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Aug. 16, 2025 - Timcast IRL - Tim Pool
02:04:39
Legacy Media In Full Freak Out Over Trump Putin Meeting, "Reached An Understanding" | Timcast IRL
Participants
Main voices
a
alex lains
13:49
c
carter banks
05:10
i
ian crossland
22:57
p
phil labonte
01:17:12
Appearances
s
serge du preez
02:00
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
phil labonte
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Alaska for two and a half hours today to discuss an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Hillary Clinton says that if he's successful, that she herself will nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
So I hope that he is, and I hope that she actually has to go through with it because I imagine that would be really tough for her.
D.C. Attorney General is suing the Trump administration for what is looking like a very successful operation to help bring down crime in the DC area.
So we'll talk about that.
New York Times.
Oh.
ian crossland
What's up, everybody?
phil labonte
New York Times opinion page still hates Donald, or still hates America.
They were talking about changing the, or getting rid of the Senate, expanding the court, and all of the things that they would like to do to make sure that they get into power and stay in power basically forever.
New Jersey is looking to charge parents for kids breaking the law.
And the Marines are going to go on vacation in Latin America.
So we're going to talk about that.
But first, we want you guys to head on over to Castbrew Coffee and buy yourself some coffee.
Ian's Graphene Dream is still one of the top sellers.
Appalachian Knights is available.
We've got K-Cups.
We've got Phil's Two Weeks Till Christmas, which is a gingerbread blend.
It's really, really nice.
So head on over to CastBrew.com and get yourself some coffee.
You'll love it, I promise.
It's the coffee that I drink, and I'm not just saying that.
I look like legit, I do.
And then after that, head on over to Timcast.com and become a member so that way you can join the Discord and join us in the after show.
Give us a call.
You can call in and talk to the panel, talk to the guests.
Then when you do, after you do that, head on over to rumble.com and become a member there so you can watch the after show.
You need to join Rumble to watch the after-show, and you need to join Timcast so you can call in.
If you go into the Discord, that's where, obviously, like I said, that's where you join the Discord so you can call in.
But also, there's a bunch of people in there.
There's like 20,000, 25,000 members or something like that.
A bunch of like-minded individuals.
There have been people that have gotten married because they met in the Discord.
There's a bunch of podcasts that have started because they met in the Discord and talked about things that they agreed on and got started there.
So head on over to Timcast.com, become a member of our Discord, head on over to rumble.com, Become a member so you can join the after show.
But right now, to talk about all of these things and so much more, tonight we have Alex Lanes, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
All right.
alex lains
You got it.
phil labonte
Who are you and what do you do?
alex lains
I am Alex Lanes.
I am a part-time commentator and hopefully soon to be full-time musician.
And for the past five years, I've just been ranting on social media about everything from politics to culture, society, yada, yada, yada.
And yeah, that's pretty much it.
phil labonte
Are you a multi-instrumentalist?
alex lains
Yeah, I play guitar and piano.
phil labonte
There you go.
alex lains
I'm not the best at guitar, though, because I've got small hands.
So I'm not very skilled yet.
phil labonte
That's all right.
My band used to have a bass player that was a female about your size, and she played a full-size bass with little hands.
So I believe that.
alex lains
So it's possible.
phil labonte
It's absolutely possible.
I have Faith and you Carter's here tonight.
carter banks
What's up?
Yes.
We have Alex Lanes here.
I'm very excited to be recording her tomorrow.
We're going to do some music together.
I'm the Tim Cast music producer and Trash House Records guy.
And so, yeah, thanks for joining us tonight.
ian crossland
I'm happy to be here too.
Hi, Carter.
phil labonte
Everyone's happy that you're here.
ian crossland
I'm happy too, Phil.
unidentified
Thanks.
ian crossland
Hi, Alex.
Good to see you.
And Serge is also probably not going to say anything in this.
Could you hear him laughing?
This beautiful.
Look at this guy.
serge du preez
I'll say what's up.
Hey, you guys.
Good to see you again.
ian crossland
Thanks for having me, man.
phil labonte
I appreciate that you're at least going to say hello to everyone, Sergei.
Everyone loves you.
ian crossland
Looking smooth.
phil labonte
You're one of the most popular.
carter banks
He told me that his microphone only goes to our ears and not.
ian crossland
I thought they were going to say his microphone only goes to 11.
Spinal Tap's coming out with a new movie.
Let's get into the show.
phil labonte
All right, then.
So the alternative press.
Associated Press is reporting.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet for two and a half hours at Alaska Summit to discuss possible end to Russia-Ukraine war.
Joint base Elmendorf Richardson, Alaska.
President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin met for about two and a half hours on Friday at a summit in Alaska that started with a handshake, a smile, and a ride in the presidential limousine.
It also had an overflight by a B-2 bomber, two F-35s, and two F-22s.
So that's something that they left out, and that's worth mentioning.
An unusually warm reception for a U.S. adversary responsible for launching the greatest land war in Europe since 1945.
They plan to hold a joint news conference after talking together with top advisors behind closed doors on efforts to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
When they greeted each other, they gripped hands for an extended period of time on a red carpet rolled out at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage.
As they chatted, Putin grinned and pointed Skyward, where B-2s and F-22 military aircraft designed to oppose Russia during the Cold War flew overhead.
Reporters nearby yelled, President Putin, will you stop killing civilians?
That sounds like activists.
Just want to point that out.
And Russia's leader put his hands up to his ears as though to indicate he couldn't hear them.
Trump and Putin then shared the U.S. presidential limb known as the Beast for a short ride to their meeting site, with Putin offering a broad smile as the vehicle rolled past the cameras.
So we've got a possible scoop, or not, well, not scoop, but we've got a possible, there's a possibility that Brett Baer or Sean Hannity will be talking to Donald Trump on Air Force One, and we'll get updates to you guys as soon as we get them.
If they do, if they actually do do an interview on Air Force One, we'll cut to that for a few minutes when it happens, probably around 9 o'clock, because that's when Hannity shows run.
But this isn't a historic meeting because it's the first time that Putin's ever been to Alaska, and I think it's the first time that the U.S. has met with Putin in since 10 years at least.
10 years, something like that.
ian crossland
Read that earlier.
phil labonte
So, yeah.
So it's possible that there will be some kind of peace development, but I don't think most people went in expecting an actual resolution.
And I certainly don't think anyone expects Putin to withdraw from the areas that he's taken from Ukraine.
And that includes the Donbass.
There are people out there that think there's not going to be, or there is no reason to have any kind of peace unless Putin promises to pull back, not just from the Donbass and the areas that he's taken since 2022, but also if he has to leave the Crimea, the Crimea area and stuff, which I don't think that that's, I don't think that's even remotely possible.
But I'm curious to know your thoughts.
ian crossland
I'm very happy that this is happening.
In general, I was kind of crying out for this a couple of weeks ago that we got to end this war somehow.
And I think Putin's been pretty clear, although the American media seems to have obfuscated his demands that he wants all the land east of the Donbass River.
He's looking for a geographical border.
It was probably the most stabilizing thing he can do.
Because if you, you guys talked about this through the week.
If you draw arbitrary borders with just a straight line across a flat area, there's inevitably going to be conflict because it's an easy place to attack.
When it's a river or a mountain, it's much easier just to that's my border.
phil labonte
I think that's dependent on the people involved.
ian crossland
It is too, because the northern U.S. borders with Canada.
Yeah, I thought of that.
phil labonte
That's exactly what I was going to say.
I don't expect there to be a significant conflict between the United States and Canada.
ian crossland
I don't expect it either.
But it's not along a geographical border.
carter banks
One of us attacked the other one.
ian crossland
Never has happened to this point.
phil labonte
What are you talking about?
ian crossland
The Canadians and the Americans never went to war.
phil labonte
I guess it was technically the British, but there was fighting.
The War of 1812, it was for.
ian crossland
You know, the jury is out on that border, but I've thought about that too, that arbitrary border between Canada and the United States.
It's not a defensible border.
But anyway, the Donbass River is.
So if Putin takes everything east of the Donbass, which they already have control of, and then they create a land bridge down into Crimea so that they have warm water sea access and they can improve their GDP by 30% because now they can trade into the Mediterranean.
I think that's the whole purpose and the point.
I'm all about it, man.
So you think that's just making an alliance.
phil labonte
So is it your sense that it's just an economic place?
ian crossland
Yes, 100%.
He's doing it for Russia's economics.
phil labonte
That actually is contrary to what he said to Tucker Carlson, though.
ian crossland
What do you say?
phil labonte
Well, when he was talking to Tucker Carlson, he was bringing up the history of Ukraine and how to the Russians, Ukraine is part of Russia because Kiev and Rus, I guess, were the original Russians, and they were from Kiev and they went to Moscow.
And there's a long history between these two countries.
Now, I'm not incredibly well-read on the Russian Ukrainian history, but I know Ukraine and Russia have got very, very deep history.
Russia actually came from Ukraine.
So it's my sense that whereas I'm not disputing the argument you're making about the economic benefit to him, but I do think that this is more than just an economic play.
alex lains
Yeah.
I think this is a more surface level opinion, but it's just nice to see a president who's not a house plant, basically, get together with a world leader and assert dominance.
I feel like if this was Biden meeting with Putin, he probably would have agreed with everything that Putin wanted in exchange for like an ice cream cone.
So it's just nice to see Trump be able to come together.
I think it's very monumental.
So I'm curious to see what was decided.
phil labonte
Yeah, we're going to jump to this right here.
This is Putin departs Alaska after a historic summit, right?
What is it?
ian crossland
This is from earlier?
serge du preez
No, this is just part of it.
I just brought you.
I brought up she did say it's just part of the story.
They've basically taken all of, well, they've taken all of the area they said they were going to take as far as like they want that they wanted.
People have argued because they have the lithium, the coal, the offshore gas, all that stuff.
They've currently occupied the areas that are like rich in this rare mineral earth.
And I just bring this up.
phil labonte
Are these the areas that the United States was looking to make the deals with Ukraine about like the rare earth minerals and stuff like that?
serge du preez
This map right here, from what I understand, this is what I saw as well earlier.
This is from an article from Fox News from two days ago, I think.
But this map right here also shows all the areas they've taken, including north here.
But this being the menu, the highly wealthy, like oil rich areas.
Rare mineral areas.
I just wanted to bring that up.
ian crossland
You got that map on screen?
See that red border along the left, I believe, is the river.
That's the Donbass River?
phil labonte
Sure.
ian crossland
All the way up.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, it looked there.
ian crossland
Stop it on a river.
that's the way to do it.
Sorry, Phil.
phil labonte
Well, that's the point that we were making earlier.
Like, I don't see Putin giving any of this back.
carter banks
Right, because I'm looking, it seems like Ukraine was actually part of Russia.
I knew this, but in 1991 was when they declared their independence after that was that was the Soviet Union falling apart.
unidentified
Right.
ian crossland
And then the oligarchs came in and kind of split it apart.
As far as I can tell, I think they intentionally took that area away from the Russian part of the split up because they didn't want to give the hegemony, hegemony to Russia.
They didn't want it to just become another Soviet Union right away.
It's like too much economic power if we give them Mediterranean access.
phil labonte
There is a distinction between Ukrainians and Russians, right?
The language is not the same.
There is an actual Ukrainian language.
They are different people.
Russians think that the Ukrainians are Russian, whereas Ukrainians are more like we're Ukrainians.
And so the Ukrainians feel like they would be subjugated.
The Russians feel like they would be bringing the Ukrainians back into the Russian fold.
I mean, this is again, this is something that goes back hundreds of years.
I don't know, like, I'm not at all claiming to be some kind of expert on this, but I know that it's a very, that it's a very deep history these two countries have.
And all of the times that there's been invasions of Russia, the two major times, which would be Napoleon and Hitler, they went right through Ukraine.
ian crossland
Yeah, we were talking before the show.
I was talking with about this, and it was the Germans had three armies when they went east into Russia, the Northern Army, the Center Army, and the South.
The Army South group had very little problem going through Ukraine.
That was the easiest the Germans had was in the South because it's so flat.
You know, in the North, they're up there.
At least it was very cold, very, very messed up in mud.
carter banks
What time period?
Because, I mean, they were like in the middle of a full-out controlled famine by Stalin at the time.
So they probably didn't have much trouble going through Ukraine.
ian crossland
The Holdomir, the Holodomir?
Yeah, they've starved out there.
phil labonte
I don't think the Holodomir was during World War II.
carter banks
No, it was like that five-year-part of that five-year plan of getting socialism into the countryside.
phil labonte
But to the point of the Ukrainians feeling like there's a distinction between the Russians, right?
The Russians are like, well, they're part of Russia.
But according to the Ukrainians, the Soviets, the Russians, starved them.
carter banks
Right, I was thinking part of Russia that they don't want that.
No, that's a good recent memory for Ukraine.
phil labonte
Yeah, the Ukrainians don't want it at all.
I mean, there's a reason why there's so many Nazis in the Ukraine or in Ukraine.
It's because, according to Ukraine, the Nazis kicked the Russians out.
carter banks
Yeah.
phil labonte
Soviets at the Soviets.
ian crossland
Well, I think, yeah, I think they were Soviet Russians.
phil labonte
Now, that's not intended to be a defense of the Nazis, but the reason that there are so many, that they have a positive view of the Nazis as opposed to the communists is because the communists did the Holodomor.
You know, they killed millions of Ukrainians and the Nazis kicked them out.
And I don't know, again, I don't, I'm not the most in, I don't have the most deep knowledge of this, but the Nazis were actually less brutal to the Russians as well.
carter banks
But like, I only know as much as I've read.
So, yeah.
ian crossland
So, Soviet central planning was nasty.
And you see it in China right now.
It's disgusting.
I mean, I don't like it.
I don't think anybody in Russia wants, well, I would imagine most sane critical thinkers don't want another instance of centralized planning because that's where the whole domir comes from.
When you have a central government that can decide that 80,000 people aren't going to get fed tonight, you got a real problem.
Those 80,000 people should be governing themselves.
I know you want to work together with your federal government and stuff, but local government.
So, you know, I don't think those Russians are, I don't think they want it.
This is another.
I'm done.
carter banks
I'm done.
No, it's a huge tangent.
We could go down.
Yeah.
ian crossland
Yeah.
carter banks
Let's.
phil labonte
Yeah.
So let's, we're going to jump to this actually.
Let's see, where is it?
Where Hillary Clinton decided.
There we go.
Hillary Clinton, from the post-millennial, Hillary Clinton would nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize if he ends Ukraine-Russia war without Ukraine having to cede territory.
If Donald Trump negotiates an end to Putin's war on Ukraine without Ukraine having to cede territory, I'll nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize myself.
alex lains
He gets under her skin so bad.
carter banks
Oh, yeah.
alex lains
I mean, he is in her head run-free.
phil labonte
Yeah.
alex lains
24-7 all the time.
ian crossland
Did they know each other back in the day?
phil labonte
Oh, yeah.
ian crossland
Well, they knew each other well.
phil labonte
She went to his wedding.
unidentified
Really?
Oh, did she?
phil labonte
Oh, yeah.
alex lains
I didn't know that.
phil labonte
Yeah, they were friendly because Donald Trump, before Donald Trump got into politics, Donald Trump would donate money to everybody because he wanted to be friends with everybody and he also wanted to be able to get in touch with people.
alex lains
They loved him back then.
phil labonte
Yeah, everyone did.
And so he would just say, like, he went to, he invited the Clintons to him and Melania's wedding.
And Hillary Clinton said, oh, yeah, of course we went.
He's a ton of fun.
Everybody that meets Donald Trump and talks to him, unless they go in intending to hate him and they're rude and they are looking to start a fight with him.
Everybody comes away and they're just like, all right, the guy's nice.
He's great.
He's funny.
He's just.
carter banks
Just as Bill Maher said, I think he went into his meeting thinking he was going to hate him too.
phil labonte
He's a charismatic Guy.
Look, and for the most part, to be honest with you, when you meet people that are that well-known in politics and that well-known just overall, they do have a really amazing amount of charisma.
I remember when I met, what's his name?
The guy that runs the Blaze.
ian crossland
Glenn Beck.
phil labonte
Glenn Beck.
I met Glenn Beck, and I was like, okay, I understand why this dude is like the big guy at what's it called?
He's just very charismatic.
When he talks to you, you feel like he's going to remember you next time.
You're the only person.
And you hear people talk about Bill Clinton like that all the time when they would meet Bill Clinton.
alex lains
Obama, too.
phil labonte
Obama, yeah.
When you meet these guys, they have the ability to make you feel like you're the only person in the room and to remember small things about you if you've met them, if they've met you twice.
That's something that politicians in Western countries particularly have.
That's part of why they end up in positions of high positions in government.
And it'll be the same thing with people that are senators a lot of time.
You probably don't see it as much with all Congress people because there's so many Congress people.
But we were talking last night about the people in Texas and whether or not the Democrats that are looking to make hay about what's going on in Texas, if they can get arrested, like are they going to be able to actually capitalize on that?
And do they have the political talent to really make something of it?
Because of course they want to get arrested.
Of course they want to get picked up and get on, you know, make social media posts about it, get on TV and stuff.
But only certain people, the really politically talented, could take that opportunity and turn it into something that gets them not only or gets them from not only being a state representative, but gets them onto the national stage and gives them influence nationally.
And it's not easy.
You can't fake it.
carter banks
Well, I mean, now you have a record and you're not going anywhere.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, even if it's not the end of the career, it's like you won't be able to capitalize on it.
It's really being able to take the attention that you're getting from that and turn it into something tangible.
And that's what the really politically talented people can do.
And, you know, that's why someone like Donald Trump, I mean, he was a massive star beforehand, but the reason he was a massive star is because he's got that very deep political talent that's really, you know, it's part of his personality.
He's got the ability to just charm people's pants off.
So that's why Hillary Clinton wanted to go to his wedding.
But anyways, from the post-millennial, in a podcast appearance on Friday, Hillary Clinton said that she would nominate President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize if he brings an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine without Ukraine having to cede any territory to its eastern neighbor.
Clinton told the raging moderate podcast, I understand from everything I've read, he very much would like to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Honestly, if he could bring about the end to this terrible war where Putin is the aggressor invading a neighbor country, trying to change the borders, if he could end it without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to concede its territory to the aggressor, had to, in a way, validate Putin's version of greater Russia, but instead could really stand up to Putin, something we haven't seen.
But maybe this is the opportunity to make it clear that there must be a ceasefire.
There will be no exchange of territory and that over a period of time, Putin should actually withdraw from the territory he seized in order to demonstrate his good faith efforts.
Let us say, not to threaten European security.
If we could pull that off, if President Trump were the architect of that, I'd nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Now, I think that she's alluding to also Crimea.
I don't imagine that she would, I can't imagine her actually nominating him.
I would love.
alex lains
She just wants to see him fail.
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
Yeah.
I mean, you were saying she's got it in for him.
And look, she thought that she was going to walk into the office of the president without a problem.
She thought up till probably 10 p.m. on November 6th, 2016, she thought that was going to happen.
So when it turns out that it wasn't, I can understand where her deep, deep hatred of the man comes from.
But that doesn't change the fact that she really hates him and she doesn't want to see anything good happen for him.
So I would love to see her have to make this, you know, throw his name into the hat.
carter banks
Haven't they already ceded land, though?
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
Well, in Crimea, yeah, they ceded Crimea.
carter banks
I just feel like it's a non-starter, though.
phil labonte
Of course not.
That's why she's saying it.
She doesn't want to do it.
carter banks
Right.
ian crossland
Yeah, it's a 0% chance of happening.
Well, it's never zero.
You know, there's always a chance that alien monkeys are going to fall down out of the sky.
But they already own the territory.
I mean, they de facto control it, own it, whatever you want to call it.
They control it.
Asking them to leave their own territory.
I mean, once you control land and it's yours, it's yours.
phil labonte
Not only asking.
ian crossland
Like, why would I leave my land?
carter banks
It's mine.
phil labonte
And not only that, it's really, it's Russian speakers in Crimea now.
Like, one of the things that the arguments that Putin made about when he moved into Crimea was like, look, these are Russian people.
These are Russians.
They speak Russian.
They're Russian people.
They've actually had votes.
Now, some people, the argument that the people in NATO and in Europe say is they're like, well, you know, Putin actually started moving Russian speakers in there and put the people in there and skewed the votes so that way he could justify taking it.
Now, I don't know the truth of that.
I don't know if it was actually something that Putin planned.
You heard stories.
I don't know if you remember, but back in 2013 or 14, you heard little green men was a phrase that you heard a lot.
They were dudes that were in military garb, but they didn't have any identifying patches.
They had no insignia.
They were basically paramilitaries carrying out paramilitary operations, but they weren't aligned with anyone.
So there were rumors of Russia planning this.
And so it could be that was the case, but it doesn't change the fact that it's been part of Russia now for over a decade.
And I think that when the U.S. went to Crimea for the, or actually when the whole world went to Crimea for the Olympics, I think that kind of sealed the deal.
If the international community really didn't want to acknowledge that Crimea was part of Russia, they would have stayed away from the Olympics.
They'd have all boycotted and said, we're not going.
You stole this land from Ukraine.
So we're not going to validate it by going to the Olympics.
But that ship has sailed, right?
Like the U.S. and all of the whole international community went to Crimea.
They held the Olympics there.
They validated it.
So I can't imagine any way that anyone could possibly think Crimea would be going back to Russia.
And I don't think that Russia is going to give up the Donbass either.
serge du preez
No, I think they're trying to do this just to tarnish the record that Donald has so far.
Like they're just trying to make it so that all the victories he's had recently are just going to seem like nothing.
Oh, well, he was unable to save Ukraine.
He wasn't unable to get all the land back to Ukraine so they can say, okay, well, he didn't end the war in Congo.
He didn't end the war between Thailand and Cambodia.
He had nothing to do.
It's like, oh, they're just trying to use it to besmirch his name.
Of course, they're going to set this crazy goal high in the sky that no one can reach.
phil labonte
Yep.
ian crossland
He wants classic.
I looked up.
I was like, what are Putin's demands?
Because I asked this question a couple of weeks ago and no one really knew.
I think that's by design from our media because they're not that extreme.
His demands, there's like, he has six.
Two of them in particular are that he wants the land, obviously east of the Donbass and the Crimea and the freeways.
But he wants guarantee on paper that they're not going to put Ukraine in NATO and Ukraine's not going to seek NATO.
They want Ukraine to be a neutral territory.
It's neither controlled by the right or the left, you know, whatever you want to call it, the East or the West.
phil labonte
Do you believe that, though?
Because the counter argument to that is if Putin takes the, or if Putin is allowed to stay in the Donbass and the Russians take that land, then it becomes a staging area for Putin to actually build up troops, have build military bases, and then later on take more of Ukraine.
Because the argument that people that are very anti-Russia have is they're saying, look, he's going to eventually take all of Ukraine.
He may not take it all right away.
He probably thought he could.
But if he could have taken Ukraine when he first invaded, gone all the way to Kiev and taken the whole country, he would have.
Now, there are people that will make the argument, oh, and then he's going to go for Poland, then he's going to go for NATO.
I don't believe that at all.
alex lains
I don't think he's into North.
phil labonte
I don't think that he wants that smoke, honestly.
I don't think that he wants to go after Poland.
There could be an argument that he wants to take, or there is an argument that he wants to take back the former Soviet states.
carter banks
Yeah, I think that's kind of what you were saying with this Tucker interview way back.
He just, I think it seems like he came away wanting to just have what he originally had back in the day.
phil labonte
But remember, some of those states are now part of NATO.
carter banks
Yeah.
phil labonte
So I don't think that he's willing to Take on NATO, especially seeing how badly, honestly, I mean, all things considered, how badly he's performed in Ukraine.
Ukraine is not a heavily armed country.
It took a lot of NATO sending weapons and military assets and money to Ukraine for them to stop him.
And I think that people expected more out of, or people anticipated more out of Russia's military capability.
Now, he could activate more troops.
And I don't think that it's something that, or it's a situation where Russia is totally a paper tiger.
But if you look at the situation, Russia's not going to take on NATO.
Russia doesn't want to fight the United States.
The only thing Russia has is nuclear weapons, right?
They do have nukes.
But when it comes to conventional war, they don't want to fight the U.S. because the U.S. would stop a mud hole in them.
alex lains
Well, not after that introduction into the meeting in that meeting that they had.
phil labonte
Well, I mean, you know, like, look, the United States, if they wanted to, it's likely they could fly B-2 bombers right over Moscow and they would never know, right?
It's likely that Moscow would have no way to stop them.
You know, it's not something I want to test.
No, we don't want that.
I don't want to test it.
But the idea that Russia is going to take on NATO so that way they can get Poland, I think that's far-fetched.
And I think that that's just an argument to get people afraid.
But it is likely that they would use the Donbass as a staging area to take more of Ukraine in five, 10 years.
ian crossland
Well, that likely, I don't know, potentially, yes, for sure.
It'd be like if you have a neighbor and you're like, well, why would I improve my neighbor's quality of life?
It's just going to make him more able to destroy me later.
You're like, well, my neighbor's not going to destroy me.
So maybe if you owned your house.
What's that?
carter banks
Unless he wants owned.
ian crossland
Unless he wants my territory my river and then control into the Donbass.
So it's really a state of mind.
Do you trust it or not?
Are you willing to empower your neighbor with the threat, the potential threat that they're going to use that power to destroy you later?
I don't know.
This is the human conundrum through all space-time.
And that's we have civil society where you empower your neighbor.
And then we have military society where you make sure that you're the strongest of all, whether that means you got to knock them down a peg or lift yourself up.
It's irrelevant in the military almost.
Not totally, but you still got to be careful about doing excess damage.
Anyway, civil society, trust.
If we really want to make peace, then we're going to have to trust.
Because, I mean, I'm also like a common sense, there's no other way.
They own the territory.
What are you going to do?
Unless we did a counterinvasion and lost hundreds of thousands of, then we're the attackers going into the defense of entrenchments.
And it's like, I don't.
alex lains
We don't want that.
ian crossland
No, I'd rather be allies than buy cheap people.
alex lains
People apparently want that, but the protesters apparently want that, but common sense people don't want that.
ian crossland
People that are like, just take it back.
I'm like, have you been to a front line of a military in a trench with the artillery going on?
alex lains
Well, I see the movies.
ian crossland
And you don't get the artillery doesn't, have you ever hear a building get demolished next to you, like the vibration in your gut that will change you forever just from that?
For these dudes that are in there for months at a time.
Fortunately, we've kind of evolved away from trench warfare.
Now we've got drone warfare.
phil labonte
Oh, they haven't evolved away from trench warfare at all.
ian crossland
They're shelling people in trenches.
phil labonte
There is still, that's the majority of what's going on and it rains in Ukraine right now.
unidentified
Boots get all wet, trench football amputated.
phil labonte
That's why they don't, that's why the lines haven't moved because trench warfare is brutal and that's exactly what's going on.
ian crossland
They go underground.
phil labonte
Yes, of course there are drones now, and it does change the battlefield, but trench warfare is still the combat method of the day.
ian crossland
It's impressive that, I mean, I'm still thinking in World War I in two terms, that the Russians actually were able to take that much territory, thinking, but I guess we have modern airplanes and things that can take out the backlines and not only that, Russia has far more military capability than Ukraine.
phil labonte
And, you know, Ukraine doesn't have a significant air force.
ian crossland
And Russia was probably preparing to do this for a while.
phil labonte
I mean, I'm sure they were.
They put up the, you know, they started massing military assets on the on the border.
And no one thought that Russia was actually, or a lot of people were like, Russia's not going to go in.
Russia wouldn't, they wouldn't go into Ukraine.
There's no way they would.
ian crossland
But when Biden was like, surge the border, Putin was like, oh, he's talking to me.
Time for my invasion.
carter banks
Can you just walk a military exercise into someone else's country and have it not be an attack too?
Because that was like originally what he was saying.
Like, that's kind of weird.
ian crossland
In the Crimea, they marched in.
carter banks
Well, no.
No.
I forgot exactly where.
phil labonte
I think 2022 when they actually made the start of the invasion.
ian crossland
He expected that they were going to be like, we welcome you as heroes and liberators.
And then they opened the doors.
And there was, I think that's what he wanted.
He was trying to create that narrative with people.
phil labonte
No, no, he, like, like I said, he was, he was looking to take the whole country.
He was trying to get to Kiev.
Well, there was a, there was an actual attack that was, or there was a convoy of military vehicles that were, you know, made a run for Kiev.
They were looking to take Kiev.
They were looking to take the whole country because he does want to take the country overall.
And that's part of why the argument against allowing them to stay in the areas that they've taken is a strong argument.
It's part of why it's such a compelling argument because it is likely that he will just try to take another bite once things cool off a little bit.
ian crossland
And like if they neutralize Ukraine and it truly becomes a neutral territory, what would that be?
phil labonte
What do you mean, neutralized?
ian crossland
Like they want it to be neutral.
Like Spain that's neutral in World War II, you know?
phil labonte
That's what no elite wants.
ian crossland
Putin wants Ukraine to be a neutral territory as part of his demands, meaning it's not beholden to NATO or NATO, yeah.
Yeah.
Or Russian influence.
But like, how do you guarantee that's actually happening?
Because there's still going to be massive influence underneath the surface if they say, okay.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, as long as, well, because of the location, Ukraine is going to have either influence by the East, by the Western countries or influenced by Russia.
Like, that's just kind of the way that it's going to be.
And the reason Russia doesn't want NATO in Ukraine is because, you know, Russia, Putin wants to take more of the country.
alex lains
Doesn't he like any deal that's going to make him happy, or is he just going to.
phil labonte
Personally, I think that what he'll do or what he might do, and I'm not, I'm not, I can't predict what the guy's going to do.
I'm not nearly educated enough to do that.
But what he might do is just say, okay, I'll make a deal for this area here and let us stay here and then we'll stop fighting.
There will be a ceasefire and then it'll be a couple years.
alex lains
And then he'll try again.
phil labonte
That's what he did with Crimea.
He took Crimea.
Then a couple years, then, you know, whatever, eight, nine years later, when the situation was favorable, when we had a president that wouldn't fight back, that he looked at as weak.
alex lains
A house plant.
phil labonte
A house plant, like you said earlier.
Exactly.
When Joe Biden was the president, when he thought that he could get away with it, he's like, all right, well, now's the time.
And he went in.
Who the president is does matter.
And what the president says does matter.
There's a lot of people that blame the United States for Russia taking Crimea.
And you can actually go back to when Barack Obama met with Medvedev and said, tell Vladimir that I've got, this is, I think, in 2012, tell Vladimir that I've got, I will have much more flexibility after my election.
And what Vladimir and what Vladimir Putin and what Medvedev heard was you can invade and take Crimea after my election.
So that way I don't have to worry about the political repercussions.
I won't fight you.
We won't have significant problems or you won't see significant resistance from the U.S. and NATO if you go in after I'm re-elected.
Just don't make this problem for me before my election.
Now, that was naivete on President Obama's part.
He thought that, oh, everybody wants the same thing and everybody can just get along and be happy.
And he'll understand that I'm just saying, don't do this now.
And we'll talk about it more later or whatever.
But what Putin heard was, don't go in until after I get re-elected.
And that's exactly what happened.
So that was, you know, that was, some people would say that that was the president of the United States giving Vladimir Putin the green light to do it.
And consequently, he didn't.
So it does matter who the president is, and it does matter how you deal with people like Putin, because it is true that, you know, Putin is a, you know, is a warmonger.
He does kill people that criticize him.
Like he shot a missile at the leader of the Wagner group and blew his helicopter out of the sky because he thought there was a coup against or going to be a coup against him.
That's how things are done in Russia.
So the idea that things in Russia are done the same way that they're done in the United States is a gross misunderstanding of how things are done or of the reality of the situation.
ian crossland
I was thinking about Putin, you know, Naeb Bukele.
They just in El Salvador, they just repealed presidential term limits so now he can be president for life.
unidentified
Bukele can.
phil labonte
Really?
ian crossland
Yeah, they did this a couple weeks ago.
I don't know if you guys have reported on it.
It's pretty stark news, to be honest.
Yay, hero Bukele, but now he's the dictator.
phil labonte
No, no, no, no.
He's not a dictator because just because he can be elected doesn't mean he will be re-elected.
ian crossland
And just because he's president doesn't mean he's influencing the elections, but he can, doesn't mean he is.
So anyway, what's that?
phil labonte
Why do you think that he's, I mean, he's got an approval rate of something like 80% because he's cleaned up the country and made it safer people.
I mean, if he gets re-elected, it will likely be a legitimate re-election.
unidentified
Exactly.
ian crossland
And I think they like him and they will.
And the problem is I think he looks around Bukele and he's like, all right, no one is going to be able to do this like me.
If I give this control over to the next president, he's going to fuck this up.
All these things are going to fall apart.
Everything I've worked for is going to fail.
I think Putin has that same mindset.
After he left office in like 2003 or four or something.
phil labonte
Well, he was the prime minister.
ian crossland
Yeah, he was done.
And then all of a sudden, it was like he couldn't go.
phil labonte
He was the prime minister.
He wasn't done.
ian crossland
He just went into a different two guy the number one.
And then they switched.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
But I got this feeling that it was like he doesn't want to let go because he thinks the next guy's going to screw it all up.
And until he sees someone competent that he believes can do it better than him or as good, he's going to like, he's just gripping and gripping.
phil labonte
And it's my sense that it's more he's looking to retain power than actually worried about who the successor would be.
ian crossland
Because like he'll get slaughtered as soon as he's out of power.
carter banks
Oh, that's a possibility for sure.
phil labonte
I think that he just wants to stay in power.
I think he's going to stay and he's a dictator and he's going to stay in power until he dies.
carter banks
Also interesting.
My mom just texted me and said Russia took Crimea on Clinton and Obama watch.
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
I mean, Obama was the president.
carter banks
Yes.
phil labonte
And like just, you know, like we said, Obama kind of gave, some would argue that Obama gave him the green light.
So we're going to jump to this story here, bring it back to the United States.
From for Washington, from NBC Washington, D.C. police chief remains in charge after federal hostile takeover attempt, AG says.
D.C.'s chief of police remains the chief of police.
The district attorneys general said after a court hearing on what he called a hostile takeover attempt by the federal government.
He called the judge's decision a very important win for home rule.
Less than 12 hours after the Trump administration seemingly replaced Washington, D.C.'s police chief with a federal officer, the district was in federal court on Friday to try to block the move.
Attorney General Brian Schwab filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming President Donald Trump far exceeded the authority granted him in D.C.'s Home Rule Act and the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution.
I don't know that that's correct about the Constitution, at least, because the Constitution does lay out that the district area is not an actual state.
It's an area that is actually controlled by the feds, if I understand correctly.
So don't quote me and I could be wrong.
carter banks
I think you're right, but I don't know.
phil labonte
The federal judge overseeing the lawsuit said the law doesn't allow the federal government to name a new police chief, but the city can't completely keep them out either.
U.S. District Judge Ann Reyes asked the two sides to hammer out a compromise, but promised to issue a court order temporary blocking the administration from naming a new chief if they couldn't agree.
I'm encouraged by the judge's remarks and the federal government making the changes that were suggested and the judge's willingness to rule if that's not satisfactory, Mayor Muriel Bowser said after the hearing.
How D.C. enforces federal immigration laws in response to homeless people are key issues.
D.C. and federal officials are expected to keep talking over the weekend about the general orders that Drug Enforcement Administration boss Terry Cole rescinded.
Now, how they deal with homeless people is something that legitimately is for D.C. to decide on its own, but they do have to deal with homeless people.
But when it comes to things like immigration, that's ICE.
And it's always ICE.
It's always Homeland Security and immigration and customs enforcement.
There's no gray area about that.
The localities, when they're sanctuary cities, all that means is our local police forces aren't going to help the federal officers.
But that doesn't mean that the federal officers don't have jurisdiction over immigration and customs and stuff.
So when they're dealing with illegal immigrants, it's always ICE's, you know, it's always ICE's jurisdiction.
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
So I don't know that there's that there's an argument to be had about that.
ian crossland
Well, the gray area I would argue about, I think that, because it's like, this is a thing about being a human.
You're told law and order are the most, are very important, law and order, uphold the law.
But then it's like you watch what happened with the Nazis persecuting the Jews and like people hiding Jewish people in their homes and lying and protecting them overtly.
And they were the good guys in the story from where the way I heard the story were the people that violated the law and that were like, no, we're doing what we believe is right for our people for our neighbors.
You're some federal cop.
Get out of my house.
phil labonte
Do you believe that it's comp that hiding Jews from the Nazis is comparable to hiding illegal immigrants from ICE?
ian crossland
Technically, yeah, comparable, not the same at all, not the same at all.
And different levels, of course, the immigration thing is way, way less abhorrent than persecuting a religion, religious people, or a culture in your society.
Much, much worse.
But the motions behind it of like, I'm protecting my neighbors from the federal people that are in here from DC, like that, that's a real, and it's, and we've been encouraged as Americans to do that.
When the king comes and tries to take your land, you're like, get out of my land.
This is our country now.
We govern this, us.
unidentified
What?
ian crossland
This is what we told the British to kick rocks when they tried to come in and find our terrorists and arrest our terrorists, George Washington and John Adams, these guys.
So this is just the thing.
You see both sides of the mind working against the people.
phil labonte
I think that it's a significant, when you're talking about illegal immigrants versus an actual rebellion of Englishmen against Englishmen, I think it's a different thing.
And I also think that it's a very different thing when you're talking about Jews being hidden by Germans from the Nazis.
ian crossland
The thing is, law and order isn't always good.
Sometimes law and order is evil.
And if you have evil law and order to deport people, I don't.
I mean, I don't think so.
unidentified
No.
phil labonte
And I'm trying to get it.
ian crossland
I think some people do think it's evil.
So they're going through this moral thing of like, I need to protect my neighbors from the ignorance.
carter banks
If you think about it.
alex lains
Like ignorance of like the law.
And like, what did you say?
carter banks
If you think Trump is Hitler.
unidentified
Yeah.
alex lains
Oh, yeah.
phil labonte
I mean, everybody's Hitler.
carter banks
That's the, that's the, because, yeah, when, when the Nazis took over, the law became determined by the objectively bad guys.
And so to break the law was good in that situation.
So I guess if you think Trump is like that, is Germany, you know, after the beer hall putsch and all that stuff with Hitler in power, then you think breaking this law is good.
ian crossland
Which is, I think, is devoid of, you know, reason to do that because the media has been pushing that on people too, like saying Trump is Hitler and things like that.
unidentified
Right.
ian crossland
So there's this.
And then they get the woman crying as the baby's being taken out of her hands when a picture.
phil labonte
Oh, look at baby crying.
alex lains
It's all about the constitution.
It's out of not knowing too and ignorance and not paying attention.
serge du preez
Ignorance of the law does not.
carter banks
Right, right.
alex lains
No, no, I know.
Yeah.
serge du preez
So even if they don't know, still guilty.
unidentified
Yeah.
alex lains
Oh, 100%.
I'm just saying like for some of them, they might actually just be genuinely stupid.
phil labonte
Might.
ian crossland
I mean, the moral dilemma is just, it's concurrent.
It's going to have to come up again in the future in a different way.
phil labonte
I don't see it as a moral dilemma because I think that it's immoral to allow people to stay here if they're illegal.
Right, the other thing is that it is a problem for the existing people.
If only because of the stuff that we talk about with the census, right?
If you're going to count all of the people, not the citizens, but all of the people, the people, and then that's how the apportionment of representation In the federal government is calculated.
That means that all of the illegals that are here are diluting the political power of the citizens, right?
This is a little, this is, this is an, it's a few degrees removed, and it takes being able to think of downstream consequences to actually really to understand how this matters.
But it's not moral to take the power of the voting power away from the existing population, the citizens, the people that have lived, that have lived here their whole lives, and dilute that power by counting people that are not citizens.
That's an immoral act, too.
So I understand there is a care argument.
Well, we need to care for these people.
They're here.
We want to be compassionate and we want to see these people live productive lives.
And it's mean to deport them.
And it's mean to have ICE pick them up.
And it's mean to make it hard for them to live here.
And we want to be nice, but that does not mean that it's moral to allow them to stay here.
It's immoral to allow them to stay here because they came here and broke the law.
And people that try to come here legally, that have been waiting, that have spent money, it's immoral.
It does them a disservice.
It's immoral to them.
It's moral to get the people that are here trying to break, that have broken the law to get here and that are violating the law by being here.
It's actually the moral action to round those people up and send them back home or make it difficult for them to live here so that way they leave of their own volition.
ian crossland
I think it's a group of both positive and negative morals.
It's immoral and moral.
There's a lot of different moralities happening at once.
So it would be like if you yell at your kid to stop doing something, is that moral or immoral?
Well, one parent might argue it's the moral thing to do because now they're not going to do the thing anymore.
Whereas the other parent's going to argue it's immoral because now the kid's traumatized.
phil labonte
What's the kid trying to do?
Because if one kid's punching his brother.
ian crossland
Yeah, as you run into the street, the conversation gets more nuanced.
What are these people trying to do here?
Like just their presence is diluting the voting base.
That's a problem, a big immoral problem to allow.
I agree with that.
Now, grabbing them in the middle of the night, dragging them out by their hair and sending them to a Salvadorian prison, also immoral, Mike.
phil labonte
So hold on.
ian crossland
How is it happening?
phil labonte
So you're dragging them out by their hair.
You're coloring the conversation here.
ian crossland
I'm just adding nuance to the...
phil labonte
That's coloring the conversation.
ian crossland
That's the instance of a possible immoral way to deal with an immoral situation.
phil labonte
But the point is you're trying to make the action of rounding the people up that are here illegally.
You're trying to make the action of doing it a violent, aggressive, malice, malicious action.
And it's not malicious.
The ICE agents that are going to get people that are here illegally, they're not doing it out of malice.
There is not a situation where they're like, let's go hurt them.
It's not about hurting them.
So grabbing them by their hair and yanking them out of bed.
That is adding malice to the action.
That is you coloring what's going on.
So that way people feel bad for the people that are here illegally and feel like the people enforcing the law are the bad guys.
ian crossland
It's less about grabbing by the hair, more about taking them without their stuff, leaving their stuff behind.
Like that they don't, ICE doesn't have a, I mean, they might have to go get their stuff eventually and send it.
phil labonte
That's why they should leave of their own volition.
ian crossland
I agree with that.
I do agree with that.
That's a nice way to kind of create a moralistic solution because there are lots of ways to solve this immoral problem in an even more immoral way.
So we got to be careful about introducing rounding people up at gunpoint, having them stripped down and like, you know, marching them naked through the street, whatever.
phil labonte
Are they actually happening through malicious?
I just can't do it.
alex lains
I think they're doing that to like illegal gang members and I'm okay with it.
But are they actually doing that?
carter banks
I haven't seen.
Well, it's just, I keep thinking about Sin Frontera, the documentary that 6-7 Kevin just made about how these people get here in the first place and how horrifying it is on their way here and some don't make it and most of them get assaulted in all terrible kinds of ways.
And it kind of sends a message like, hey, we're not incentivizing you to continue to do it that way because if you did it that way, you're going back.
It is a tough moral thing to think about because like hurting, you know.
phil labonte
If you make it difficult to live here and you make there be significant repercussions for coming here illegally, that is to deter people from coming.
The point is, you have to have negative consequences for coming here illegally.
It can't just be, oh, they were picked up, they got processed, sent back, and then they decided they just want to come back and they snuck through again.
You have to make negative consequences for coming here.
You can't come back ever.
You'll never be an American citizen if you get picked up.
You should, and I've talked about this multiple times in the show.
You shouldn't be able to rent a place to live.
And if the people that are, if the people, if there's someone that owns property that's renting to an illegal, they should face significant fines, jail time, and possibly loss of their property.
Same thing with people giving jobs to illegals.
If you employ an illegal, you should face jail time, significant legal repercussions, possibly loss of property.
alex lains
Because right now they're not afraid of the law.
So they're not listening to the law.
You have to make them afraid.
phil labonte
And it should be something there's, you know, Democrats say this all the time, and they're actually right about this.
They're always like, oh, you know, well, the people that hire them never get in trouble.
You're right.
They should.
They should lose their property.
They should lose their businesses.
It should be too scary to hire illegals.
And illegals should have a hard time finding a job.
And illegals should have a hard time finding a place to live.
And that way they'll say, it's not worth coming to America because there's no benefit for me anymore.
No one can find a place to rent.
I can't find a place to rent to me.
I can't find a job.
No one will hire me because if they do, if the place gets raided by ICE, then they might lose their business.
And remittances to other countries, tax that at 90%.
You want to send money to send money back home?
You can only send 5% of what you've made.
And all that money goes to the federal government.
So they can't send their money back.
So they stuff their tax remittances.
I'm not sure exactly the method, but they can do it, whether it be wiring money.
It's possible that people would do things like buy crypto and get around it that way.
But again, to buy crypto, there's a lot of crypto companies where you have to, you know, KYC remotely.
ian crossland
It's all tracked on our network, too.
Eventually, that stuff's coming back.
All your crypto trades are public.
phil labonte
So, and it should be difficult to come to the United States and take advantage of basically loose liberal immigration laws.
And if you do that, then you don't have a situation where people are getting ripped out of their homes by their hair and traips through the streets naked at night.
You know, it just doesn't happen because they're like, F this, I'm going home.
You know, I can't get a job here.
It's not worth coming to the United States.
ian crossland
Is it happening?
alex lains
It's worth it if you do it the legal way.
Yes.
My dad did it.
Sure.
My dad came from Africa.
phil labonte
Surge did it.
alex lains
And it took him like 10 years and thousands of dollars.
Not saying it's easy.
It's not easy to become an American citizen.
But if you think it's worth it, then do it.
But don't do it the illegal way because just like you said, it undermines the people that come here and they do it the legal way.
The people that wait years upon years upon years and spend hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars.
It's a slap in the face to everybody.
And then it's also a slap in the face to the actual American citizens.
And it disrupts our safety, our resources.
It's just like, yes, it's, I can see the point in like morally, immorally, but I don't think it's immoral to take lawbreakers out and put them back where they came.
And it's also, it's the same thing too with like how people like to blame ICE for, you know, taking parents and their children and like putting them back.
And it's like, why don't you blame the parents for putting their children in that situation in the first place?
How do you think they got there?
Probably through the cartel.
They risked their own child's life to come here the illegal way when they could have done it the right way.
It's just possible.
ian crossland
What was your dad's experience like?
Did he talk about it much explicitly?
alex lains
No, I was young.
So he came to America before I was born because he met my mom here.
He was actually born in Mozambique, fled during the communist regime.
My Va Vaugh got a job with the U.S. Embassy.
And then him and his brother, my uncle, they came to America separate times, but they both came with green card.
And then he met my mom, and he wanted to become an American citizen.
And again, it took him like 10 years.
ian crossland
Did they get married?
And then he got his citizenship.
alex lains
Yeah, they got, yeah, he got his citizenship when I was in like fourth grade.
ian crossland
And then, so they move here.
Did they get a green card upon entry?
I mean, this is a basic question.
alex lains
Yeah, yeah.
I believe so.
I believe that's what he had.
And then he went through the process of getting a citizenship.
But he was never here.
There was never a point where he was here illegally.
Like he was always making sure that his card and whatnot, you know, never expired and everything.
And it's tough and it's hard and you're going to spend a lot of money.
And I don't think the system is perfect.
I do think that there needs to be some sort of reform.
I'm not saying it needs to be like easier in the sense, but just, you know, I was talking, I can't remember his name, but I was talking about it out there.
And it's like the system isn't perfect, but still, it doesn't mean that it gives you a right to come here illegally when hundreds of thousands of people are coming here and doing it the legal way and they're waiting.
ian crossland
I've heard that some of the people that are the most upset with the illegal immigration are the legal immigrants.
alex lains
Yeah, my dad is pissed.
Rightfully so.
unidentified
I would be so rightfully so.
What a violation of social.
alex lains
He has a, I'm telling all his secrets.
He has a bald eagle tattoo on his shoulder and that says an American citizen or whatever.
And he's like, I want to laser it off.
Oh, hold on.
unidentified
It's terrible.
alex lains
He's like, no, he loves America.
He loves America.
He doesn't want to see it turn into the country he fled from.
ian crossland
In a way, people that come here legally obviously love this country to put yourself through 10 years of his own business, his own construction business.
alex lains
He made a great life for himself and his family.
It's possible.
It's hard work, but like if you really want to be here, it's possible.
You can't take the easy way out.
ian crossland
I guess maybe what immigration, some people say like put a total freeze on immigration for the moment, whatever that would look like.
unidentified
I don't know.
alex lains
There's people waiting.
Yeah.
ian crossland
And then what, like digitize the process so that it happens faster?
You said that needs some reform?
alex lains
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it does suck to wait 10 years to get citizenship, especially when it's, it's most likely, of course, the ones that are doing it the legal way are the ones that really love this country and believe in the American dream and want to make a life for themselves.
And they know that they can do it.
And America's, you know, the great, they think America is the greatest country in the world.
And it sucks that they have to be the ones to go through this long process of spending a bunch of money and waiting a bunch of years to do it.
I don't know.
I don't know what the reform should be, but I, you know, it's not easy.
ian crossland
So I want them to know English.
alex lains
Yeah.
Well, my dad, my dad knows English, so that's good.
ian crossland
He knew it before?
Yeah.
alex lains
Yeah.
Well, because my Volvo worked at the U.S. Embassy in Portugal.
So that's your grandfather?
No, it's funny.
Volvo is technically grandfather in Portuguese, but when I was younger, that's all I really knew how to say was Volvo.
So it's your dad?
No, it's my grandmother.
unidentified
Oh.
alex lains
Yeah.
So my dad's mom.
Yeah.
ian crossland
She worked at the embassy.
Oh, okay.
alex lains
Yeah.
ian crossland
So they were Americanized.
I could go on and on, man.
alex lains
Yeah, I know.
Well, maybe, maybe you guys can have him here.
He'll talk all about it, all his story and everything.
carter banks
It's not a bad idea.
phil labonte
Did you?
ian crossland
Did you come from South Africa to America and then get your citizenship?
What was your process?
serge du preez
Yeah, it's roughly the same as that.
ian crossland
You just sat in a waiting line for.
serge du preez
Yeah, I sit in the IRS lines for like 10 hours.
It was crazy.
ian crossland
Over and over again?
serge du preez
In California, back when Democrats didn't want me in this country.
Oh, Democrats used to hate coming to the country because we would like add to the tax base.
You know what I mean?
We were more people that were that they didn't, they didn't like, they weren't like super cool with immigrants.
Remember, Obama was like the deporter in chief.
Everyone forgets that.
You're like, oh, but we suddenly need open borders.
No, dude.
Since when?
phil labonte
Since when?
Was it like it's worth it's it's worth noting like The difficulty of becoming a citizen is a feature.
It's not a bug.
Like you should have to work hard to become an American.
And one of the reasons is because the people that will put the effort in actually care about the ideals this country was founded on.
People that will go, will come to the United States and go through all of the stuff, pay all the money, show up for their hearings that they have to do, do all the things that you're supposed to do to come here legally.
Those people care about being Americans.
They care about being Americans more than most Americans that are born here because they see the value in it.
They know what it's like to not be an American.
One of the things that we talk about, you know, I think that you shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States if you don't believe in the values the United States has.
So if you're a communist, you shouldn't be like, it should be perfect.
ian crossland
It should be to visit or to move here, you mean?
phil labonte
Either.
alex lains
Me up, right?
unidentified
Either.
phil labonte
I don't care.
I mean, it should be a privilege to come to the United States.
So yeah, if you're a communist and you're only coming because you want to visit, like, I don't, I don't see any reason to grant you a visa.
I mean, if you're looking to escape your communist country and you want to become a citizen, you're looking to defect or whatever.
You know, I don't know.
I don't even know if there are countries where you can defect from anymore.
But if you're looking to escape a common country and you want to come to the United States and you hold our values in high esteem, like then, okay, you got an argument.
You know, then maybe we can figure something out.
But there's no reason to be like, oh, yeah, you're from a communist country.
So it's fine that you come here to visit.
ian crossland
They're like, I just want, I want to learn about democracy.
What's the problem?
phil labonte
You don't care.
The internet works.
alex lains
That's what Google's for.
phil labonte
Yeah, exactly.
ian crossland
I don't want to immerse myself in the culture.
phil labonte
No, no, no.
No.
ian crossland
Northeast Asia.
phil labonte
We don't need it.
The point is, it should be a privilege to come to the United States because the United States is the greatest country in the world, in my opinion.
It should be a privilege to come here.
It should be hard to become a citizen and it should take significant effort.
So that way we don't just have people that are like, well, I'm going to get there and I'm going to get a job and then I'm going to act like all the people in California that were protesting ICE, that were like waving Mexican flags and saying, you know, we hate America.
Well, you live here.
alex lains
Okay, then go back.
phil labonte
Get out.
If you don't love America.
alex lains
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
phil labonte
Absolutely.
We have, like, if you're an American and you're born here and you're an American citizen and you want to, if you hate America, we can't do nothing about it.
You're an American citizen.
It's just like if you have like a crappy relative, they're your relative.
Deal with it.
You can't do anything about it.
But if you have a crappy neighbor, you don't have to let that crappy neighbor come into your house and tell you how crappy your house is.
You don't have to allow it.
You can just be like, get out of here then.
ian crossland
You know, something I also is sort of a through line is I feel, I believe, and I hope that in the future, when people move to a state, they don't get voting rights until they live there for three years.
For five years, five years?
phil labonte
Five years.
ian crossland
Some amount of time, a long time that you're now you're a resident.
You've been here.
You know the land.
You know the people.
It's three years at least, five years.
So I think extending that to immigrants also would be fine, especially those that are here illegally shouldn't be counted on a census, first of all.
It makes absolutely no sense.
It's completely logical.
And then I'd like to say that.
phil labonte
That would probably take a constitutional amendment, though.
ian crossland
Which one?
phil labonte
It would take an amendment because right now, the way the census rules are written, it just says count the people.
It doesn't say count the citizens.
So if you live here, unless you're Indians not taxed.
So it's possible that the Supreme Court would read it and would say that there's a way to read it that says they're not talking about people that are here illegally.
But the letter of the law now, it says they count the people not including Indians not taxed.
ian crossland
And then three-fifths are a totally different thing.
phil labonte
That's totally different.
ian crossland
That was not a census thing?
Weren't they counting bodies?
phil labonte
Yes, it is, but that's not the same.
It's a different thing.
They're talking about slaves.
Slaves are three-fifths.
There are no longer slaves.
So no one has counted three-fifths.
ian crossland
And then that led to someone being like, well, what if we treat the people that are here illegally as three-fifths count towards the census until the bodies are sent back home?
phil labonte
I don't imagine that the SCOTUS will find that.
I mean, it's possible.
And this all, this is just me pontificating.
It's not law.
so what the SCOTUS would actually say is what would really matter.
But it's my sense that the way that SCOTUS would rule is, well, it says in the Constitution, count the people.
So you have to count the people.
And I think that that's part of why you should make it super hard for illegals to live here.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says you have to force, you know, you can't punish businesses or punish renters for renting to illegals or for, you know, and you have to provide ID to rent in most places.
You have to provide ID to get a job.
So there are plenty of means to make it difficult for illegals to stay here.
But I think that when it comes to the actual census, what you have to do is get them to leave.
Because I don't think that we're going to be able to say we don't count people that are not citizens.
I think that the way the Constitution is written, you'd have to actually have an amendment to fix that.
alex lains
Well, on the voting thing, too, I follow a girl on social media who she's from America, but her husband is from Scotland.
So she actually ended up moving to Scotland.
I'm assuming got a citizenship or card or something.
I don't know.
I don't know how it works.
But she still has her citizenship for America.
So she literally lives.
She does not live in America anymore.
She's been in Scotland for like over a year.
She lives in Scotland.
She voted in the 2024 election.
She voted, Kamala.
But she's not even here to like experience the new president.
So I just find that so crazy that there are people that who don't even live in America anymore and can still vote in the election and then not even like reap or sow the benefits of it.
unidentified
Maybe if they're in the military, she's not in the military.
alex lains
She's literally a social media influencer.
ian crossland
And she's a primary resident.
unidentified
Yeah.
carter banks
Does she pay taxes in America?
alex lains
I don't, I don't know.
I don't know how it works.
Probably.
Literally, her job is social media.
It's like Instagram and YouTube and stuff.
And her husband is Scottish and she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
And she literally, during the election, was posting and like people were asking her, Are you voting?
I know you live in Scotland now.
And she's like, Yeah, I flew, I flew to America to vote.
carter banks
At least she flew to do it in person.
alex lains
Yeah, but like still.
carter banks
Yeah.
alex lains
I'd rather not.
She's a major liberal.
ian crossland
You travel a lot and you have your primary residence in the U.S., but you're overseas 10 months out of the year traveling.
alex lains
Yeah, but that's different.
She literally lives full-time, house, husband, dog in Scotland.
ian crossland
And then I wonder if she has a full-time residence in the parents.
unidentified
Oh.
alex lains
Yeah.
ian crossland
The floods are being pulled.
carter banks
It's tough because my sister was working full-time in Japan and she still was able to vote because she was going to come back.
I mean, they were not going to be like, oh, you can stay here forever because they don't let you do that.
phil labonte
I mean, I still vote in New Hampshire.
You know, I've got a place down here, but I spend enough time in New Hampshire and I have my primary residence in New Hampshire.
So, you know, I think that you are, as long as you don't give up your citizenship, you're going to say, look, I live, I'm an American citizen.
I have a place in whatever state or whatever.
So that's where I live.
I'm not sure the details of it and what the legalities are for that location.
Like I pay taxes here in West Virginia because I'm here so much.
But when it comes to where I vote, I go back to New Hampshire to vote.
ian crossland
It's about where your residence is, which is kind of nice that they, because I think what the, you know, the overmind wants is to know where your body is and where your paperwork says your body is and make sure it's all the same so that you're not violating the system's tendrils.
phil labonte
Well, the thing is, like, states want their tax money.
You know, like, so West Virginia, because I'm here so much, they want to, they want to cut on my pay, right?
Because I'm here doing the show and stuff like that.
So they want their tax money.
There's no income tax in New Hampshire, so it's not a problem.
You know, I pay my property tax and New Hampshire's like, I don't care.
You know, just like, whatever, you know, there's no income tax.
There's no sales tax.
Whereas down here, there is income tax, so I got to take care of that in West Virginia.
ian crossland
If New Hampshire had income tax, would you be paying income tax in both states?
phil labonte
Or do you pick the one and wherever you spend most of your time is probably what it's got to be?
So we're going to go ahead and jump to this next story.
Let me see here.
Where did it go?
from the New York Times.
The Democrats hate America, and they continuously want to remind you that they hate our representative democracy.
So, from the New York Times, abolish the Senate, end the Electoral College, pack the court.
Why the left can't win without a new constitution.
After the great rebuke of 2024, many Democrats seem to think their party needs to become more moderate.
But there's another theory potent on the American left that believes Donald Trump's election shows not just that American democracy is in danger, but that it doesn't really work at all.
What the country needs isn't just a new policy agenda.
It might need the kind of constitutional revolution from adding new states to packing the Supreme Court that some Democrats already flirted with under Joe Biden.
That's the kind of argument that my guest today, Osida Nuwana, makes in this new book, The Right of the People, Democracy in the Case for a New American Founding.
Nuvana is a contributing editor at the New Republic and the Democratic Institutions Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
So, this is an hour-long podcast where Ross Dutt and this fella who wrote this book get into why the Democrats actually don't want to protect democracy.
They want to change our Democratic Republic so that they can retain power.
All of the things that are proposed here would actually make it impossible or incredibly difficult for the Republicans to win at a national level, which there was a time, and this is probably back in 2013, well, 2014, 2015, leading up to Donald Trump.
The Democrats really did think that the Republicans were going to be a regional party for as long as they could see.
The Republicans were not going to have a national influence anymore.
And the Democrats had kind of just taken over everything.
And then, when Donald Trump won, that's part of why the Democrats kind of freaked out about everything.
They really thought that they had control of everything.
They had control of, and they were going to forever have control of the White House and the Senate.
Maybe they would lose the House of Representatives for a bit, but they would lose by maybe five or 10 members and they would gain them back.
And they really thought they had essentially a permanent one-party rule.
And that's exactly what they want.
They want to change the way that our government is organized in order to make sure that Republicans don't win ever again.
And they outline that right here.
Now, this is not something that is actually surprising to anyone on the right, really.
You kind of knew, if you pay attention to politics, you kind of understood that that was the situation, that Democrats don't really care about democracy when they would say things like, you know, we're going to lose our democracy.
Donald Trump is going to destroy our democracy.
What they were talking about was their power base, their bureaucratic power base.
And there are people that'll make arguments.
No, that's not what they meant.
They don't mean that.
They don't really think that the Republicans are evil, et cetera, et cetera.
But there are more and more people that are coming out and saying the quiet part out loud and making arguments: hey, we need to make sure that Republicans can't.
We need to do these things that will make sure that Republicans can't win.
And these are terrible ideas.
Adding states.
I mean, D.C. constitutionally is not supposed to be a state, right?
They want to make Puerto Rico a state and they want to make D.C. a state.
At the best, if they want to continue to have a constitutionally, you know, a constitutionally correct situation, they would have to give most of D.C. back to Maryland.
And there would be, you know, just a very, very small portion of D.C., Capitol Hill, you know, just the Capitol Hill where the White House is and probably where the Supreme Court is.
Like they would have to make that right there just the small area, D.C., and the rest just give it back to Maryland.
So that way you're not adding states.
You're not adding senators.
But they do truly believe that it is perfectly legitimate to expand the court so that way they have more Judicial power because they want to use an activist court and they're floundering that they don't have the ability to influence the court.
But it is worth noting, like the Democrat, the three progressives on the court, they always vote the same way.
There's three of the conservative justices that you're just like, I have no idea how they're going to vote.
They're not reliably conservative because they actually look at being a judge the way that a judge is supposed to be, right?
They're supposed to judge the issue on the merits.
You will never, ever get Kajenti Brown Jackson to come down with a ruling that is anything other than exactly what is progressive orthodoxy.
Always, always, always.
You won't get Sodoma.
You probably won't get Sodomyar to come down on anything other than progressive activism.
And that's just the way that the left behaves.
So the Democrats aren't happy that they might get things their way because maybe Amy Coney Barrett or maybe John Roberts or whoever will come down on the side of the progressives.
They want to make sure that they have enough people on the court to guarantee that they always have a progressive victory.
And that's what the adding people or adding states is for.
So that way they have two more or four more senators.
They want to have two ostensibly Democrat senators from DC and then two Democrat senators from Puerto Rico.
And that way they'll have what they believe will be a permanent, you know, permanent majority in the Senate.
They want to add the, they want to change the way the Electoral College works so that way it's a direct election by popular vote because they believe that the states or the cities that are the concentration of population, they should be dictating to the rest of the country who the president would be.
And those situations, those would all produce a Democrat out essentially the argument is that those things will always produce an outcome that is favorable to Democrats.
But they don't care about democracy.
They care about power.
alex lains
No, it's rules, rules for the, not for me.
Aren't they the same people that have been fear-mongering others that Trump wants to change the Constitution, right?
It's like, I'm pretty sure I've heard that claim like countless times already that Trump's going to change the Constitution or he's going to get rid of the Constitution or he's going to rewrite the Constitution.
And it's like they're accusing us of exactly what they're planning on doing.
carter banks
It's right out of the Rules for Radicals playbook.
alex lains
Yeah, it's like number one.
carter banks
Also, it sounds a lot like socialism because like all the people that I had talked to on the left that want it, it's because they think they'll be at the top, like controlling it.
So if the Democrats want that, it's because they want to control everything, like Phil was saying with power.
ian crossland
Dude, communism is so insidious, though.
People, we can all do this.
That rhetoric of all of us together.
And it's so like someone looks around a room and says we all and makes eye contact with everybody.
That's a bonding human being for humanity, for families.
It's important.
But for politics, it's so dangerous because as soon as we all get together and put that thing, I'm on top.
Now I get to decide what happens.
And I know it's all about all of us, but I got to take care of me first so that I can take care of you and who else is in my tight.
And that's how it always has gone with these dumbass centralized authorities, man.
But unless you know that ahead of time and you see it, it's tough because it feels so good to say we're all in this together.
phil labonte
And it's empowering.
Essentially, what they're proposing is what the situation in California is, right?
There's a one-party rule in California.
There's no represent or very little representation at a state level for any Republicans in California.
And you see it in the exodus of people from California.
You know, after COVID, California lost, I mean, I don't know exactly how many, but I want to say it's like half a million people, something like that.
So and California's never lost people because California's like the geography and the weather are just so attractive.
alex lains
Oh, it's a beautiful state.
phil labonte
It's gorgeous, gorgeous.
It's wonderful.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Like the only place that I think in the whole United States that's actually more beautiful is probably Hawaii, or at least that I think is nicer.
I love Hawaii.
alex lains
I love Hawaii so much.
phil labonte
Texas, huh?
carter banks
Yeah, you know, I like Texas.
ian crossland
Texas is flat, but I didn't true state.
carter banks
Yeah.
ian crossland
I liked San Diego.
I was going to be like, well, San Diego is pretty nice too, Phil.
But I was like, oh, yeah, that's California.
phil labonte
It is.
carter banks
I was thinking San Diego when you said California.
phil labonte
San Diego is probably my favorite part of California.
ian crossland
So nice.
I mean, the Los Angeles Valley, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, the Angels.
That's what they said.
alex lains
I've never been to California.
phil labonte
Really?
Really?
alex lains
Yeah.
I know.
I want to go, but it like scares me.
ian crossland
What part?
alex lains
I don't know.
Any part.
ian crossland
I think that southern coast is the way.
Big Sur down to San Diego.
alex lains
Yeah.
I want to check out the national parks.
phil labonte
Oceanside's great.
ian crossland
Up north into the Redwoods.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
I've never been that far north, but I heard the Red Woods.
alex lains
It's such a from things that I've seen, it's such a beautiful state, but it's just the policies are absolutely horrendous, and it just completely ruins it.
ian crossland
And it's controlled by the metropolitans.
I wonder if California should be split in half and it'd be like a northern state and a southern state governed by Los Angeles and San Francisco because it's so big and so different.
alex lains
Is there like a conservative area in California?
phil labonte
Orange County?
unidentified
Yeah.
alex lains
Yeah.
phil labonte
Orange County is very, it's fairly conservative.
unidentified
Okay.
phil labonte
And there are other parts.
Like once you get off of the coast, like into the interior, it's a lot of conservatives.
But there's also not a lot of people.
It's desert.
Like once you get, once you get an hour and a half from the coast or so, two hours from the coast, like it's, it's pretty, it's pretty much like Texas.
It's very, very hot all the time, or at least not all the time.
carter banks
Did you have like a natural cool that rolls through at night?
ian crossland
LA?
carter banks
Just California in general, from what I've like, I heard they don't have a lot of air conditioning, like air conditioning.
ian crossland
You don't need it in Los Angeles.
Right.
It's 95 in the sun, and then you step into the shade, it drops 20 degrees because the air is so dry.
It's 75 in the shade.
phil labonte
I mean, it depends on where you are because if you go up into the valley, it's like 105 degrees.
I spent the whole summer out there when we were doing the madness record, and it was, I mean, 110 in the valley.
serge du preez
Yeah, man.
You didn't need AC in Los Angeles?
ian crossland
I didn't need any AC.
I was thinking windows were open 24-7.
unidentified
Oh, well, that's maybe it's a breeze, a constant breeze.
serge du preez
Okay.
phil labonte
If you're on the water.
ian crossland
I was just in the city in LA and the breeze was enough.
The second floor, second-story breeze, if you're fortunate to live above the dark, the heavy metals of the ground floor where all the brake dust is hovering, you know, get about 18 feet up, and then you start to be, it's pretty beautiful and fresh.
Final answer, California.
phil labonte
Well, I mean, California is great weather-wise.
It is, it is completely and totally run by the Democrats.
And your politics, you know, your politics really do affect how your lifestyle is.
Again, they lost at least half a million people after COVID.
Massive amounts of, you know, many businesses left.
Tesla left their headquarters was there.
Joe Rogan left.
I know there's.
alex lains
Isn't In-N-Out leaving?
phil labonte
In-N-Out is leaving.
I think they're going to Nashville.
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
You know, so look, I mean, I would love to see In-N-Outs open up all across the country, but that's a totally different story.
But, I mean, it's hard for businesses in California.
They raised the minimum wage, and what happened was exactly what people were saying was going to happen.
Businesses would fire people.
They would raise prices.
Businesses would go out of business because they can't afford to pay people.
I think it was like $20 or whatever.
I don't know what the minimum wage was raised to, but they raised the minimum wage.
And everyone that was against it was saying, don't do this.
Don't raise the minimum wage.
This is going to be bad.
It's going to have all these negative downstream repercussions.
And as soon as they raised it, within a couple of years, everything that the people were saying was going to happen has happened.
alex lains
Yeah.
ian crossland
I got this feeling.
I went to LA during COVID.
I think it was 2021.
And it was like this feeling of pathetic pathos.
I got that feeling a little bit in the entertainment industry when I lived there because the people were so obsessed with getting picked, being, let me be part of your cult.
Let me be picked by you and be part of your group.
And yes, I'll say what you tell me to say.
And it was just kind of sickening to watch.
But this, watching them on masks during COVID was the most grotesque, like bow down to authority from put sand in skate parks so that way kids couldn't go outside and skate.
alex lains
That's just evil.
phil labonte
They were arresting people for being on the beach during COVID.
Like no one's around and there are a handful of people on the beach and they were just wrapping up.
ian crossland
There was somewhere where someone that was like out in a boat or on a canoe or something.
They went out on a boat and arrested them.
They were not for that.
That might have been in Australia.
I'm not sure.
But it was nuts.
phil labonte
But I mean, California, it was definitely, they were doing that in California.
There are people that talk about, I see the picture of the skate parks filled with sand.
I see that picture frequently on X. Finished Beach.
Yeah, because people respond to Gavin Newsome with that picture regularly.
He'll talk about freedom and all these things because he wants to run for president.
And people are just like, oh, yeah, you really care about freedom.
You locked everyone down.
alex lains
Yeah, how quickly he forgets.
unidentified
Yeah, they rapped surfers, but you can't catch me.
phil labonte
All right, we're going to jump to this last story here from the U.S. Sun.
Spare the rod.
Parents face $2,000 fines or 90 days in jail if their child breaks the law in U.S. state, from skipping to school to muggings.
Oh.
Some parents will face fines or jail time if their children break any laws ranging from drunkenness to felonies.
The Gloucester Township Council in New Jersey has announced that any parent who fails to prevent their child from committing a crime will face up to 90 days in jail or fines totaling $2,000.
The council has identified 28 crimes that could result in parents being fined or jailed.
Some of these crimes include felonies, disorderly conduct, associating with thieves, gambling, and idly roaming the streets, among others.
ian crossland
I associate roaming the streets.
phil labonte
Harsher penalties will be assigned to parents of children who are repeated offenders.
New consequences come one year after a massive brawl erupted at a community drone show in South Jersey.
The crowd of the show grew to 500 people, with kids and young adults making up the majority of the viewers.
Multiple fights broke out throughout the show, leading to the arrest of 11 people.
Of the 11 arrests, nine involved teenagers.
The ages of the arrests were teens.
Of the ages of the arrested teens were 13 to 17, with seven of the arrestees being boys and three being girls.
That's not a surprise.
All of the teens arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and then released to their homes.
During the fights, three police officers were injured and sustained minor injuries.
The lawless groups of unsupervised juveniles and young people acting with total disregard for others ruined a great family-oriented event, which has taken place to raise funds for the Gloucester Township Scholarship Committee for over 40 years.
Gloucester Township Police Chief David Harkins told the outlet at the time: this type of lawlessness and the violent riotous behavior will not be tolerated and will not define the great community of Gloucester Township.
I think that this will likely not produce the results that they want because I don't, I think that a lot of these kids that, and this is just an assumption, but I think a lot of the kids that end up behaving this way, being kind of out of sorts and getting in trouble and stuff, a lot of them don't have two parents.
What are you going to do?
You're going to throw a single mom in jail for 90 days?
alex lains
Do the kids get any sort of repercussions or is it just to the parents?
Because also, I can't imagine, like, what about the kids that hate their parents and then they'll purposely commit crimes to get their parents in jail?
So, like, what are you going to do there?
ian crossland
It really seems like a bad.
alex lains
I could see where maybe they thought this would be a good idea because there is a lot of juvenile crime in Jersey.
carter banks
Why can't they just charge the kids?
unidentified
Well, because it doesn't seem because they're not working.
carter banks
I think the punishment's harsher on the kids.
phil labonte
Because they're kids.
The point being is that they're under 18, so they don't get charged as an adult, but you can still.
carter banks
I had plenty of friends that went to jail at like 14 and 16.
phil labonte
Oh, my God.
unidentified
Plenty of them to be associated with thieves, but check this out.
phil labonte
The crimes parents are held responsible for.
A felony, high misdemeanor, misdemeanor, or other offense, violation of any penal law or municipal ordinance, any act or offense which he or she could be prosecuted in the method partaking of the nature of a criminal action or proceeding, being a disorderly person,
habitual vagrancy, incorrigibility, immorality, knowingly associating with thieves or vicious or immoral People growing up in idleness or delinquency, knowingly visiting gambling places or patronizing other places or establishments, his or her admission to which constitutes a violation of law, a felony, high misdemeanor, or other offenses, violation of any penal law or municipal ordinance.
Are they repeating that?
Yeah, it looks like they're, it looks like they're just repeating them.
I like, where was that?
Indecent exposure, begging, drunkenness, consumption of alcohol, alcoholic beverages on a public street, destruction of pagan equipment in public parks.
ian crossland
I mean, growing up in idleness meme.
carter banks
I mean, it's like a period of time, like we've been watching you for 30 days and you've grown a whole month in idleness.
phil labonte
You're just doing nothing but doing nothing.
And so they're going to arrest your parents for it.
carter banks
We're taking your parents.
ian crossland
We've been reading the biometrics of your seven-year-old and he hasn't been exercising enough.
$2,000 fine.
carter banks
He failed the school wellness test.
phil labonte
I mean, do you guys think that this would actually work?
No.
ian crossland
Or do you think that's the nature of humans?
It's the pendulum swinging.
These councilmen got so overwhelmed with emotion is that now they're like, we just need to stop it all.
Let's just do something extreme.
phil labonte
Do you think that parents are too stern enough with their children nowadays?
And this is the result.
ian crossland
I'd have to hang out with parents one-on-one more to answer that directly.
alex lains
No, yeah.
There's a lot of, now it's like a lot of kids are going up with their own iPads and everything.
phil labonte
Gentle parenting.
alex lains
And the gentle parenting.
It's like the kid can punch their mother in the face and the mother will be like, oh, sweetie, no, please don't do that.
unidentified
We don't.
alex lains
We don't.
And then the kid will slap her again.
No, no.
phil labonte
You have kids, right?
alex lains
Yeah, I have a two and a half year old who does hit me, but he's also two and a half.
carter banks
Is this particular to New Jersey?
Like this kind of stuff?
alex lains
No, no.
phil labonte
I'd like to take a chance to go ahead and give New Jersey the grief, but I don't think that it is.
alex lains
No, no, no, no, it's not because there's also when we were in, we lived in Virginia right after having River.
And like there was one family that would come over, like we would, friends would get together and like they would barely associate with this toddler, just stick an iPad in front of this toddler and just like not play with him at all.
And it's like, so the kids grow up in front of screens and then they grow up with the gentle parenting.
Oh, we don't hit.
You know, we have to be nice.
And they have no actual structure.
So I definitely think that parents have become easier on their kids.
Now, I mean, I was, I was like spanked as a child.
I don't think it was necessarily fun, but I am a maybe there needs to be like a balance, but today the gentle parenting has definitely taken over and kids aren't being disciplined thoroughly.
I think they're not like afraid of their parents.
ian crossland
Yeah, I think the balance is that you want, you don't want to scare your children.
alex lains
Yeah, you don't want to scare them, but you still want to make sure that like they stay in line.
ian crossland
In a way, you kind of want to present an essence of fear.
Like you are the authority that will bring down the hammer and destroy everything you love if you wrong me.
In the future, that will be the government.
So keep and then, but also, but not to hurt them.
To make sure it's okay for them to be afraid of what might happen if they wrong you, but you don't want to harm them with beatings, you know?
Like spanking so that they're afraid of never getting that sharp smack on their ass again and they never do it again.
unidentified
Good.
ian crossland
Doing it till you can feel their bones breaking.
alex lains
No, that's not.
unidentified
That's abuse.
ian crossland
Yeah.
That doesn't make the kid not do it.
alex lains
And then they usually end up being criminals.
ian crossland
So pain.
Then you talk about like what's an ethical level of pain to administer on a child, like to teach it with pain.
Like touch the whole thing where if they touch a hot stove, they're don't do it.
Don't do it.
Until they do it once, they don't know why they're not supposed to do it.
So and kids give into the internet and they figure out all their emotions and pains with a video game.
They go there and they say it to somebody in real life and they get their teeth knocked in and they go and they so you got to kind of socialize off the screen, I guess.
unidentified
Yes.
alex lains
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a big thing.
phil labonte
So so you're you guys are generally the opinion around the around the table is that punishing parents will not help, but parents need to be more stern with their kids.
Do you think that this would motivate parents to be more stern with their kids?
alex lains
Maybe.
unidentified
Yeah.
alex lains
I think maybe that's the general like Idea is for families to get like, oh, they see these consequences of like, if their children go out and do these things, these are the consequences for you.
And maybe it gets like their family, like the families act together.
But at the end of the day, I don't think it's the best.
ian crossland
I thought the same thing you thought that if a kid is pissed off with their parents, they're just going to go commit some stupid crime and get the parents fined.
Like, that's, yeah.
alex lains
Like, you're a raging hormonal teenager, too.
So it's just like, there's just, there's so much going on.
It's like, they're not going to think, they're going to think, oh, my parents are probably going to go to jail for a little.
It's going to be fine.
But it's like, no, that's a much bigger problem.
phil labonte
So there's another thing that you might want to think about when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Most of the time, if parents, especially in places like New Jersey, if parents are too strict, then they run the risk of CPS coming and picking up their kids.
If you allow your kid to go walk, you know, if the kid is too young, and that's an arbitrary phrase, but if the kid is too young and he's allowed to walk to the corner store, there's a chance that the police will pick the kid up, bring him back to the house, and you'll get, you'll get, you know, get a visit from CPS.
So how do you think that they would square that kind of system where if you're too stern, the government might come and take your kid from you.
But if you're not stern enough and your kid gets too buck wild, they're going to go ahead and come and pick you up and throw you in jail.
I mean, what does that do?
How does that actually help parents to raise their kids in a way where those kids will become productive members of society?
It's really, it's hard enough for parents to know how to raise kids.
alex lains
It puts a lot of pressure on parents, especially like first-time parents.
phil labonte
Both of you guys are playing.
Yeah, both of you guys have new ones.
carter banks
My children will never be out in the streets doing whatever it is that would put me in jail.
I just wouldn't let that happen.
phil labonte
How do you know?
unidentified
But how do you chain them up in the basement?
carter banks
They would fear me.
Like Ian said, I don't know.
I don't know.
I hope it never came to that.
ian crossland
We would lose privileges.
When the privileges are so good at home that it's worse to lose those than it is to go do the thing you want to do.
That's that's why it was just so good at my house that losing that was just the most horrific.
I didn't want to violate that because it was so good.
alex lains
You have to grow up in a loving home.
carter banks
Yeah.
alex lains
Like love your children.
Like spend time with your children.
Engage in their activities and what they love.
Like I feel like parents don't do that enough.
ian crossland
What kind of stuff?
What do you do with the kid?
alex lains
Well, no, just like anything.
Like just, it's just like engaging with them and like, you know, figuring out what they love to do, what hobbies they love to do and like maybe go and taking them to those to do those things.
Like, I don't know.
phil labonte
How old are your kid, you say?
alex lains
Literally only two and a half.
ian crossland
So I thought it impressive with a parent when they learn the video game that their kid loves.
alex lains
Yeah.
ian crossland
That is a big deal for a kid.
alex lains
If your parents can start talking to you in the language of the game and they know what the items are and everything, just show that like you're paying attention to the things that they're interested in.
phil labonte
Yeah.
I mean, it's, I mean, I imagine that just paying attention to your kid and interacting with your kid is the thing that they're after.
Right.
I know that there's, it doesn't matter so much what you're doing because kids don't, you know, everything's kind of an adventure to a kid, right?
When you're two, three, four, five, like they just want to do stuff with you because you're the most important person in their life, you know?
carter banks
Yeah.
phil labonte
So I imagine the more time you spend with your kids and pay attention to them, that's the important thing.
It's not what you're doing.
It's are you doing things with them?
alex lains
Yeah.
phil labonte
You know, and include them.
Don't just have them be like, you know, don't have them be just, you know, watching you do things or whatever.
Make sure that they're doing things with you.
Even if, you know, that's why they make things like little kids' fishing poles.
They're not going to pull in a three-pound bass with it.
But the kid's there doing the fishing with dad.
Even if he's not going to catch anything worth doing, he's there doing the fishing.
You know, and whatever it, whatever the activity is, it doesn't matter what the activity is.
alex lains
It's just like washing dishes.
phil labonte
Yeah.
alex lains
They have those like stools that kids can stand up on.
And it's just like, even if you're doing washing dishes or you're cooking or you're folding the laundry it's like especially for like you said like a young toddler they don't know any better like they just want to be with you like every time like my child will sit and play on the floor with toys he's always involving me and i'm always playing with him because he doesn't want to do it alone it's it sounds simple i was thinking uh the last week or two that a lot of rhetoric about have more kids it's been going on for years like we need to populate
ian crossland
But I'm like, rather than ask how many kids do I have, ask how many children am I parenting?
Yeah.
unidentified
What?
ian crossland
Because one, if it's your wife's kid from an old marriage, if you're the dad, you're the dad.
That is your child.
You're charged now.
unidentified
Is that true?
alex lains
No, I can see.
I can see.
ian crossland
And if you're not there for the kid, what's the point?
alex lains
Yeah.
You don't want to get too caught up in the like have eight children and then not be able to like fully dedicate time to all of those eight children individually.
You know what I mean?
It's just like it's I my opinion is it'd be better to have one child and be able to not saying you need to only have one child, but like just one child and be able to put all of your energy and attention into that child than to have, you know, five, six, seven kids and struggle to give them that attention that they're going to want because they fight for the attention of their parents.
ian crossland
I get the utilitarian argument of like if we were like in a tribe and there had been a nuclear holocaust and we had like 17 people, we had to repopulate, go have 800 kids.
You never see whatever.
Do that if you need to.
But I don't think that the system requires that right now.
unidentified
No.
ian crossland
It doesn't seem to.
unidentified
It requires more quality people.
alex lains
I'm personally not on board with the whole have more kids than you can afford type thing.
I'm not on board with that.
carter banks
It's crazy because, yeah, as a new father, I feel like my four month old is already teaching me that I must be giving all my attention all the time.
And I couldn't imagine having eight kids.
phil labonte
kids because i don't know how to split that attention the self-arent yeah it's a very selfless thing yeah we're uh we're gonna jump to this last story here from the postmillennial uh trump to deploy 4 000 marines around latin american waters to combat cartels reports the trump administration will be deploying an additional 4 000 marines from the u.s military in the waters around latin america in order to combat the drug cartels according to a new report from cnn citing two u.s defense officials
the outlet reported that the move is part of a broader mission to ready military assets to target the drug cartels a third person familiar with the plans told the outlet that the additional military assets are aimed at addressing threats to u.s national security from spec specially designated narco-terrorist organizations in the region including in the deployment is the jima amphibious ready group and the 22nd marine expeditionary unit reporting to u.s southern command the effort is repeatedly has reportedly been underway
for the past three weeks a p8 poseidon reconnaissance aircraft nuclear-powered submarine multiple destroyers and a guided missile cruiser are also being allocated to u.s southern command as part of the effort one of the officials told the outlet that the buildup of the military assets is meant to show the force of the u.s military rather than the targeting of the cartels however having the military assets that they're ready allows for more options if trump orders military action to take place an official from the marines told the outlet that a marine expeditionary unit
stands ready to execute lawful orders and support the combatant commanders in the needs that are requested of them.
A memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year instructed the Pentagon to seal our borders, repel forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities, and deport illegal aliens in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.
Last week, it was reported by the New York Times that Trump signed a directive for the Pentagon to start using military force against some drug cartels in Latin America.
What do you guys think?
Do you think that this is going to...
Do you consider this an escalation of the war on drugs?
Or do you think this is more about securing the United States from foreign terrorist organizations?
ian crossland
I think the latter.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's more of a defensive tactic with the amount of fentanyl that's been coming over the southern border, reportedly, from China, wherever it's coming from, Canada, China to Canada, back to China, to Mexico, through the border.
I don't know.
But uh yeah we gotta we gotta tamp tack that down that's i think i mean you talk about the war on fentanyl.
That's a whole other thing, man.
I'm open to starting a war on fentanyl if you want to talk about that.
But, you know, forget about the other drugs for the moment.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
Or whatever else.
So more fentanyl, I think, is another fentanyl they're working on.
serge du preez
It's also the people that they're bringing.
Don't forget, like, these cartels are bringing lots of people across the border and have for a long time.
alex lains
They control that border.
serge du preez
Well, not anymore.
alex lains
But they did.
serge du preez
They did.
Yeah, but not anymore.
ian crossland
I saw them shooting a couple months ago.
There's reports that the cartels were firing across the border.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
Now they got military on your coast, so that's what happens when you shoot at Americans.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, so it's my assumption, and this is not based on any kind of, you know, any kind of inside information.
I don't have some kind of contact or anything.
But this kind of show of force, it really, it's probably just an intimidation tactic.
serge du preez
Yeah.
phil labonte
It's to remind cartels what exactly they're going to be up against.
Because look, if you watch, I mean, you can get on Telegram channels and you can see what the cartels are doing, how they're outfitted, what they, you know, how brutal they are.
You can see in graphic detail the way they behave.
And they do look like militias.
Like they're they're not just dudes that are, you know, selling drugs or guys running around with an AK anymore.
Like these guys are legitimately well equipped.
They probably have anti-air assets, right?
Like they probably have things like stingers and stuff because you can get that stuff on the black market.
So they have, you know, a lot of armored vehicles.
They're not like APCs.
They're trucks that they've put armor onto.
They're closer to, I guess, like an armored car that you would have transporting money in and stuff.
But these vehicles are full of dudes with serious hardware.
They've all got belt-fed fully automatic machine guns.
They've got 50 Cal rifles, semi-automatic rifles.
They've got, you know, they're walking around with AKs and ARs or M16s and stuff.
The idea that the cartels are what they were, you know, 30, 40 years ago, that stuff is gone.
These guys are as well equipped as any other terrorist organization that you would find in the Middle East or anything.
But the United States has really gotten extremely proficient at disassembling terrorist organizations.
They spent 20 years doing it in the Middle East.
And whereas the cartels are brutal and they're violent and they do things trying to intimidate, I don't, it's my sense that the United States military is not going to be intimidated, right?
And so the argument that I hear is, oh, well, the cartels will come into the U.S. And I do think that there could be some attacks in the U.S., but I don't see the cartels having significant impact on the United States.
And I don't think the United States would say, oh, we should stop going after the cartels because they've killed some Americans.
ian crossland
No, if you look at it, I mean, the best allegory would be like what they just did to the Iranian government with that bunker buster.
And then, like, I think you said, Phil, a few weeks ago, we were talking about it, that it's like they go in there, the CIA, and they kill the leadership of this terrorist seller with his government.
And then the next people come in and they're like, we're going to get those Americans for what they did to us.
And then they go in and they kill all those guys.
The CIA goes in, they kill all the new guys.
And then the next group comes in.
They're like, all right, you know what?
We're going to play ball with the Americans.
phil labonte
And the thing is, it's not so much the CIA.
Like, you're talking about direct action military forces.
Like, if the Navy's there, you know that there are SEALs there, right?
There are definitely SEALs that would have the capacity to go into Mexico and attack assets on the ground.
ian crossland
And I imagine they would use airplanes.
They'd bomb.
They would do what they did to the Iranians.
phil labonte
No, I don't know.
ian crossland
That's how they would start.
phil labonte
I think that more than likely it would be more like the way that the U.S. took on ISIS because the U.S. had a lot of covert assets in Iraq that would go into Syria and take on ISIS and get into a lot of gunfights and kill a lot of ISIS.
A lot of ISIS guys got killed by Delta.
ian crossland
It was either the Israeli and the American intelligence together before that attack on the Iranians.
They killed a bunch of people inside.
They had dudes on the inside.
I remember that part of it.
phil labonte
I don't know exactly, but that was all Iran.
I mean, that was all Israel doing.
The only thing the U.S. did was use B-2s with bunker busters or B-1s and B-2s with bunker busters because the assets that the Iranians had where they were doing the nuclear enrichment were too far underground.
The Israelis didn't have anything that could get into those.
Everything else was Iran.
I mean, sorry, everything else was Israel.
And the U.S. attacked the actual nuclear sites because the U.S. had the actual bombs that could...
That's it.
So I really do think that the attack or the dealing with the cartels would be much closer to the way that we dealt with ISIS.
Like ISIS was, ISIS was doing things like making passports.
Like ISIS was a country.
It was a very young new country, but they were providing infrastructure to the inhabitants.
They were making passports.
They were doing state things.
They were doing things that countries do.
And so the U.S. had to deal with them in a very different way than just dropping bombs on them.
And so they had people stationed and they had Bagram Air Force Base in Baghdad.
I'm sorry, not Bagram.
I forget what the Air Force base was or the airport that the U.S. had.
ian crossland
Outside of Baghdad?
phil labonte
Yeah, in Baghdad.
I forget what it's called.
But either way, that's where the U.S. forces were.
And they had some places stationed in the desert so that they could get into Syria.
But they had a lot of special forces that were doing the actual fighting of ISIS.
And when Donald Trump came into office, that was one of the things that he wanted to do.
He was like, we're going to go and smash ISIS.
And he really let loose the special forces and he let loose Delta and they went and they killed a lot of ISIS and got them to the point where they were no longer technically a country.
And Assad was able to push them back.
And then, you know, there was a civil war going on, but the U.S. really did disassemble ISIS.
And I imagine that's probably the strategy that they have when it comes to the cartels.
Now, whether or not the Mexican government wants the U.S. to do it, I don't think that that really matters.
alex lains
No.
phil labonte
You know, because everyone knows that if the U.S. goes, just like the same exact thing that they did when they went and they got bin Laden, right?
The strike to get bin Laden.
They didn't let the PACs know because if they'd have told the PACs, the PACs would have informed, someone would have informed Bin Laden.
So they had to do it without the PACs.
ian crossland
The Pakistani government?
We say the PAC?
unidentified
Yeah, the PACs.
phil labonte
The Pakistani government.
They didn't tell the Pakistanis because if they'd have told the Pakistanis, someone in the government or the military would have gone and informed Bin Laden.
So the same things goes on in Mexico.
You can't go to President Sheinbaum and say, oh, we're going to do this.
Because Scheinbaum is only there because the cartels allowed her to live.
There were like 40 politicians in Mexico that got killed in the past year or something like that.
And they cut their heads off and hang them up off bridges and stuff.
So anyone that's a politician in Mexico, they're there with the approval of the cartels.
It's a total narco-state.
So the U.S. isn't going to sit there and be like, hey, we're going to work together to get these.
They're going to go in there.
They're going to go and they're going to start attacking the cartels and they're going to start taking those people out without the approval of the Mexican government.
And the Mexican government's going to make a bunch of noise to the president or to the U.S. government, but they're going to say, we can't trust you.
serge du preez
Yeah, Shinbaum literally can't say, like, Sheinbaum is the president of Mexico.
She can't say that she wants it to happen because we all know what will happen to her if she starts saying stuff like that.
If she starts saying things like that, very bad things will happen to President Sheinbaum.
ian crossland
Okay, so Sheinbaum's controlled opposition.
Yeah, you started his controlled opposition.
That's good.
serge du preez
Yeah, that's what I would think.
phil labonte
You know, so, I mean, I think that this is the obvious course of action.
ian crossland
Yeah, it seems obvious.
It doesn't excite me.
It doesn't make me happy the thought of another military explosion, death, all this God, whatever.
But at the same time, it seems inevitable.
Like, if we don't militarize our southern border in some fashion, like this is what even I'm talking about the water, too.
I'm glad the Navy's there.
Very, very, very least is just a show of force.
If there's an attack on Taiwan from the Chinese, our Pacific Fleet needs to be ready.
Everything is in position.
I like it.
The Chinese-Taiwan thing bothers me a lot.
It's been on my mind lately.
Someone said, oh, they're going to take it.
I think it was Alex Jones was saying it.
phil labonte
Well, I mean, they look at Taiwan as part of China.
ian crossland
And if I was an alien looking down at Earth, I would have looked at it as part of China too.
Be like, why is this part controlled by that guy?
Give it to them.
Let them have their part.
phil labonte
But Taiwan's actually Taiwan's actually controlled by Taiwan.
Anyways, we're going to go to super chats right now.
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Andrew says, Ari Trump-Putin interview: Putin finished off speaking English.
This is huge.
This is a huge deal.
Knowing Putin will only speak Russian for interviews.
Those last words meant a lot.
I hope you're right.
I mean, I don't know particularly how frequently Putin speaks English.
I don't know how well he knows English.
But listen, I would love to see Trump be able to broker some kind of peace deal so that way we can stop sending weapons to Ukraine or stop sending money to Ukraine and Ukraine can stand on its own feet.
But I do think that this is probably just Putin making a peace deal for a short amount of time.
So that way he can say, all right, we can rebuild the military some, build up our ranks and prepare to go back in.
I assume that he's thinking when there is a less volatile president, someone a little more easy to predict what they would do.
But like I said, I hope that it actually does produce peace, even if it's not a long-term peace.
Shane H. Wilder says the Texas House special session ended today.
Cindy, Sindai.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
The governor called for a second special session.
Dem said they will come back if California redistricts in Dem's favor.
Newsom said he will.
Well, I mean, look, this is all about figuring out how Democrats can retain power.
This isn't about representing the people.
It has nothing to do with democracy or making sure that people's voices are heard.
This is all about consolidating Democrat power as much as they can because they have been totally trounced and they're remarkably unpopular.
You'd think that considering how unpopular the Democrats are, something like 30% approve of them, 30% approve of Raiden, their brand has totally been dragged through the mud.
You'd think that they would say, we need to come up with better policies, as opposed to saying things like, we need to figure out ways to grab power in a way that is not representing the people of the states.
Like if they're unpopular, they shouldn't be thinking, hey, how can we grab onto power and hold on to it?
They should be thinking, what are we going to do to offer the American people a platform that they will vote for?
But they're not interested in representing the American people.
They're interested in holding on to power.
So hopefully, you know, they're not successful in their efforts.
But this is what you can expect from the Democrats.
They don't have a popular platform.
They can't speak to the American people.
They're at record low approval ratings.
And now instead of going and thinking, how do we fix this?
They're thinking, how do we grab power and make sure that we can hold on to power?
Who cares what the people think?
Who cares that the people don't like us?
Who cares that the people don't want anything to do with our platform?
It doesn't matter what our platform is.
The only thing that matters is we hold on to power.
ian crossland
I think it's because the COVID response was such a floundering misfumble of human society.
And now all those people that were complicit, like Gavin Newsom, they know that and the utter humiliation, which is why they can't create a resounding message and they're falling back on tricking people to vote for them.
phil labonte
No, that's not even tricking people to vote.
They're trying to get around people voting.
They're trying to make sure that they can retain power in like no matter what the people want.
ian crossland
Is it that they're not giving a message and no coherent message out of that party that I've heard?
Is it, I mean, my best take is that what can you say other than I'm sorry that I screwed you over for four years during COVID?
carter banks
Like, they'll never Say that, though.
ian crossland
Yeah, because as soon as you apologize, like blood in the water, all the sharks attack, and then they never get re-elected because they were weak.
phil labonte
Well, not only that, but the policies that the progressives want, the far left wing of the party, are the unpopular policies.
They're literally open borders.
Like the closing the border has been super popular with the American people, but Democrats will swear up and down that it's horrible that the borders are closed.
They want to have open borders.
The Democrats want to have LGBT stuff taught in schools, even though the American people are generally not for that.
The American people are not for having, you know, the boys and in girls sports, but they haven't really softened on that.
They haven't moved away from that.
They have doubled down on so many 80-20 issues on the 20 side as opposed to the 80 side, as opposed to rethinking what their platform should be.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans have really done a job on what the Democrats used to be.
They used to be the party of kind of the center and they used to be the party of the working people and stuff.
And they've abandoned them totally.
Now they're the party of the super rich and they're the party of the dependent class.
ian crossland
Yeah, they used to be the rich people that were cool and then they stopped being cool.
During Obama, Obama went from being cool to not cool in like 2013 or 12.
He started to get really gray too.
I think the stress of being, you know, the killer in chief was getting to him.
phil labonte
Well, presidents tend to go gray when they get into office.
ian crossland
He seemed cool.
Yeah, that's true.
alex lains
I always say he was, I almost feel like sad, like the potential.
Like he's such a great speaker.
He like carries himself really well.
But like he's really just a terrible person with terrible policies.
ian crossland
When he came in, he said his favorite president was Abe Lincoln.
That was, I think he was planning to sacrifice himself to free us from whatever this global tyranny, this economic order had been.
But then he learned as he became co-opted by the system when he left off.
He said his favorite president was Teddy Roosevelt.
So he completely let go of that whole Abraham Lincoln ethos while he was in office at some point.
alex lains
So much wasted potential, honestly.
phil labonte
Funk Master General says, Ian, what happened to the live streams?
The masses are clamoring for them to return.
ian crossland
One more live streams.
phil labonte
They can't get enough of you.
ian crossland
Just a click button away, you know.
I put a couple videos up on YouTube.
Check them out if you want to get a fix.
Talking about God and spirits, actually, talking about spirits.
Why your thoughts affect reality because you're changing the shape of your neurons, which is altering your resonating field, which is then resonating, causing other people's neurons to change.
Anyway, your thoughts are directly influencing other people's thoughts.
And that thought about the spirits and how your thoughts are affecting, if they're within your resonation field, them, these high-frequency density things, and then they're changing, and then they're influencing it.
So you can like think healthy thoughts, change the spirits with these healthy thoughts, and then the spirits will then think, make you other people think healthy thoughts.
It's a wild ride.
phil labonte
Let's see.
Trump and the Rue Actual says Trump and the Clintons are still close friends.
Same with the Obamas.
It's all theater.
Trump is one of them.
He is proving every day he's not on our side.
I'm not sure that I agree.
I think that the fact that they were trying so hard to put him in jail makes me think that maybe he's not actually one of them.
You may not like what he's been doing or don't think that he's been doing enough.
And there's an argument to be had there.
You're entitled to your opinion.
But the idea that he's the same as the people that are trying to throw him in jail, I don't know, man.
ian crossland
Yeah, if you get in a swamp, people might think you're part of that swamp if they see you in there digging around.
And he's in there right now.
phil labonte
Rue Actual came back and said, if he was on our side, there would already be over a million deportations.
No, there wouldn't.
The NFA, IRS, and the ATF would be gone.
No, they wouldn't.
He would tell judges to get F and people would be in prison.
You're wrong on all of that.
carter banks
Yeah, I kind of feel like he doesn't have that kind of power.
We're kind of overestimating amazing to me that he's able to have done what he's done so far.
phil labonte
So the a million deportations, it takes time to actually process the people.
I mean, I'm not even sure if you have enough time to grab, like, a million's a lot, man.
Like, a million's a whole lot.
The NFA, IRS, and the ATF would be gone.
That takes Congress, not Donald Trump, right?
Like, all of those things were created by an act of Congress.
So it would require an act of Congress to make Them go away.
You're saying that you wish Donald Trump would just be a dictator.
I don't think that that's a good thing for the country.
I do think that he's doing things that could have the results that you're looking for, but there is a process.
No one likes it.
No one likes to see the way the sausage is made, right?
That phrase means no one likes to see how things are actually done in DC.
And it's hard to pass legislation for a reason because the federal government isn't supposed to be passing legislation.
So you've got 100 years of garbage legislation that's been passed and 100 years of bureaucracies that's been created, maybe more.
One guy isn't going to get in there and in six months be like, bam, it's all set now, unless that guy gets in there and literally takes over the whole government with the military pointing guns at people.
Like, I understand where you're coming from, that you want these results.
And a lot of those results I want too.
But to think that that was ever going to happen was an error on your part because it was never going to be like that.
Let's see.
Skeebird says, my wife and I are continuing the tradition on the IRL while in labor with our third daughter.
Cheers.
Congratulations.
Thank you for letting us know.
We appreciate that.
Make babies, right?
Like making them is fun and having a family is cool.
Make babies.
So get married and make babies.
Let's see.
Dan Hall 960 says countries do not have morals only interest.
Yes, that is 100% true.
You can have a population that wants policies that ascribe to the population's moral outlook, but the countries themselves, they don't have morals.
They only have interests.
Smokey Mirror said, should EMP guns be legal as home defense weapons or as drones and cyber warfare type things become commonplace?
I mean, I don't know if they have EMP guns yet, right?
Like that won't fry everything, you know?
ian crossland
Would it shut the lights off if you pulled the trigger?
carter banks
Or would it be like direct practice with that?
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, I think I personally, I think that if they did have them, I think that they're probably non-lethal to humans as EMP weapons, like people, that doesn't really affect people.
So I can't imagine that being a problem for people owning them.
I mean, the government likes to get involved and say, you know, you can't own this with a lot of things.
So maybe they would stick their nose in.
But yeah, I don't think that that would be a problem.
Wyatt Claytonberg says, I watched Culture War today and I am an old fart and not with it.
Are young people's sexual relationships really that weird?
If so, the West is doomed.
Look, man, I think they probably are that weird.
There's a lot of kids nowadays that have not ever had any alcohol.
I think it's something like less than half of Gen Z has ever had any alcohol.
Kids aren't smoking weed anymore.
They're not going out and doing the things they used to do.
So I think you're probably right.
They probably are that weird.
ian crossland
So I didn't get the reference of the show.
I didn't see that part of the show.
Tinder made things weird.
Online dating sure made things strange.
phil labonte
Let's see.
Garrett says, DC is ruled by Congress.
DC was allowed home rule in 73.
DC home rule can and will be removed.
DC has zero say in the matter.
I mean, yes, that's true.
They do.
Let's see.
Gary goes on to say, complaining, yeah, I'm out.
You guys need fact checkers.
Too much ignorance being dropped tonight.
Meet before and talk about the topics and fact check yourselves.
Okay.
ian crossland
Gary.
Drop specifics, homie.
What was wrong?
Give the correction in the super chat.
Be a team player, Gary.
phil labonte
Joe Arnone says, thank God Ian is back.
The show is too boring without him.
Welcome back, Ian.
Arnold.
Everybody loves you, Ian.
ian crossland
Hi, Joe.
Thank you.
phil labonte
And then someone else says, Justin Green says, this idiotic crap like this, that makes me hate Ian.
ian crossland
I love these.
I love you so much.
What was his name?
Thank you, sir.
phil labonte
Who is he?
Justin Green.
ian crossland
Justin, thanks for the expression.
I love, sometimes I'll read, literally in the chat, I'll be like, Ian is the best.
Ian sucks.
It'll be like, I want a screenshot and just be like, life on the internet, baby.
phil labonte
Let's see.
MRP 1775 says, Phil, last night you said the U.S. has been stable since 1955.
Also, argument, also argued, government made a boo-boo with Fed in 1913.
Does former cut against latter not defend Fed WEF boo with capital 86?
Apologies if misconstrued.
I do think that it is, it is probably like you wouldn't have had the Cold War if it wasn't for the Federal Reserve.
You wouldn't have had a lot of the bureaucracy, you wouldn't have had all the bureaucracy that we have without the Federal Reserve.
I think that a significant portion of our, actually probably all of our big bloated government is because of the Federal Reserve.
If it wasn't for the ability to print money, I don't think that the government would have been able to have all of the bureaucracy.
They wouldn't have been able to engage in all the adventurism and wars abroad and stuff.
So it is possible that the U.S. wouldn't be able to do things like have the liberal economic order that has made the world a much better place after World War II.
But without the Federal Reserve, I mean.
But yeah, so let's see.
One last one.
Pinochet's helicopter tour says, Phil, look into what the job is of the 7th Special Forces Group is also stop glazing the CIA.
No, I'm not going to stop glazing the CIA, even though I don't know how I am glazing the CIA.
A lot of times people are like, if you don't criticize the things that I want you to criticize, then that means that you're glazing them or you're a shill.
It's like, I want to hear my opinions coming out of your mouth.
And if I don't hear my opinions coming out of your mouth, that means you're a shill.
alex lains
Sounds very liberal.
phil labonte
I tell you what, there's a lot of people, a lot of people that get mad at you if you don't have their opinion.
And that's a very leftist liberal goal.
ian crossland
You know, if you want to hear your words in Phil's mouth, just super chat them.
phil labonte
There you go.
I mean, we'll read things that are critical as well as things that are positive.
So, all right, smash the like button, share the show with your friends.
Do you have any, where can people find you on the internet?
alex lains
You can find me on X at RealAlex Lanes.
That's L-A-I-N-S.
And Instagram at livinglife like Alex.
ian crossland
Thanks for coming, Alex.
unidentified
Thanks.
phil labonte
Carter.
ian crossland
Carter's in the house.
carter banks
I've been trying to find this link.
What link?
It's to the song that me and Alex are going to do tomorrow.
It's inspired by it.
It's from the Sen Frontera score that I did, and I'm like trying to give it to y'all.
ian crossland
And I literally can't play it out.
While Carter's.
carter banks
So yeah, go ahead.
ian crossland
I'm Ian Crossland.
You can find me at Ian Crossland, which is my name, all over pretty much all over the internet.
So find me, hit me up.
Happy to be here.
Great to have you.
carter banks
I'll tweet it whenever I find it.
Just follow me at Carter Banks.
I'm going to tweet momentarily.
phil labonte
I am Phil that remains on Twix.
The band is all that remains.
You can check us out on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, and Deezer.
Don't forget the left lane is for crime.
And we will see you all back here Monday.
There will be clips throughout the weekend.
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