me.
And I only have one tool in my toolkit, which is I'll debate you.
I can't fist fight you.
You know, like, so it's like, okay, so let's have a debate and we'll see who's a fucking moron.
And now I weaponize the audience back against you.
And they all, and he accepted, but then refused ever.
You know, he's like a bunch of people have reached out.
Patrick B. David tried to set it up.
Charlie Kirk actually tried to set it up.
That was, it was supposed, Charlie Kirk wanted me to come debate.
And I said, how about Dave Rubin?
Because I know he lives in Florida and it was right when we were talking our shit.
And then he was like, no answer.
But so like, I get like if someone attacks you, you, you feel the need to attack them back.
It's kind of the game we're in.
I do think though, when you're, you know, it, it leads easy to the perception when you're kind of attacking me, attacking Tucker, attacking Candace, you go, well, what purpose are you really serving here?
You know what I'm saying?
And it's like, it seems like any voice that's critical of Israel, you know what I'm saying?
Like you're going after.
And then it does make people say like, do you get the point I'm making?
He goes like, okay, so what, number one, you're saying we got to attach all this toxic baggage to our opposition of Israel.
And then number two, anytime there's a critic of Israel who's resonating, it seems like you're trying to take him down the peg.
You get what I'm saying?
I do.
And from the outside looking in, I get it.
But I would say that with Tucker, it started before all that.
It started before he was ever criticizing Israel.
This was in 2023, at the beginning of 2023, before October 7th.
And, you know, Tucker had never said anything negative about Israel up to that point, with the exception of one thing he did about the ADL.
And, you know, same thing with Candace.
I mean, I supported Candace like I supported Tucker to the hilt.
I had an account called Standis Owens.
I stand Candace Owens.
And we were like gassing her up during the whole thing.
And all I ever said about Candace is that it felt like she was kind of blowing smoke up my ass about why she wouldn't do the show with me.
And I didn't like that, you know, after she gets all this clout, she's clouded up.
She then starts saying it's the frankests.
It's the frankest.
And I said, yeah, that's not true.
Like, that's nonsense.
And even this year, she invites me on her show.
And I ask her, I said, well, is it going to be a hit piece?
She goes, no, I don't set anybody up.
I get all dressed up.
I fly down there, look into, you know, she extended the olive branch.
I accept.
And she's motherfucking me about drama from a year ago about you, about, are you racist?
Are you anti-Semitic?
Why aren't you married?
All this kind of stuff.
It wasn't a friendly interview.
I don't even think it was cordial.
I think it was basically it was an attempted hit job.
And, you know, so like with you, I mean, look, we have disagreements and here we are talking about them.
And I think I said during my show, like, I like you and I respect you, but I also speak freely.
And if I disagree, I say something.
And, you know, these other people got to recognize like Tucker and Candace, they're more powerful than me.
They have institutional backing.
Tucker is from Fox.
Candace is from Daily Wire.
They never got censored from anything.
Me, I never had any, I, they tried to throttle me in the crib by they, I mean conservatives from the time I was 18.
And I've been banned from most things for five years.
So it just, to me, it's like a little unfair.
It's like when Ben Shapiro quote tweeted me with a thousand followers for Tucker.
That's something else.
I mean, I think it's similar.
I mean, Tucker and Candace getting together and saying, oh, this guy's like a fed.
It's like, yeah, well, you guys have millions and millions of followers that you accumulated serving the system that I was getting killed by for five years.
So that's why I feel like I have a special license to attack because it's punching up.
But, you know, I don't know what to make of Tucker and Candace.
I would say if I was being charitable, that there's immense distrust on both sides.
Yeah.
And for obvious reasons, because I'm an unknown quantity on the outside who, you know, they probably don't watch everything.
They don't know what's happening down here.
And on the other side, they are exiting the institutions.
So from someone on the outside, it's like, are you CIA?
Where are your loyalties?
What do you really believe?
Are you concealing what you really believe?
And to what extent?
And so, you know, I guess when I gave Tucker a black eye, so to speak, and kind of retaliated very strongly, maybe at the minimum, it made him just kind of respect what I represent.
But I'm open to all possibilities making up with either of them.
Well, that's good.
I think it's good to be open to that.
You know, I remember like that.
And I don't know that this is true, right?
Like, I don't know if David Duke is a fed.
I've never met David Duke.
I don't know him.
But I remember he used in 2008 and 2012, he came out and endorsed Ron Paul for president.
And then this was, of course, used against Ron Paul.
And I remember just feeling like I remember going, oh, you're a fucking fed.
Because like, if you're not a fed, then fucking don't endorse Ron Paul.
Like, what are you doing?
Do you hate him?
Like, this would, you would, this would only make sense.
Like, if you, and so I think there's just something, and I'm not, I'm saying like from the perspective of Tucker Carlson, who is in a different generation and a different time and a different thing.
I think there might be something of that where it's like, dude, this looks, you know what I'm saying?
Like to me like that.
I also think, and this is something I've struggled with myself, maybe like a little bit of imposter syndrome or something, or just the fact that guys like me and you, it's a little bit weird when you're kind of like, you know, like you're grinding and you're doing your job.
You're doing what you do.
We do shows.
And then like you kind of look up all of a sudden and you're like, oh, I'm like kind of up here in this.
You know what I mean?
Like there's a lot of like people who are doing shows who aren't like, and I think that, you know, like I had this when I was debating Alex Berenson, who just is fucking horrible.
And I probably never should have done that.
It got sucked.
I'm embarrassed by it, you know.
But I mean, you know, whatever.
It's just, it's like the same thing I think you have sometimes.
You're like, where's like, there's got to be a price tag to this.
Like, you can't be allowed to just shit talk me like this, you know, like, especially when, and for whatever reason, there's something about me, my personality, but I'm much more offended by someone calling me a Holocaust denier than I am by someone being a Holocaust denier, if that makes sense.
Because it's just like a fucking dirty trick to try to get me with.
And there is, I mean, we didn't get it.
We could talk a little about the Holocaust if you want before we end, but like there isn't like, I do believe the Holocaust happened.
I do have family who suffered in it.
I also, like I said before, don't believe that that should be like that suffering should be imposed on everybody else.
And I don't think it makes sense that everyone ought to be going to our museum or something.
Like I find that to be weird.
But to claim that I'm denying that is like a real fucked up thing.
And to be, and in my mind, I was like, you're a fucking, you work for the New York Times, dude.
You pinned this to your Twitter, like this accusation of me.
But then I kind of noticed as we were debating that like in my mind, I'm like, dude, you're the fucking New York Times guy.
I'm some comedian.
And he's like, dude, you're Dave Smith.
I'm just Alex Berenson.
Like he kind of had that.
Like he didn't exactly say that, but I almost started to realize that it's like, oh yeah, I guess I kind of got to like recalibrate in a way.
And I would just suggest, just humbly suggest that like while you view it as like Tucker and Candace are up here and I'm just this guy down here, even the guys at the top, as I've gotten to meet them, they're also just people.
And they also just like, even when you're like, when you're talking shit on your live stream, you're like, I don't know.
I'm a fucking kid in my basement talking shit on my live stream.
But actually, like, maybe they heard some of that shit, you know, and like, actually, and they look at it much more of like a parody relationship.
Like, I know, like, I just know that you, and I don't, this is nothing that Tucker ever told me.
I'm literally just speculating.
But like, you went at Tucker pretty hard.
I remember after the 2020 election.
Yeah.
When he was basically saying, I have not seen any evidence that this thing was stolen.
And to be fair, like, you know, you went at him in a pretty harsh way.
And so I'm just saying things like that.
Like, I think guys like me and you often feel like, well, who the fuck am I?
I'm just some guy talking shit.
Whereas like people see more than you think and they are aware of it.
Yeah.
Well, and I get that, but with Tucker in particular, the Fed, if he came out and said, I don't like that kid, that's different than saying he's a fed.
Agreed.
And he said, I know that.
And it's like, but I'm me and I know that's not true.
So how can you know something that's not true?
Like, and people don't have to believe me, but I know what I know.
And Tucker knows what he knows.
And I've been accused of being a fed by several people that I'm, I'm here to ruin libertarianism.
I'm here to do all this.
It's an amusement.
And of course, I've been accused of being on Qatar's payroll, which is like, when do they start sending the money?
I have no idea.
I'm doing everything.
Come on, guys.
So yeah, no, I get, look, and obviously that's license for you to respond more than license for you to respond.
So I understand that.
I couldn't, like, obviously I love Tucker and I love Candace.
They've just both been very good to me, but I could never tell you like, oh, you shouldn't go back.
And in fact, as I was watching it, I was like, well, Nick Linda is going to go to work here.
Because also, like, that's kind of, you know, it's, you're brawling with a brawler if you try to do that.
And so obviously I understand that that was going to be the response.
I would, I guess from my perspective, because like even what you're saying with Candace with the Frankists and stuff, like, you know, or the Bridget Macrone stuff, you know, like with a lot of this stuff, I try to be somewhat fair.
Like, I try not just to dismiss a conspiracy because it sounds crazy.
Cause like, hey, I know there's lots of crazy conspiracies that are in fact true.
But at the same time, like I said to you before, it's like, I'm just always 10 books behind.
I'm always.
There's people I love reading them who have just put out books.
still haven't gotten to like, I still haven't read Jim Bobart's new book and I want to, but it's just so much shit to fuck.
And you're like, I can't even follow you down this conspiracy rabbit hole to debunk it.
You know what I mean?
Like, I just can't.
But I would say that, you know, me personally, I would have, I would have rather Candace was just the chick who worked at Daily Wire and was like, I cannot support the slaughter of innocent people.
Like I loved, I love that she was like, I just had a baby and I'm sorry.
I'm not going to support this shit.
I thought it was so.
And to have a Daily Wire employee take that stance at the Daily Wire and then to find out that in fact, feelings do care about your facts, you know, and that she got, like, I just thought that was so valuable.
And Tucker Carlson to me, I mean, it's, and I think you could appreciate this too, right?
If you just like remove yourself from it in your personal issue, it's like, dude, our Bill O'Reilly is Tucker Carlson.
That is so fucking awesome.
Like that is so much better than having Bill O'Reilly.
You know what I mean?
And so like, and I think you would grant that like, that's fucking all like it is.
Incorporating Instead of Vanquishing00:02:49
They are important voices.
I would just hope you would kind of, like all of us have to do to some degree, it's like try our best to remove our own personal thing.
Like you slated me and go, look, what are we trying to do here?
I certainly think, as I was saying with the Jordan Peterson thing before, and I said this on a podcast at Ron Paul's birthday party, someone was interviewing me.
Clint Russell was asking me about this.
And I said like about you, I was like, look, Douglas Murray might think I shouldn't be on big shows.
Like other people might think you shouldn't be on big shows, but you know what?
You're here.
Like there's no more debate about this, Douglas Murray.
It's like, yeah, I'm as big as you without the institutional background.
So you don't get to say I don't get to be here.
And I think the same thing is true with you and the Groypers.
It's like nobody's being vanquished.
We're all here.
And in fact, what needs to happen is not vanquishing people, but incorporating.
And I think that Tucker and Candace and people like that.
Like, I just think all these voices are so important.
And I, you know what I mean?
I hope you would like kind of think about that.
And I do.
And I grant that on my show all the, even throughout these feuds, I've said they're both important and they're pushing people in the right direction.
But I think it's totally the opposite.
I think that, you know, like with Candace in particular, she, she brought me out under false pretenses and then tried to vanquish me.
I think I think that's what that was.
Or, or that was a way of putting me down or something because I had just had my biggest show ever in the middle of the war.
She invites me out the next day and her whole show is, you hate Jews for being Jewish.
You're a real racist.
You're the, and it wasn't friendly.
It was nasty.
She was nasty to me.
And then afterwards, she wouldn't let it go.
It didn't play well at all because in the interview, she goes, she goes, well, you got triggered.
I said, I don't think so.
She goes, well, people are going to, and nobody agreed.
People were furious about the paywall.
They're pissed at the way she treated me.
It was universally negative.
And she wouldn't let it go.
And then she got to come in and say, well, you lied.
The reason people didn't like it is because you lied about it.
And it's like, lady, you know, you got to take the L. You were out of pocket.
It didn't work.
It backfired.
So I could coexist with her.
I was willing to do it before.
I'd even be willing to do it now.
And the same is true with Tucker.
And I think Tucker's more rational.
Maybe he's a guy or something.
I don't know.
It does help.
It helps, you know, but I could coexist with Tucker.
It's just there need there needs to be a mutual understanding because I also represent a lot of people.
And then when they put me down, they're not just putting me down.
They're putting down that whole right-wing flank of the issue.
And I don't need everybody to agree with me.
We can, we can, I love the disagreement.
I love this conversation.
We disagreed about some things here too.
It's just when people say, you're a fed, you're a racist, F you, you shouldn't be allowed on the shows.
Mutual Understanding Needed00:07:13
You're just an asshole.
It's like I'm not an asshole.
I've been fighting for 10 years to say the stuff that many of these people just got around to saying last year.
And that's just so, yeah, it's like a little irritating when they do that to me, but I'm willing to be the bigger person.
Well, it's good.
Well, look, I mean, I think it's good.
Look, dude, I mean, all of us are trying to, you know, figure out kind of now that we're in this position, like how exactly to manage that.
And I, I think, like, kind of, as we were talking about before, it's like we're kind of we're united in our opposition to a thing, but now we have in a lot of ways.
Look, it's, it's been decentralized.
So it's not like any one of us is exactly like the mainstream guy, but like we're the mainstream media now, you know, like it's us.
It's like, I mean, honestly, like there's particularly like daytime shows, like you're lapping.
It's like me too, you know?
So it's, it's an interesting thing.
All right.
So maybe we could talk about this a little bit and really test my YouTube channel.
What do you, because I think a lot of this, I remember when we first spoke, or one of the podcasts when we first spoke, what the big controversy about you that at least, at least from what I heard from the other libertarians or whatever of the world, was the you're a Holocaust denier and that that was the cookie.
There's a clip where like a fan makes the cookie monster joke and then you like read it, like obviously laughing around and joking.
I remember people selling, sending me this and going, this is clearly like he's joking around, at least to some degree.
But then when you were criticizing me, you were talking about like me not because my family was involved, not willing to challenge.
What is your view simply like what we were saying before that it's like, look, this happened.
It was awful, but like also all of history doesn't have to revolve around this.
Also, it was in the context of a war where like 50 million people died and Europe was destroyed.
So like that.
Or are you actually saying like, this didn't happen?
The numbers are not, because this now is much with the general, whatever you want to call it.
I hate using the word anti-Semitism because it's not even a good word, but with the general kind of like hostility toward Jewish people, this does seem to be something that's like really catching fire.
And I just think is completely wrong.
Like, I think it's like Israel killed Charlie Kirk.
It's like, this just isn't actually right.
It's not actually good history.
And so anyway, I'm just curious what your thoughts are.
Well, I also, by the way, sorry, I'll let you know, but I also do recognize, I remember thinking this the last time I had you on.
There's like this weird dynamic.
I guess I feel a little freer now.
But back then, I kind of wanted to ask you about it.
But then I also realized that if you don't, you're not, you can't even say it because we'll all get fucking nuked.
So it's like a weird conversation to have, but I am curious.
For me, it was never really about the Holocaust in itself because early on, I watched a lot of documentaries like the canon of Holocaust denial documentaries and essays.
And I found a lot of the arguments compelling.
And then I saw that other people were pushing back on that.
And I have good friends of mine who are like, you know, their fellow travelers, let's say, and they adamantly insist it did happen.
And they send me blog posts and things.
And at a certain point, you sit down and say, so is this really about a World War II historicity debate or historiographical debate?
And to me, it's sort of missing the point.
To me, the Holocaust is just like, it is just a central part of the Jewish identity story, which is that if the white people get too much power, they're going to kill us all.
And that means if we don't have enough power, they're going to kill us all.
If they can critique us, they're going to kill us all.
You know, it's wrapped up.
And this has been pointed out before that more Jewish people think that the Holocaust is central to their identity than believe that believing in God is central to their identity.
And that just tells you about what Jewish identity really is and how it's political.
And so to me, what matters more, I don't know.
I think it was exaggerated.
I think it was embellished.
I don't know that six million exactly died, but I don't know.
I haven't, I'm not an expert and I don't really even care about being an expert.
To me, it's more about, like you said, I don't want this trauma imposed on me and for it to define our political order because that's really the issue.
So that part, I think, is 100% reasonable.
And in fact, as you said, that the Holocaust is more central to Jewish identity than God.
It's certainly true for non-religious Jews and even maybe for some religious Jews.
Like it is very central to Jewish identity.
And I think in unhealthy ways.
And I think absolutely you're right about this being kind of the same.
You know, I love when Darryl Cooper made this point, but it was such a perfect way to put it, but where he was like, look, the founding fathers are Martin Luther King.
And you know what I mean?
Like it's not just like, and he goes, you could test that out, like go desecrate a statue of George Washington and then go desecrate a statue of Martin Luther King and see what has more of the reaction.
And it is like, it's really like World War II and the civil rights movement have become like the American consciousness, you know, and then I think the Holocaust and World War II being the same for Jews.
And of course, the story becomes this very ahistorical, weird version of it where it's like the creation of Israel stopped the Holocaust or something like that, which is like just not at all true.
In fact, they had very similar goals, the Zionists and the Nazis at first, which is why the Zionists wanted to do business with them.
I think it was the Nazis' anti-Semitism is the only reason why that didn't happen.
But I do think it's like, and I mean, I've been down this rabbit hole a bit, but it's like, I really don't actually think it's that exaggerated.
I mean, it's probably not six million to the person, but like, I think even David Irving, I think he put it at between four and five.
Like, and that was like on the low end estimate.
And even if it's four or five, it's like, what are we even fucking talking about here?
It's all the same thing.
So I think like, and I guess in a way, because we've, we've gone for a while now, so we can, we could wrap up.
Unless there's anything that you wanted to bring up.
But I do, I will say I appreciate that I think, you know, and this isn't, I'm not even saying like, you know, because I'm sure the, you know, the part of the problem with this stuff, right, is that, at least from my perspective, is that when you're Jewish, if you, there, there is this kind of, not amongst you, I don't think, but I think maybe some of your fans, not all of them, where there's this kind of heads, you lose, tails, I win type thing where it's like, okay, so like, if there's a, a Jew who's for Israel, they go, well, of course,
and then if there's a Jew who's against Israel, it's like, well, they always control both sides of the, you know what I mean?
So it's like, no matter what you do, you're like kind of in this position where you're like, well, there's nothing I could say here other than, yes, you should hate Jews.
And it'll be like, okay, finally a good one or whatever.
But I do think that like, like we said before, we're all kind of like figuring out this new world.
We're all kind of like dealing with our newfound relevance.
You're also, you know, like, how old are you?
27.
27.
So you're kind of like, you know, you're, you're approaching your late 20s.
Dealing with Relevance00:01:49
And I do really appreciate you kind of like, like, I really appreciate it on Patch Bit David when you said like that you're like, I'm not a racialist.
I'm a Christian.
And that it's like, and that, not that you might have some racialist views, but like that being a Christian is first and foremost, like the most important part of your identity.
I would just really encourage that.
I think like that's what we need.
I really think that's like, you know, I told you when I, we spoke on the phone when we first planned this.
And I told you the video that I saw of you is like a clip that was going super viral, which you, I think, were touching on earlier today, where you were just like, where you're talking about how like a Christian just can't support killing people like this.
And you were like, and you even said you were like, look, I don't want them living here, but like we also can't support killing them over there.
And I just thought there was something really powerful about that.
It's like kind of because it's a it's a paradigm shattering thing where someone would look at this and go like wait But I've been led to believe this is like the most horrible person and he's the one who cares about this and I kind of think like I would just hope that that's in you know what I mean like that you continue kind of to push that and all that stuff I'll say I really really appreciate you coming out and traveling for this.
I know it took us it's hard.
We're both busy and so it's hard to schedule these things.
Really, really enjoyed this conversation.
I hope we do it again soon.
Me too.
Absolutely.
And thanks for having me.
And I will say just to kind of close it off, you know, what I love, I love honesty.
I like people that care about the country.
I love people.
And I think as long as that's the agreement, there won't be war.
You know, there won't be violence and we can talk and we can get along.