Dave Rubin and Nick Shirley investigate Senator John Fetterman's defiance of Democrats, LA hospice fraud involving luxury cars, and NYC Mayor Zorhan Mamdani's controversial estate tax hike. The discussion spans Iran's nuclear program, AI's dual role in extending life versus threatening employment, and the rise of ideologically aligned podcasts challenging mainstream media integrity. Ultimately, the episode argues that political polarization risks consuming families while urging listeners to demand unbiased fact-checking tools amidst shifting economic optics. [Automatically generated summary]
I have to say, in some sense, it's kind of old hat playing clips at this point of Fetterman being sane, right?
Because he's mostly sane.
By the way, he did not vote for the latest round on the SAVE Act.
So he still is a Democrat and still misses things for sure.
But I think he said something that was kind of interesting there.
You know, it's like, we're from different parties, but perhaps we have some views that overlap.
And that's the way politics used to be.
I'm not saying politics 20, 30, 40 years ago was just great all the time.
Maybe there were all sorts of bad things and deals being cut all the time and grifters and all of this stuff.
That's certainly possible.
And in some sense, it's probably likely, right?
But in the old days, not too long ago, most of the people in government pretty much liked America, understood that we had to have a border, understood you had to have fair elections, wanted to have healthy debate on important things like abortion or like foreign policy, et cetera, et cetera.
And now it's the Democrats that seemingly are unable to do it.
So as Fetterman points out, he's the only guy that stood up and applauded for Rubio during the State of the Union.
Not only that, when Trump asked the whole chamber, hey, stand up if you're here for the people of the United States more than you're here for the people that are illegal, Fetterman was the only one that stood up on their side on that too.
Should be noted that Rubio, who was a senator for many, many years, doing a great job here in Florida, during his confirmation for Secretary of State, he got 99 yays and zero no's on the Senate vote.
So even the Democrats who now hate the guy, and think about why do they hate him?
He's calmly explaining what American foreign policy is.
They all voted for him because they knew there wasn't a way.
They couldn't get him on being evil or corrupt or any of the things.
So they had to vote for him.
And now what they don't like about Rubio, the truth in the end, is that they don't like Rubio because he's effective at his job and they don't want an effective Republican.
One more from Fetterman here, just talking about how crazy the Dems have gone.
You know, it's interesting because, look, a lot of his thought process is a little screwy, or at least his ability to get it out, you know, kind of in a functional way.
But I'm not mocking him for that or anything else.
What you have right there, actually, I'm going to credit him for it in some sense, because what you have right there is a guy who's kind of sitting back in that chair.
And you can tell he's just telling you what he thinks.
And what have I been telling you about Trump over the last however long at this point?
What is so good about Trump right now is he's just telling you what he thinks at the highest possible level.
And think if you were to sit down, think about the, forget the content for just a second.
If Sean Hannity was to sit down with Gavin Newsom, the slick, overly performative, ridiculous way of mannerisms and speaking and everything else, or any Democrat, if it was, if it were anyone, well, Bernie, I would say, Bernie is Bernie.
But if you were the rest of them, the performative ridiculousness of Ilhan, of AOC, of all of them, of Chuck Schumer, who will say one thing from five years ago in the complete reverse.
Now, so there's Federman basically being like, look, I'm just going to tell you what I think.
It is what it is.
And I hate to tell him, but as the years go by, he will continue to have those comfortable, enjoyable, pleasant conversations with hardcore right-wingers like Sean Hannity, and he will have less and less of them with the Democrats.
But again, he did not vote for the SAVAC.
So it's not like he fully is on board everything, but I think occasionally you got to give credit where credit is due.
One place that credit is due, absolutely, is this kid, Nick Shirley, who, you know, he is the one who had one of these.
My God, he had a phone in a dream and he was able to put it all together.
He went to Minnesota.
He is the one that uncovered the entire Minnesota Somali fraud scheme as it related to these learing centers, also known as learning centers, unless you get an education at a Somali learning center, in which case it's spelled Learing Center.
And then he started over the last little bit, he has started to aim some of his iPhone shenanigans over at some of these Los Angeles hospices.
You may remember about two weeks ago, we played a video of Dr. Oz who went to some of these Los Angeles hospices and was trying to figure out what's going on here, these places where they say they have dozens and dozens of patients, you know, hospice.
This is end-of-life care.
Those people are there.
You know, they should be there.
They're not out playing pickleball, right?
But they're not there.
And most of these places are boarded up and there's nobody there.
There's one person there who won't answer the door.
Anyway, Shirley went right into virtually the same exact places that Dr. Oz was at.
And just watch the fraud that is going to be uncovered in Los Angeles, as Dr. Oz pointed out, is going to make Minnesota fraud look like nothing.
So it's mostly hospices that he's looking into, but also some child care stuff.
I mean, look at that building itself.
Like that is a dilapidated old-ass LA building.
I used to live in the valley around a lot of these kind of, this is like karate kid Resida, you know, 1984 buildings that haven't been touched since then.
You think that the people who work there should be driving, what was it?
A new Mercedes-Maybach, which costs $350,000.
There were several BMW M8s there, which go for about a cool $140K.
And where are the bodies?
When you were on hospice care, it ain't great.
It's the end of the end.
You're not doing anything else.
You are bedridden and ready to go at any moment.
I'm speaking of it in a slightly performative tone here, but it's sad.
Most of us have had relatives in hospice care and you just never know.
And that's it.
That's when you've waved the white flag.
And then nature is going to take its course.
And these people, what they're doing is they're creating these offices.
They're getting government money.
They're calling them Angel This, Angel That.
They're cashing checks, buying cars, and it's all fraud.
So the reason I'm showing you this, because in some sense, you're not surprised, obviously, that this is happening in Los Angeles.
But Nick Shirley puts that video out, and Governor Gavin Newsom's press office has the gall, the nerve to put this up.
Look at this.
They put this image up for those of you listening on the audio podcast.
It's Nick Shirley sort of looking like a zombie or something with all these cameras on him.
And it says, hey, can I see your kids?
And the text above it, Nick Shirley right now.
That is so profoundly evil.
So first off, he's using an iPhone.
He's not using a gajillion cameras.
He doesn't look like a zombie, but they're going after the guy who is exposing the fraud.
If you were Gavin Newsom and this fraud was being exposed in your state and you knew this was happening and it's blowing up across the internet, wouldn't you maybe be like, hey, you know, I guess maybe I don't necessarily agree with Nick Shirley politically.
I don't even know that we know most of Nick Shirley's thoughts, but they keep saying he's a conservative YouTuber or something.
But you might say, but it does appear that he's uncovered some pretty nasty stuff.
And, you know, these videos are pretty damning.
And I would like to find out what's happening at Angel Care and Angel Uncare and everything else.
But instead, he decides to mock the guy going after it.
So Nick Shirley responded to that image right there.
And he wrote, You do realize I'm trying to help America eliminate fraud and waste, right?
No need to try and make me look like the bad guy for exposing fraud.
People are over it.
Start working for the people and not against them.
Well, I hate to say one thing as an elder statesman here, Nick, but Gavin has a long track record of doing this and he is never going to come around, right?
So I know that's nice that you think that you can maybe guilt him into coming around and not being an evil lizard person.
But the ship has sailed on that one without question.
But again, this is really about the gall of Gavin Newsom.
And the thing is, with Gavin Newsom, it is a career of this.
This isn't just this last year it's fraud, or three years ago, it was eating at French laundry during COVID while locking people up.
It's everything that he's done for years.
And before he was governor of California, as you know, he was mayor of San Francisco.
And I've shown you this video two or three times over the years, but it really is worth watching again.
Because if there's one person on God's green earth who dislikes Gavin Newsom more than me, it's Adam Carolla.
And Adam somehow got him in studio back in 2013.
So this is literally 13 years ago.
And watch Adam disassemble Newsom right to his face because, of course, Gavin, a Democrat, doesn't think black people can open a checking account.
unidentified
Half of African Americans in the state of California, roughly half of Latino families have no access to a checking count for an ATM, things we take for granted.
Interestingly, that was the last time that Gavin Newsom did the Adam Carolla show.
I think one time about a year ago, Carolla was guest hosting on somebody else's show, and Gavin didn't know that he was calling in, and he got to confront him again.
But how extraordinary.
You push him a little bit.
So black people can't open checkouts.
What about Asian people?
It just happens to be that way.
Everything with these people folds like a wet paper bag when confronted with reality.
But remember, that's 13 years ago.
You'd think the guy might have learned a little something about race baiting in politics, about all of the ridiculous policies that he has put in.
Think how much better California was in 2013.
That's 2013.
I literally moved to California in February of 2013.
It was still a place that you wanted to move to back then.
Certainly not the place that it is now.
But the reason I'm showing you all this is because decline is a choice.
And there are places in America where we do not choose it.
And if you are acting fraudulently, because there's no doubt that this type of fraud can happen anywhere, there are going to be bad people who take advantage of the system and do criminal things anywhere and everywhere.
But if you do it here in Florida, we're going to get your ass.
That's what they say.
Listen to this from Eric Daughtry.
Breaking in an incredible development.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' office and Attorney General James Utmeyer just pledged 100% full cooperation with Dr. Oz's new investigation into rampant health care fraud in Florida.
Trump's CMS chief, Dr. Oz, said he found horrifying amounts of health care fraud in the state and is seeking more documentation.
In response, DeSantis' chief of staff replied, Florida is working closely with CMS.
We have zero tolerance for waste, fraud, and abuse, and we will aggressively deploy every resource necessary to root it out at any level in our state.
Stay tuned.
Attorney General Utmeyer said, just recently, our Medicaid fraud control unit arrested a man who was stealing Medicaid money meant to provide transportation services to disabled children.
The Medicaid system is overwhelmed with fraud and abuse, and we look forward to working with Dr. Oz on the issues.
So look, Florida.
What did they used to say about Florida?
It's where people come to die.
Now it's where people come to live.
But Florida does have a lot of older people, right?
People like the warm weather of Florida.
So is it possible we're going to have a disproportionate amount of abuse in the system?
And then what would a responsible civil politician do, civil servant do?
What would they do?
They would work with Dr. Oz to get that fraud out.
They wouldn't post a picture of the kid who's exposing the fraud and go after him.
But in stark contrast to Florida, a place that people are moving to that has low taxes and excellent infrastructure and is safe and clean and the promise of what America is, let's jump to communist New York City because Moron Zamboni has now announced the future fund and they even put cute music in it and he smiles a lot and here's what they're going to do for small businesses.
The NYC Future Fund ensures small business owners have a loan program catered to their individual needs, such as reduced minimum revenue requirements, lower minimum loan size, affordable interest rates, and flexible monthly repayment terms that adjust with seasonal revenues.
Because a tough winter shouldn't put your ice cream shop under.
New York City residents are finding out very quickly that free is not actually free.
Did anyone warn them about any of this stuff?
I thought this was interesting from Wall Street Maverick on X. New York City mayor socialist Zorhan Mamdami has proposed lowering the exemption on the death tax, also known as the estate tax, from $7.1 million down to only $750,000.
He would also increase the death tax from 16% to 50%.
No other jurisdiction in the USA confiscates wealth at death from people with that small of an estate.
Anyone with any equity in a home in New York City would likely exceed that $750,000 and have to pay the death tax.
There is a federal estate death tax for estate wealth that exceeds 15 million individuals.
However, you can deduct other state and city estate taxes before paying the federal estate tax.
So effectively, Mamdani is preventing the federal government from taxing estates.
New York City and New York State are taking it all first.
Look, there is a debate to be had about the estate death tax altogether.
Frankly, from where I sit, it should be zero, zero, zero, zero.
What this is, this death estate tax, is that the government comes in.
Think about it.
You've saved money.
You've lived right.
You've done right by your spouse and your kids.
You've played by the rules your entire life.
and you've saved however much money, couple hundred thousand dollars, couple million dollars, many millions of dollars, whatever it is, but you play by the rules all the way.
The government, the estate tax, is that the government then just comes in and can pick an arbitrary amount that they'll let your family keep.
And then beyond that, they can pick an arbitrary percentage that they will tax above that.
And then they just get to take that money.
That money has been taxed your entire life.
You lived right and saved.
So if you give your family at your death a house that's $900,000 and the estate tax is $750,000, they're going to have to pay tax on that.
It's all completely, completely absurd.
However, we do have an estate tax.
It is what it is.
We should be working to eliminate it altogether.
But this I thought was quite interesting because the other part of all of this is as more and more people wake up to how ridiculous this guy is, more and more people are fleeing New York City.
So you're pushing out the billionaires, even though you need their money for the quote-unquote free stuff.
And then when you say to the people who live there, well, we're going to jack up the estate tax, we're going to lower the threshold and jack up the percentage at the exact same time.
Well, we still live in America where people can vote with their feet.
And when they are about to die, they wisely are going to leave New York.
Here is New York City Comptroller, who's a progressive himself, Mark Levin, but Mark Levine, I guess, or it's not Mark Levin, Megan Kelly's favorite guy.
This guy's name is Mark Levine, New York City controller.
But here he is saying that they should raise the estate tax, but it could be a problem because people are an idiot.
He thinks that nationally we should raise the estate tax, both to bring in more revenue and for equity reasons.
I think we should be very, very careful about doing it just in New York because people are mobile and they're potentially more mobile later in life when their kids are grown and they may be retired.
And it would really undermine the whole purpose of a move like that if people left.
So look, this New York City controller there, Mark Levine, what he's saying is make it national.
Make it so that the federal government will tax everybody to the high hell when you die so that you won't be able to move.
So even he's acknowledging by New York City doing this, what you are going to do is going to take older people who won't have the commitments that, you know, if you're a young person, you've got a family, your kids are in school, they're in sports, growing up, all of those things, they have all those connections.
It's harder to move.
When you're in your later years, now you're in your 80s, let's say, you don't have that many attachments.
It might be more attractive to be living in a place like Florida purely for weather reasons, beyond any financial or anything else.
It would just be much easier to move.
So he's acknowledging if New York City does this, more and more people are going to leave.
So of course, his solution is make it a bigger government program.
Let's make sure that it's national so that nobody has any choice because these people are all severely, severely demented.
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All right.
So the government wants your money.
If you live in New York City, you're screwed.
However, there are some good places to live.
And something else interesting is happening, which is that social media, which has been maybe not the promise that we thought it was, right?
We all thought it was going to make us more productive and we were going to find old friends and we were going to be in Shangri-La together and whatever.
And somehow social media made us more anti-social and filled with anxiety and all of these things.
And, you know, I do my August off the grid and I encourage as many people to try to take as much time off on the weekends.
And we all look at it too much.
And I'm still even guilty of some of those things.
However, there are some pushes right now to clean up some of the craziness.
I thought this was interesting.
This is from Cointelegraph, which is a crypto commentary account on X.
He writes, there's several X updates coming.
One of them will be rolling out a dislike button.
So if you see garbage constantly in your feed, you'll be able to dislike it.
And then hopefully it'll be pushed out of your feed.
That's pretty good.
The second one is spam incentives are expected to drop over the next 30 days.
In other words, there are all sorts of companies and people and influencers who use all sorts of ways of spamming you and trying to game the system.
And X is going to be pushing back on that.
That seems pretty good.
And the third one, and this is probably the most interesting one, they'll soon allow reply restrictions by country or region.
Now, this is really interesting because you may remember a few months ago on X, where I know many of you are not on X, and I don't necessarily recommend you get on there if you're not.
I get most of my information from there.
And it is sort of the public town square that is the freest because of Elon and everything else, but it's a massive time suck and it can drag you down rabbit holes and everything else.
But you may remember a few months ago on X, they allowed you to click an account's name.
And when you look at the account's name, you can see where the account is.
And what that uncovered or what that discovered for many people was that huge swaths of replies are coming from largely from Pakistan and parts of Asia.
And a lot of these accounts have America First in it or they have American flags or whatever it might be.
So we've been just hyper, hyper manipulated and we don't even fully understand how manipulated we are.
You know, it's sort of like when I tell you guys, or sometimes you tell me, I see it in comments.
People will be like, Dave, I've been subscribed to you for three years.
One month I see all of your videos in my feed.
The next, then three months later, I don't see any and I forget to watch and then suddenly a video pops up and I end up watching it.
We're all playing in this game that's very hard to understand.
So the fact that X is going to do a little something to clean it up and get rid of some of the spam and the bad actors, I think is pretty good.
Let me connect that to something else that's pretty good.
One thing we're seeing right now is that for as crazy as the left has gone and broken so many brains with young people, there are also a set of young people who are kind of waking up, who are trying to take care of themselves a little bit more and eat better and exercise more, understand more about finances and take some interest in their future and everything.
There's a guy by the name of Caleb Hammer who runs a show called Financial Audit.
I thought this was just kind of interesting to the backdrop.
We were just talking about the estate slash death tax and all that.
And he had two guests on who struck me as just kind of these just strike me as generic, what do you call them?
Like Gen Z lefties.
And I thought this was rather interesting.
unidentified
We just don't really get political like year in.
I have to say that.
I think both sides are evil for politics.
Like no matter what.
That's true.
I'm honestly kind of with him on that point.
Like it's all just bad.
Like I don't extremism is bad, but even still it's all just bad.
Like I agree that like the three letters are great.
I don't think the government really is out to help the common man.
I think it's out to help billionaires get richer.
Like, I agree.
We have the most progressive income tax system in the entire Western world, to be clear.
Federal.
Okay.
Why is it not helping me?
Like, why has the system not helped anybody I know?
Just go get a better job.
That's your choice to get the education you wanted.
I won't make the obvious comments that that guy looks like a edgy hobbit and the other one has strange.
All right, it doesn't matter about that.
The point of showing you that was that there's this certain type of young person and you can't blame them.
It's kind of blackpilled about everything.
And then when you explain to them, like, oh, you know, because they want the government to do more for them.
And of course, that's not what the government, certainly not what the founders set the government up to do.
The government was founded to keep to keep itself off your back, to protect your natural rights, which are God-given and then enshrined in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights.
But these young people are so confused about things.
They think the government is supposed to exist to take from some and give to them.
And then, of course, they're black, though.
They don't like any of the agencies or whatever.
And we can all have our criticisms of all of these things, of course, but they're just kind of confused as to what the issues are.
So I thought it was quite good there when he basically is like, well, you know, we do have the most progressive tax system in the West.
And then they, maybe it lights a little flicker in them like, oh, well, the U.S. does tax people in a progressive way and things aren't working.
So maybe we shouldn't.
The next step in the thought process would be, so maybe we shouldn't do that and the government should be slimmer or trimmer and you should just get out there and it shouldn't be asking the government what it can do for you.
It should be asking you what you should do for you.
That's a loose RFK, the JFK quote there.
I slightly altered it, but I see, I think you see the point.
But I also thought this was interesting.
We're just catching up on a few things here.
Actor Jerry O'Connell, you know, my feelings on actors, you don't have to listen to them and they usually don't know what they're talking about.
And they're often the worst people in the world.
But he went on Bill Maher's Club Random and he comes from a liberal family.
And my general sense is he's roughly moderate.
I don't even know.
I can't even think of a movie he's been in.
He hasn't worked in a while, has he?
Probably a perfectly nice guy.
I don't need to throw him under the bus.
But like, you know, he was big maybe 20 years ago.
I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy and I think his career was just fine and hopefully he's working and everything else.
But to live in that kind of hostage situation, man, that's Bill saying, I think in essence, that was Bill saying, well, that's why I never got married and never had kids, which that's a whole different thing.
But like, he's basically saying, I can't say what I think as an adult man.
And it's because of this place that I chose to live in with the people that are supposedly the most tolerant people.
And that's no good.
Like, that's not good.
And it's the reverse of what liberalism is, ironically.
And Bill is the last guy trying to defend that from us, say, a leftward position.
It was nice to see Kopal on the set.
That's right.
Copal is still rocking it.
Bill does love it.
He texted me the other day.
He is enjoying the Copal.
You can go to drinkkopal.com if you'd like to get a bottle for yourself.
But I thought, okay, to wrap all this up, there's a little of everything here.
But what you don't want to do is let politics completely consume you.
Because once it consumes you, you'll be angry at your wife or your husband over these things.
You'll be afraid to say what you think to your children.
You'll be completely condemned to a life of staring at this thing or just being obsessed with things that are probably largely out of your control.
And I say that with due irony as someone that cares deeply about these things and is using my voice the best way I can to angle the world into a way that I think will be better for everybody, not just for me.
And Arthur Brooks, who I had on the show just a couple weeks ago, who's got a new book about happiness out right now, and I think is just a really great, great human being.
Here he is talking about how politics shouldn't affect your familial relationships.
I'll be going and seeing him at ARC again this June.
I should mention, I just interviewed him, but it's not up yet.
It'll be up in about a week and a half or so.
And we get into it a lot about that.
That you better be able to put politics aside with your family.
You can do it and you can debate and you can argue and you can do all of those things, but you better at the end be able to put it away.
Otherwise, it will freaking shred you.
It will shred you and your family.
And everyone knows that and everyone's had a version of it.
And I'm not saying it's easy because we all lived through COVID and we've all lived through Trump derangement syndrome and all of those things.
But maybe there is something more important out there.
Maybe it has something to do with family and kids.
You think?
You think?
All right, let's do some community Q ⁇ A questions.
And then, well, I'm actually in Budapest right now.
It's a major time shift disorder situation going on right now.
Glenn says, I'm wondering why no other nation sold any nukes to Iran, hoping Iran would do their dirty work.
Any thoughts?
Well, I mean, the only nation that would.
So if you think about who definitely has nukes, well, we have nukes and the UK has nukes and France has nukes and Pakistan has nukes.
That's the most dangerous one.
There are a couple other countries that have nukes.
Israel has never admitted it, but most people think they have nukes.
So who would they get the nukes from?
Pakistan would be the only other country.
And unless Pakistan, oh, India obviously has nukes and they're at a standoff with Pakistan because they both have nukes and they know that it's mutually assured destruction.
Pakistan would be the only country that maybe you could see siding with Iran here, but they know that that would lead to their utter, utter destruction via the United States or India or some combination thereof.
So I don't think that there was any way that they were going to do that, which is why they were rushing to get the bomb and building the ballistic missile program that as Rubio has pointed out over and over, even though the lefties seem to ignore it over and over.
When they talk about an imminent threat, it wasn't that they were going to get nukes tomorrow, although they were enriching higher than they were supposed to.
It was that they were going to have a better defense system and better offensive capabilities to make any ability to stop them from getting nukes that much more dangerous.
So, you know, we're two plus weeks into this thing.
As I keep saying, it's going extremely well, but we have lost some servicemen.
Several countries, 14 countries, I think, have been hit by bombs and rockets.
So would you wait for them to be stronger or do you do it now?
But yes, thankfully, their nuclear program for sure will be set back years and they weren't getting stuff from what likely would have been Pakistan.
Moro says, what are you looking forward to most in Hungary?
You know, we've been there a couple of times over the last couple of years and it's, I really enjoy the country.
I find the people are kind of thoughtful and serious and love their country and their culture.
You know, I'm going usually I'm doing a lot of political stuff.
So I'm speaking at CPAC and I've met with the prime minister a couple of times that we're supposedly doing a sit-down with him.
Schedule is permitting.
And I've done some live shows there.
You know, it's just a beautiful city.
One of the thing that I really, because I do travel quite a bit, one of the things that I've really learned is like safety, just the ability to walk around a city at any time and feel safe is basically, it's basically the most important thing in some sense.
Because we've walked around Hungary around Budapest, which is absolutely beautiful right there on the Danube River, which bisects the city.
And it's just spectacular and it's gorgeous.
But that you can walk around at 3 a.m. after going out to dinner or drinks and feel safe.
And there aren't homeless people all over the place and there aren't drug addicts and there isn't crime like that.
And it's not to say it's perfect.
Of course it isn't.
But they care enough about their city that it just, their city and their country, that it operates well.
And then I've been to other places where it definitely didn't feel like that.
For example, when we were in Melbourne, Australia not too long ago, where it was like, wow, this does not feel safe.
And there's a lot of shady looking people here.
And then you go to other cities in Australia and it was better.
So, and I love Australia.
So you just see various different things.
So what am I looking forward to most?
I am going to have, I'm going to try to get whatever they say the best goulash in Budapest is.
Believe it or not, for the amount of times I've been there, I've only had goulash once.
I end up, they always drag, not drag me, but I get taken to a lot of just like dinners at steak joints and things like that.
Lynn says, do you have confidence that the SAVE Act will be passed?
Oh, boy.
Do I have confidence?
Well, confidence, I mean, I don't have confidence that the Republicans ultimately will do the right thing and nuke the talking filibuster and pass it with a simple majority.
But I think they might.
So how about that?
I don't have great confidence in them because they're not great.
And when you listen to Thun, he's kind of wishy-washy about this stuff.
And that's not great.
But that's why we must continue pushing them.
You've got to keep talking about it and pushing.
If the Republicans can't get this done, something that 85% of Americans, not just their own party, but 85% of Americans want secure elections.
If they can't get this done, especially the backdrop of the hysteria that the Democrats are offering, this is Jim Crow and everyone knows that it's not.
Then what is the point of the party?
So they've got to get it done and Trump needs it.
Look, Trump's going to get some wins leading up to the midterms.
I think the war thing will end nicely.
I think the big beautiful bill, the economic stuff is going to look good.
We're just getting, we didn't even have time to cover it today, but we're getting some of the trade deals back.
Our deficit with China is starting to reverse a little bit.
There's good things happening.
So he'll get some wins.
We got July 4th, our 250th birthday coming up.
There's going to be a bunch of nice stuff, but he needs a win on SABE, I think.
He needs a continued effectiveness of ICE.
The war probably is the most important one, but there's all sorts of summer surprises.
So we shall see.
So I can't say that I'm confident, but I would say I'm like 52% that they're going to get there.
Crafty Cat says, with energy prices and food not likely to come down, what should conservatives do to keep morale up during these times?
Well, I just addressed that, some of that.
Look, the energy price stuff is tricky because we are at a war.
Prices are not bananas, right?
Who was it that said $8 gas?
Was that Sonny Hostin?
Sonny Hostin this week on The View said there's $8 gas.
Nowhere, nowhere in the United States of America is there $8 gas.
The average is about $3.85 right now, and that is a little bit higher than it was a month ago.
It's about 35 cents higher.
That's legit.
That's real.
It's something that people absolutely see.
But it didn't go bananas considering there's a Middle East war, right?
And that's partly because we took Venezuela.
It's partly because Trump is managing this properly.
We're making sure ships are getting through the Strait of Hormuz and all of those things.
However, that is something that people see.
On the food price part of it, I would say from what I can see when I go food shopping right now, things seem comparable to a tiny bit better than under Biden.
Would you guys agree with that?
I don't see food prices like exploding anywhere.
I don't see any evidence of that.
But I guess the narrative around it right now is that food prices are too high.
And we'd all like to see that go down, right?
Like I don't like going into the store and buying a dozen.
I try to buy organic eggs, you know, like free-range eggs, and it's now like, you know, $9.99 a dozen, where, you know, back in the day, it might have been $5.99.
So it does feel a little bit higher in general, but I don't think it's like wildly higher than Biden.
But it's all about optics.
It's all about optics.
So I think what will happen is as the big beautiful bill continues to lay out and people get some rebates and hopefully interest rates go down and the housing market loosens up, that hopefully as we roll into the midterms, the messaging on that will be actually seeping into people.
Well, I hate to tell you, with AI, you might be around longer because it's also going to extend our, I mean, there's all sorts of things that AI is going to do.
You know, we think about it in just like automated cars and you're going to have the robot butler and like that kind of stuff.
But AI is going to be able to diagnose diseases way earlier.
We're already seeing that.
It's going to be able to analyze CT scans and all sorts of unimaginable scientific breakthroughs.
For people that have cognitive problems, there's going to be AI that will be able to help them work through some of those things.
There are things that we literally can't think about.
Now, are there issues?
Are there serious issues that the more that AI and robotics come, that the average person is not going to know what to do with themselves?
As we played that video of Elon this week, and he basically said, look, AI and technology and robots are going to start replicating so fast.
It's going to speed up so fast that we'll be able to produce more stuff than people need.
So in some sense, that will be deflation.
Like you'll just have stuff because we won't have to work so hard for it.
Now, the problem is that work in some sense is a very critical thing to the human psyche.
You want to feel valuable that you're doing something.
And if you just had all the things you want, meaning you got your PlayStation, you got your bucket of Takis, you got your Prime and your phone and your, well, then what would you do with your life?
Would we all become the fat people in WALLI, the movie WALL-E?
A lot of us probably would.
But the thing is, in some sense, you can't fight City Hall.
Like technology is coming one way or another, right?
Like the VHS came one day.
And then DVD came one day and then digital video game one day.
And all these things, they come.
And then, and the question is, how do you figure out how to incorporate some of it into your life so that your life is still good?
And I think that that's going to be the great challenge.
I don't know that any of us are going to do it properly the same way that I don't know that any of us are doing this thing with the phone properly.
But that is going to be the great challenge.
But I'm telling you, you may only want 10 more years, but it might offer you much more.
And when you get to year nine, you might be happy about it.
Nimbit says, if political figures now cycle through ideologically aligned podcasts like Joe Kent going on Tuckers, the same way they used to rotate through friendly cable networks, Saki and MSNBC, has the alternative media platforms effectively become the new mainstream media just with different branding?
What pressures does that put on you?
And by extension, your audience?
That is quite a question.
I actually did see that question before.
And I had sent this to Joseph earlier in the week.
I want to show you something interesting here.
This is somebody put this up on Twitter and it is Tucker's Facebook page where he puts up whatever one of his usual diatribes about the war.
And almost everyone is disagreeing with him here.
And it's a little bit trickier to create fake Facebook pages than it is to create fake X pages and X accounts.
So people are waking up.
That's why I'm not blackpilled on everything.
But to the point of your question, and by the way, that's also to the backdrop of, as I've said several times this week, I'm so thrilled.
The comments, especially on our YouTube channel, have been so freaking good and thoughtful and interesting and appreciative of what I'm trying to do here, what we're trying to do.
And I'm very aware of that.
And it makes me want to be better and all those things.
To really answer your question, though, will the alt media become the new MSM, new mainstream media?
And then what kind of pressures does that put on all of us?
Well, I'd say that's happened already, right?
Like I get way more views than any CNN show at this point, right?
Like that's just reality.
I'm not the only one.
But mainstream is still the center.
So we're all sort of operating off of mainstream.
There has to be something that kind of connects all of us.
And that's why in a weird way, you need a mainstream thing.
We just wish it was a little bit better.
As I've said many times, I hold myself to a certain standard, even though I don't consider myself a journalist.
I try to have journalistic integrity when I'm here and I try to tell you the truth.
And if I make a mistake, I try to correct it and all of those things.
A lot of these other people, they don't.
And it's going to get much more difficult to be able to trust the people that you're watching.
Now, I guess I could connect this to the previous question, which is, well, how can AI help us?
Well, soon enough, you'd probably be able to have an AI bot, an AI chat bot or bot or bug or whatever you want to call it, widget, that would, you could probably sit in the window with me.
Maybe we can come up with it ourselves, who could literally be fact-checking me on the fly and giving you more information on the fly.
Or it could be a third-party one that's doing it.
Now, you'd have to trust that the modeling of the AI is right, right?
We've covered this before.
There's all these, you know, there's ChatGPT, there's Grok, there's all these different things, and you're going to have to trust that they're not biased.
But that's the way the world is going.
And again, if you can figure out how to incorporate that into whether it's your job, as the previous question was talking about, your lifestyle, or your news consumption, well, that'll hopefully make you a more discerning viewer.