July 21, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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[MUSIC] | |
| All right, I'm Dave Rubin and welcome to another Friday Roundtable extravaganza. | ||
| Joining me today is the host of The Michael Knowles Show on The Daily Wire, and author of many non-New York Times bestsellers, Michael Knowles, and host of The Wright Report, and former CIA ops officer, Brian Dean Wright. | ||
| Gentlemen, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Excellent to be with you both. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| So glad to be here, brother. | ||
| Michael, I'll start with you, because do you take offense? | ||
| I mean, you've written many books. | ||
| As far as I know, they're all non-New York Times bestsellers, but in some ways I actually meant that as a compliment. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| No, I wear it as a badge of honor now. | ||
| I did not, the first time this happened to me, my book didn't have words. | ||
| So I said, okay, I'll take it on the arm. | ||
| The second time- Literally did not have words. | ||
| You wrote a book with no words and it sold, I don't know, 50,000 copies probably. | ||
| Can I break some news on your show right now? | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| So I had one book with words, my first book, My Greater Magnum Opus, without words. | ||
| I have just received word that my first, Foreign translation will now be published imminently, and it will be the Hungarian translation of Reasons to Vote for Democrats, coming out within days. | ||
| So to be clear, the book with no words will be translated into Hungarian? | ||
| They are furiously translating the spaces and the gaps into the Hungarian language, that's correct. | ||
| Let me call my friends at the CIA. | ||
| I think we can get some other languages for you. | ||
| We will bust this thing open, man. | ||
| It's going to be a huge deal everywhere. | ||
| Well, that's exactly. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's exactly why I wanted to have you both on for political insight and a little insider stuff on CIA and intelligence and all that, because that seems to be what everything has been about over the last couple of weeks between this now new the 87th Trump indictment and just all of the political stuff in these primaries that's heating up and big I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President. | ||
| yada, yada, everyone gets it. | ||
| So I thought we would start today with some Tucker Carlson stuff, | ||
| and we're gonna go through Trump and DeSantis and Pence and a whole bunch more. | ||
| But the big thing of the week was Tucker Carlson at this Blaze Forum effectively ended the career, | ||
| certainly the candidacy of former Vice President Mike Pence. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President, have you, I know you're running for president. | ||
| You are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough american tanks | ||
| Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years. | ||
| Drive around. | ||
| There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States. | ||
| And it's visible. | ||
| Our economy has degraded. | ||
| The suicide rate has jumped. | ||
| Public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased. | ||
| And yet, your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S. | ||
| tax dollars, don't have enough tanks. | ||
| I think it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern for the United States in that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it's not my concern. | |
| Tucker, I've heard that routine from you before, but that's not my concern. | ||
| I'm running for president of the United States because I think this country's in a lot of trouble. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's not his concern now. | ||
| Look, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt on Twitter. | ||
| I said he slightly misspoke because I think what he meant by it's not my concern may have been a little bit more towards the tanks in Ukraine rather than the cities of the United States of America. | ||
| But okay. | ||
| Brian, he reads to me as a 1994 primetime season five Simpsons caricature of a Republican. | ||
| I don't think it flies in 2023. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Oh, not at all. | ||
| Look, had he said something to the effect of, hey, look, I've been to Ukraine. | ||
| I've spoken to a variety of different officials there. | ||
| And what I know to be true is that the Russian government are using these Christian Orthodox leaders to manipulate the Ukrainian people. | ||
| That's why I'm concerned about, you know, the Christian leaders. | ||
| They're being used by the Russians. | ||
| He could have explained his position, but he didn't. | ||
| He just said, yeah, I talked to a guy. | ||
| There's nothing big going on there. | ||
| And then he just bumbled his answer. | ||
| So I'll tell you, you are absolutely right. | ||
| I think he pretty much ended his candidacy at that point. | ||
| What a terrible answer when we all know that this country is struggling. | ||
| What an awful way to respond. | ||
| Michael, do you see some of this as a sort of generational rift within the Republican Party? | ||
| Like, I personally happen to be more in line with Tucker. | ||
| I don't know if I'm quite totally as isolationist as I think he is, but I'm pretty much on the libertarian side of this thing. | ||
| I sense that you probably are. | ||
| That it feels like the old guard versus the new guard. | ||
| That sort of is what it boils down to in a way. | ||
| It's generational in terms of the voters. | ||
| Right now the younger voters are much more likely to be on the Tucker side of this than on the Mike Pence side, almost certainly. | ||
| But it's not generational in terms of the political figures. | ||
| Don't forget the Tucker side. | ||
| is broadly embraced by Donald Trump, who is older than anybody in America other than Joe Biden. | ||
| The Tucker side is embraced by Pat Buchanan, who is like 500 years old at this point. | ||
| The Tucker side has a long tradition on the right, and that tradition went away for the past | ||
| 30 or so years, but it's come back, and it's come back with a vengeance. | ||
| And so the people who are now articulating this view that we need to constantly be involved in wars all around the world with no particular strategic objective other than just kind of being there, they seem really out of touch. | ||
| I'm with you. | ||
| I think Pence not only misspoke, obviously, but I think he's being willfully taken out of context by people who are attacking him. | ||
| But even on that front, I get why people are doing it. | ||
| To me, it's kind of like when somebody calls someone else a racist slur. | ||
| Maybe that means that the person who's using the slur is a racist. | ||
| But very often, it doesn't. | ||
| Sometimes you call somebody a racist slur. | ||
| Someone, could you imagine, someone called me a guido or something like that, a guinea. | ||
| I don't know what they call me. | ||
| My God. | ||
| Could you imagine? | ||
| Very often, people would not do that. | ||
| Because they hate Italian people. | ||
| Very often, they will use that kind of a slur because they don't like me. | ||
| And so they'll just, because they don't like me already, they're just going to attack me any way they can. | ||
| And I kind of think that's what's going on with Pence here. | ||
| I don't think people really believe that Mike Pence says, the American interest is not my concern. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| I think they don't like Pence already. | ||
| They don't like him for whatever he's done in his career. | ||
| They don't like him for the vision that he's presenting for the country. | ||
| And so they're just going to attack him any way. | ||
| It's just, It's moving in the opposite direction of what the critics are saying right now, but the end result is the same. | ||
| The Pence campaign just looks dead in the water. | ||
| Right, and then at that point, just because of the way the internet works now, it doesn't matter if the rest of the half hour with Tucker is 99% on point, that's the clip that's gonna go and the rest of it is irrelevant. | ||
| I'm not saying that it was, but that's just sort of the nature of the internet. | ||
| Brian, why do you think Pence is even running? | ||
| I genuinely do not know one person that is a Mike Pence for president supporter. | ||
| I know a lot of people in politics. | ||
| Well I think that there are probably a couple candidates who fall into that, Asa Hutchinson might be another one. | ||
| There are folks that really don't have a base of support in this country and frankly haven't really put forward a good, compelling argument why they're there. | ||
| I think Pence, in his mind, thinks that he's the adult in the room. | ||
| And so he's going to be this sort of Reagan-esque figure that's going to stand up, take the Republican Party back from sort of its insanity, as he would say, and You know, take this country in a different and better direction, much like Reagan did. | ||
| But times have changed. | ||
| This isn't, you know, 1980 or 1988. | ||
| The country's changed. | ||
| The Republican Party has changed. | ||
| We are in a much, I think, angrier country. | ||
| I think if you look at a lot of the polling, folks say we are on the wrong track. | ||
| We want a very different set of people in the United States White House and the Congress. | ||
| But also, more importantly, I think that the administrative state we call the deep state, people understand that this country is not working. | ||
| And they want a little bit of spit on that fastball when we have politicians talking about changing it. | ||
| And Pence is like that fellow who's had maybe two or three shots, although he doesn't drink. | ||
| He sits down and he tells us, you know, how he's going to fix the country in this very calm way. | ||
| And I don't think too many people want that. | ||
| I think we want a little more firebrand to reflect the moment of people being very upset and very angry about the direction of the country. | ||
| The best I can think of or come up with, I guess, related to Pence running is that he wants to somehow remove the stain of whatever he thinks the ending with Trump was, and he thinks this is the way to do it. | ||
| But I don't know that that fully jives. | ||
| But, Knowles, I know you haven't taken a full position on the Trump-DeSantis thing. | ||
| You like certain things about both of them. | ||
| I guess dislike certain things about both of them. | ||
| But I think Trump really missed an opportunity to show up there and sit down with Tucker, a guy who he really aligns with on a lot of stuff. | ||
| Tucker obviously likes Trump on the Ukraine stuff. | ||
| They're almost completely eye to eye. | ||
| Do you think he missed an opportunity there? | ||
| Because it would have been good. | ||
| And by the way, to Tucker's credit, I think he probably would have hit him on some things that maybe they don't see eye to eye on. | ||
| He missed a little bit of opportunity, he missed a little bit of potential upside, but he sidestepped a lot of downside. | ||
| And so I think it was probably a smart move for Trump not to show up. | ||
| I think it was smart for Chris Christie not to show up. | ||
| I'm the last person in America who's still waiting on the Chris-issance, you know, the Chris-issance to come up. | ||
| But Christie's got whatever he's got, 3% call it. | ||
| And Christie knew that if he showed up, there's maybe a small chance he could have increased that to 5%, but there's a big chance he could have sent it down to 0%, like Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence did. | ||
| And so Christie avoided it, and then he mouthed off about it later on on the Sunday shows. | ||
| Trump had a similar strategy. | ||
| Trump right now is about 30 points up in the field. | ||
| He stands to gain a little bit, but he also opens himself up to a huge amount of risk, even with Tucker, who is broadly allied with him. | ||
| But we know from those Fox News Dominion texts that Tucker has complained about Trump before, that Tucker has criticized Trump. | ||
| And so if the polls were tighter, I think Trump would have had to show up. | ||
| Now he didn't. | ||
| Ron DeSantis showed up. | ||
| He did himself a lot of good. | ||
| I think he really performed very well. | ||
| I think Nikki Haley actually performed pretty well also, though she's much further down in the polls. | ||
| But this is the trouble right now for the state of the field, and especially if you're Ron DeSantis. | ||
| Everybody is playing this safe. | ||
| Trump is playing it safe. | ||
| DeSantis's campaign, in many ways, is playing it safe. | ||
| Vivek Ramaswamy is probably the only guy who's not playing it safe, and it's why you're seeing a lot of movement on his numbers. | ||
| The other candidates, probably not even worth a mention, because they're just all stuck down there in single digits. | ||
| And so the problem, especially for DeSantis, is if he continues to play it safe, Trump's the nominee. | ||
| Barring an indictment, and frankly, even with an indictment, probably he could be the nominee. | ||
| So they've got to do something, because If everyone just keeps playing according to the rule book right now, the race is over. | ||
| Yeah, by the way, I agree with that to a certain extent. | ||
| I don't know about over, but I agree with that to a certain extent. | ||
| He's got to kind of do some new things. | ||
| So he did go on Tapper yesterday. | ||
| He's going on Megyn Kelly. | ||
| That took a long time to happen. | ||
| I think he should go on Rogan. | ||
| I think he should go on The View, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| But Donald Trump did not do nothing that weekend. | ||
| He did go to the big Turning Point annual conference. | ||
| And here's a bit of his speech. | ||
|
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That was only the beginning. | |
| With your support in 2024, we are going to put America first like never before, and we are going to finish the job that we so successfully started. | ||
| You know, many people, it was four years, but many people say it was one of the most successful presidencies ever. | ||
| Some people say it was the most successful presidency. | ||
| When I get back into the Oval Office, I will totally obliterate the deep state. | ||
| They will be obliterated. | ||
| I don't know, some of it, again, I voted for him and I like him in a lot of respects. | ||
| It's just, it's starting to seem like this rerun that I've seen a million times before. | ||
| But Brian, this concept of that he'll get the deep state this time, look, he did a pretty freaking good job as president, especially those first two and a half years. | ||
| But in the end, he did award Fauci on the way out. | ||
| The deep state seemed to have gotten him. | ||
| As a former three-letter guy in the CIA, do you think he knows what he's up against? | ||
| Does anyone really know what he's up against? | ||
| Well, I don't think- Or any of these guys. | ||
| Yeah, fair. | ||
| Look, I think in 2016, he certainly didn't know. | ||
| I think the folks around him didn't have any understanding of how bad it was going to be. | ||
| And then he was basically thrown into the wood chipper by these guys at the FBI, the agency, and others. | ||
| And so I think that he's been pretty burned pretty heavily. | ||
| I think everybody in the country knows how bad those organizations have got. | ||
| Those mid-level, those senior-level individuals, the James Comeys, the Christopher Rays now. | ||
| We've got some more reports from inspector generals and special counsels. | ||
| That said, these guys are out to no good. | ||
| So I think that there is now a wind at his back for the conversation that the country has to have, and has been having, that we need some pretty serious reform, and we need to toss a lot of folks out of office. | ||
| So the real question is going to be, does he have the support on Capitol Hill to do that? | ||
| That's going to be, I think, something I'll be looking for certainly the next day after we all vote. | ||
| Who controls the House and the Senate? | ||
| Because that power of the purse is going to be very important. | ||
| I know that he's looking at, and his team are looking at, executive orders to toss out a lot of mid-level folks at their will or their whim. | ||
| Maybe they'll be able to do that. | ||
| I think it's called Schedule F or something. | ||
| At any rate, the point is, you know, they're looking at doing what they need to do to clean the joint up. | ||
| It's got to be done. | ||
| I think most of us now understand that. | ||
| Does he have the congressional, you know, backing to do that, particularly with Power of the Purse? | ||
| That's the part that I think really that will shape this whole conversation. | ||
| Can he actually do what he's saying he wants to do? | ||
| Michael, putting aside the power of the purse and whether the Republicans have Congress and Senate and all the stuff, do you think he can staff with the right people that can do this thing? | ||
| I mean, that's what I'm actually... Look, I have said this a million times, even though I obviously am supporting DeSantis. | ||
| If at the end of this, If Trump is president and DeSantis is my governor, I will be fine. | ||
| I guarantee you I will be fine and I will gladly vote for Trump and that will be it. | ||
| My concern with the Trump presidency at this point, though, is that he will get there and nobody is going to want to work for him for good reason. | ||
| Personnel has been a problem for Trump. | ||
| He's had some real stars, but by his own admission, he's had some real plunkers in there. | ||
| And so my most out-of-the-box thought, if the polls remain as they are, if Trump becomes the nominee... I know a lot of people are saying DeSantis should be VP. | ||
| I think we both know neither of those guys are gonna go for that arrangement. | ||
| That's not happening. | ||
| At the very least, DeSantis as chief of staff would not be the worst idea. | ||
| Because the real shining mark for DeSantis here is he knows personnel and he knows how to wield power. | ||
| And he's done it on a smaller stage in Florida. | ||
| But that would be the thing that Trump is talking about right now. | ||
| How do you wield power on the personnel? | ||
| And the issue is the deep state, depending on how you count the bureaucracy, | ||
| just employees for the federal government, is like two million people. | ||
| It is just so many, many people. | ||
| Even under the umbrella of the DHS, you're talking about a quarter million people. | ||
| And so in order to make substantial change in there, you would have to switch out 40 to 50,000 people | ||
| just to start to get the engine and machinery moving in the right direction again. | ||
| An ordinary president swaps out four to 5,000 people. | ||
| So we're talking about a drop in the bucket. | ||
| And Trump doesn't really need to prove anything right now, I guess, because he's so far up in the polls. | ||
| But if those numbers start to decline and if a number two candidate starts to get a little bit closer, then I think the biggest thing Trump is going to have to prove is how he can get a sufficient number of people to say nothing of the sufficient quality of people into those positions to actually take back The deep state and so far we haven't really seen that plan. | ||
| Yeah, for the record, I think there's no chance in hell DeSantis leaves Florida to go be Chief of Staff or Attorney General or anything like that. | ||
| It's the most powerful position in the world, but you're probably right. | ||
| Yeah, but I also think that's why what Trump did with Kayleigh McEnany was so bad, because it was like she was such an obvious all-star for him. | ||
| It's one thing you go after Christopher Wray and Comey. | ||
| Nobody cares about those, like those types of DC people, swamp people. | ||
| But Kayleigh, it was just too much of an all-star to go after. | ||
| But all right, we'll leave Let's leave it at that. | ||
| Let's move on to what I think we're all going to completely defend Trump on, which is another freaking indictment this week. | ||
| Another week, another indictment. | ||
| We've got some info from the Daily Wire. | ||
| You know these people, Knowles? | ||
| Have you ever heard of them? | ||
| I've heard of them. | ||
| I've passed them in the hallway sometimes, but yeah. | ||
| All right, here we go. | ||
| Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday he's been informed by special counsel Jack Smith that he is a criminal target of a Washington, D.C. | ||
| grand jury investigating his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. | ||
| Trump announced on Truth Social that he got a target letter Sunday night in which Smith's office offered him the opportunity to appear before the grand jury this week. | ||
| The development indicates another indictment could be on the way, although it does not say what charges Trump would face. | ||
| Brian, this strikes me as the swampiest swamp stuff ever. | ||
| There's obviously going to be more of these, by the way. | ||
| We know something's coming in Georgia. | ||
| I don't know what they're going after here, what the indictment's for. | ||
| I mean, we know Trump was saying, be peaceful, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| But here we are. | ||
| Look, at this point, fundamentally, I think the American people are looking at their Department of Justice and asking the question, do I trust that the DOJ or that the FBI, do I trust that they will do their job without fear or favor, that they're going to be nonpartisan? | ||
| And at this point, I think most of us have decided, well, if you look at the polls, they believe that Biden and his family have gotten preferential treatment. | ||
| So the DOJ and the Bureau's cases, Just don't stand up to that smell test. | ||
| Most Americans just don't support it. | ||
| The partisans, you know, particularly on the left, they're going to just embrace it because they hate Trump. | ||
| But it is wildly dangerous. | ||
| I think it's very clear that this DOJ is out of control. | ||
| We have more IRS agents who are stepping up as whistleblowers, you know, confirming that. | ||
| And I think that this just puts more wind at the back of Trump and his claim that he's being persecuted and prosecuted for partisan reasons. | ||
| And it helps him make the case to the American people that we've got to clean the joint up. | ||
| We can probably debate whether or not he's going to be able to do that, particularly with the deep state, or ejecting, as Noel's just said, 40-50,000 people. | ||
| But he has the principle at his back and at his side to say, yes, I am the persecuted. | ||
| They're coming for me, and then they're coming for you. | ||
| Michael, call me a conspiratorial cynicist, but is it possible that these indictments keep coming because that's what's keeping Trump in the news and the machine wants Trump as the nominee? | ||
| We know that every time one of these comes down the pike, his numbers go up. | ||
| That seems to be the thing that keeps the numbers afloat. | ||
| Well, there are two reads on it. | ||
| One is, yeah, the media want Trump because they think they can beat Trump, and the liberal establishment wants that, that's why they keep indicting him. | ||
| The other one is, they see him as a genuine threat, that's why they tried to undermine his administration, that's why they changed all the election rules in 2020, and so they're doing it really to harm him in the race. | ||
| Either way you read it, the difficult fact for Governor DeSantis and for the other candidates is It just makes the race about Trump. | ||
| And we can pull our hair out about that, and we can say, well, it shouldn't be about Trump, it should be about this issue or that issue. | ||
| But in war and in politics, your enemy gets a say. | ||
| And so they're playing their card, and they're saying that this is all about Trump. | ||
| And this indictment, by the way, is more egregious than the other ones. | ||
| When they go after him for some fantasy that a lunatic lady made up about Bergdorf Goodmans, when they go after him for the mementos he kept from the White House, when they go, whatever. | ||
| It's unprecedented, but it's crazy. | ||
| This one, however, is there saying that because he contested the results of the election, he's committed some kind of a felony. | ||
| This is not without precedent. | ||
| In 1876, you had a hotly contested race between Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, Sam Tilden, the Democrat. | ||
| This came down to a backroom deal between the Republicans and the Democrats. | ||
| Hayes gets the election. | ||
| The Republicans pull out of the South for Reconstruction. | ||
| It was a constitutional crisis, though, and they came up with a grand bargain here. | ||
| This is not unprecedented, but at extreme moments of hotly debated races, as you had in 2020 when they changed all the election rules, what the Democrats are saying now is, we are going to criminalize politics. | ||
| We are going to criminalize raising questions about an election, particularly a really radical one. | ||
| That threatens not just Trump, not just the Republican Party, That threatens the whole electoral system that we have. | ||
| And by the way, how many Democrats and the entire freaking corporate press were questioning | ||
| the results of the election when Trump won the first time? | ||
| Or how many Democrats were on the record saying that George W. Bush was an illegitimate president | ||
| because of Bush v. Gore and all that stuff? | ||
| But I thought there was an actual nice moment of politics this week related to Trump and | ||
| DeSantis, which is kind of rare these days. | ||
| This was at a DeSantis event a couple days ago in South Carolina. | ||
| A Trump voter, a previous Trump voter, after listening to DeSantis. | ||
| And I think there's something to this. | ||
|
unidentified
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I was invited to come today to listen to you by this gentleman, Representative Moss. | |
| I'm a very hardcore Trump supporter, but I know He made me stop and think a minute because my love for President Trump comes from all the despair, all the things that he's been through, has served as our President of the United States, and he did a good job. | ||
| But all the things I'm thinking more with my heart and my sorrow and my love for him and for this country. | ||
| But now I have this is the most important vote that we're going to have. | ||
| And I have to think more with my mind and what's best for this country. | ||
| And you did an excellent job. | ||
| And I certainly God bless you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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[applause] | |
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| [APPLAUSE] | ||
| And, you know, I agree with you. | ||
| I appreciate what President Trump did. | ||
| How they treated him with things like Russia collusion was a disgrace. | ||
| And he was treated wrong. | ||
| He was treated in ways that were unconstitutional. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| The question for us now is what are we going to do about it? | ||
| And we need to end the weaponization of government. | ||
| I will get that done. | ||
| It's not about me, it's about you. | ||
| It's about me standing up for you and standing up for this Constitution and restoring this country to what the Founding Fathers envisioned. | ||
| And we will get it done. | ||
| We will be focused, we will be disciplined, and we will make it happen. | ||
| Michael, let me start with you on that one. | ||
| I thought it was a nice moment because I thought that that woman in a very emotional way captured what a lot of people feel right now, which is there's a huge appreciation for Trump. | ||
| He doled out more red pills than any of us could for the rest of our lives, all of that kind of thing. | ||
| And then she's saying, but I, but I sort of feel like moving on. | ||
| And that DeSantis then basically was like, I appreciate him too. | ||
| I think I'm the guy. | ||
| And to me, that's true. | ||
| I get primaries. | ||
| We're all going to shred each other. | ||
| But to me, that strikes the tone that I actually think most people want to hear. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| It was a great moment. | ||
| The whole event was really good for DeSantis, even in the way that he reacted to the news of the indictment. | ||
| And he was reacting on the fly, but he did so in a way that was gracious and Still has this problem, though, which is, we're all still talking about... It's still about Trump, yeah. | ||
| It's all still about Trump, so I think it was really good, and the thing he struck on that really could resonate and really could be a new path for his campaign is if he taps into what Trump did in 2016, which is, it's not about me, it's about you. | ||
| Hillary says I'm with her, I say I'm with you, and you just totally take that ego out of it, you take that personality out of it. | ||
| That can be really charming and persuasive and offer a choice, not an echo. | ||
| If DeSantis continues to run his Trump 2.0 bigger, better, faster, stronger, he's gonna lose. | ||
| Because even if new Coke tastes better than old Coke, people want old Coke. | ||
| They want the OG. | ||
| If DeSantis really strikes this difference, and you see him starting to do that in this answer, then maybe you've got a real alternative, and then you've maybe got a viable path to the nomination. | ||
| Yeah, what do you think about that, Brian? | ||
| That makes sense to me. | ||
| Well, I think that's very smart. | ||
| I would also add one thing. | ||
| That beautiful woman, I think, represents something very important that I think if a candidate could capture and spread this message, that so many of us feel so disheartened, so disillusioned, that either we want to just be reflexive with our emotions or we just want to give up. | ||
| And what she did in that moment is say, actually, I'm still here thinking with my mind. | ||
| I still want to be reasonable. | ||
| I want to be thoughtful. | ||
| And that's very inspirational, I think, for a lot of people who have given up or just want to think, or not think, rather, and just embrace their heart and their emotions. | ||
| So what a cool moment that that was for so many people who I think have this sort of dispirited feeling in this country. | ||
| She really, I think, stood up for a lot of folks who have given up, and that's a cool message that I think a lot of candidates should really embrace, is we need more of that. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Yeah, and that's why I wanted to show it for the second time this week, because it's like we all repeatedly show somebody getting owned and demolished and destroyed, and perhaps, perhaps there is another way out of this thing. | ||
| But let's jump over to the guy on the other side who ain't being treated that well by the corporate press and the mainstream media and everybody else. | ||
| Actually, they're treating him like one of us. | ||
| Yes, I'm talking about RFK Jr. | ||
| I had him on the show a couple days ago, and we talked about conspiracy theories and slow-motion reality and time-release | ||
| truth and all that stuff. | ||
| I asked people to come up with some of your dangerous ideas and nobody seems to really know what they are, | ||
| but that doesn't stop the New York Times. | ||
| Yeah, all of my conspiracy theories, as it turns out, have come true. | ||
| They're no longer theories. | ||
| They're, you know, they're now proven hypotheses. | ||
| But I do wonder about it. | ||
| I, you know, I was thinking about this this morning, because that this kind of this hailstorm of negative publicity about me really kind of odd. | ||
| It goes beyond like hit pieces to be just this, you know, poisonous vitriol. | ||
| That it's coming from all the legacy media, from the Atlantic Monthly, from New York Magazine, New Yorker, from the Washington Post, and the New York Times, from Vanity Fair, and they all kind of use the same talking points, and they also are not accurate. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons it doesn't trouble me, is because it's just inaccuracies and distortions. | ||
| Brian, it seems like he's just getting a dose of what Republicans have been getting a dose of for a long time. | ||
| Yeah, so here's what's so fascinating to me about this. | ||
| You know, we talked earlier about how Trump didn't show up because at some level he didn't want to punch down. | ||
| He's so far ahead. | ||
| Biden and his team, and frankly those around him, they're punching, as it were, down. | ||
| They're trying to take this guy out, even though he is dramatically behind in the polls, if you believe most of them. | ||
| So the point is that they actually view him as a threat. | ||
| There's something about him that is very frightening to the Democrat Party. | ||
| So that, to me, I think is perhaps the most interesting development over the past week or so, which is this guy is resonating at some level that scares the living crap Out of the Biden campaign and other Democrats. | ||
| To me, there's something else going on here that he's tapping into. | ||
| And I think that that's really important to acknowledge. | ||
| Michael, you debate Democrats all the time and go to college events where you often open up the floor. | ||
| I do it, too. | ||
| I always say, if you disagree with me, you come up first. | ||
| You do that stuff all the time. | ||
| I know it's getting harder and harder to find sort of legit people to debate with. | ||
| The fact that this guy is obviously not going to be allowed on the stage with Biden, they're never going to have a primary in the first place. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| But further in the conversation, I said to him, are you in any contact With the Democratic Party, the DNC. | ||
| No. | ||
| That was the answer. | ||
| One word. | ||
| No. | ||
| Does that tell you all you need to know about the Democrats? | ||
| The Republicans, for all their faults, when Trump was the renegade in 2015, they didn't stop him. | ||
| He ran right through and took over. | ||
| The Democrats are full on stopping the renegade. | ||
| And by the way, they've done this before. | ||
| Cue Bernie Sanders. | ||
| And think about who the renegade is. | ||
| The renegade is a Kennedy. | ||
| He's Jack Kennedy's nephew, Bobby Kennedy's son. | ||
| He's, in his own right, a major figure on the left for the past 30, 40 years now. | ||
| But because he contradicts their narrative on a few issues, and more importantly, because he threatens their power, now the guy's totally out. | ||
| Forget about what the DNC is saying about him and Biden. | ||
| Look at what his own sister says about him. | ||
| Bobby Kennedy is filmed at a dinner Mentioning a scientific theory. | ||
| What does he say? | ||
| He says, there's a fear now that there are ethnically targeted bioweapons, which is just true. | ||
| That's been written about in magazines for years. | ||
| And he says, and there is a theory about COVID that it's harsher on certain races than it is on other races. | ||
| Also true, you can look up the scientific paper. | ||
| All the man is saying is there is a theory, which you can read in a scientific paper that was published a couple of years ago, that this has different effects with different genetic backgrounds. | ||
| He is called an anti-Semite. | ||
| A vile racist by not only the White House, his own sister, Carrie Kennedy. | ||
| It reminds you that on the Democrat side, on the left broadly, there is no more important tie than political convenience and that includes immediate family. | ||
| And by the way, if you think that COVID was some grand conspiracy by the Jews, Israel got vaxxed more than anybody and they're probably, and sadly will probably pay the price when it comes to vaccine injuries and everything else. | ||
| But let's leave that one there and shift to the elderly gentleman pretending to be president. | ||
| Of course, I'm talking about Joe Biden. | ||
| Don't worry about Joe. | ||
| That's at least what Nancy Pelosi say in these days. | ||
| He's now, it's grandfatherly. | ||
| He's mostly grandfatherly and we should appreciate that. | ||
| I want to ask Speaker Pelosi about 2024. | ||
| You talked a lot about President Biden's successful presidency so far. | ||
| All the points on the board. | ||
| It's a long list. | ||
| I think arguably, objectively, one can say he has accomplished a great deal. | ||
| Maybe even historic proportions. | ||
| But there's the question I have for you as a honoree on the very first 50 over 50 list with Forbes and Know Your Value. | ||
| A lot of people are talking about the president's age as a factor in this, especially Republicans. | ||
| What do you make of the criticism the president is getting that he's too old to have a second term? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think the president should embrace his age, his experience, the knowledge that he brings to the job. | |
| Putting aside Nancy Pelosi for just a moment, the way that Mika is tickling his old balls, I'm sorry for the imagery, could really make you barf. | ||
| Oh, you like that one? | ||
| The slobbering she did on it. | ||
| Don't like that one. | ||
| They're a little more uptight over there at the Daily Wire. | ||
| But don't take my word for any of it. | ||
| People might be watching going, Dave, you're always hitting him on his age. | ||
| It's just too much. | ||
| Well, Biden did manage to fall asleep while talking to the Israeli president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We brought Israelis and Palestinians together at a political level. | |
| And as I affirmed... The issue is not the age. | ||
| The issue is not the age. | ||
| I'm with Aristotle. | ||
| I think age and maturity, that's good. | ||
| With age comes wisdom. | ||
| Reagan was old. | ||
| Trump is old. | ||
| The problem is that the man doesn't function. | ||
| He was never the sharpest tool in the shed going back to 1972 when he entered the Senate. | ||
| And things have gotten dramatically worse in recent years, even since he left the Obama White House. | ||
| And you just see it absolutely everywhere. | ||
| It's constantly on show. | ||
| So the libs have tried to resurrect this idea of a virile Biden. | ||
| They used to do it with dark Brandon memes. | ||
| Now they're doing it with this leak, this leaked report to Axios. | ||
| That Biden, he's yelling at his staff and he gets into the weeds on the details on all the policies. | ||
| It's total BS. | ||
| The guy is asleep. | ||
| The guy's not only asleep most of the time, he's asleep most of the time that we see him on camera. | ||
| So he's declining cognitively and in the polls. | ||
| This is also why you see a Gavin Newsom waiting there in the wings. | ||
| The question right now is who's going to decide the nominee first, the Republican Party or the Democrats? | ||
| Yeah, I think that's well said. | ||
| Brian, what do you make of this? | ||
| I agree with Michael. | ||
| This is not making fun of someone because of their age. | ||
| He could be five years older, and if he was competent, even if I disagreed with him, this would not be about age. | ||
| This is about literally falling asleep in front of the president of another country. | ||
| This is a problem. | ||
| Yeah, so look, as Commander-in-Chief, your preeminent role in this country, and in fact in the world given what we are as a nation, is to protect and defend. | ||
| And let's think about this from the perspective of our foreign adversaries, China, Russia, others, | ||
| even our allies in Europe, they're looking at this guy and they're saying, | ||
| I don't know if he's gonna make it to tomorrow. | ||
| The age issue really is, as Noel just said, it's a cognitive concern. | ||
| And my fear is that a president Xi of China, who was talking about taking back Taiwan by 2027, | ||
| he looks at a very weak United States, a very weak commander in chief, | ||
| knowing that we are knee deep, if not neck deep in Ukraine, we are low on things like, you know, Stinger missiles | ||
| or some of our 155 artillery and they strike. | ||
| Alright, that is the reality here. | ||
| When we have a compromised Commander-in-Chief, whether it be his son, or all those shenanigans, or his cognitive abilities, this really matters to have a sharp person in the White House, and we don't got that. | ||
| Knowles, can I give you another conspiracy theory that we can end on? | ||
| I want both of your takes on this one, which mine is that they obviously know something's wrong with him. | ||
| He's being drugged. | ||
| There's simply no doubt about it. | ||
| Doctors, some staffers, there's a certain closed amount of people that know something. | ||
| And it seems to me at some point someone is going to say something because it will have gotten to the point one way or another that it will be so bad that not everyone will want to be taken down by this thing. | ||
| Whether it's a low-level staffer who saw something go on or a piece of paper that has the medication list or whatever, he's snorting Adderall or cocaine or whatever, this cannot last forever and it will break. | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| I mean, listen, some people really deny till they die. | ||
| We didn't figure out that LBJ stole the 1948 Senate race until like 1991. | ||
| So these political secrets can last for a long time. | ||
| The worst aspect of this is not that something is being hidden or something might come out. | ||
| The more depressing aspect is, let's say it came out tomorrow and let's say Biden were | ||
| still up in the polls. | ||
| Would anybody care? | ||
| Let's say it came out that this guy was being drugged left and right. | ||
| He's got 10 different types of cognitive decline. | ||
| Would the Democrats care? | ||
| I think they already knew that in 2020. | ||
| I think they all knew he was on the decline, but as long as they can affix him to marionette strings and have a semi-warm body sitting in the Oval Office from which they can get their judges, get their apparatchiks, get their policies through, I just don't think they care. | ||
| Yeah, that's probably right. | ||
| You think because they're all gonna be like, oh shit, you know who the VP is? | ||
| We're in a lot of trouble here. | ||
| Brian, bring us home. | ||
| My goodness gracious, I tell you what, What an era, what a time to live in right now. | ||
| We have a compromised president on multiple levels. | ||
| We got parties who are busted and broken. | ||
| We have a corporate press who doesn't give a darn about much of anything other than making money in their pride and egos. | ||
| It's a tough time, so this election's a big one. | ||
| It's an important one, a local level, state level, federal. | ||
| We got a lot of work to do. | ||
| We got a lot of stuff broken, but we can do it. | ||
| Like that lady said, talking to Governor DeSantis, like she wants to think with her head and her heart, so that's a good thing. | ||
| That gives me hope. | ||
| Strong finish for the newest podcaster out of the three of us. | ||
| I have to say, that was quite a finale of the show. | ||
| Brian, Michael, I thank you guys. | ||
| You're welcome back anytime. | ||
| Of course, links to your stuff right down below. |
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