Erin Molan confronts Joe Rogan's Gestapo comparisons to ICE, citing DHS data showing zero U.S. citizen deportations despite 700,000 total removals since 2025. The dialogue critiques progressive figures like Ilhan Omar and Zohran Mamdani for defunding agencies or mandating universal childcare, while addressing Iran protests where Trump threatened to cancel meetings. Molan further argues that Australia's colonization legacy fosters suicidal empathy, contrasting cultural exports like Bluey against political correctness, before concluding that removing land acknowledgments is essential to stop teaching children self-loathing. [Automatically generated summary]
And this is the first time that we're meeting in person.
We've done each other's shows before, but you have become just an absolute all-star of sanity in this space.
And you really, really have.
And somehow we missed each other when I was in Australia.
I said to you right before we started, I was going, if this was six months ago, I probably would have introduced you by saying she's the Megan Kelly of Australia.
After that woman was shot, I think unfortunately, well, everything's unfortunate about it, right?
But one of the real problems is now ICE are villains.
And now people are looking at them like murderous military people that are on the streets of our city and they're masked up, which is also a problem, right?
You don't want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching people up, many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens that just don't have their papers on them.
Okay, so the reason I'm saying it's a slightly confused take is I want to give you some numbers on this.
This is from DHS.gov, USA Today, and ProPublica.
ICE arrests and deportations from 2025 to now is over 600,000.
It's about 700,000 actually.
The amount of U.S. citizens detained during that process is 170, 170, with over about 700,000 deported.
Zero U.S. citizens have been deported.
And that means that less than 0.1% of ICE arrests were U.S. citizens, most of whom were held temporarily.
There was some sort of mix-up or mistake.
And most of them, it's just a couple hours, and usually because they were interfering with some sort of ICE action.
So, on one hand, I kind of get what Rogan's saying, and I've said the same thing.
There's sort of like an optics problem here because when you have these masked guys on the streets, and I'm all for them wearing masks because their families are getting doxed and all the rest of it, but there is a bit of an optics issue about masked men on the streets kind of stopping cars.
But I think what he's confused about is that the overall numbers, no Americans are being kicked out, and nothing is perfect.
So there are going to be mistakes every now and again.
Does this whole thing, I mean, obviously, as someone that's not even from America, but you're here right now, does this whole thing seem like just like madness to you or basically right?
And I think one of the biggest promises Donald Trump made was cleaning up America and cleaning up crime and getting rid of people who, A, are not meant to be here and B, are here but commit crimes against American people.
I think he's also not really accurate when he's saying that he's talking like every American now looks at them and sees them as murderers.
I don't think he's giving enough credit to the American people.
I look at the number of people who voted for Donald Trump, which reassures me they have common sense.
And I don't think they look at what happened and say now ICE and murderers.
I think most of them would look at what occurred and say that's absolutely tragic.
That's really, really sad.
We wish no one had died.
But the fault for what occurred does not lay with ICE, in my opinion.
So I don't think that it's completely changed the way that Americans view ICE.
I think they say that was unfortunate.
But there was someone in a car that was actively trying to stop them and actively trying to hit someone and knock them over.
So, you know, I don't think most Americans now have changed their view of ICE based on what occurred last week.
As I said yesterday on the show, if I literally just parked my car in the middle of a street, forgetting ICE or anything else, and the police came up to me and then I started moving forward at the police, they would shoot me.
And even in Australia, where we don't have the kinds or the levels of crime that you have, or our police force, I mean, we were talking about Wandi recently, which I think it's just been a month since that horrific terrorist attack, the biggest one we've had.
And you look at the police reaction to that.
We don't have things like that happen regularly in Australia, if at all.
If there is even a gun drawn, that's a huge big deal for us, right?
We have intense gun laws.
Police are not used to having to confront that.
In America, the threat of violence against law enforcement, ICE police, is a massive daily thing.
So I can understand why they would be highly paranoid and on edge and alert and ready and having to act as though things could be legitimate threats against them.
Can I just say, as the only immigrant right now on this podcast who immigrated here legally, I feel much safer and better under a Donald Trump presidency than I ever did under a Biden presidency.
Just want you to hear from my mouth for what that's worth.
And then Pete pulls out one example of this Latino doctor.
I don't even know about that.
How do you deprogram the, you know, because you guys, one of the interesting things that I found in Australia was that you guys are seriously politically correct as a nation, which is so not what we think of you.
We think of you guys as crocodile Dundee and surfing and just like saying whatever you think and drinking fastas and blah blah blah.
But we suddenly found ourselves, like many Western countries, where we cancelled people.
And I made the analogy, and we'll talk about what's going on in Iran at the moment.
But, you know, a guy in a workplace in Australia could not compliment a woman on wearing a nice dress because he'd be cancelled as being a sexual predator.
Yet the same women will look at what's going on in Iran at the moment and be completely silent.
It's insane.
And I went through it as well in mainstream media and I ended up suing a publication because they called me racist because I'd referred to a joke that a football commentator had made where he couldn't pronounce a difficult islander's Pacific Islander's name.
And so we would take the mickey out of this legendary commentator because every time we go to say it, he struggled.
And one of the other commentators had this hilarious story of them being in the car and him practicing the name.
And I was labeled rape.
Like, it's insanity.
And I then became terrified to say anything.
I've clearly left that person behind well and truly now these days.
But yeah, it's insanity.
I don't know how you get it out of people.
I think exactly that is how you get it out of people.
People, you know, speak up and say, no, that's not how I feel.
And I think, you know, the more people do that, because often when you're in those environments and you're on someone's show, it's easy to just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, of course, the big thing that's happening right now is because of the shooting of the woman that put her car into drive and almost drove over an ICE agent who was in the middle of the street and they had asked her to stop because of that shooting.
Basically, all hell is breaking loose in Minneapolis right now.
Donald Trump was interviewed and asked about Renee Good.
And so today, I am glad to announce that the Congressional Progressive Caucus has adopted an official position to hold ICE accountable.
Our caucus members will oppose all funding for immigration enforcement in any appropriation bills until meaningful reforms are enacted to end militarized policing practices.
But putting that aside, the reason I think she should be denaturalized and deported is because she is using her position as a sitting member of Congress to break the laws of the country that she swore to protect.
It is the federal government's job to get these people out.
They've come to your country to hack each other with machetes, but the government did put machete boxes so that if you're about to hack someone with a machete, you can just...
Oh, but don't worry, Dave, because they're about to really, really crack down on gun laws to solve that machete issue and the terrorism issue because that's really going to help.
I think so long as the Republican Party and the Trump administration is using ICE to attack American citizens and shoot mothers in the face, I'm not willing to have a conversation with them about any other bad faith attempts to terrorize U.S. citizens.
Because also she didn't need, had this shooting not happened, it's not as if she'd be talking to Trump and trying to figure out a way to make this all work.
It's just everything is for the cause of the revolution.
And what she just said, the way she, you know, for those who are not that engaged and haven't been following, if they're just listening to that and they're thinking that ICE agents are going up to mothers in the street, you know, helpless mothers with prams just trying to shop and shooting them.
Despite the turmoil, the federal government says it is not deterred.
It is now sending hundreds more federal agents to Minnesota to protect those ICE agents, according to Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam.
And they're blaming both the news media and, quote, agitators for the chaos, claiming journalists are willfully misleading the public about Renee Nicole Goode.
Officials saying she was dangerous, not just some innocent mother of three.
Just like they say Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn't just a Maryland father.
But what do you make of that as someone that, you know, you've worked in media for a long time, that they can still get up there and do all of these linguistic tricks and confusions and think they're going to get away with it?
And obviously they do to an extent because they're on television, right?
I'm really worried about that Trump is looking for this kind of pandemonium to go on, like you just described, so that he could declare martial law or something and also cancel the midterms.
I just, I love the end bit of her, you know, her little spiel and her little enablers on either side going, and then the audience going, and she kind of finishes a bit, looks down, and just you can, you know, that feeling where everyone's clapping and she thinks she's literally just said something that, you know, is akin to Einstein.
Do you think, and it was a similar thing I was trying to figure out in my head at the Golden Globes where they actually genuinely believe that they are very important and that they're significant players on the world stage, don't they?
I don't even know what I can't even respond to that properly.
Anyway, there was a movie Awakenings about a guy who's basically in a coma and then he starts coming back to life and waking up and seeing what's happened.
It doesn't end that well for him, but he's kind of what Fetterman is.
He's like coming back online.
And the more he wakes up, the more conservative he becomes.
But do you think there is a version of something the Democrats could do that would not be over the top that we might be sympathetic to?
There's such an opportunity, given how bad beep crazy the vast majority of them are.
And this wouldn't help the Republicans at all, but for someone to actually come through and actually just be decent and sensible and appeal to, you know, not everyone loves Trump.
We know that.
There is a void there for the taking.
And I think absolutely, you know, jump on board, support what they do.
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I do want to give a shout out to our trustee director Connor here, who cuts our mics during commercial breaks, because we would really end up in a lot of trouble right now.
unidentified
Connor, you're doing a fine job and you're keeping Eric employed.
All right, so let's jump over to what's happening with Iran.
I mean, this is unbelievable, unbelievable what these decent, what these incredible human beings are doing going up against the Mullahs and the Ayatollah.
I'm going to read you first this truth social that Trump put up yesterday that we read to you.
Iranian patriots keep protesting.
Take over your institutions.
Save the names of the killers and abusers.
They will pay a big price.
I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops.
Help is on the way.
MIGA, which is obviously make Iran great again, President Donald J. Trump.
Let me just show you one image here.
This is one of the things going viral right now.
And it's a protester in Iran asking Donald Trump for help.
I mean, they're now saying that over 12,000 people have been killed.
They're really expecting over the next 24 hours for it to ramp up because the regime really is starting to shake right now and they need to send a signal.
And I think that's something that's lost a little bit in the chaos, the violence, and the tragedy because it is all of those things.
But in a positive, exciting way, we're on the edge of something absolutely phenomenal if they can hold on.
And Donald Trump is helping when he sends messages like that.
He is helping immensely to give them courage.
And they've got it in hordes, but they need hope.
And I look at what is happening right now, and there are a lot of indications that America could be about to intervene militarily.
And intervene, people get, oh, what America can do here will benefit America as much as the Iranian people and everyone else around the world.
This regime is so evil.
It has its tentacles in almost every bit of tragedy, destruction, and death globally.
They had a bounty on President Trump's head.
This is a regime who wants to kill your president, yet you still have people going, that's not America first.
No, no, helping the people of Iran is a great thing, but it's also America first.
We've seen some reports of big fueling jets that have already taken off towards the direction of Iran.
I'm seeing messages in Israeli group chats that are saying essentially bunker down, something big is coming.
We're seeing the evacuation of plenty of Americans from bases in that region.
I think we're on the edge here.
And I say absolutely go for it.
And I know not everyone wants America to get involved, but you've seen with Venezuela, we've seen other examples, and with Iran itself during the 12-day war, where you can do things that are high impact, you go in and out, that make the world of difference, and you don't lose lives on the ground.
Do you think that part of the pushback or confusion from, say, like the Tucker or hyper-libertarian crowd that wants America only and just a purely isolationist view of the world is that they just don't believe in America anymore.
Or if you're spending a lot of time in Qatar and buying house there, but we can punt that for a moment.
But they look like the argument, if I was trying to steel man their thought, it's basically, okay, well, we had all these misadventures in the Middle East.
Even Obama destabilized Libya.
Qaddafi's gone.
It's a failed state now.
Obviously, Iraq war, whatever the high hell happened in Afghanistan, a 20-year war, the longest war in American history, that the argument is, oh, we've screwed up all of this stuff.
Most of the quote-unquote Iranians you see on social media are fake.
They are Israeli bots trying to start a war.
From the Israeli press Ha'aretz, which is a completely insane banana's far-left publication there.
A large-scale digital influence campaign in Persian was underway, operated out of Israel.
The campaign promotes Pahlavi's public image and amplifies calls for restoring the monarchy.
The campaign relies on avatars, fake online personas posing as Iranian citizens on social media.
A lot of people in Iran don't want the Ayatollah in charge.
No one in Iran wants a new dictator.
Shah is the Persian word for king.
A king is a dictator with no restraints.
The reason Israel wants this is because dictators are much easier to control than a democracy.
Notice that no one is talking about Israel paying for this war nor that they want use fake accounts and fake reports to start a war that America pays for there's so much dribble in there, it's off the charts.
I just saw this as I was coming into your studio and this was a message from the Iranian foreign minister.
And when I say that, the terrorist foreign minister, part of the regime.
Israel has always sought to drag the US into wars for its own sake, but surprisingly this time they're saying the silent part out loud.
With blood in our streets, Israel explicitly boasts that it has armed protesters with live weapons and blah President Trump should know exactly where to turn to stop the killing.
I mean he's getting his talking points from the terrorist regime in Iran.
So you're telling me all of these people who are risking their lives on the street to end the oppression of the Ayatollahs and the Mullahs that they're doing this somehow for Israel?
Every single one of those people has more bravery in their finger than he has in his fat fucking head.
Sorry, but there was a time when these Hollywood woke lefty fools would have jumped at the chance to jump on board anything that was to do with, say, women, Me Too movement.
They were all over it.
Black Lives Matter, all over it.
Of course, Gazmino, all over.
Sorry, this is one of the greatest examples of courage, bravery, of people, actually not idiotic protesters in Western streets who are not giving up a thing and who would never survive a second in one of these places and would never try because they're cowards.
But sorry, not one person could give a shout out or even wear not one person at the Golden Globes.
And that's, you know, that is appalling.
He is a mouthpiece for the regime in Iran, and that is a disgrace.
Listen to this from AOL Yacobi on X. Breaking Iran International reports that after reviewing information from government insiders, IRGC members, medical personnel, and eyewitnesses, at least 12,000 people have been killed in recent protests across Iran.
And I thought we'd throw back to this video.
We've shown you this a couple times over the years.
It's from, I think, two or three years ago.
It's Saudi Prince Mohammed, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, talking about what Iran under the Ayatollah is like.
But this is again, in so many of these situations, people in the West and elitists think they know better than those at the coal face, than those on the ground, than those who have experienced it firsthand.
Like, you look at the same as Bondi, and same as so many terrorist attacks around the world, and this appeasement of these terrorist Islamic extremist regimes.
And in the West, we're like, oh, we don't want to offend or hurt feelings.
Arab states and Muslim states say no.
Indonesia, world's largest Muslim population, and I promise this is relevant.
They, under the last president, Widodo, all but eradicated Islamic extremism, the world's largest Muslim population.
And he went into power and he said, this is one of my top goals.
And he did it double-pronged with getting rid of kids who were indoctrinated and not getting rid of the children, getting rid of the indoctrination and being tough as all hell on perpetrators of this violence.
And they have all but eradicated it.
And loudly and proudly, yet in Western nations, we wouldn't even, my prime minister wouldn't even say Islamic extremism.
This is the thing.
This is a man, the crown prince, who knows this evil.
If you're kids, Starma and you see that, surely, even in your, maybe if you don't even say it to your wife, surely inside you've got to feel a little bit sick and go, oh, sweet Jesus.
unidentified
Yeah, like, surely.
Like, this is a, hey, Tony, like, this is a little off.
I want to share with all of you that I'm feeling happy because yesterday we announced that New York City is going to deliver universal child care for every two-year-old across the five worlds.
Like, I can't, I mean, of course, Mamdani and her find so much common ground.
Of course, they're like TPs in a pod.
She, I mean, my daughter was never that into her.
I actually take pride in this because even prior to her insane hatred of Israel and her one-sided, dangerous rhetoric and her selective outrage, my daughter thought she was a flog.
And I look at my daughter sometimes and I worry about not that great at dancing.
She loves it though, God bless her.
Other things, yeah, but identifying flogs, she is a great person.
unidentified
I could probably hire her because clearly I have a bad track record when she's in the house.
They did have about a month with her when they were about one and a half or so.
And we started feeling it was very brain-numbing.
You know, it was sold to everybody.
It's like, this is the thing you want to show your young kids.
But something about the repetitiveness, the way they talk, the colours, you know, she had this weird genderqueer person, you know, this one with the ring in her lip and she couldn't tell if she was a boy or a girl and she was really depressed.
But all of that aside, the fact that they get little kids to applaud for childcare, it's like, if you wanted to brainwash a generation, what would be the best thing you could do?
You would send two-year-olds to government schools.
I mean, eventually they're going to put chips in these people and it's just going to be in utero.
Let me show you one other thing out of New York City because you've been extremely outspoken about this sort of thing and then it'll connect us to some stuff happening in Australia.
But just a few days ago, outside of a synagogue in New York, here are protesters chanting, We are Hamas.
Okay, so first off, they're outside of a synagogue, so this, I guess, has a little something to do with the Jews.
They always try to pretend all their hatred of Israel has nothing to do with Jews.
But they're saying, we are Hamas, which is a real mask-off moment, because usually they dance around that and they pretend that River and Sea, even though they don't know which river and rich sea they are.
They pretend all the globalized identified, it doesn't mean anything.
This seems a little bit different now.
Also, Hamas killed 47 Americans.
So even if you don't care about Jews or you don't care about Israelis or whatever, they killed 47 Americans.
As much as I obviously hate how this would have felt for the people using that synagogue or the people around, and I'm sure Jewish people in New York would have, they watch this and think, okay, this is just another example of how unsafe my city has become.
I love this so much because finally they are telling us exactly what they think and who they are because you're exactly right.
That was the point I was going to make.
Is that for so long, even marching across the harbour bridge in Sydney, Australia, and they're saying, no, no, we're for the kids in Gaza.
We don't hate Israel.
No, we're not for Hamas.
Blah, They've always been pro-Hamas.
They have always been pro-Hamas.
At least now finally they're saying the quiet part out loud.
Because people watch that and people who believe what they believe and feel the same way watch that and go, well, they'll just go home and go to bed and do it.
So, you know, I had one clip from Australia here, but I don't even think we need to throw to it.
I just want to talk to you about what's going on in Australia right now because the morning of the Bandi shooting, you live in Sydney and you actually heard the shots from the flat or whatever.
And I look at different moments in our country post-October 7 that all contributed to an acceptability and a legitimacy to hating Jewish people and hating Israel.
And I look at the Opera House straight after October 7, where we had people chanting, gas the Jews, F the Jews, where are the Jews?
As though they were looking to hunt down Jews.
This was before Dave, an IDF boot, had hit the ground in Gaza.
unidentified
Right, you're talking about literally October 18th.
In fact, the only person that had a little run-in with authorities was a Jewish man who went out to fly a flag.
The Jewish community in Australia wanted to go there on that day to mourn, to acknowledge what had occurred.
They were traumatized.
That was meant to be their moment.
They were told to stay away by police, told to stay away, and suddenly these people came and they were okay.
They were fine to do that.
The Harbour Bridge, exactly the same thing.
Blowing up a synagogue in Melbourne, where you were.
And by the way, the Iranian regime was behind that.
There were people inside.
People could have died.
They were behind the blowing up of a synagogue in Melbourne.
So the ambassador was expelled.
We never should have had an ambassador from a terrorist organisation anyway.
So when people say, oh, why don't you care about what's happening in Australia?
Why do you keep talking about Iran?
The Iranian regime blew up a synagogue in Australia.
Their tentacles spread far and wide.
So look, I think people, again, they move on so quickly.
I feel like already we've kind of moved on.
And it's like, well, the Prime Minister wouldn't say Islamic extremism for two weeks, kept referencing right-wing violence and gun laws.
No, that was Islamic extremism that had been enabled because our country continued to make Israel the villain off the back of October 7, which is not true.
It's dangerous and it results in the deaths of innocent people.
I had Ben Habib on my show recently from Advance UK, and he announced, so he's probably Nigel Farage's biggest competitor when it comes to, you know, next leader in the UK.
And he said their first policy, culture.
He said, because nothing else matters if we don't get back to the roots of our culture and what matters.
And I look at Australia in a very similar way.
Yes, legal immigration is our big issue.
And not so much in terms of extremism, but just from basic hospitals and education and transport and kids of hard-working Australians, including immigrants, by the way, who came to our country because they wanted to escape lives that were not as rich or were dangerous or for whatever reason came to Australia to give their kids a better future.
Their kids now can't get a rental because we're too crowded.
There's too many people and we don't have the infrastructure.
We then also have been letting in people from places like we gave over 3,000 visas to Garzans after October 7, our government, to appease the Muslim vote in Australia.
And unashamedly, they weren't worried about offending.
They were like, oh, God, no, we feel sorry for the children, absolutely.
As do I, absolutely.
But there's no way we're going to risk our own people's lives or the disruption of our country by bringing in people from a place that is run by terrorists where the vast majority voted in a terrorist regime to run it.
So Australia, I think we've got to get back to what matters.
We've got to be able to wave our flag.
Australia Day is coming up.
And suddenly, you talk about being politically correct.
I remember when I was a sports host putting an Australian flag up on my Instagram.
So before I was a political commentator, when I just had to be down the line and no one wanted to know my opinion, which was fine, putting a flag up and being annihilated as being called racist and a bigot and a white supremacist.
The only place I hear the Australian anthem played, the only place in five years that I've heard it played, has been at Jewish events that I've spoken at since October 7.
They play it every single time.
Jewish Australians.
They fly our flag and they play our national anthem.
Australia needs to get back to who we are as a people, to what we value, what the people pride to us, like my grandparents and other people went and died for, went and died to preserve.
We need to get back to that Australia or we're completely screwed.
And that starts at home.
You can't rely on schools.
You can't rely on education.
You can't rely on social media.
We need to bring our kids up to love this country because if they don't love it, they're not going to fight for it.
They're not going to protect it.
They're not going to embrace it.
They're going to think, oh, we're colonising racists.
So I think it comes back to the core of who we are.
And I thought, you know, I kept saying something awful's got to happen on home soil for Australians to realize, wait a minute, this is not a faraway problem.
This is in our own backyard.
But I see the aftermath of Bondai.
It's been almost exactly a month.
And it feels like people have moved on already and it's kind of like, oh, next.
Do you think it's kind of funny that you're not, it seems to me that your number one cultural export now is bluey, which is really, instead of Miss Rachel, that's basically the thing we let the kids watch.