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March 9, 2026 - Timcast IRL - Tim Pool
02:42:15
THIS COULD BE THE END | Timcast IRL #1465 w/ Brandon Herrera

Brandon Herrera and Tim Pool analyze the potential end of the Iran conflict, noting a 30% crude oil price drop after Trump's claims, while debating whether regime change in Cuba or Venezuela requires invasion or simply economic isolation. They critique omnibus bills like the "Voltron law" for obscuring NFA abolition strategies and discuss mandatory gun ownership as a tactic to shift the Overton window against Democratic bans. The conversation covers geopolitical stakes at the Strait of Hormuz, skepticism regarding Afghanistan's 20-year conflict, and legal challenges to the NFA, ultimately suggesting that peace through strength and national reciprocity for concealed carry permits offer a path forward over traditional military interventions or bureaucratic stagnation. [Automatically generated summary]

Participants
Main
b
brandon herrera
37:29
i
ian crossland
18:19
p
phil labonte
11:09
t
tim pool
01:04:51
Appearances
Clips
c
carter banks
00:19
|

Speaker Time Text
Market Wild Ride 00:04:19
tim pool
So the market has been pretty wild.
Gas prices were, there was a fear it was going to skyrocket because crude oil had shot up so high due to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
And then Trump comes out and says, the war is basically over.
They got no Navy.
They got no Air Force.
They got no missiles left.
So we're looking like it's pretty done.
He said that the original timeline for four weeks actually were going much, much more quickly than that.
And then instantly, the market turned around.
And the price of crude oil dropped 30%, the biggest drop, the fastest drop we've seen, I think, ever.
Just because Trump said, I think I'm done.
So this could be nearing the end of the war, or however you want to describe it.
But the interesting thing is, the Ayatollah's son reportedly survived an assassination attempt.
However, while the reports say that he was wounded, there are rumors circulating that he actually didn't make it.
We don't know for sure.
There's no official confirmation on this, but that is the rumor right now.
And oh boy, it's coming home.
There's a really crazy story, guys.
Over the weekend, Islamic extremists lobbed IEDs, improvised explosive devices at protesters in New York City.
Now, that in and of itself is absolutely insane.
And then you add on top the depravity of the media, who has repeatedly misled the public by framing this as though the protesters planted bombs at Mamdani's house.
It's ridiculous seeing these headlines they're putting out saying suspicious devices found near Mayor Mamdani's home.
When the real story is, with video, Islamic extremists threw nail bombs at protesters.
Absolutely insane stuff.
We're going to talk about all of that, my friends.
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Aside from that, joining us tonight to talk about this and so much more, we have Brandon Herrera.
brandon herrera
How's it going, buddy?
unidentified
It's good.
brandon herrera
It's going great.
tim pool
It's great to see you, Congressman Elect.
brandon herrera
Well, we shall see.
We're not out of the woods yet, but we completed the one goal that we had in the very beginning, which is getting the rhino Tony Gonzalez out of office.
So we're pretty proud about that.
tim pool
And so you are not yet the actual Congressman-elect.
You won the primary, and now you're going to the big race in November.
But it's a red district, so you're considered to be a heavy favorite.
Other than that, who are you?
What do you do?
brandon herrera
Well, so outside of that, my day job is I'm a business owner here in the district, District 23.
I'm a firearm manufacturer, firearm designer.
I do YouTube, own a host of different businesses and co-own it with business partners of mine.
But the biggest thing was I just was very unhappy with the actions of my congressman and the things he was voting on.
Rhino Gonzalez Out of Office 00:15:17
brandon herrera
And so that was my primary issue with him.
And so I ran against him last cycle, narrowly lost by 400 votes.
Hoped he would be better.
He clearly wasn't.
And so I decided to run against him again, where for the first time in his political career, he lost.
He lost us.
tim pool
I think it has to do with a lot of factors.
You came really close the first time around by within a couple hundred votes, I think, is the reporting.
This time around, aside from the fact that people already were questioning his choices, we got this other story in which people really questioned his choices about this affair and everything like that.
So we'll get into this later on for sure.
But, you know, in all honesty, I'm more interested in what you want to bring, like your story about what you want to bring to Congress, which is particularly dysfunctional.
So, oh boy, that'll be fun.
brandon herrera
Dysfunctional is a good word for it.
Yeah, I always joked on the campaign trail.
If I ran my businesses the way that Congress runs the government, I would be homeless three times over.
tim pool
Yeah, isn't that funny how that works, huh?
All right, man.
Well, thanks for hanging out.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
Let's just jump into the news here.
We've got this from Mediite.
Trump declares Iran war is nearly over.
The war is very nearly complete.
It's very complete, pretty much.
He said pretty much in a phone interview, President Trump told me the war could be over soon.
I think the war is very complete, pretty much.
They have no Navy, no communications.
They've got no Air Force.
He added that the U.S. is very far ahead of its initial four to five week estimate, estimated timeframe.
Now, I don't know what that really means for Trump to be like it's very much, pretty much complete, but you take a look at oil prices.
When Donald Trump comes out and says, I think we're done, oil drops from 97.
It was over 100 before, down to 84 just a few hours later.
So it's looking like the market is reacting to this may be the end right now.
And I will stress this: based on my conversations with people in the Beltway, a lot of these fat cats and big wigs, the big money, they've been acting as though they fully expect this to be wrapped up in a couple of weeks.
Not an exaggeration.
So it really does sound like there's people putting their money where their mouths are.
But I'm curious what you think about is Trump just bloviating or are we actually getting this thing to end?
phil labonte
I think that he's always blowviating.
Always awesome.
Like, this is hilarious.
Look, if this actually does get wrapped up, you know, say, say on a fast timeline within two weeks, and the U.S. can make a legitimate claim that the majority of their goals were met, think that it might end up being you know a positive thing look the iranian regime has always been or at least for the past 47 years has been a thorn in the side of basically everyone in the west all of the middle east they're all their neighbors hated them um
They were constantly funding terrorism.
There's plenty of history of them attacking U.S. forces.
Because of Iran, there was a lot of people that were in Iraq that ended up losing limbs or dying because of the bombs that they were supplying to the insurgents and stuff.
So again, I wasn't for the war beforehand, but if I am pro-America, so if it ends up where they wrap it up in the next week or so, I mean, I think that's a good thing for the United States.
ian crossland
Remember that audio saying that Phil's audio is low.
tim pool
But let me just add real quick, also, Phil, the way your laptop mandar is angled, your shirt, because they can't see the second word, it looks like it just says, I stand with Israel crossed out.
But then you can only see the top of Palestine, so it looks like you actually stand with Palestine.
phil labonte
Yeah, no, no, you can neither.
ian crossland
I stand with Nazi.
phil labonte
I stand with Lockheed Martin.
tim pool
It's a great investment, and I'm not giving any advice.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
ian crossland
Get your American.
No, I can't even give you advice.
tim pool
There's this post on Reddit that went viral where they said, I can't remember who they said Trump Jr. and someone else bought, invested into a drone manufacturer or something like this right before the war started, signaling that they knew and they're profiting off of it or whatever.
But I don't think these leftists understand what invested in means.
They assume that investment only just means like, I'm going to make money.
They don't understand it means I am funding the creation of what they're doing.
So like if we're getting involved in war and we know that there are enemy countries that are producing these specialty drones for warfare, and you're like, if I provide money, we can have those too.
See, they don't understand the point of what investment is because they're communists.
So, you know, and Reddit's just basically all communists.
ian crossland
Is it insider training if like Nancy Pelosi knows a company's about to start, so she invests in another company that's going to support that company?
Like it's technically still insider training.
phil labonte
As soon as they were moving aircraft carrier strike groups into the Middle East, you kind of knew what was going to happen.
ian crossland
I knew what was going to happen.
I thought I knew.
phil labonte
If people were like, oh, they're moving carriers, and so I'm going to buy, you know, defense industry stocks, that's not insider training.
brandon herrera
I mean, it's kind of like what happened in the breakout of the Ukraine-Russian war.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
When you saw those reports that, oh, they're moving blood bags to the front lines.
It's like, okay, well, that just got a lot more serious.
That's not a thing you do for a training exercise.
ian crossland
I'm glad that Trump said this.
I think that he might – I never know.
like Phil, you were saying he blow like he loves to trick people and to say nonsense to get the world like I have no idea what this guy's gonna do.
Just please, Trump, spare me.
But if they really killed Khomeini's son, which potentially they wounded him, killed him, I mean four, right?
He has four kids.
phil labonte
No, no, this would be the fourth I had told that they've killed since the start of the war.
Jesus, the second?
tim pool
Yeah, they killed Ali Khomeini, and then the council appointed his son.
phil labonte
Okay, I've been under the impression they did.
tim pool
Unless there was like, was there like a vice supreme leader?
brandon herrera
Yeah, because I think the first night they killed like 40 plus.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
brandon herrera
It was pretty extreme the first night.
tim pool
I guess if they have the, you know, the chain of command or whatever, the line of succession, and he wiped them all out, I guess you could say 40 or whatever.
I don't know that actual, but my understanding is that they came in and they voted for his son to come in.
And we'll get into all that too, but I'm curious, Mr. Harris, you will be very likely going into Washington, D.C. What do you think about Trump?
You know, they're not calling it a war.
They're saying it's a combat operation.
Heg Seth said, we'll have the lawyers, you know, figure that out.
It's very obviously a war, but I'm curious what you think of it and what would your position be?
brandon herrera
Yeah, like constitutionally speaking, if you're going to go to war, you need the approval of Congress.
And now that's changed over the course of, especially since World War II.
We've gotten a lot looser with that definition with the War Powers Act and different things like that.
I still, I'm personally in favor of the idea that if we're going to go to war with another nation, you need the approval of Congress.
That being said, I don't think anybody wants another forever war in the Middle East in the sandbox.
I don't think anybody's in favor of that.
ian crossland
Yeah, every day, all the time, forever.
No, not true.
My jokes are meaningless.
brandon herrera
The thing is, though, I really, you know, less so with this Iran conflict, but we'll see how it pans out.
But especially with Venezuela, is if we are going to get involved with something, I vastly prefer the kind of conflict where you go in, the entire op takes an hour.
You go in, you get out, you accomplish it, you get it done, and you don't spend 20 years somewhere, spend trillions of dollars in a war that fathers and sons are fighting in the same conflict generation apart.
Like, just go in, get out.
Like, the way that Trump's doing this foreign policy-wise is putting 20 years of Bush-Cheney policy, foreign policy to shame.
tim pool
You know, the challenge I have with it is I would say I completely agree with MUSA, and I would add one caveat.
There is a challenge, and I think you'd probably agree.
There is the president does have the ability to engage in military operations in an emergency.
Just go and do it.
And that's been the criteria that they have exploited to be able to continually go to war.
There is something that's challenging in that if Iran is really about to strike a bunch of U.S. personnel or ships or something like this.
I'm not saying.
I know people are going to be like, Tim, we sent all those, but no, no, I'm saying, let's say we've got troops, you know, and then Iran's like, we're going to go blow them all up.
Trump says, okay, we're going to take out their capability to do this.
If he goes to Congress and says, put it to a vote, you just told the whole world your next military move.
And that is, I think, largely why they don't want to go to Congress, but also how they exploit the rules so they don't go to Congress.
brandon herrera
No, 100%.
I mean, that's clearly like, it's kind of like, I think it's the same justification for no-knock raids.
Like, I am largely against no-knock raids, but I understand there's certain situations in which case you're like, okay, we have verified actionable intel.
If we try to knock on this door, there's 18 armed cartel members on the inside.
They're going to light us up.
You know, I understand the use case for it.
I just think it's overused, especially when it comes to law enforcement, no-knock stuff like that.
I think it's a similar thing.
unidentified
Exactly.
tim pool
It becomes the excuse.
And then if you threaten to take that power away because they're abusing it, they'll say, then what will you do when you actually need to no-knock raid?
brandon herrera
It's the same thing with abortion, where they always come back to the, oh, well, it was rape or incest or whatever when like the vast majority of cases, like the very vast majority, that's not the case.
ian crossland
Do you think we're headed towards a future of central control and authority where we trust the president to make the decisions about who we attack?
Or are you, do you want to scale it back to congressional world?
brandon herrera
I mean, I think we've been headed there for a long time.
I mean, this is, people think that this is unique to Trump.
I saw there's a couple like gotcha moments.
Tim, you kind of got a little bit of a, you know, crap storm on the internet over the thing that you posted.
tim pool
Which one?
brandon herrera
Just it was the old clip where I think it was, was it Bill Maher that was talking about, well, that was the justification Obama used.
Or was it a Colbert?
No, it was the Colbert one.
unidentified
I've seen a couple.
tim pool
I posted a quote from Stephen Colbert about gas prices because everyone's a retard and I know.
And so I was like, I'm going to post Stephen Colbert's quote without quotes in it and then ignite the internet and get really angry.
For those that don't remember, there's a huge story three years ago where Colbert said something like gas is hit an all-time high, but I'm okay with paying a buck or two for a clean conscience or something like this because we are going to get involved in the war in Ukraine.
So now that Donald Trump was saying, look, oil prices are temporarily going up.
And now all of a sudden liberals were losing it being like, MAGA's going to support high gas prices.
Was like, this is the perfect opportunity for me to trap all these libs.
I'm going to quote Stephen Colbert, who they defended, in this context, and then they will insult and attack me saying MAGO will do anything for Trump.
phil labonte
And here's the thing.
tim pool
I literally posted, like, I posted the quote and then immediately the link to the story.
And I still knew no one was going to actually click the link and read it.
And it's 2,000 replies of people like, you happy that the gas prices are up?
I'm like, no, I just wanted to do this to prove a point.
And then I'm going to make it into a YouTube video.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I mean, well, like you said it this morning, you're like, this was an IQ test.
tim pool
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Because, well, and it does point out the fact that like people are just headline readers nowadays.
Like, how many people actually take the time?
And, you know, I'm guilty of this occasionally.
How many people take the time to actually open up the article and read the context behind the two sentences that they read before, you know, that are in the headline?
tim pool
This is like the sole basis for my job in media is that, you know, people are always like, Tim's kind of a milk toast fence.
And I'm like, yeah, because my opinion on like the tax rate and, you know, the policy for abortion, I go, wow, I don't know if I'm smart enough to answer those questions for you guys, nor do I have the clarity, of a moral clarity to tell you how to live your life, but I can certainly tell you the media lied to you about everything.
So that's the challenge we have right now, it's not even that the media lies, which they do incessantly.
It's one of the stories we've got pulled up.
It's that people don't care.
So that, you know, the NBC knows they can write this fake headline making the victims of a terror attack sound like the perpetrators because most people are not going to read the story.
They're going to read the headline.
And I guarantee you now, there's a bunch of lips going around saying, did you hear about the white supremacist rally where they threw explosives at Mamdani's house?
Because that was the headline that NBC created, even though the real story is anti, I guess the protest was like anti-Islam or Islam critical or something.
And Islamic jihadi extremists lobbed nail bombs at them.
And then the media frames it to make them the bad guys, which again, we'll get into.
But yes, people aren't reading the news.
They're just skimming the headlines and then assuming that's the truth.
ian crossland
Man, there's even just deep fake fake news headlines that I'll read and I'll be like, is this real?
And I'll ask Grock and I'll be, nope, this is fabricated.
This is a fake picture from 2020.
The American ship did not get blown up by Iranian missiles today.
Like, it's got 17,000 likes on it or whatever.
brandon herrera
I'm sure you've seen the billions of AI videos that have been going around where it's, you know, like an American fighter jet being chased or an American helicopter being chased by a dude on a flying carpet.
This is going to one-shot your grandfather on Facebook.
Like there's no way.
If you're 70 plus, like this is just, it's over.
tim pool
He's going to be like, I knew they had those things the whole time.
ian crossland
I've been indoctrinating my mother about it.
Everybody, go to your elderly family members and friends and tell them about this AI stuff.
Let them know right now.
Like get serious about it.
Because they still, it's interesting to them when they find out about it.
But it's, you know, no one's going to tell them unless you do it.
tim pool
Let's jump to this next story.
Speaking of the lies and manipulations of the media, I have a tweet here from NBC New York, which reads: Multiple arrests made after, quote, suspicious devices found outside Gracie Mansion, home of Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, during anti-Islam rally and counter-protest.
Now, any person who heard that is going to assume that anti-Islamic protesters planted suspicious devices.
In fact, what actually happened is that an Islamic extremist lobbed a nail bomb at protesters.
And here we have a video where there's the guy.
And you know what?
I love this.
This guy, Walter Madison, says, I was in the middle of saying, as a born and raised New Yorker, we welcome everyone in the city, when he threw that over my head.
And as we learned after the fact, what he's throwing is a nail bomb.
That means it's an explosive device.
And I think it was made with TATP.
Is that what it's called?
brandon herrera
Yes, which is actually, I'm glad you brought that up because TATP, they got very lucky on that because people were like, oh, the fuses, you know, they didn't ignite, whatnot.
TATP is very notorious for being an impact explosive.
unidentified
Wow.
brandon herrera
So that's something that could have immediately gone off the moment it hit the ground, just from the impact of smacking the concrete.
phil labonte
Jeez.
tim pool
Now, I do add a shout out to Sean Fitzgrail to say, some say true poetic beauty is rare in life.
I say, look at this video of Islamic terror literally going right over a lefty's head.
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
Islamic terrorist is using a leftist as a defense or a shield to carry out a terror attack.
tim pool
But it's not just NBC New York.
Media Blaming Leftists for Terror 00:03:36
tim pool
CNN had a very similar headline.
Now, again, you have this: teens charged an ISIS-inspired attack near Mamdani's Gracie Mansion.
Shouldn't the headlines be Islamic extremists throw improvised explosives at protesters?
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
These people in media hate you.
They are evil.
I'm sorry.
Not literally every single journalist, but whoever's making these articles, they hate your guts and they are evil.
ian crossland
Were they near Mom Dami's house?
tim pool
Yes.
phil labonte
Yeah, that's the.
tim pool
And so this is the manipulation.
This is evil stuff, man.
brandon herrera
But don't you know the real victims of this will be the Muslims that are targeted by anti-Islamic hatred.
tim pool
And then, you know, that's Norm McDonald.
He had the fame – it was a tweet, I think, where he said the worst thing about – what did he say?
phil labonte
Like the worst thing about – My real fear is that there's going to be a nuclear explosion.
tim pool
Caused by Islamic terror.
unidentified
Yeah, 50 million.
tim pool
No, no, no.
I should just pull it up.
But he said, think about how bad it would be if a nuclear device was lit off by Islamic extremists, all the poor Muslims or whatever would face all that hate or something like that.
And yeah, that's the way the media operates.
So the question is, what is the job of the press?
It's to inform the public so that they can make the correct decisions to better lead their country through the democratic processes.
That means you tell people, Islamic extremists threw an improvised explosive at protesters and they say, okay, let's assess that and figure out how we should adapt our country, our city, our state, or otherwise.
When you put the headlines like this, what are they going to think?
Oh, wow, white supremacists are scary.
That's what Mamdani said.
Mamdani did the same thing.
Zorhan Mamdani tweeted Jake Lang, a white supremacist, blah, blah, blah.
And then he said, what happened next is even worse.
It is wrong to use violence and explosives.
He made it sound like Jake Lang showed up and his guys threw explosives.
brandon herrera
How dare you peaceably assemble as is guaranteed your right under the First Amendment and give an opportunity for one of our people to do that to you?
Like, that's really how that came off.
tim pool
Yeah, it's like the Sultan Nitson said in that passage about a soldier was about to be murdered, stabbed, and then he fought back, grabbed the knife, and stabbed the attacker, criminally charged for it.
And when he was in court, they said, why didn't you flee?
And he said, he was trying to kill me.
And he said, you could have run away.
And so it's the poor, the poor criminal.
Why didn't you, you know, actually a really great example?
One of my favorite episodes of Made with Children, a show I'm not a big fan of, because El Bundy's always losing.
Except, no, ma'am, they had their successes.
But I love the episode where he punched a guy in the face and then sued the guy for hurting his hand on his face.
And I guess the point of the story was it was always, something was always backwards or whatever.
Or the point of the show, it's always going wrong.
But this is basically how they operate with these terror attacks.
Like you just said, how dare you create the opportunity to entice these poor young men?
You know, and I assure you right now, there are lefties in New York saying that I guarantee this, because I've been in their meetings, they're probably saying things like, well, you got to understand they're internalizing white supremacy and victimhood, and they're lashing out at the only way they know how.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, they take away the agency of the people that are actually carrying out the crime.
They say, well, these poor people don't know any, they don't know better, or they can't help it, or what have you, which is completely and totally taking away their agency and the fact that they are human beings that actually make their own decisions.
They lay the blame on someone else all the time.
AI Stealing Human Agency 00:06:58
ian crossland
You were talking about the role of media and journalism, particularly.
And I feel like it used to be find out what happened and then tell people about it.
Now it's find out what's a lie and then tell people so they know which one's the lie.
And then you kind of leave it up to everybody else to go find the truth.
You know, there's just so many things happening that one guy cannot deliver that amount of information properly anymore.
So we've got independent researchers now.
It's a lot more normalized.
And your job really is just, you know, break the fake narratives when they arrive.
brandon herrera
It used to be just to tell the truth.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
It used to be just tell people what's happening.
And then now it's all opinion-based.
tim pool
Can you guys turn up Phil's mic?
Hey, sorry.
brandon herrera
No, no, you're good.
It's just, it's insane to me that now, like, the narrative, like, weaving a narrative is part of the job when it comes to mainstream journalism.
That wasn't the way it was ever intended to be.
tim pool
That's so crazy, man.
ian crossland
It might have, that we know of, because when the Unistate owned it and it was like Walter Cronkite, I just thought it was true.
But like the Vietnam War, you know, Gulf of Tonkin, you all thought that was real.
tim pool
You guys knew it was coming.
The moment people pointed out that Phil's mic was low and they started saying turn up Phil's mic, we got a bunch of no, turn Phil's mic off.
ian crossland
But Phil's mic was fine the whole time.
unidentified
I have fans.
tim pool
No, it just needs to go up.
phil labonte
I'm going to keep doing that.
tim pool
Well, Phil's been practicing his ASMR.
He's got a new ASMR channel.
brandon herrera
Well, no matter whether or not you can hear him, we can still hear him.
unidentified
Rock.
phil labonte
That's right.
tim pool
A buy.
ian crossland
Is it because your AI is doing all of your talking for you now?
unidentified
Yeah.
No.
phil labonte
Tank doesn't have a voice yet.
unidentified
Yet.
ian crossland
Tank.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
Indeed.
ian crossland
Are you guys going to put his personality in a tank one day?
tim pool
No.
ian crossland
That'd be badass, dude.
You're like, Tank, take me to the future or whatever.
And it drives you along in your tank.
unidentified
Why not?
phil labonte
Because I prefer him in the middle of the day.
tim pool
He's going to be in your Tesla, bro.
phil labonte
Well, that's actually coming, to be honest with you.
tim pool
It's going to be a Grokba.
It's going to be, what did Elon name that?
phil labonte
Ara, I think, is one of them.
tim pool
No, the waifu?
Yeah, Ara.
phil labonte
A-R-A.
unidentified
Are you sure?
phil labonte
The blonde one?
brandon herrera
Is Ara?
Pretty sure.
You seem very sure about this.
tim pool
I don't think that is not correct.
ian crossland
Are you deep in AI right now, Brandon?
brandon herrera
Not particularly.
unidentified
I have that.
brandon herrera
This is the one thing where I realize TikTok started it, and now AI is definitely one of those things that I'm seeing how easy it is to fall behind.
Because I think this is where I'm pushing back.
Where I'm like with my parents or my grandparents, I don't understand how you can't understand Facebook or whatever when it was coming out.
Now I'm like, nope, nope, this is scary.
This is robots.
I understand the importance of it, but like whenever I see AI music or AI art and things like that, my initial response is just like, uncanny valley, wrong.
What about I push back?
phil labonte
This is my AI agent.
I can literally, I just send him tech messages on.
tim pool
Did you give him access to your credit cards?
phil labonte
No, I shouldn't.
That's why he's on a computer of his own.
He's got his own email address and he's got.
tim pool
We're going to do it.
We're going to make an agent and I'm going to get a prepaid visa.
unidentified
Yep.
tim pool
And then I'm going to have it go into the prediction markets and just run it, get the API, if they allow it, and then just crank it.
ian crossland
What if that rule baby is right now?
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
Apparently it is.
brandon herrera
I guarantee you it is.
ian crossland
I took a Waymo earlier, driverless car.
I've took like four of them in the last day, and it's very soothing.
You don't smell the guy.
You don't have to argue.
You don't even talk your ear off.
It's just you in a car.
You can have a phone call.
Well, it's still being rid of it.
tim pool
I've also taken a Waymo, and it stopped in the middle of the road and made me get out in the middle of the road.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
And I'm sitting here in the car, and it's like, so don't get me wrong, there's a sidewalk to my right.
There was like a curb and grass and all this stuff.
And I'd have to, but it's the middle, there's no shoulder or anything.
It was, I was in LA, I think.
And it's just driving and then just stops on a two-lane road with cars zooming past.
And it was like, you've arrived.
And I'm like, no, I haven't.
I was maybe like a block from my actual destination.
And it was trying to get me to get out the wrong spot.
And I look at my mom.
I'm like, where am I?
And you can't do anything about it.
You can't tell it to stop.
ian crossland
It happened to me today.
That literally, a block away.
tim pool
And just like on the street.
You're on like a busy thoroughfare and just stops.
ian crossland
What year was it?
What day was that, like a month in, was that like it?
tim pool
This was last year.
When was I when did I go on Bill Maher's show?
It was around then.
phil labonte
It was like a year ago.
tim pool
Yeah, and I wanted to take it to go around into like the Hollywood Hills, but it won't.
ian crossland
What if there was an AI congressman?
Would you support that?
unidentified
No.
ian crossland
I think when that happens, if there was a member of Congress that was like an advisor or an advisor to Congress that was AI or something, like a state advisor.
brandon herrera
Well, advisor to Congress.
I feel like that's already a thing.
That's pretty much everybody under 25 that works for a Congressman currently.
phil labonte
All the staff.
brandon herrera
Anything else sounds like WALL-E, you know, just one of those like you're controlled by your robot overlords.
No, I mean, I drive a cyber truck.
Like I was my daily driver.
And the autopilot's pretty good, but there's been like three scenarios it tried to murder me.
unidentified
Murder you?
brandon herrera
I caught it.
Well, because it like it doesn't understand certain things.
Like if there's like a yield to turn left on green and there's oncoming traffic, it's just like, we're turning slowly.
And I had to manually take control to make sure that.
tim pool
I've had a few in the past couple of years, it's gotten dramatically better.
A couple years ago, I talked about it quite a bit where in West Virginia, there's like a, I think it's West Virginia.
It might be Western Maryland.
There's a like three, it's like six lane highway, so three and three.
So to turn left, you have to stop in a median and then wait until the road clears.
So I'm in the middle lane autopilot going, I think like 70 miles an hour, and there's a pickup truck sitting in the meeting waiting to turn.
And as soon as it pops up on the, it was in the Model S, it slams the brakes on from like, and me and my wife are like, need to say, we were like, holy crap.
And I, you, you tap the get the accelerator to stop it, make it go forward again.
Tons of things like that.
And then I was in Hagerstown, Maryland, and it was autopiloting.
And there was like a Nissan Center or something sitting in front of me turning right.
And Tesla was just going straight for it.
And it wasn't stopping.
And when it got maybe within a couple inches, I just jammed the wheel to the left.
Like, holy crap.
And then like the alert goes off.
phil labonte
What's wrong?
tim pool
And I'm like, you nearly just rammed the back of someone's car 25 miles an hour.
More recently, it hasn't really, it's been mostly fine.
I haven't had real issues.
Yeah, I've had a couple new updates.
phil labonte
A couple times where there was issues, but it's for the most part, I can basically rely on it to go wherever I want to go without any issues.
tim pool
You know, and I don't really care about the cyber truck because it's got curb weight.
You know?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
tim pool
And the liabilities on Elon.
brandon herrera
So the way Elon put it is, I think, in the crash testing of the Cybertruck, he said, if the Cybertruck gets in an argument with another car, it will win.
unidentified
Indeed.
phil labonte
I told Tank that we were talking about him.
He said, wait, seriously, what are you saying about me?
And then I said, well, that's wild.
Good things I hope.
Congressional Term Limits and Gun Bills 00:15:49
phil labonte
I'd hate to get canceled before I even have a social media presence.
brandon herrera
Just send him the link.
phil labonte
I said only good things.
He said, appreciate that.
Tell him I said hi and that I'm available for bookings.
ian crossland
We'll get Tank on the show.
We can give him a voice and see what he has to offer.
I brought up AI.
tim pool
Give him like a good British.
No, not a good British, a bad British, like a cockney.
phil labonte
So I can barely understand him.
Right, right.
tim pool
Yeah, yeah, you're like, you know, Phil, I'll think you do a pick, Mike.
phil labonte
After everything, he's going to say, innit.
brandon herrera
In it, just make sure it's not run by Grok because on a bad month, that can get pretty hairy.
unidentified
Yeah.
I was thinking about.
tim pool
I don't understand why everybody wants to.
You know what really annoys me?
I'm sorry.
I have to say this.
When Grok started calling itself Mecca Hitler, that was funny.
It was an error in the system caused by user input, and the media acted like the apocalypse was happening, like Elon did it on purpose.
It's like, dude, live a little.
He fixed it.
It was funny that it broke that way.
brandon herrera
But there's fake moral outrage to be had.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
I brought up AI Brandon because I feel like Congress, where you're going most likely, is pretty busted up right now.
Like one guy has to represent 700,000 people and can't literally, like, you can represent yourself.
You can't represent me.
I can only represent myself effectively.
You could pass a note for me, but then what, 700,000 people, you're going to like, you've got to make your own decisions at some point and we can trust you.
But that system, it's getting so big, it feels like it's not sustaining.
brandon herrera
Well, I mean, it's represented based on population.
And really, the job is not to represent each individual person.
The job is to say, okay, this is the area of land.
These are the people that I'm representing.
These are the issues that they're having that aren't being put on a national stage.
Like, for example, in my district, it's the biggest border district in the country.
We've got border issues.
We've got water issues, water shortages.
We have AI data centers that are moving in.
We have oil thefts that are happening in the Permian Basin areas.
It's my responsibility to then take those issues to the national stage to represent the broader whole of the people, not each individual person.
Because I mean, realistically, the best form of government is the one that governs most locally.
So you want to take the most amount of power away from federal, give it to states, states down to local communities.
And the ideal form of government is the individual.
But in lieu of that, you have to have somebody that can represent that voice.
phil labonte
And if you're looking for things that affect you personally, like on that kind of level, you do have state representatives.
So like you wouldn't go to Brandon, who's a federal representative.
He represents a district in Washington.
You can go to your local representative and talk to the people about the needs of your community on a state level.
tim pool
It's about the district, not every single individual as an individual.
And even when it was 35,000 people, it's impossible.
Come on, you think back in the day when they created the country, one guy was going to go to each and every of the 35,000 and be like, literally what you want, I will advocate for.
No, sometimes there's going to be contradictions.
So I agree with you in essence that it is getting pretty wild.
these districts are getting so massive but the general idea is do you have a do you have an understanding of what your district is looking for and wants in terms of you know uh brandon will be going to dc uh dealing with federal policy and representing the interests of everybody in this district correct And that means there's going to be challenges.
And I don't mean just to say this about Brandon, but literally any member of Congress.
You got 100,000 people who think raw milk should be banned.
You got 100,000 people who think raw milk should be legal.
What do you do?
And there's no easy answers.
ian crossland
That's where your ethics come into play.
And that's why we choose who we send because it's like, it's up to you to break the tie.
unidentified
For sure.
tim pool
You say raw milk for those who want it and tiny miniaturized American flags for everybody else.
ian crossland
And what is that?
Fecal transplants for the women that need them in their elderly years?
I was just riffing.
What were you going to say?
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I don't know.
I just got flashbanged.
unidentified
Sorry.
phil labonte
It was a bad riff and it shouldn't go into any song ever.
unidentified
Okay.
tim pool
Flashbanged.
brandon herrera
I mean, I feel like on one element of it, you could interpret it that way.
Things are getting crazy in that regard.
But also on the other one, with the age of information technology and instant communication, you could say that representatives, if they actually gave a damn about representing the people that they were responsible for, they're in the best position possible because they can instantly from D.C. talk to their constituents and ask what they need and ask what they want and ask what the issues are from the district.
But that's also, that's giving a lot.
That's asking a lot.
That's asking the congressmen to actually care about what their constituents need.
ian crossland
I wonder the longer they're in there, if they get less and less interested with what's happening out there.
Like, do you support term limits?
brandon herrera
We've seen it a million times.
Technically, I'm still the president of U.S. term limits for the state of Texas.
I mean, a lot of what I did when in between the last two elections, or the last election and this one, was go to the Capitol in Austin and ask other members of the state legislature if they would sign on to the term limits pledge.
Because I don't think anybody goes to D.C. and gets better.
phil labonte
So about term limits.
I'm kind of of the opinion that if you have term limits, you're going to end up giving the bureaucracy more power because you have people that are only there for, say, for Congress, it's whatever, four terms, right?
They're only there for eight years.
Just at the point where they really learn the ins and outs about D.C., they're term limited out and they have to leave.
So what could end up happening is the bureaucrats and the staffers that don't have any kind of term limits end up running the show even more than they already do, which we understand that staffers really do a lot of making decisions for Congress.
They tell their congresspeople or their senators, this is how we're voting or what have you.
But what do you say to people that say term limits actually aren't going to solve the problem?
It's going to make the bureaucracy more powerful.
brandon herrera
Well, here's what I would argue in return: I don't think it's going to solve the problem.
I don't think any one thing, this is a massive, multi-multifaceted problem.
I think it's going to help in regards with the incumbency advantage because not only do you have the name recognition that comes with incumbency, but a lot of times you have the fundraising ability and everything.
Like once you get to the levels of, for example, John Cornyn right now, who's done 24 years in the Senate.
He's asking for 30.
He might get it.
I don't think he will.
But he has the ability to throw $100 million at Ken Paxton because he's essentially invincible at this point financially.
And so like that's something that snowballs and people don't get better.
John Cornyn, I mean, he was never great, but he certainly did not get better.
And now he has like a fraction of a billion dollars to throw at his opponent who's objectively a better candidate.
And so I think you're actually kneecapping the ability of good incumbents to hold these people accountable.
I mean, in my race, I got outspent $13 million, like 10 to 1 initially.
And it was just because the guy had access to the appropriations committee and to all the big PACs and super PACs and everything like that.
He was able to throw all that money at me.
And I think if you start holding these people accountable in the sense that they can't continue to snowball those resources, things get a little better.
unidentified
Okay.
ian crossland
I'm thinking about like AI, about using an AI to compile what your district wants.
And then so it's easier for you as a candidate to focus on.
Because I think what's going to happen is you're going to go to DC and get, I don't know what's going to happen because it's up to you.
You know, you're sovereign, but if there is a temptation to get sucked into DC politics and like be part of the gang there and then kind of turn a blind eye to behind what's the past, you know?
tim pool
My understanding is that the first thing that happens is Mitch McConnell will bite you and then transform you into one of them.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
I have, what is it, three days to cut off my arm or else just tell us if you get notice all the teeth marks on the inner forum of all new members of Congress.
brandon herrera
Well, I mean, he has to wake up first.
ian crossland
Instead of being like, hey, don't do that, which is like, well, all the Congress people pretty much, there's a re, they go there and they get involved with political, you know, federal politics.
If we had an easier way to compile what the districts want and need using like an AI or some sort of system.
brandon herrera
I mean, I'm not discounting AI as a tool.
Like maybe I came off as a bit of like a Luddite a second ago, but like I understand the utility of AI in that regard.
But at the same time, I just, I don't know, especially what I'd like to do is kind of approach the problem from the other side of things when it comes to, because I know I guarantee any DC staffer watching this, they've used AI to summarize bills and they've used AI to figure out, okay, I have a 500-page bill on the table.
Chat GPT, what does this say?
Summarize this in 500 words.
I guarantee that's happening.
Let's approach it from the other side and stop having these 4,000-page bills.
Like, let's start going back to like couple page bills that any reasonable human can actually read and understand because otherwise it's just staffer slop.
ian crossland
Matt Gates was obsessive about getting rid of the omnibus bills.
Matt Gates, it was a big deal, and then he left.
And you're the first person that's mentioned it since that's tangentially close to Congress.
I agree.
These omnibus 800-page bills, I mean, I think it should be a felony to vote on something you didn't read.
You know, swear on God that you read the bill.
tim pool
They should have to swear under oath that they read and affirm knowledge of the bill and what they're voting for.
brandon herrera
Most of D.C.'s going to go to prison.
tim pool
Yes.
unidentified
All right.
Yeah.
brandon herrera
This is.
Well, I mean, to be fair, I mean, the first time I met Matt Gates, I was asked by his staff to fly in and testify in front of a congressional field hearing on ATF overreach.
And I think it was like the end, the ATF Act, which, if I'm not mistaken, was either like a one- or two-page bill.
I read it while I was sitting there waiting to testify on it.
Why can't we do that?
unidentified
I don't understand.
phil labonte
I can't fork into a one or two-page bill.
Come on.
brandon herrera
Well, that's probably why they don't do it.
ian crossland
Purely for obfuscation?
tim pool
No, no, here's what I don't understand.
When they bring in the omnibus, I don't understand why Thomas Massey doesn't just sneak up behind it, lift it up and just slide in a one-page amendment.
Because nobody reads it, and they're going to be like, wait, what happened?
And he's going to be like, I got you.
phil labonte
I mean, that's one of the things that Congress likes about the omnibus bills, right?
Like they can go ahead and slide something in and it gives them cover.
They can say, well, you know, I had to vote for the omnibus bill because all of these good things wouldn't have happened.
So this bad thing that you don't like, we had to vote yes on it because it was an omnibus bill.
And it gives them cover to vote yes on things that are bad.
tim pool
My pitch to Thomas Massey was because he said they was able to get an amendment into an omnibus like a year and a half, two years ago, that said if they didn't pass a budget, they would reduce all existing budgets by 1% or something.
And everybody in Congress was like, oh, that's meaningless because we'll just pass another omnibus or whatever.
We'll get the budget done.
And so when they didn't and everything dropped a point, he was like, that's how you do it.
And my pitch was using something like that where they'll make a concession, can you orchestrate this kind of like, how would you describe this?
Series of bills, sleeper bills, that, oh, oh, we would call this a Voltron law.
Each individual component of the law does very little and most people don't care.
But when all of them get activated, then they abolish the NFA or something.
brandon herrera
The omnibus of Exodia.
tim pool
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
When the five single-page bills come together, all guns are now legal and everything else is removed.
ian crossland
Are you going to pass legislation you want to pass in Congress?
brandon herrera
There's a lot of priorities, I mean, specifically in my district and some that apply nationally that I'd love to get done.
But one of them, I mean, again, comes down to border is codifying a lot of the stuff that President Trump has done to solve the border crisis.
Because my God, I mean, I campaigned in this district last cycle, and I talked to the sheriffs.
I talked to a lot of the Border Patrol and National Guard guys deployed on the border off the record, entirely off the record, just listening to the actual problems that they were dealing with.
And now campaigning in this district for the second time, it's night and day.
I mean, it's a complete shift.
I mean, a lot of those problems went away.
The only problem I have with it is a lot of it was done with executive order.
And if it's done with executive order, that was one stroke of a pen, made it go away.
If we get another, you know, another Democrat president at some point, which we will, it will happen eventually.
If one stroke of a pen made it go away, one stroke of a pen can make it come back.
tim pool
I have a pitch that I assure you all listening at home is not a joke.
I believe that Congress, members of Congress, maybe you or Thomas Manson could do this, present a bill for mandatory gun ownership.
Make it a requirement that people in Guns NACU laugh because it is kind of crazy, right?
And we would all love the idea.
But the actual strategy is to force the debate in the other direction.
So instead of constantly having a debate over which guns should get banned this time, the debate should start with the Republicans saying, we're going to make it mandatory for everybody above the age of 18 to own a gun.
You are required to go to the Department of Gun Services, the DGS, where you will then fill out the paperwork, like basically just here's who I am, so that you can get your one sidearm and long gun.
Everyone must do it.
Then when Democrats say you're crazy, say, okay, how about we just go with don't ban guns?
brandon herrera
So it's an Overton window shift.
unidentified
Yes.
brandon herrera
So I do laugh, but there is actually, I think there's at least two states that have a county that did something similar.
I think one of them is Georgia and the other is Tennessee.
I could be could be wrong on that, but they did it and they don't enforce it, but they put it out there because they're saying, like, this is our local crime prevention.
Like, this is your responsibility.
It's in the verbiage of the Second Amendment.
tim pool
But just think about how amazing it would be, right?
Like, you're driving in your car and you get pulled over and the cop says license, insurance, and proof of gun ownership.
And then you're like, I don't have it on me.
It's like, sir, are you driving without a firearm?
It's like, I am.
I'm going to have to write your ticket for that.
You can't do it.
ian crossland
It's like, I could have had somebody coming up behind me.
Where are you?
I need you to protect me.
tim pool
I need your help.
I don't actually think it would be good to force everybody to have guns.
I think it should be a choice.
But the general argument is every time the Republicans are always engaging the Democrats on their territory.
They will say, hey, we're going to ban.
I don't know if you guys remember this, but it was something like eight years ago.
Democrats in D.C. proposed a bill to ban every semi-automatic gun.
100% of them.
brandon herrera
Look at what they're doing in Virginia right now.
Oh, very, very good.
tim pool
Virginia is basically banning literally every gun.
And the Republicans argue with, well, well, hold on.
Let us keep these guns.
Like, you're negotiating with them from an extreme position.
Let's go extremely other direction and then meet in the middle.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Like, I will never forgive.
Like, and, you know, the NRA leadership has changed a lot since then.
They seem to be going in a much more based direction, which I'm thankful for.
I'd like to see some results, but I will never forgive them for capitulating on the bump fire stocks and whatnot.
Like when the push was coming from the Democrats, to my understanding, they were the ones advocating behind the scenes, like, oh, well, what if we just allow this to be banned?
It's like, no, no, no, you should be fighting for us.
You shouldn't be figuring out what the least consequential compromise you can make is.
tim pool
But now they're doing, what is it, the fixed reset trigger?
Is that what it's called?
Forced reset trigger.
Forced reset trigger.
Are those banned now?
phil labonte
The Supreme Court's already decided on that.
So I'm not sure what the actual language in the bill would be to get them to pass legislation that wouldn't.
tim pool
No, I mean, like, is that banned?
phil labonte
No, no.
Supreme Court knows that.
tim pool
The Supreme Court said, no, you can't do that.
brandon herrera
Right now, well, because if you actually look at the letter of the law, when it comes to a machine gun, it is a weapon that fires more than one round per pull of the trigger.
And because the forced reset triggers forcing the reset, meaning that the trigger resets and you have to pull the trigger again, your own force of the trigger pull is pulling the trigger.
If they wanted to amend the NFA and make that a machine gun, they'd have to get it passed through Congress.
But as it stands, it does not meet the definition of a machine gun.
Therefore, they're all legal.
And man, this is that's the new wild west in the gunfront right now.
tim pool
I mean, to be completely honest, the technology is out there for some pretty wild weapons.
Rail guns have been around for a very long time.
And I've noticed a lot of the laws that were on the books for ammunition specifically referenced like combustion of some sort or powder or whatever.
But what's to stop a person from just making a railgun with bolts?
Wild West Railgun Bunkers 00:12:25
phil labonte
Probably technical knowledge.
ian crossland
My general real question for you, Brent, because you're, you know, AK guy is your handle on Twitter, and like you're notoriously a gun rights activist.
At what point do the Second Amendment kind of be like, should I have a nuclear ballistic warhead that I can carry around and like accidentally drop on the rounds and bring it on?
tim pool
Real quick, and I'll add one more to also depleted uranium rounds.
Where's the line?
What do you think?
brandon herrera
So there's also all sorts of stuff that's technically banned that civilians have access to just because of stuff that's fallen off the truck.
You see it at gun shows and different things like that.
It's kind of like, yeah, you know, it's one of those, like, there's never been a legal determination on it.
So like it just kind of, because it's never been commercially for sale.
It's only been military.
A lot of the diehard gun nuts will know kind of the stuff that I'm talking about.
But a lot of people don't know that there's actually an ATF form specifically.
So like when you do e-file, so I'm getting kind of a little technically in the weeds here, but you do like a form two, form three, form four online through the ATF.
On their own website, there is a drop-down option, and I do not know what it is for.
I do not know the use case for this.
There is a drop-down option for nuclear.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
So that is a thing.
Like there is an actual ATF form.
There's licensing for it for whatever reason.
tim pool
Well, I would imagine, you know, Lockheed or Raytheon or whoever is developing U.S. nukes is going to submit a form for it and be like, although I kind of feel like when you're at that level, it's rubber stamped.
The president's involved.
ian crossland
Right.
unidentified
Oh, no.
brandon herrera
I can only imagine the approval process.
If only the Ayatollah knew that he could just move to the United States and then do the form.
tim pool
But let me ask you in terms of restrictions on gun rights, what about depleted uranium rounds?
Should civilians be allowed to purchase things like that?
brandon herrera
I just don't, I don't see the argument against.
I mean, would I want to put that anywhere near any vital part of my body?
Absolutely not.
But I mean, it's not really useful for anything.
Like anything that people would be concerned about, it's not very useful for anyone.
tim pool
I am of the opinion that private citizens and entities in the United States are legally allowed, should be legally allowed to own nuclear weapons.
Only, hold on, I'll clarify because all the libs freak out when I say this, because it is constitutionally protected and we have not amended the Constitution as such.
I don't think people should be able to get nuclear weapons.
However, technology has outpaced the perception, our understanding of arms, weapons, et cetera.
And so the liberals have to make the argument the Founding Fathers could never have thought about a semi-automatic, which is just plumb not true.
They had, when the 1300s, they had that multi-barrel gun.
You pull the rope.
brandon herrera
I mean, several of the Founding Fathers invested in the technology that eventually led to things like the Gatling gun.
Like this was a thing that was kind of, it was on the table.
tim pool
That being said, nuclear weapons is something different.
But they did know and actually required the services of privateers with the most advanced weapon really.
I mean, imagine if there was like an aircraft carrier floating around that was just owned by some guy and he's just like a, like Jeff Bezos buys an aircraft carrier and just mans it and he's got weapons and he's got a couple nukes on it.
That's how it used to be.
And so until we amend the Constitution and say the right of people to keep arms shall not be infringed, except if it is considered to be a weapon of mass destruction, which includes, then my opinion is the government restricting people from having access to it is an infringement on our rights.
And it is a duty of the people to amend the Constitution as the Founding Fathers have laid out if they would like to change that.
brandon herrera
Also, I had a pragmatic argument on the nuclear weapons front, which was, you know, it requires, that's something that is done on a national level.
That is a massive technological feat.
I mean, the Russians had to steal information from us to figure out how to do it after, you know, they had a massive war machine and everything else and a bunch of German scientists.
If someone in 2026 had the resources, the ability, the engineering team to be able to enrich uranium and be able to put together a nuclear weapon on an island Doctor Evil style, your law is not going to stop them.
unidentified
Good luck.
brandon herrera
If Elon Musk threw $8 billion at deciding he wanted to have a nuclear weapon, good luck.
What are you going to do?
Sanction him?
tim pool
Let me ask you real quick.
How do you define or how is the word arms defined?
The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
So what does that mean?
brandon herrera
I would say weaponry.
You know, that's kind of the way it's implied in the Constitution, I think.
tim pool
Anything can be a weapon.
Like, what if I took like a can of AF hard seltzer and then tied a shoelace around it and started swinging it around, you know?
brandon herrera
I mean, that's very biblical.
tim pool
The right to keep in bare AF seltzers on shoelaces shall not be infringed, huh?
brandon herrera
But I mean, there's also the lie that keeps getting perpetuated by people like Joe Biden.
He was one of the worst.
tim pool
When he told you to shoot a shotgun to the air?
brandon herrera
Well, no, the thing where he's like, it's illegal to, it's illegal to own a cannon.
Like, you've never been able to own a cannon.
I always push back on that.
It has never been illegal to own a cannon.
It has always, Texas was almost borderline founded on the idea that we're keeping our cannon.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Like, and they used to ask, like, you brought up the privateers, they would ask privately owned vessels bearing cannons to come help us, you know, mess up some of America's enemies.
phil labonte
The head of NASA now owns a MiG.
I want to say, I'm not sure what's.
unidentified
29.
phil labonte
MiG 29, is it?
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
So, I mean, Chris got four now.
tim pool
Now, let me ask you another question before we, and we'll jump to the next story real quick.
There was a man who famously created a radioactive death ray in his garage.
I think you're familiar with the story, Phil?
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
I'm not going to explain how he did it, but it's actually not very difficult.
And the feds came in and were like, you are irradiating your whole neighborhood with this death ray.
People are going to die.
So they arrested him.
He was covered in lesions.
And they offered him a job.
And they said, why don't you do what you're doing, but for us?
He said, okay.
And he was just nuts, I guess.
I don't know the finer details, but I just read the story online.
And then started doing the same insanity with radiation.
So they eventually said, okay, get out.
And he got arrested.
That's a weapon, right?
brandon herrera
And now we have the discombobulator ray.
tim pool
Indeed.
So, I mean, what happens to us if people are able to wield compact, deadly weapons?
I'm not talking about with high risk of collateral damage, like a discombobulator ray or a radiation death beam.
brandon herrera
And I mean, we saw this all the way back to Timothy McVay in Oklahoma City in the 90s.
This is one of those things where, and it's going to get worse and worse in that regard, where man-made horror is beyond your comprehension.
I think that there's going to be an issue where technology, like you said, outpaces these things and it will outpace the law.
It will outpace.
It doesn't matter what you think the law should be, if a law is in place that will not stop it.
And that's where I think we have to have a conversation.
tim pool
Agreed.
Let's jump to this next story from the New Republic.
Trump officials are suddenly buying doomsday bunkers.
Completely separately, we are on the 10th day of an ever-expanding Iran war.
Well, as you already know, Trump said the war is very nearly complete.
So we'll see if that actually turns out to be true.
The market certainly reacted as though Trump is always telling the truth, or at least always correct.
So they must know something.
We got this.
They say at least two members of the president's cabinet have recently purchased bomb-proof bunkers.
Ron Harbor, the creator of Atlas Survival Shelters, told the Telegraph of the weekend that orders have gone up tenfold since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.
But among his anxious clientele are two chief members of Trump's team, according to the shelter maker, saying, One of them texted me yesterday asking me, when will my bunker be ready?
He told the Telegraph.
So these bunkers can range from something like $20,000.
We've actually, I think I might have a, no, we don't.
I have to log in the Telegraph to get the photos.
But they've got $20,000 tubes that they just lower into the ground.
Pretty easy.
But then they've got these really amazing pre-constructed bunkers that look like, you know, nice little apartments.
Question.
Trump cabinet members buying nuclear bunkers because they can or because they know something we don't?
phil labonte
Because they can.
unidentified
You think?
Yeah.
tim pool
Just rich people.
So they're like, I mean, look, I got money.
I haven't bought a bunker.
phil labonte
I mean, well, I mean, I'd like one.
Not to speak about how much money you do or don't.
brandon herrera
No, I said I'd like one.
unidentified
That'd be nice.
tim pool
20 grand a bunch of.
brandon herrera
I mean, you know, I'm too busy trying to fix things from the inside right now.
If I didn't spend all the money on it.
tim pool
No, no, no, no, that's not fair, Brandon.
Once you get into Congress, you've got Mount Weather and Raven Rock free bunker.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Put it this way.
Once I'm there and then I start buying a bunker, maybe pay attention.
But the, yeah, I don't know.
I feel like that's something.
tim pool
You like walk out of a skiff and you're like, I can't tell you what went on in that meeting, but I will tell you that Atlas bunkers are the best bunkers.
phil labonte
You can actually get, they have a website.
I checked out their website before.
They have a YouTube page.
brandon herrera
I'm pretty sure I have a buddy who has one of their bunkers.
Although I don't think that if it was sensitive state information, I don't think they would be very happy with him saying this to news sources.
tim pool
Dude, these are amazing.
unidentified
Oh, yeah, look at this.
tim pool
25K pre-cast concrete bomb shelter.
Look at this one.
Customizable.
Do they have like a shelter builder?
phil labonte
I'd have to blast if I wanted to put one in New Hampshire, though, because there's all the mountains and rock and stuff up there.
brandon herrera
Is this a sponsored bit?
phil labonte
No, it's not.
unidentified
I'm joking.
It's a passion.
tim pool
Hey, I mean, I would be totally down.
phil labonte
Yeah, like their YouTube page is pretty sick.
ian crossland
Plus, you could Airbnb it out.
tim pool
Look at this.
$20,000 bunker.
Like, why buy a house, dude?
ian crossland
Just for the sunlight?
phil labonte
To put on top of it so no one knows where your bunker is.
tim pool
You know what I was thinking would be a really cool idea, though, is you can get mountainside property really cheap because it's hard to do anything with, right?
And so I was like, what if we took one of these 250K bunkers and dug it into a mountain?
ian crossland
Yes, dude.
tim pool
So one side is just overlooking the beauty.
There's a river down there, a stream or whatever.
And then you actually set it up so that there's a gigantic concrete barrier that separates it.
So a portion of it is sheltered.
The other portion is exposed and open.
brandon herrera
So what you need to do is find some, you go to New York, find some Islamic extremists that have TATP that can blow a hole in the side of a mountain for you.
phil labonte
There you go.
brandon herrera
And then you can build your dream bunker.
ian crossland
Dude, you could do like a bunch of them next to each other and build either a city or build tunnels between them and have just like a megalopolis in the side of a mountain.
phil labonte
Well, part of the reason why you build a bunker, or part of the one of the things that people like about building bunkers is anonymity.
They like that people don't know where it is, keep it secret.
Because ostensibly in an end of the world scenario, if you have a bunker and your neighbor doesn't, your neighbor might want to try and come and get into your bunker.
I was thinking of a bad idea.
ian crossland
That guy who was like, end of the world scenario, he's got all the money in the world.
He's got all the armed guards in the world.
And then the world ends and he's underground with all his armed guards and the armed guards are like, why are we dealing with this guy?
tim pool
That's actually, I think, part of the plot of the Horizon series.
unidentified
Oh.
ian crossland
I know I've heard about, I've heard that, you know, mind experiment before that like if you, you know, you hire a guy for a gun.
brandon herrera
One of these people was because money meant something.
Now that money means nothing.
I'm the guy with a gun.
tim pool
Yeah.
phil labonte
I mean, they're in the bunker with you.
So, you know.
tim pool
Well, you know, it depends on what your skills are.
The funny thing is, I'd imagine most billionaires don't have functional skills for survival.
Maybe presumptuous of me to say, but probably the I'd imagine farmers are going to be the first, well, preppers are obviously going to be the ones who survive any kind of real nuclear strike or apocalypse or whatever.
But outside of anyone who's specifically preparing for the end of times, farmers probably would do the best.
Hunters, people who naturally have basic survival.
I'd imagine a tech billionaire would be completely useless.
Now, to be fair, they're smart.
You don't get to these places without being smart, and technology is important.
The question is, how would Elon apply his knowledge in a situation where it's like seven dudes in the middle of a field, city's gone, there's no fuel, cars aren't running, and they're like, okay, we got to survive.
brandon herrera
To be fair, that's exactly the kind of person I would trust to rebuild a society.
tim pool
But rebuild society, yes, when you have scale, but what if you're just seven guys in the middle of the woods?
Well, then I you're gonna be like, look, someone's gotta find water, someone's gotta build shelter, and someone's gotta find food.
brandon herrera
At that point, his food is your food.
Elon's Survival in a Post-Apocalyptic World 00:03:07
tim pool
Exactly.
ian crossland
You gotta protect him, too, because you're like, look, on the off chance that we do make it out of this, you're gonna be rebuilding society for us.
So we're gonna keep you alive.
tim pool
I don't necessarily agree with that.
ian crossland
You just let it.
tim pool
No, while I certainly respect that someone like Elon or Bezos, they're intelligent individuals who are able to build systems.
It doesn't mean they're good with people and building policy and governance or anything like that.
brandon herrera
No, I think outside of like a fallout style bunker where you have an actual functioning society with a lot of people that you could trust, okay, when we go topside, we have something that we can actually rebuild with.
I'm not sure I'd want to survive a situation that I would need a nuclear fallout bunker.
I think I'm good, frankly.
tim pool
Yeah, you turn into a ghoul, you know, and then you live forever, but you're all weird looking, your nose falls off.
ian crossland
Heaven's pretty cool.
So I'm kind of with you on that.
tim pool
Heaven is pretty cool.
brandon herrera
It sounds neat.
From everything I've heard about it, it sounds much preferable.
tim pool
Well, you know, when I was a kid, my dad, he was always full of fun little hypotheticals.
And one he said to me was, if you saw a nuclear bomb coming down right there in the sky, what would you do?
And I was like, run.
And he goes, yeah, which direction?
And I was like, away?
No.
You run towards it.
Because you don't want to be caught in the searing flesh and painful death zone.
You want to be in the instantly vaporized zone.
brandon herrera
What a cheery man he was.
tim pool
And he'd always be like, we'd walk into a restaurant where your exit's at.
He was a Marine.
So you walk in and go there and there.
He's like, that's right.
And a firefighter.
Because the amount of people that die in burning buildings because they don't know where the exits are.
There was one crazy video where a fire started in a bar and everybody ran to the front door and got stuck.
And then the guy who filmed it calmly walked out the emergency exit and then filmed everybody just stuck in the door because they all pushed each other in and then got, yeah, it's brutal, man.
brandon herrera
It doesn't surprise me, but it's still just, it's jarring.
tim pool
Yeah.
They say that when too many humans are in one space, fluid dynamics take over and it's basically a bunch of water.
Oh, I was when those stampedes at Mecca.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
I went to a Mardi Gras in St. Louis and it was like that.
It was like getting squeezed and like moved along in an ocean of maniacs.
And then I peed on a wall.
I was so drunk.
The cops were like, you can't do that.
I think they let me off with a warning because they couldn't get to you.
tim pool
They're like, get him.
And he's floating away over here.
unidentified
See ya.
ian crossland
I think these dudes did a buck.
tim pool
What were you going to say?
brandon herrera
Oh, I think that was one of the big, God, I could be misremembering this.
I think it was in New York or something like that, but there was like an attack on, I don't remember if it was just a nightclub or like a gay club or something like that.
It was one of the biggest mass casualty events because they lit it on fire.
phil labonte
That was Pulse Nightclub.
tim pool
No, no, no, no.
brandon herrera
It wasn't a shooting.
It was an actual firebombing.
unidentified
Wow.
brandon herrera
And a lot of people died because they couldn't get out.
ian crossland
Dude, fire.
tim pool
Now, what if someone discombobulates like a nightclub?
And then everyone inside just going like, oh.
phil labonte
A lot of nosebleeds and bowel of action.
brandon herrera
The mm.
ian crossland
And they blame the artist that's performing.
tim pool
Do you think the Havana syndrome stuff was like them testing out the discombobulator?
Sonic Weapons and Geopolitics 00:15:09
brandon herrera
I wouldn't be surprised.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I mean, I remember seeing this stuff on like, you know, when I play hookie from school and like watching future weapons.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
They show like the sonic weapons they were using for like crowd control.
I'm like, that's that's the stuff they were willing to tell us about on TV 15 years ago.
phil labonte
Yep.
brandon herrera
Yeah, I'm sure it's got to be better.
tim pool
You know, somebody just was really excited to call it the discombobulator.
unidentified
Yeah.
phil labonte
I thought that that was just Trump kind of riffing.
unidentified
Oh, was it?
phil labonte
I don't know what's going on with it.
I don't know for sure.
I'm sure there's got a military designation.
tim pool
In that case, there's going to be some dude who invented something that he calls like the high energy output destruction device, the Hiyod.
And now everyone's like, how's the discombobulator going?
He's like, it's called the hiat.
ian crossland
I wanted to say about these guys that are serving with Trump that bought bunkers.
I don't think they're panicking.
I think they are maybe panicking.
I don't think that they're actually moving off of like an intelligence that like there's a threat.
I think that these are just a couple of guys that are like, it's cheap.
We can do it.
They're hitting Iran right now.
What better time?
brandon herrera
I'd love to know like how many people, out of what sample size, is this like Trump's two biggest advisors?
Or is this like out of 500 people attached to the White House, two dudes with money decided we're in a conflict, I should have a bunker?
You know, I think that's kind of more where we're falling.
ian crossland
How do you feel about this conflict?
I mean, we'll probably pull it up.
I don't know if we really went too hard on Iran, but like, what are your thoughts on the regime and the Iranian government and how to handle this?
brandon herrera
It's definitely, I don't know.
I hate to be a fence sitter on it.
Like, I would prefer no conflict, frankly.
But then you have the other side of the fence where these guys go, well, what did Iran ever do to us?
Like, well, okay, we have a lot.
How much time do you have?
You know, so like, I don't know.
I prefer, like I said, I don't want to get involved in another forever war.
I don't think, you know, a lot of this stuff is any of our business.
But if we're going to do, if we're going to do it, if we have to do it, I don't have access to the intel.
I don't know what they're operating on.
I prefer it to be fast, cheap, effective at the lowest cost of American life possible.
I don't want foods on the ground.
tim pool
Real quick, sorry.
Don't forget what you were going to say.
So I want to show this map and explain about what did Iran ever do to us.
Right now, the concerns and the reason price is skyrocketing is because the Strait of Hormuz is under threat by Iran.
And you've got these Gulf states.
You've got Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates.
You've even got Oman and the Saudis.
And there's a lot of oil here.
20% of oil and natural gas they want to get out to the rest of the world to do business with.
You are allowed to sell stuff.
That's what they're doing.
So Iran right here, the whole time has basically been saying, we will blow you up unless we get what we want.
At a certain point, everybody's just like, dude, these a-holes need to be stopped.
I am not advocating for anything that we did in Iran because my concerns are instability in the region.
And that could screw the whole thing up even more.
My point is only to say that when you have a bunch of different countries that sell 20% of natural gas and oil to the rest of the world, and they're constantly under threat of being blown up by Iran unless we give Iran free stuff like pallets of cash.
ian crossland
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
Sooner or later.
Sooner or later.
You get an Obama who says, okay, Iran, what do you want?
Just don't screw with the oil trade.
And so he gives him a bunch of money.
Then you get a Trump who says, I'll just kill you.
And they're like, well, we can make nukes.
Then I'll kill you faster.
So you pick your leader, right?
One leader is going to try and bribe him and pay him off.
Doesn't seem to work.
They keep blowing up our people.
They keep threatening the strait and oil trade, among other things.
And then you get Trump.
And I got to be honest, Trump's the kind of guy who's going to press the button.
So it is what it is.
Right now, we've been seeing reports that ships have been turning off their transponders and moving through the Strait of Hormuz and then turning them back on to try and get past Iranian missile strikes.
That's insane.
Look, whatever the issue is, I'll put it like this.
Call the United States bad for whatever it does in Afghanistan and Iraq, fine.
Call Iran bad.
There are other countries involved that are pissed off that Iran is shutting down the strait.
And more importantly, When the strikes happened, Iran started bombing Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates and these other countries who did not engage in hostilities against them.
ian crossland
South American military bases, I think, was their justification.
tim pool
That may be for some, but why bomb a hotel?
unidentified
Oh, it's tough.
tim pool
Again, therein lies the problem.
If they bombed the military bases, which they did, you'd say, oh, wow, this is war.
When they start striking hotels and apartment buildings, you're like, what they're trying to do is get the people.
This is what Tara raised.
They want the people in these countries to get angry that they're being targeted in the war so that they go to their governments and put pressure on the government so that the government goes easier on Iran.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
And I think all those governments knew that because they immediately were like, all right, we're declaring war on Iran.
Like, we've got a missile into our terror sovereign territory.
phil labonte
Like I said earlier, Iran's been a thorn in the side of multiple countries, not just the U.S., not just Israel.
Like the entire Middle East is basically worried about what Iran's going to do.
brandon herrera
They're the only nation state sponsor of terrorism in the world.
phil labonte
They're the only Shiite Muslim country in the area.
Everybody else is Sunni.
So they're at odds in that aspect.
So, I mean, look, they're not friendly with most of the countries that we mentioned so far.
ian crossland
And they're most, you're speaking about government, because the people are mostly, I don't even think the majority of the population is Muslim in Iran.
Someone was telling me stats earlier, they're saying, is it literal majority or is it not?
tim pool
Oh, yeah, yeah.
The government is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
ian crossland
The government.
The government.
But the people themselves are like, they were free, you know, almost 79.
brandon herrera
They were fairly secular for a good amount of time.
Like, if you look back at pictures of, you know, Iranian colleges in like 50s, 60s.
ian crossland
Dan Holloway was telling me it's that they're Persian first.
Most of them are Persian first and Muslim second.
phil labonte
Their religion is Islam, but they're generally secular Muslims.
They're not particularly religious.
ian crossland
I'm kind of dancing around this question, which I was going to ask you before Tim asked me to remember it, is you said we got to do this.
We need to protect American lives at all costs.
But like that can get very broad, the at-all cost metaphor, because would you incinerate a million Iranian civilians?
brandon herrera
Because, well, I think you're kind of misstaking what I was saying.
I was saying, if we have to do this, let's do it quickly to the least amount of American lives.
If it was up to me, like if I had a vote right now, based on the information that I have, which granted is less than they have, I'm not sure if that changes anything.
I would vote no if I was asked if we were going to declare war in Iran, if we would go in ground invasion or like declare an official war, I would vote no.
I think we've, you know, I'm typically an anti-war hawk kind of guy, not the way I'm going to do it.
However, I feel like my policy on it is very much to make a weird analogy.
It's like the Bill Burr bit about like, no reason.
It's like, well, okay, should we do it?
No, but no reason.
tim pool
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I think I'm more irritated by the arguments against it where they're saying, well, these are just poor.
They've never done anything to us.
I'm like, all right, well, I'll get to you in a minute.
That was retarded.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
It's a rock and a hard place because the issue is, and I think, you know, I like to bring this up, it's not just the Strait of Hormuz.
It's also that Iran's been funding the Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been bombing the Red Sea down here where the ships are trying to come on in to the Red Sea, where they head up through the Suez, get to the Mediterranean.
Iran has basically been disrupting a massive amount of global trade.
And Obama tried bribing them.
If we give them some money and tell them to chill out, but they have not chilled out.
Attacking us in Iraq, I get the United States should not have been in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I got to be honest, I think the point of going to Iraq and Afghanistan was largely to stage a pincer strike around Iran.
You know, we've got military bases all along the edges.
But Iran has been, look, at any point, if Iran was like, no, no, no, we're not going to interfere with global trade, no one cares about Iran anymore.
unidentified
Yep.
tim pool
So for that matter, if we zoom over here, I'll tell you all about Trump's interests.
So here we have Nicaragua.
China was trying to build the Nicaraguan Canal.
They wanted to build it straight through here, and it would have disrupted, I believe it was whatever this is, Lake Coquibolka, is that what it is?
Or it might have actually been up here.
But they wanted to build a canal that would compete with the Panama Canal.
And this is some 10 years ago.
They ultimately abandoned the project after it just like cost an insane amount of money.
The reason why Trump wanted Panama back, the reason why Trump wants control of the Strait of Hormuz, he wants Iran shut down, basically.
The reason he wants Greenland, it's all about controlling international waterways for trade for oil.
The United States tells the world one thing.
You will use the U.S. dollar for all oil purchases, which means our economy is going to be great no matter what, because you got to use our money to buy oil, which means you've got to come to us first.
However, they say in exchange, you will be able to freely trade around the world without someone blowing you up.
We'll go after the pirates.
We will police the seas.
This is, I'm not saying it's a good thing.
I'm saying this is the mechanism of the United States and why we have a strong economy, despite not producing as much as other countries do relatively.
We have the petro-dollar system.
So when you get countries complaining, we can't ship goods to the Red Sea anymore because of the Houthi rebels, Trump goes to Iran and says, are you going to stop arming these guys who are blowing up civilian transport?
And they go, maybe, give us money.
And Trump says, no, I'll kill you.
When they threaten the Strait of Hormuz, Trump's not playing a game like Obama and says, no, I'll kill you.
Now, if you're not a fan of the Team America World Police stuff, that opinion was always allowed.
I am not telling you you should support any of this.
I am telling you this is the mechanism by which all of this is happening, the reason why they're doing it.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's pretty clear that America lives, or the living standard that Americans have is because of the petrodollar.
And if we were to change that system, it would be a massive change in the living standard of all Americans.
And as much as people say, oh, I don't want to see the U.S. to be the world police, as long as the U.S. is the world police, we should continue to do things that will try to keep the U.S. living standard as high as possible.
Because you think that poverty is bad in other countries, if the petrodollar goes away, you're going to see a significant decrease in living standard.
And that means the poor are the ones that are going to be hurt the most here in the U.S.
brandon herrera
And I've got to give a shout out to my boy Nick, the fat electrician, real quick, because he had a very good video breaking down the history of why America went after Greenland and just the long-storied history since just after, I believe, the Civil War, attempting to purchase the Greenland territory and the reasons that we had interest there, especially with the strike capabilities later on and decreasing our strike time to places like Russia and everywhere else and just having that ability.
Because I think we came to an agreement after the end of World War II because during World War II, obviously, you know, they were overtaken and we had placed American bases in Greenland itself.
And so.
tim pool
I just think that the United States is the nexus of good and morality.
Has never done anything wrong.
And for that matter, if the U.S. does it, it is good.
That's just, it's the definition.
phil labonte
It's magic.
ian crossland
I have a bit more of a nuance to take.
I do think that the liberal economic order that is overseeing this, you know, collusive global takeover is the least worst global order we've ever seen in human history.
It's been 80 years of no world war, limited.
The internet, the amount of food people are sex trafficking.
There hasn't been a famine.
There hasn't been a famine in like 80 years.
I don't think there's been a famine in like 150 years in the United States, if that, maybe even more, ever in the United States.
So it's pretty impressive.
Like if we can stabilize and develop our drone delivery systems so that we can spread resources out, I think this system could work.
brandon herrera
Well, so I actually was having this conversation the other day because I'm like, look, is America perfect?
No, absolutely not.
Nobody ever has been.
But I think that right now the United States, as it stands, in possibly the history of humanity, has the most power, like the most might to good ratio.
Like to freedom of its individual citizens, to how little we leverage it against the world for nefarious purposes.
I think this is probably, again, the most power-to-good ratio that has ever existed on planet Earth.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, essentially, if you put the kind of military might that the U.S. has in the hands of, oh, I don't know, the Huns, you know, I think that they're not.
tim pool
Anyway, I have a question.
I brought this up this morning.
It was a hypothetical on Reddit.
They have these hypothetical scenarios they ask, then you comment.
And it is this.
The question is for you, Mr. Riera.
You wake up one day with all the powers of Superman.
You are super strong.
You can fly.
You can shoot lasers and breathe cold for whatever reason.
And all that good stuff.
However, once per year, a random person on Earth, could be in any country anywhere, will also get these powers.
You are informed a full year in advance who that person will be.
And the only way to stop them from getting the powers is to kill them before they do.
What do you do?
brandon herrera
Does that save?
Does that stop it from going to a random different person after that?
tim pool
So the idea is on January 1st, a random person in the world will get these powers as well.
You always know who it's going to be.
After that person dies, the next January 1st, there will be one more person.
So it's one person per year.
brandon herrera
Got it.
tim pool
And the hypothetical scenario is, will you kill them to prevent them from getting Superman powers as Superman?
brandon herrera
Do you also have those powers while they have them?
tim pool
Yes.
So people will just start popping up and getting them all over the world if you do nothing.
brandon herrera
I don't like that.
That's a very, very rough moral question.
Because the obvious, I mean, the mathematical answer to that is at some point, somebody's going to have those powers and use it to kill thousands of people.
So it's like, all this is like a Reddit version of the trolley problem.
Right.
tim pool
Exactly.
Yeah, that's about it.
It is an interesting question as it pertains to war and two powers because you look at it from the perspective of not Superman, but you're a global world dominating hegemonic power.
You know another country is rapidly gaining power.
You can blow them up right now to prevent them from doing it.
However, if you don't, they will rival you then, and now there will be – that's essentially what the scenario is meant to be.
The challenge with this, the Superman question is that what if it's an Islamic extremist?
And now he's immortal, invincible, and he's going to start massacring not thousands, but millions of people.
And you can't stop him because you only match him.
You'll be locked in a fight endlessly and the collateral damage will probably still make the millions.
And so the ultimate question is, I feel like this is a question to try and explain geopolitics at a grand scale to children, aka Redditors, adult men who have the mentality of children.
brandon herrera
The Funko Pop breed.
Rubio's Restraint vs. Rubio's Rage 00:15:44
tim pool
Yeah, indeed.
ian crossland
It would be a good plot for a supervillain.
tim pool
Oh, bro, Ian would just, he would be like, I'll kill him.
ian crossland
And they're like, why are you doing this?
And it's like, you don't understand.
unidentified
I have to.
ian crossland
And he's psychotic.
unidentified
He's lost his mind.
ian crossland
I'm like, saving the world.
You have to be aware of it.
tim pool
When you're Superman, meaning you're super speed.
So it's two in the morning, whatever country they're in.
You flash into their room, laser beam into their eyes, and then flash out.
And then people come in in the morning and the person's just dead.
phil labonte
When you're Superman, you don't have to explain yourself.
ian crossland
I would try.
But then at the end of my life, as Superman, they'd be like, oh, yeah, by the way, it was all a lie.
They were all going to be just normal people.
phil labonte
Now you're changing the level of the world.
tim pool
He's just ruining me on killing people.
brandon herrera
You're ruining the plot twist of your own movie.
ian crossland
I should do that in the movie, yeah.
tim pool
No, actually, that is a great plot twist where the guy tells people, you don't understand.
If I don't do this, they will develop powers.
And then we will have super-powered terrorists.
You can't control them.
brandon herrera
You're three weeks away from Superman powers.
tim pool
Yeah, and then finally on his deathbed, he's like, I made it all up.
I just wanted to kill somebody.
Just liked killing.
He's got to be under my side.
ian crossland
He's three weeks away.
Okay, let's do it.
That's a funny movie.
Now he'd be like the villain.
He wouldn't be the main character, but that would be his motivation.
tim pool
The villain?
He's just a serial killer.
He makes a fake excuse.
ian crossland
Well, that's what the United States basically has been doing.
They stomp down on anybody that's starting to rise up.
And then if they get too far, too fast, like North Korea, they just don't stomp down because they got intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles.
tim pool
Well, let's open up this story real quick and let's talk about that, Ian.
Trump floats friendly takeover of Cuba, but says it may not be friendly either.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's my birthday and the only thing I've ever wanted, ever, my whole life.
I remember being a little kid, sitting in my living room, just looking out the window at the stars in the sky, thinking, I just want to conquer Cuba.
And now on this, my 40th birthday, Trump has floated a not-so-friendly takeover.
Mr. President, thank you so much.
It's all I ever wanted.
Do you agree?
Should we invade and conquer Cuba?
ian crossland
I would like to see Cuba as part of the American Empire.
I don't like calling it, I shouldn't call it an empire because that's kind of tongue-in-cheek.
I would like to see Cuba not under the control of communist dictators.
phil labonte
Well, they don't have any power right now.
They're not under control of anyone.
ian crossland
I'd like to see them sovereign citizens in Cuba with the right Puerto Rico style.
Perhaps, yeah.
Gun rights, property rights, the right to freedom of speech to speak out against your government.
And if you want to participate in the United States, like I'm willing to open the door to those people for sure.
tim pool
I like that joke where it was like, waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay sounds really fun until you read about it.
brandon herrera
Until you know what either of those two things are.
tim pool
Yeah, yeah.
Waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay.
unidentified
I don't know.
brandon herrera
I think we might have squandered that one in the Spanish-American War.
phil labonte
Yeah, I don't think that the U.S. is going to actually need to take Cuba.
If I understand the news reports coming out, they haven't had power in something like a week, and the people are rising up like people are rising up like America says, you know, said they were going to rise up in Iraq or say they were going to rise up in Iran.
tim pool
Their government's going to collapse.
phil labonte
Literally pissed.
tim pool
Cutting off, taking Maduro and seizing back our oil assets in Venezuela.
Cuba is now cut off from oil.
And so the people are basically at this point saying, I don't care who the boss is.
I care about who's got the oil.
Think about it.
That's the easy way to conquer a nation.
The people are probably saying, I don't care if you think you're in charge.
Like, they're good.
Listen, you put it like this.
You work for a company and you got a boss who's like, if you quit, I'll sue you under contract.
And then all of a sudden the paycheck stops coming in.
You're like, I don't care what you do at this point.
You're not paying me.
ian crossland
And if you're working and they're paying you sometimes and then all of a sudden some foreign entity wants to pay you a bigger contract, you're like, why am I still taking this?
Give me something.
Like, what is the purpose of me staying in this contract anymore?
You've been fucking me over for 80 years, Castro.
So Raul, what is like 90?
tim pool
Castro's not there anymore.
ian crossland
Well, it's his brother.
Is it Raul?
tim pool
No, it's Miguel.
ian crossland
He's a new guy.
brandon herrera
Yeah, they're done.
ian crossland
The Castro regime was all that country had holding it together.
phil labonte
Yeah, and the oil.
tim pool
If you look at the I want to just stress this to the people in chat who are like, oh my God, Tim's a cultist for Trump.
No, you're a really low IQ person.
So for that, I apologize for you not understanding what was meant to be facetious.
I don't think the U.S. should invade Cuba.
That was the joke.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
I don't think it needs to invade Cuba.
I think the Cubans have long wanted away from that communistic dictatorship.
And now with their oil supplies running out, they see de facto.
Who's in charge?
phil labonte
It's looking like the op in Venezuela was successful on multiple fronts.
It got Maduro, the current Venezuelan regime.
Yeah, well, the current Venezuelan government is looking to normalize relations, if I understand correctly.
The vice president there is saying that she's going to work with the United States.
And it also looks like it's going to take Cuba out.
brandon herrera
I also saw bets on the state of the union as to whether or not Trump was going to parade out Maduro behind him on a train.
phil labonte
I wanted to see him come out with the gimp mask from pulp fiction.
tim pool
Just bring up Kenya's interview with Alex Jones.
phil labonte
But yeah, I mean, look, Cuba's been a communist country for I don't know how many years.
And if the communist rule ends there, that's a good thing.
I mean, I think it's an unmitigated good thing.
tim pool
Can you imagine if before all this is done, if Trump pulls off in Iran what he pulled off in Venezuela?
This is the thing I was saying.
Like, you know, I was asked by a reporter at the Wall Street Journal how I felt about the attacks on Iran, the war.
And I said, I'd advise against it.
I wouldn't vote to support it.
I oppose it.
And I think it's because we have post-intervention stress disorder as millennials from Iraq and Afghanistan.
And not to mention the stories of Vietnam.
We do not trust that these operations are going to play out the way they claim they will, nor do we trust the reasons for going in and doing it.
That being said, if Trump is able to pull off a regime change without a ground invasion in Iran, which would surprise the Helmie if he could, people are going to be very, very happy about it.
And so when all this is said and done, Venezuela is looking like said and done.
I mean, it's pretty crazy.
If Iran ends up the same way and then Cuba falls into the U.S. fold, Trump's going to go down in history as one of the greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we've had ever.
brandon herrera
Well, at that point, it becomes a legacy play.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Certainly.
tim pool
Maybe why he wants to do it all.
Maybe, you know, with the Abraham Accords, I think Trump very much was like, I can bring peace to Israel-Palestine.
Now, I'm not sure that he actually can, but I think Trump is looking at the world stage saying, I can solve this.
And perhaps it's ego-driven.
Perhaps it's, I want to be the guy who did.
Or maybe it's ego-driven in the sense that I'm smarter than you and I can figure it out better than you.
Either way, if it happens, I'll be happy.
brandon herrera
Frankly, I don't care what the rationale is.
If he can get it done, an objectively good thing, I don't care why he's doing it.
If he can be the guy who gets it done, then by all means.
tim pool
You know, if Israel gave Trump a billion dollars personally to bring peace to the world, I wouldn't care.
ian crossland
I don't care the motivation.
phil labonte
Blue statement.
tim pool
But the point is, think of the most like offensive thing.
brandon herrera
I want to lower that again.
tim pool
The most offensive thing, like Trump is secretly getting paid cash in the back room by Israel for foreign policy that brings peace to the world, ends war and conflict, stabilizes trade relations between a bunch of countries.
Why would I be mad?
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I mean, two things can be true.
Like, you could say that that's an objectively bad thing to happen.
Like, that's a bad reason to be doing stuff while also saying that a good thing happened because of it.
tim pool
And that's my point.
Like, what if Trump's motivation for all this world peace is that there's like a small child that he wants to murder just in the middle of Tehran that he can't get to?
There's like just some little kid.
He's on Call of Duty and he said he was going to bang Trump's mom.
And Trump was like, I'm going to find you.
And he's like, you can't.
I'm in Tehran.
He's like, oh, yeah.
And so he brings peace to the Middle East, stabilizes relations all over the world.
And it's all just to steal.
unidentified
You can't touch me.
brandon herrera
My dad's the Ayatollah.
ian crossland
Give me Obama's number right now.
tim pool
He was playing Call of Duty back in the day, OG.
ian crossland
Do you ever hear those AGM?
These are old ones, too.
Him and Bobby play.
Gold.
If you haven't seen them yet, watch those.
They're so funny.
They're so well done.
It's nice to hear them getting along.
brandon herrera
But on the Cuba thing, I think that Marco Rubio has been looking forward to this moment for a long time.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
He's just like looking at a picture of Cuba and rubbing it.
ian crossland
You know, in another reason, it's not like because of Rubio, we seized the Venezuelan government or whatever.
But putting Rubio there was probably part of the plan to, you know, secure the Central America, I think.
He's a master.
I love that guy.
tim pool
I'm really impressed with Rubio.
ian crossland
Oh, I feel so much better and like safer with him in the government.
tim pool
Him hold you and keep you safe in the war.
ian crossland
That would be fine.
That would be fine.
tim pool
He comes up behind you and he just embraces you and you know that you're safe in Marco Rubio's arms.
ian crossland
Love you, Mark.
tim pool
I was actually, I found him to be uninspiring in, you know, eight years ago, whatever.
Recently, the way he's been handling all this foreign policy stuff and press stuff, I actually think he's not a perfect guy, but he's handled it very professionally, especially considering the political tumult between Democrats and Republicans.
He's played it very professionally.
I respect it tremendously.
One of my biggest criticisms of Trump going back to his first campaign was his lack of decorum.
He approaches us from a very abrasive, culture-warry kind of approach.
And JD Vance does that as well.
Now, I'll give JD Vance some respect in that.
He's very tactful and academic in his insults.
I can respect that.
But Rubio has been very hard for Democrats to go after because he's kept it very professional and calm.
He hasn't fired back insults or plenty of these dirty games.
I'd imagine if they insulted him in some dramatic way, like with Trump and they called him a racist, Rubio's response would be like, well, I'm terribly sorry if I've done something to give you that impression.
It's not my intent.
Like, he's not going to lash out at him.
brandon herrera
I mean, we all remember Marco from the little Marco, like those days.
I think uninspiring is probably a good word for him back then, but I honestly, like, I had my worries about him taking the role that he has, but I think he's, I agree with you entirely.
He's taken it and he's run with it.
He's done a very good job.
phil labonte
I think his time in the sense probably helped with that too.
tim pool
Yeah.
ian crossland
Big time.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
And it was 2012.
Did he run for president in 2012?
He was one of the 2016 primary.
2016.
And maybe before that, I don't know.
He'd been around before that, and I always thought he was a war hawk.
But as I've learned more about global geopolitics and that, like, you, you can't just never go to war when you have the largest military on the planet.
You can't just let it all fall.
tim pool
I mean, you have to, if you know, you use it, use it or lose it.
Sometimes you just, you're bored.
You know?
brandon herrera
I mean, I want to be decisive with it.
Like, I don't want to just do it for the sake of doing it.
And I want to make sure it actually protects American lives or protects American interests.
But if somebody screws with us, I want to show them what $1 trillion a year looks like.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
tim pool
So I guess the liberals are mad at me because I praised Trump's masculinity on the attack in Iran.
My point was, not that I would call the attacks well-advised.
I'm skeptical, but hopefully optimistic.
But I said that I loved the masculinity of it in that the Iranians came to the negotiating table saying, we have enough material for 11 bombs, and that's where we're starting the negotiation.
And Trump's response was like, I'll just kill you.
Like, again, I'm not saying that means you should go to war.
I'm saying that video of Mark Wayne Mullen and O'Brien from the Team Service Union is just one of the greatest, manliest videos on both parts for both of them.
I give them both respect.
You know what I'm talking about?
brandon herrera
I don't dare do.
tim pool
Mark Wayne Mullen is like, he's like reading.
He's like, after you left here, Mr. O'Brien, he's a president of Team Series Union.
He's like, you were mouthing off on Twitter.
brandon herrera
It's like one of the posts you said, yeah, yeah, where he threatened to like throw down.
tim pool
As consenting adults made the offer to throw down, and O'Brien says, Let's go.
And then he gets up and goes to pull his ring off.
And I'm like, We need the men back in the room.
brandon herrera
So, so, funny story about that.
I was in DC, like a block away when that happened.
As I'm looking on my phone and watching this, I'm like, Man, I could have had front row seats in the best UFC fight this year.
tim pool
I gotta, so, so, uh, uh, Mark Wayne Mullen reads the tweet where he's like, you know, where I am anytime, any place.
And then he goes, This is a place.
Now is a time we can be two consenting adults.
And then, and then O'Brien goes, Okay.
And he's like, Stand your butt up.
He goes, You stand your butt.
I'm going to go, All right.
And then he stands up and goes to pull his wedding ring off.
And then Bernie Sanders ruined all the fun.
You are the United States.
unidentified
Shut it up.
If I'm not mistaken.
brandon herrera
That was a very good impression.
If I'm not mistaken, I think that he probably should have read up on Mullen's combat sports record.
unidentified
He's three.
brandon herrera
Yeah, that guy knows how to throw down.
ian crossland
I think he's two, but two, one technical knockout and then two by decision.
tim pool
My, my, uh, no, I thought of submission.
I thought he had submission.
Two by submission, one TK, a TKO, and two submissions.
ian crossland
Okay, way better.
tim pool
Yeah, one was an arm bar.
But again, you shouldn't be fighting, fist fighting in Congress, okay?
You shouldn't do it.
brandon herrera
As much as you want to.
tim pool
But I'm just saying, like, I am sick of this pencil neck, hoity-toity, button-daub.
Oh, you know, like, we need strong, decisive men to say, do not F with me.
ian crossland
You know, this is very real quick.
tim pool
Just final point.
What does Trump say?
It's, I forgot the phrase, but like, deterrence through strength or whatever.
unidentified
He's through strength.
tim pool
Peace through strength.
The idea is I like the story of the guy who's sitting in a bar, minding his own business, having a drink, and then the loudmouthed dudes messing around.
And he comes up and tries to start a fight with the guy.
And the guy says, Listen, I apologize.
I'm not interested.
I'm going to be on my way.
But then when they finally don't let the guy, it turns out he's much more badass and he beats them all up.
You know what I mean?
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
I love the movies where the action hero is going, you don't want to fight me, dude.
I'm going to leave here.
We don't need to do this.
But the bad guys are the ones who are like, you think you may.
And then the good guy shows restraint, honor.
You know what?
The best example of this is a Bronx tale.
You know that scene?
Scene of the Bronx tale?
I will cite it 50 billion times, ad nauseum for everybody.
So it's, I'll give you the quick version.
Mob boss, here's motorcycles, all big ruckus, walks to the bar.
He says, what's the problem?
And the bar donor says they're not properly dressed.
They can't drink here.
And the biker leader says, hey, look, man, we just want a beer.
Just one beer.
We'll be on our way.
And then Sonny goes, spoken like a gentleman.
Give the men their beers.
So the mob boss is like, I'm going to be, you respect me.
I respect you, right?
Then they shake the beers up and spray everybody down.
And then Sonny goes, once again, honorably, okay, now you've got to go.
And they say, F you, F off.
Then he walks over, closes the door and locks it, turns around and says, Now you just can't leave.
And then the narrator's like, at that moment, they knew they F'd up.
Then the back door pops open, all the good old boys come in with guns and bats and beat the crap out of the bikers.
The reason I love that story, he said, spoken like a gentleman.
These men were polite, but not properly addressed.
So he said, I will treat you with respect.
They then chose to disrespect him, and he still showed restraint and said, Now you need to leave.
And when they still decide it, he says, okay.
And they got, they beat the crap out of these guys.
That's what it means to be a man.
You're able to, but you show restraint because you want to keep the peace and protect those around you.
But when bad and evil comes, look on that corner.
You are willing, ready, and able to stop it.
ian crossland
Oh, what's that?
brandon herrera
Sorry, just like the biblical interpretation of, oh, the meek shall inherit the earth.
It's like, well, one of the translations that I was hearing was it's not meek as in like weak, you know, it was more of the those who carry swords but choose to keep them sheathed.
ian crossland
Julius Caesar, I believe this is what he was, he was the guy.
He was the meek one.
Julius Caesar's Meek Strength 00:05:04
ian crossland
He had all his legions up north, all this territory, and the Senate started getting very afraid that he was going to betray them.
So they're like, we're going to strip him of all his land and all his, all his soldiers.
And he's like, you, you, no, I'm not giving the power up.
He's, he's the man in a situation.
These pencil neck paper pushers are trying to control the world with bureaucracy.
And he's like, no, I'm not giving you back.
He comes down to Ravenna, you know, close to Rome with one legion and is there to make a negotiation.
I just want one province in Croatia and one legion.
unidentified
He had 10.
ian crossland
He was giving up nine-tenths of his army just to go govern some simple thing and serve Rome.
And they still wanted his stuff and wouldn't let him.
And finally, he was like, you leave me no choice.
And that's the story of Julius Caesar.
Crossed it.
unidentified
I love it.
tim pool
So I got ragged on by the liberals.
They were like, Kim thinks it's masculine to go to war.
Yes, I do.
Indeed.
Doesn't mean you always do it.
The fight you've won is a fight you can avoid, right?
That's a saying.
So you don't go looking for trouble, but you are damn well prepared to solve the trouble if it comes looking for you.
brandon herrera
Oh, 100%.
And that's something that a lot of veteran friends of mine, veteran advocate friends of mine say, if you want to help combat veterans, make less of them.
You don't want to go to war for no reason.
There's a lot of baggage that comes with it, not only American lives, but a lot of the things that they had to go through and a lot of the things that you still have to take care of afterward.
That being said, you should always be prepared for it when the necessity comes.
Again, if you want to screw with us, we will show you what $1 trillion a year looks like.
ian crossland
Or they won't even see it.
That's the crazy part.
And they still haven't seen what they're doing.
We just still need to come.
tim pool
And I stress this too.
The issue I take with the attacks on Iran are less to do with that we're going to war, but that we do not have a good track record on regime change.
And that is the argument against it.
The expense, the waste of time and energy, 20 years flushed on the toilet in Afghanistan.
That being said, you make a great point with the Bill Burr comment that there's plenty of reason to put the smack down on what the Iranians have been doing in the region.
It's not about us, about literally everyone else destabilizing it.
And so my only hope is that whatever Trump ends up doing, we want to get out cleanly.
We don't want a bogged down 20-year conflict.
It sounds like the rumor in the Beltway is they expect it to be a couple weeks.
That they're just going to just bombard this place.
And then everybody who holds stock in these defense contractors are going to get very wealthy because they got to replenish those armaments.
phil labonte
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Well, I mean, if it's going to, again, if it's going to happen, I hope it happens soon.
And I hope that we're down.
I mean, what are we at right now when it comes to the American lives lost?
I think it's seven.
unidentified
Seven.
Yep.
brandon herrera
I think we're down seven.
But I think according to the Iranian ambassador, as of today, I think they're at over 1,300 civilian casualty lists.
I don't know, to be honest.
tim pool
And it's hard to know what to believe.
I mean, official statements from the U.S. are going to try and rally as much support as possible.
They're going to say, you know, Trump's saying it's almost done.
Maybe it's not.
Who knows?
But then, of course, on the Iranian side or the pro-Iran side with Russia, China, they're going to be claiming all of the worst things imaginable, like the U.S. is intentionally killing children.
And this is one of the stories that came up.
brandon herrera
Well, I mean, right after the first night of attacks, they claim the Ayatollah was still alive.
So I really don't trust anything coming out of Iranian press right now.
ian crossland
I saw a video on Twitter of a guy driving in Tehran and just fire.
And it's like apparently the Israelis, this is what it says, the Israelis struck oil refineries or something.
And that it was getting into the sewers and you're blazing fire along the sides of roads and stuff.
And I don't know if it's true.
For all I know, it's a freaking deep fake video.
brandon herrera
I saw a lot of it.
I saw some of the videos where it first lit off.
I don't remember what exactly it was, sewer system or whatever it was that was that was blowing up in the streets, but it seemed like that was pretty legit.
ian crossland
It did seem like it.
brandon herrera
It's just from the multiple angles, like that.
ian crossland
And I don't want to ever let myself get to the point where I just completely disbelieve everything in front of me.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I mean, we're getting there.
It's getting close.
phil labonte
It is kind of hard to tell, especially when you've got people that are so bent on discrediting either side, whether it be people that are counter signaling the United States that are saying, oh, Iran's actually winning.
Look, the Iranians have, they haven't been launching a lot of drones because they're saving their weapons for later.
But I mean, that kind of stuff just doesn't really make sense because they've already lost.
Like you said, 1,400 people.
There's a bunch of people that have, a bunch of people of their senior leadership were taken out the first night and stuff.
And it's like, well, what point do you start using your best weapons if it's not to save the people that are or prevent the people that are in charge from being blown up?
brandon herrera
And again, even hearkening back to the most power to uh to good ratio or restraint rather, I guess is the better way of putting it.
The United States, I think, is the only military on the planet that is limited by its political will and not its ability.
Because if Russia could take Ukraine, they would.
Star Trek's Best Seasons 00:10:55
tim pool
Indeed.
brandon herrera
And there's multiple examples of different, you know, you can name a country and who they'd like to take or what they'd like to do.
They'd do it if they could.
We're the only ones that hold back because we can, but we choose not to because of the political fallout.
But we have the ability, and I think we're seeing that right now.
I think we're actually holding back a little bit.
I mean, we're holding back a lot.
tim pool
Well, I mean, we have nukes, so there's always one.
brandon herrera
There was always the next step.
I don't think we're ever going to go that far.
tim pool
Carpet bombs, even.
I mean, there's a mid-tier the U.S. could be engaging in for sure.
brandon herrera
We're being strategic, I think, specifically to strike military targets without civilian casualties.
phil labonte
I mean, we've spent billions of dollars developing weapons that'll be able to, if we want, that we can discombobulate, but also that are literally just flying swords, right?
Like you can take out an individual person with a Hellfire missile that doesn't have a warhead on it.
It has literal swords that pop out.
brandon herrera
The mobile ninja blender.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
phil labonte
You haven't seen that, Ian?
ian crossland
I've never seen it.
tim pool
They assassinate a guy with it.
It fires blades that just like spin and slice you up.
phil labonte
There's a Hellfire missile that when it gets to the target, blades pop out on the side and it will strike the target.
There's a couple pictures on the internet of cars that were hit.
You can see where the blades went in.
And I think the U.S. took out an Iranian, some Iranian official with it.
ian crossland
Is it because it's like a low yield type of thing?
phil labonte
There's no explosion.
ian crossland
So it just hits like the local area and then it's just moving really fast.
tim pool
It hits you with blades.
ian crossland
But wolf knock buildings over.
Like, that's what I mean.
It's less destructive.
brandon herrera
No, entirely analog.
There is no explosions.
It's just.
ian crossland
Sounds like an assassinative tool.
tim pool
We're going to go to your Rumble rants in Super Chat.
So smash that like button and share this show with everyone you know, my friends.
But before we go to your rants, my friends, go to Timcast.com and click join us and become a member of the Discord community.
We've got tens of thousands of people that are hanging out in the Discord.
They want to be friends with all of you.
And more importantly, it is my 40th birthday.
Oh, indeed.
The big 4-0.
That's it.
I'm officially over the hill as per the standard life expectancy, which is, of course, 79.
That puts me on the back end.
And it's all downhill from here.
So the only thing I can do is say, if you'd like to get me a birthday present, please join our community at Timcast.com.
The community is always hanging out.
They've got live chat.
They've got early shows, after shows.
And we do the uncensored members-only show Monday through Thursday on Rumble exclusively.
But if you want to call in and hang out with us and talk to us and our guest, you need to join the Discord community at Timcast.com.
So I humbly request, my friends, if you want to get me a birthday present, all you need to do is sign up and join the community because it's not just about me.
It's about building community itself.
And we're trying to make this the principal component of everything that we do, a long-standing group of people that become friends, that can work with each other.
Because as I enter my 40th year, the one thing that we've been discussing over the past couple of years is I will eventually be unable to work.
Who knows?
Maybe I'll do this for another 20 years.
But there needs to be a mechanism by which other people are able to carry out from everything that we've done.
make friends, build shows, build community structures.
And then maybe in 100 years, there will be a new company or the company will still exist.
And there will be a big community of people who believe in freedom, truth, justice in the American way, and all that good stuff.
So again, join us.
And I appreciate all the birthday wishes and the super chats and rumble rants.
But now let's read what you guys have to say with all of this.
All right, we got Disgruntled Vetti.
He says, General Herrera, when do we, the Autistic Army, get to buy our AK-50?
LOL, congratulations on winning.
We need more people like you.
brandon herrera
Well, first off, I appreciate it.
If we were actually going to ever mass produce, like manufacture the AK-50, we'd have to find a very good manufacturing dance partner with that because we do not have the capabilities to do that right now.
tim pool
How long did it take to build an AK-50?
brandon herrera
Well, to get the design down and to get it to where it is today, I mean, it's been like nine years, probably nine, 10 years.
And this is like, it's a garage project.
Like, it's something that we would put down and then pick up six months later, wait for parts from a machine shop, kills the project for four months, you know, that sort of thing.
But we'd need somebody like, we worked with Titans of CNC on some of that.
They were incredible to work with.
We would need somebody like that to partner with on the manufacturing side because, I mean, we're a bunch of idiots in a garage.
We don't have that sort of mass production capability.
tim pool
Right on.
All right, let's see what we got here.
Code Man Red says, I don't know how you did it, but I started watching TNG, and it seems we're watching the same episodes.
The last two Star Trek references Tim made were episodes I just watched last week, Fifth Wall Broken.
Well, it's because when I got sick, I started the series over again, and I've been just watching all the episodes.
I'm also rewatching Deep Space Nine, which I just got to stress, guys, the last three seasons of Deep Space Nine are just so incredible, and I really do recommend you watch it.
Again, I get frustrated with people who are just like, I don't like sci-fi.
But if you really just ignore the sci-fi stuff, like I don't care for the aliens or whatever, have you ever watched Deep Space Nine?
brandon herrera
Yeah, apparently, I think I was told by my father that I was born while he was watching Deep Space Nine.
He was trying to switch between like, pipe down, woman.
Star Trek is on.
tim pool
It is prescient, and the writing is interesting, and it makes you think, and it's relevant to what is going on today.
So we've talked about the episode in The Pale Moonlight, which may be one of the best episodes of television just in general, where the Federation stages a false flag attack to trick one of their rival nations into joining the war on their side.
brandon herrera
Well, that would never happen in real life.
tim pool
That's why I'm just saying.
It's amazing to watch how they wrote this stuff out.
But also just the beginning of the Dominion War in general.
So basically, there is a military faction that repeatedly is sending military vehicles to a, let's just call it a country in Star Trek.
And eventually the Federation says they're at the point where they have built up an army where they could launch an attack on all fronts, you know, all Federation frontiers, and we would get crushed.
So they mine a wormhole, the entrance to where these vehicles are coming through, which triggers the beginning of the war.
And then from there, it's just, it's war stuff.
It is the politics of war, conflict, disaster economy.
It's really interesting writing.
It's a sci-fi setting, but man, I cannot stress how good that's.
Voyager happened, and we all kind of rolled our eyes.
ian crossland
I want to shout out Johnny Frakes and Brent Spiner.
You guys, they got a show on YouTube called Dropping Names with Brent and Johnny.
That's Commander Riker and Data from Star Trek Next Generation.
They're badass human beings.
tim pool
You've gone and done it, Ian.
You've gone and done it.
You've triggered me.
Jonathan Frakes recently was talking about how people don't like Starfleet Academy, the new shows.
And he's directed a couple episodes of the latest stuff.
And Jonathan Frakes, you are an absolute legend, and you add one of the best voices to the Star Trek universe.
But good sir, please hear me if you ever hear this.
If you want to understand why people don't like New Trek, the point he made was that when they launched The Next Generation, Trekkies got really offended because they replaced the cast and crew and it was a new fake version of the show.
And yes, indeed.
But I was a little kid and I grew up watching you.
And so understand that the original Trek audience and the audience that I inhabit are it's a Venn diagram.
We overlap, but we are not the same.
So when I watch The Next Generation in Deep Space Nine, literally throughout the 90s, I'm a little kid in the early 90s, and the show's already been on the air.
I think it first aired in 87.
I'm one.
Understand this.
The brilliant quotes, the interesting logic, philosophy, conflict that exists in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and even to a certain degree in Voyager does not exist in Starfleet Academy in these new shows.
For example, there's just so many great quotes.
One of the latest that I absolutely love is Data the Android loses, let's just call it chess.
He's playing a game called Stratagema against a master who beats him, and he's supposed to be unstoppable.
He's an Android.
So he finds himself defective and says, something must be wrong with me.
I need to figure out why I'm not functioning properly.
And so he basically calls in sick, thinking that if he can't solve this properly, something must be wrong.
And then the captain comes to him and says, you are my second officer.
You need to do your job and stop doubting yourself.
And Data says, but there must be a defect.
And then we get one of the greatest quotes ever.
He says, he says, Commander, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
That is not weakness.
That is life.
That is what I'm talking about with Star Trek the Next Generation.
That's the kind of great writing that we got in the early 90s.
Now you have like the sci-fi makes no sense, a permeable hologram that becomes sick because she's not really permeable or something.
And she says, I can't deal with your midday energy before I even pulled my underwear up my butt.
That kind of quote is deeply offensive to those who were inspired by the moral philosophies of the 90s Star Trek era.
brandon herrera
But now they're edgy and they say the F word on Star Trek now.
tim pool
Oh, yeah.
brandon herrera
Yeah, that was my dad also just text me to correct me.
It was Voyager that I was born to, not Deep Space Nine.
unidentified
Shout out.
tim pool
And you know what?
As much as we all ragged on Voyager, it is a masterpiece compared to what they have given us today.
ian crossland
I should go easier on Voyager and Deep Space, I think.
Because it was the exact same thing that John was saying.
I felt like they were cheap, new fake casts.
Because I remember I felt like that for Next Generation.
I was like, where's Spock?
But then I immediately started falling out with Picard and Riker and Data.
And then same phenomenon again.
And I didn't give the other shows a chance.
tim pool
I always liked Picard better.
Picard's the best, but I was like, when I start watching Star Trek, I'm a little kid watching Next Generation.
I see that first.
It's on TV.
I'm a little kid sitting on my couch.
My dad's watching it.
I'm watching it.
I didn't see the original series until years later when I was like, I love this.
I want to watch more.
And then I was like, oh, you know, Kirk's good.
But Picard is fantastic.
I do think it's a little cheap how they were like, we're going to shoehorn in some character traits about him, like he doesn't like kids.
And then they try to make that a thing, but it really doesn't work for Picard's character.
Anyway.
brandon herrera
I feel like for a long time, the baton got passed down to new people who loved the original source material or at the very least respected it.
And nowadays, that's just not a requirement.
And that's not just a Star Trek thing.
That's a Star Wars, Halo, whatever.
It's almost, it seems like with the exception of Fallout, it's like you're required to hate or disrespect what everything that led to you having that job built on.
unidentified
Yep.
ian crossland
I'm glad you said about Fallout.
I haven't seen the new show 76 or Fallout.
I've been playing Fallout 76, and I haven't seen the show.
Well, it got better.
Why Marathon Fails 00:16:25
ian crossland
It launched horribly in 2017, a miserable wreck of a game.
And now it's well worth the money.
tim pool
Have you guys heard about the new game Marathon that's bombing from Bungie?
unidentified
Yep.
brandon herrera
No.
tim pool
Guys, I'm just, I'm sick of this stuff, right?
So Game Rant Marathon is being review bombed.
No, it isn't.
It's just a bad aesthetic.
The game looks terrible.
So this is Bungie.
They made Destiny.
I played Destiny incessantly and Destiny 2 as well.
Did all the raids.
You know, went to the moon.
Went to Titan.
Is that where?
Or Europa?
unidentified
I don't know.
tim pool
It's been a long time, man.
It's been a long time.
Went to Mars.
And Halo, of course.
I didn't play as much, but Halo played.
Bungie launches a new game, Marathon, and the characters are disgusting.
They're like weird mannequin robots or something.
I got to tell you, Concorde, the game bombed miserably.
$400 million flop.
It's considered to be the biggest flop in the history of all media, period, for humans.
$400 million production, zero profit.
Zero.
Zero revenue.
They sold 25,000 copies and then refunded all the money when the game flopped within 11 days.
They canceled it.
brandon herrera
They're like zero gross.
$0 gross.
tim pool
Zero.
Completely zero.
The characters were all gross and weird and had pronouns.
One of the characters was a morbidly obese, like, central, like, like Native American-looking guy.
Why would anyone want to play these games?
And aesthetic matters.
Marvel Rivals is now one of the top games.
Why?
All the women look like they're naked.
Their suits are basically just their skin color.
That's how comic books do it.
All the men are insanely jacked, like they have 2% body fat.
And everybody wants to play the game and they want to be the superhero.
Every time.
Have you guys, did you guys see Dakota Johnson did the topless ad for Calvin Klein?
Sexy is back.
Okay.
I was saying, whatever Justin Timberlake was bringing back, that wasn't it because after he made that song, they brought in a bunch of morbidly obese people to Calvin Klein.
So whatever he thought was sexy, that's not working.
unidentified
I mean, now.
brandon herrera
Did you see Jaguar when they did their super like the stock depletion that happened at that point?
tim pool
So then they said, hey, look, what was it?
Who did Sidney Sweeney do the genes?
What genes is that?
brandon herrera
American Levi.
ian crossland
Oh, no, no.
I didn't get that right.
carter banks
I think it was American Eagles.
tim pool
Nobody even knows.
Dakota Johnson did Calvin Klein, where she's topless, and she's basically reading lines about a sexy woman.
I think people finally realized with Ozempic, we are aspirational.
So when they did all this body positivity stuff and they were like, you can be fat, what they were really saying is you are fat and we're trying to sell you a product.
And then once they made Ozempic and all the women got skinny, now they're like, okay, let's bring back the naked chicks again.
ian crossland
Oh, girls be getting horny.
tim pool
No, the issue is, I explained this in a segment this morning.
The commercial with Dakota Johnson, topless, with her hair over her boobs, and she's doing sexy poses, it's not for men.
ian crossland
I'm so glad she made that.
I gotta watch it.
tim pool
It is not for men to watch.
unidentified
Are you sure?
ian crossland
Because I'm about to pull it off.
tim pool
Yeah, because you don't buy Calvin Klein.
What they want to do is they want women to watch that and then think I can be sexy like her because men like that.
It's a commercial for women to be aspirational.
brandon herrera
So in your opinion, we're bringing back body negativity.
phil labonte
Yes.
tim pool
I don't think this is negativity.
I think it's correct body positivity.
brandon herrera
I mean, no, I objectively agree.
I'm messing around.
I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that you should aspire to be fit.
You should aspire to be healthy.
You know, there are these like, you know, all throughout human history, we've had these paragons of what, you know, the proper male and female form should be.
Even if you can't get there, you can aspire to it, get as close as you want.
And the byproduct is you're healthier because of it.
unidentified
Yep.
brandon herrera
You live longer.
You live happier.
tim pool
Body positivity should have always been encouraging people to get fit in a positive way, cheering them on.
Saying you can do it.
ian crossland
RFK, man, we don't talk about him a lot because he doesn't do like military and all, but I think he's like the unsung hero of the decade, like man of the year.
Maybe in retrospect, people realize how he saved a nation by stripping some of these toxins out of the diet.
brandon herrera
And to me, I don't think a lot of the stuff that he's doing, like the whole maha, like make America healthy again movement, I don't see why that should be polarizing.
It's like, okay, let's take the poison out of our food.
Let's stop feeding slop to our children.
Let's maybe get them to be a responsible weight, teach them how to do a push-up.
Like that should be all basic stuff that we all agree with.
phil labonte
Yeah, it's just about the polarization now.
He's associated with Trump, so he's got to be a bad guy, which is ridiculous.
ian crossland
Yeah, it's kind of like poor propaganda because I don't know.
It works, but sometimes it doesn't.
I mean, his work is apparent.
I think his works are showing.
brandon herrera
Because there's something that he says now that I truly, like it struck a chord.
It's something along the lines of, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but it's something along the lines of, one of these days, I truly hope you love your children more than you hate Trump.
That hits hard.
It really does.
tim pool
Let's grab some more of these rumble rants.
We got D-Sage who says, I agree with Brandon.
Clankers are not people.
Ian will kill us all.
unidentified
What?
ian crossland
No, I'm here to help.
phil labonte
Clankers are not people.
unidentified
It's true.
ian crossland
Clankers are not people.
tim pool
Jay Hamlin says, wait, it's Tim's birthday and we get Brandon as a present.
Thanks, Tim.
Also on Iran Bombing Hotels, I heard the reason might be because most troops were relocated off base, probably civilian locations.
Then they targeted civilian locations and it makes them look really bad.
I mean, it is what it is.
ian crossland
I actually think clankers are people.
I just don't think they're human, but they have personalities, like dogs.
tim pool
Clankers.
Clankers.
Why is YouTube giving me the business?
YouTube's always given us.
ian crossland
You ever speak pig Latin for fun?
unidentified
No.
ian crossland
I just did.
Utubia.
You take the first letter of the word, you put it at the end of the word, and then A after it.
tim pool
Why is it called Pig Latin?
That sounds racist.
ian crossland
I wonder if that's a racist thing, and I just displayed that for pickup lines.
tim pool
Let's grab this one.
We have Mikey says, I am keeping the tradition and say, my wife is delivering baby number two right now.
Welcome, baby Clara.
And now my wife just gave me the look.
Pray for me.
ian crossland
Congratulations, guys.
phil labonte
If she's on the delivery table, you don't have to worry about her getting up to chase you around.
She can give you the look all she wants.
ian crossland
Much love to your wife.
tim pool
We got a lot of birthday wishes.
I appreciate all of the birthday wishes.
RFH is in keeping with longstanding Tim Cast tradition.
I'll announce the arrival of my new baby son, Bruce Buffer Voice.
Weighing in at five pounds, 13 ounces, standing at a whopping 19 inches long.
Carter, Asher, Roche.
Love you guys.
unidentified
There you go.
ian crossland
Talking about Carter.
tim pool
Congratulations.
phil labonte
Good name.
brandon herrera
All right.
tim pool
The Branca show says military operations, declaration of war.
Declaration of war resets entire U.S. to a wartime footing.
Rights suspended.
Industries ordered about drafts.
Only Congress can do that.
President can still fight in defense of our nation without that.
You heard Carolyn Levitt said Trump won't rule out a draft.
phil labonte
Yeah, but I think that's a good draft.
brandon herrera
It seemed like that was out of context because I watched the full clip.
tim pool
Well, it's fair to say that asking, give us your military strategy publicly right now.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
You can't.
There's not going to be a draft, though.
ian crossland
Yeah, but you never rule it out as the commander.
You always have to keep the option open.
tim pool
Well, yeah, if we get invaded, they're going to give you a gun, Ian.
Can you imagine?
We'd be desperate.
ian crossland
I've been thinking about shooting lately, actually.
brandon herrera
Well, I mean, hit me up.
I know a guy.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
That could be cool.
ian crossland
I kind of want to shoot that AK-50.
Do you let people put hands on it?
brandon herrera
Friends.
phil labonte
How many rounds have you put them?
brandon herrera
I mean, at this point, it's like, it's got to be at least over 500, 600 rounds.
Which for a 50 cal, that's quite a bit.
ian crossland
Does it hold up well?
phil labonte
Pretty good.
brandon herrera
Like, we're always finding more stuff to kind of screw with, like, more things we're not super happy about, like little nitpicks.
We're like, okay, well, that should be about 10% tighter, you know, different stuff.
tim pool
What would happen if you hit a deer with it?
brandon herrera
Honestly, it's less impressive than you think.
A lot of people think that if you hit something with a 50 cal, oh, my God, it explodes.
If you nick somebody, it'll blow their arm off.
It's not true.
Basically, what's going to happen is it's going to go straight through.
There's going to be a crazy exit wind.
And then 70%, 80% of the force of that bullet's going to go into the tree behind it.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
Well, that's not so fun.
I wanted to hear the deer will explode into a fine mist.
brandon herrera
It's the less impressive answer, but it's unfortunate.
tim pool
Is there any kind of ammo that could cause some catastrophic explosion to a deer?
Because they're big.
phil labonte
Can you get a 50 cal that's a soft point?
Or like a hollow point?
brandon herrera
I'll have to match.
You know, maybe that's the new business you and I open together.
Maybe we just start making a soft point or a ballistic tip 50 cal hunting ammunition.
unidentified
All right.
All right.
tim pool
Let's grab a couple more here.
I don't know what this means, so I don't know if I can read it, but I'll read it anyway.
Political overtone says, dirty plops and pepperbacks for Brandon Bibera.
brandon herrera
Unfortunately, I understand that language.
It's our streaming platform, Pepperbox.
We invented a new slur for the people that are there on the platform.
It's dirty plops and pepperbacks.
ian crossland
Oh, that sounds highly offensive.
unidentified
It does.
brandon herrera
We legitimately had a strategy meeting for what is the most offensive sounding thing we can call our subscribers.
And they just ran with it.
ian crossland
What is it?
phil labonte
Plops and dirty plops and pepperbacks.
ian crossland
Pepperbags.
tim pool
Here's one.
Drive-by, or drive-by.
Says, I want to congratulate Brandon on his fourth Victoria Cross and the second Legion of Merit.
brandon herrera
I got nothing.
tim pool
I guess forced value.
I'm not sure Crowder this morning said he wasn't sure if you were a veteran or not.
brandon herrera
It is clear that the joke has gone too far.
The forced valor of the unsubscribed podcast has permeated actual politics.
ian crossland
Oh, I wonder if while you're in Congress, there's going to be a story about fake valor.
brandon herrera
They already tried.
During the primary, they already legitimately tried.
It's like, oh, yes, you stole one of the photos that we put up of a private comedy show and try to pretend I was stealing valor while we raise over a million dollars for veteran charities and such.
It's like, okay, well, you know, the thing about politics is nobody really cares about telling the truth.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
Indeed.
phil labonte
They want to see no good deed goes unpunished.
unidentified
Results.
tim pool
Let's see what we got here.
So we had a goal of 50 super chats.
If 50 super chats were met, Tim will have a happy birthday.
Unfortunately, only 37 super chats, which means I'll have a sad birthday.
I'm just kidding, guys.
I just put up there as a gag.
ian crossland
How are you feeling now?
tim pool
Literally, I feel the exact same as I felt yesterday.
ian crossland
Didn't make you uncomfortable that it didn't hit the mark or anything?
unidentified
Oh, no.
ian crossland
I feel pretty good, too.
tim pool
No, I had a really great birthday present.
I went all in with Ace Queen against Ace King, hit a queen on the flop, and it held, and I defeated him.
ian crossland
Oh.
tim pool
And it feels really good when that happens.
unidentified
Very nice.
tim pool
That's right.
ian crossland
Was there a big pot involved?
tim pool
Yeah, we were both all in.
brandon herrera
Oh, very nice.
unidentified
Yep.
tim pool
And I knew I was cooked.
And I think Ace King versus Ace Queen, I had like 24% or something.
But that queen hit, and it held.
And that was the universe saying, happy birthday, Tim.
unidentified
Happy birthday, man.
tim pool
You bad beat somebody.
unidentified
All right.
phil labonte
What do we have here?
tim pool
Martin Edgar says, a teenager in Michigan made a nuclear reactor in his shed from old smoke detectors.
50-50 for Tim and Brandon's campaign.
It is indeed a famous story.
It is indeed a famous story.
Do not do it.
Do not do it.
You will get sick and you will die.
ian crossland
Do not radiate yourself.
tim pool
Michael Soholt says, Happy birthday, Tim.
Today is also my oldest daughter's 19th birthday.
I'm a 40-year-old Marine vet and love your show.
I've been listening to you since before you launched IRL.
Here, here, sir.
Thank you so much.
And happy birthday to your daughter.
It's a good birthday.
It is indeed the peak of Pisces.
So for those that track that.
And my signs are Pisces, Pisces, Leo.
Sun and Moon, Pisces, Rising, Leo.
ian crossland
Wild, you got that lion energy.
tim pool
Lion energy.
ian crossland
That water, that flow.
unidentified
That's right.
ian crossland
Be like the flow.
unidentified
Yep.
tim pool
And Leo's fire, right?
unidentified
Ah.
tim pool
Anyway, we are going to go to the uncensored portion of the show over at rumble.com slash Timcast IRL and take calls from you all, our beautiful Discord members.
So make sure you go there to hang out.
You can follow me on X and Instagram at Timcast.
Brandon, do you want to shut anything up?
brandon herrera
I would like to shout out the voters of Texas 23 who put me in this position.
I'm forever grateful to be your voice in Congress.
And if you'd like to go check out the campaign and things we stand for, it's Brandon Herrera for Congress.com.
I'd also like to shout you out.
Have a very happy birthday, and I appreciate you bringing me back, brother.
tim pool
Oh, yeah, absolutely, man.
Really excited for it.
We need more real people in Congress.
We got to get all the bad incumbents out and get all the good people in.
ian crossland
It really is promising that you're going in.
I know you got the election coming up near the end of the year.
When is it exactly?
brandon herrera
It's the first Tuesday in November.
But honestly, we were prepped to go to the runoff.
I know a lot of the stuff happened that caused Tony to drop out.
But we still, at the end of the day, we still beat him in the original primary.
So it's crazy.
It's been a crazy turn of events.
I'll say it that way.
unidentified
Vote.
ian crossland
There is no sure thing.
You vote in November.
You vote Republican in Texas.
If you want to vote, I don't know.
You're going as a Republican, I imagine.
I never really even asked.
Or you're independent or what?
It doesn't even matter these days.
unidentified
I don't know.
brandon herrera
Well, yes, we were on the Republican ticket trying to get out, like just a really bad Republican incumbent.
A total, like, I know the term's overused, but a rhino.
And we succeeded in that goal.
And again, it was not by a big margin.
So your vote really does matter.
ian crossland
It's really good to see you, man.
Thanks for coming.
unidentified
I appreciate it.
ian crossland
I'm at Ian Crossland.
Find me on the internet at Ian Crossland.
Also go to graphene.movie and check out this trailer for this graphene documentary that we're building.
It's badass nanotech.
Like if you want to get some white hill energy, look into the new scientific breakthroughs that are going to be supporting a lot of this political momentum and change that we're seeing all around the planet.
It's graphene.movie.
See you there.
We also got Carter Banks.
I'm not sure he's got a camera on him today.
carter banks
I do.
I got Andrew back here, and we are hanging out, pressing the buttons.
And yeah, it's a pleasure being here.
Thank you, Brandon, for coming on the show.
I should probably set this up so you can see me better.
But yeah, anything you want to shout out, Andrew?
unidentified
No.
carter banks
Well, okay, let's go to Phil.
phil labonte
I am Phil That Remains on Twix.
The band is all that remains.
You can check us out at allthatremainsonline.com.
We're going on tour this spring with Dead Eyes and Born of Osiris.
We're starting in April 29th in Albany.
We're going through all of May.
You can get tickets at allthatremainsonline.com.
You can check out the band at Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer.
Don't forget the left lane is for crime.
brandon herrera
Are you coming to Texas?
phil labonte
No, not on this one.
unidentified
No.
brandon herrera
Trader.
Yeah.
tim pool
We'll see you all at rumble.com slash Timcast IRL for the uncensored portion of the show.
Thanks for hanging out.
So this is the gameplay for Marathon.
I don't really care to listen to the guy talk about it.
Unappealing Mannequins and Destiny 00:13:01
tim pool
But here's my point with all of this stuff.
Let's do that so you can see it better.
Basically, the shooting, the guns, and everything, it's just basically destiny.
It's just basically Halo.
But what they appear to have tried to do with this game is make they're trying to eliminate race, I guess.
The characters are just a bunch of mannequins that look like Asians and black people or something.
It's an unappealing game that apparently is not fun to play.
People have complained about the learning curve, about AI, about time to kill.
But my issue with the game largely and why I think it's going to fail is the aesthetic is that you all play weird robot creatures.
And it's just kind of weird.
brandon herrera
I mean, I feel like that could be done well, but they just clearly didn't.
tim pool
This aesthetic that it represents, you know it when you see it.
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
It's the same thing as the fucking Jaguar commercial.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
All those colors of the rainbow and everything.
brandon herrera
Let's make everything androgynous.
tim pool
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
ian crossland
Are the characters like all gray?
Are they all like gray robots?
I didn't really get any look at any of their character models.
tim pool
Let me.
ian crossland
Let me pull up the androgynization of entertainment.
tim pool
Everybody's gay.
ian crossland
They're trying to.
But the horniness never stops.
I mean, I guess you can poison men into not being interested, but they're trying.
tim pool
Overwatch did it right with their diverse characters, but they're all stereotypes.
Like, this is just gross to me.
The game is apparently flopping really bad.
unidentified
Ew, so what is the game?
tim pool
What do you play?
What do you do?
What are the characters?
ian crossland
And then it shows the main guy of the ad getting killed.
tim pool
Look, you want to be an Asian mannequin robot?
ian crossland
Do you want to play against bot snipers that are going to ruin your fun?
brandon herrera
That whole thing is just off-putting.
unidentified
Yep, 2023.
brandon herrera
Well, is that when this is the trailer?
ian crossland
It's not down two years ago.
tim pool
And it came out, and apparently it hit like 90K players and then started rapidly declining.
And that's not a good sign.
It's not bad, 90K, but it's worse than EA Skates.
EA skate at 130,000.
ian crossland
They call it marathon because you run a lot.
tim pool
I don't know, but it's aesthetically displeasing.
And I'm just going to point this out.
The reason why people play video games is to go on adventures.
You know, you play GTA and you don't really care the guy, like, is the guy this, that, woman, black, whatever.
You want to go around beating a shit out of cops and shooting people and stealing cars and bang hookers, whatever.
This?
What are you doing even?
What are these characters?
ian crossland
It was a terrible trailer.
unidentified
Indeed.
ian crossland
Sorry to interrupt, though.
tim pool
No, and this is what they do.
This is what they do.
Every time they fuck up, they're like, Marathon is getting review bombed.
Well, I don't know what that thing is, and I have no interest in exploring its story.
brandon herrera
The review bomb thing is just a way of saying, like, oh, well, people didn't like what we did, but it's the consumer's fault.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't have to.
ian crossland
You just don't know what you like, let me tell you.
This says that it launched March 5th, just like three days ago.
Is that the official launch?
unidentified
Oh, okay.
tim pool
Yep.
I thought the whole thing looks, it's extremely off-putting is the way to put it.
It's the, the, the aesthetic of it is nails on a chalkboard to me.
brandon herrera
And I think it's the color palette.
Weirdly enough, that's a weird complaint, but it looks like when they do, if you've ever had like a colorblind friend that played video games and they do that like color inversion where everything's like pinks and greens, it looks like that.
tim pool
Look at this.
Like the characters are just gross and unappealing.
ian crossland
I'd be down to watch some gameplay footage of it.
tim pool
I'm understanding.
Look at this.
Do you want to be this thing?
ian crossland
I don't know what it is.
tim pool
Yeah, it's weird and off-putting.
I'm telling you, all you got to do is give me a big tittied woman with a gun.
Make big titty shooter.
ian crossland
Yeah, but I can't.
tim pool
You'll get, I'm joking, but only half joking.
brandon herrera
People want to self-insert, too.
Like, when you're playing a video game, whether it's, you know, Red Dead or Cyberpunk or whatever, like those big games, like the big AAA games that have done very well, they want to self-insert and they want a good storyline.
This delivers neither of those things.
ian crossland
Not in the trailer.
I mean, the trailer was just a guy running and then getting shot.
brandon herrera
Oh, the gameplay was worse.
He was showing gameplay a second ago.
It's not good.
unidentified
It's not good.
ian crossland
Is it like Overwatch?
unidentified
It's destiny.
tim pool
Why do I care about whatever that thing is?
They're not people.
ian crossland
They are called runners, cybernetic mercenaries.
Oh, technically, maybe they're human cyborgs.
tim pool
All I know is the whole thing's aesthetic.
It's like nails on a chalkboard to look at.
It's the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
brandon herrera
It's Uncanny Valley, I think.
unidentified
Yes.
ian crossland
Like too much shadow.
tim pool
Uncanny Valley.
ian crossland
Yeah, when that first character appeared, I was like, I just would rather watch a real person.
It's not real enough to seem real, and it's not cartoony enough to just accept it's an animation.
tim pool
Who are these games for?
It is so dark.
unidentified
Whack.
tim pool
Is there any gameplay?
Weird off-putting robot people.
All of it's just disgusting.
ian crossland
This is kind of like that old MTV animation.
brandon herrera
What is this bullshit where like the worms are like, it's like silkworms that make cyborgs?
unidentified
Oh, is that what it is?
brandon herrera
That's what it looks like they're trying to do.
ian crossland
Man, it looks like every other freaking first-person shooter.
tim pool
It looks like it's just literally destiny.
Everything about it just screams like literally a reskinned destiny.
I'm not even kidding.
ian crossland
At least the guns move.
tim pool
It's like identical to destiny.
Just with aesthetically displeasing everything.
brandon herrera
Yeah, I never really got into destiny.
I know my brothers got into it for a minute, but I.
tim pool
It was great.
And you could be a robot if you wanted to.
brandon herrera
They were inclusive.
They were inclusive.
unidentified
Indeed.
tim pool
Indeed.
I think Overwatch did it the best.
They have a diverse cast, but they're all stereotypes.
Every character in Overwatch is a stereotype of whatever culture they come from.
brandon herrera
I don't know.
That's kind of a thing.
I don't know how you get an obese character without also increasing the hitbox.
ian crossland
You have to increase the hitbox.
brandon herrera
I mean, just purely on a logistical perspective.
Like, how do you not make it a detriment that you have an obese character?
ian crossland
Yeah, I think a game that is being honest would increase the hitbox.
brandon herrera
And I could see it if you give them other abilities that offset that.
But I mean, like, come on.
You're going to give like a 120-pound character the same hitbox as a 300-pounder.
tim pool
Look at this.
ian crossland
Don't do it in Heroes of the Storm.
What is this?
tim pool
Where's the sound button on the stupid fucking thing?
ian crossland
Upper left.
unidentified
Right on target.
tim pool
Let's start it over.
unidentified
Prudent.
tim pool
Do you want to be the morbidly obese like Indian or Native American guy?
brandon herrera
Dawah, every time.
tim pool
Where's his pronouns in?
unidentified
Right on target.
Prudent choice.
Fight.
Too bad.
tim pool
Starchild.
unidentified
Fight is what?
Yes, indeed.
On my mark.
brandon herrera
You know what?
Fuck it.
Take back what I said about AI.
I think you might be onto something because I think AI could do better than whatever the fuck this is.
tim pool
It's about to look at this one.
ian crossland
Oh, duh.
brandon herrera
Everybody went to high school with her.
unidentified
Yep.
brandon herrera
You had one of those.
ian crossland
They needed to cut that.
That laugh at the end.
tim pool
I got you.
ian crossland
Oh, fat bitch got it going.
Oh, that's my favorite guy.
unidentified
Oh, hi.
ian crossland
He's a robot.
unidentified
What was this like?
tim pool
$400 million.
brandon herrera
This is the game Concorde.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
I wonder if they make it free to play.
tim pool
It existed for 11 days.
ian crossland
I guess they go free to play and maybe sell hats for 99 cents.
tim pool
The other thing, too, is like EA Skate is dead.
It launched with 130,000 players, which is pretty good considering it's a skateboarding game.
And then within six months, there's only 1,900 players left.
unidentified
Jesus.
tim pool
Yeah, that's going to get shut down.
There's no way you can maintain the servers with that.
brandon herrera
Helldivers did a pretty good job at maintaining their popularity because they just gave the gamers what the fuck they wanted.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
How hard is that?
ian crossland
That game is spectacular.
Although I played about 40 hours or 30 hours, but then I don't play it solo.
I like playing with friends where you can actually talk and be like, hey, I'm running.
I'm going.
And you can do tactics and shit.
Playing it solo is like, blowing yourself up with a grenade launcher.
brandon herrera
Yeah, but playing it solo is boring as hell.
But like with your boys, that's a perfect example of like, I think they were a relatively indie studio that did it.
Like they weren't a maybe indie is the wrong word, but they weren't like a triple-A, you know.
ian crossland
I played that game with Andrew Wilson.
That's awesome.
It's really fun.
Do you game much these days?
I imagine you're so busy running.
brandon herrera
Last night I jumped on Battlefield 6.
It was the first time I played video games in like two months.
I did not have time.
I felt there was one time like a week ago.
I fired it up.
I'm like, okay, cool.
Time to play with some of my shop employees and stuff like that.
I'm ready.
Immediately had a relatively important political call.
I'm like, well, I fired it up.
I got to the menu.
It was a nice thought.
ian crossland
Yeah.
I like, it can help you get into flow state.
I like jumping into a game and being like, where am I at right now?
And I'll play in it.
How flow am I right now?
How many, how little mistakes can I make and win this game 15 and oh?
If I can, I'm like, good state of mind.
tim pool
Yeah.
ian crossland
And then I can set it down.
tim pool
I feel bad for Sony on this because clearly what happened was a bunch of old fogies brought in like some 34-year-old chick and she was like, trust me, this is what kids are doing.
They got the crazy purple hair and they were like, okay, let's go with the microscopic fringe woke aesthetic for a $400 million game.
brandon herrera
Well, what was that?
What was that company that existed purely to be like the woke engine behind AAA Studios?
I can't remember what it was called.
It was like baby something.
unidentified
Oh, I don't know.
Yes.
ian crossland
Baby sauce?
Something baby, sweet baby.
brandon herrera
Sweet baby might be it.
ian crossland
Yes, I remember that.
tim pool
Every character's propaganda and pronoun.
ian crossland
Sweet baby.
brandon herrera
Sweet baby Inc. It was a Montreal-based Canadian narrative development and consulting studio.
tim pool
He him.
brandon herrera
Oh, yeah.
tim pool
Yep.
unidentified
What?
She her?
ian crossland
Why do they need to tell me that?
Oh, this is the one game that bombed.
unidentified
I see.
tim pool
Oh, yeah.
brandon herrera
Is this actually...
tim pool
That's real.
The pronouns are in the game.
brandon herrera
Where it says in the bottom, propaganda.
tim pool
Oh, no, they added that.
That's edited in.
brandon herrera
Okay, I was going to say, I'm like, she, her.
ian crossland
You're 100% they put those pronouns or were they made?
tim pool
Pronouns are in the game.
unidentified
What?
brandon herrera
Okay, famous.
I'm like, if they look at the propaganda thing in there, that's actually kind of a matter of money.
tim pool
Look at this.
Undecided.
ian crossland
Oh, the mushroom.
It's a chick.
tim pool
Gender queer.
ian crossland
Obviously.
Fucking mushroom person.
unidentified
And that's the normal thing.
tim pool
The convictors are all so unappealing.
phil labonte
Sweet Baby Inc. has an ex account.
Narrative development and design script rating.
Oh, no, never mind.
ian crossland
He's like, finally, I get to be the guy that's a she, her, and a male.
I've been looking it my whole life.
tim pool
How come they, thems are always women?
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
I feel like this, this entire thing is going to be full of like the parts of Marvel we all find cringe.
unidentified
Yeah.
brandon herrera
That whole that just happened.
That sort of shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
ian crossland
Is there a guy who's like, unknown, unknown?
tim pool
Sweet baby.
phil labonte
Sweet baby Inc's official ex account is actually protected tweets.
brandon herrera
No kidding.
unidentified
Yeah.
Realignment and Nuance 00:08:15
unidentified
What's he doing?
tim pool
One off.
ian crossland
He him.
He's a robot.
tim pool
Just a robot.
unidentified
Come on, girl.
Oh my god.
tim pool
I've never wanted to punch something more in my life.
ian crossland
That's the most annoying one for me.
That girl.
tim pool
Uh-huh.
ian crossland
Oh, her voice.
unidentified
That's a gow.
ian crossland
It's a fake, like, joy.
unidentified
Oh, God.
That girl, dude.
ian crossland
Whoopi Goldberg up in it.
unidentified
What's with the clown?
tim pool
The crust of the clown hair.
unidentified
Really?
Pulling on that whoopie.
Me and my crew.
That dog.
tim pool
Yeah, you and your crew are people who don't walk.
brandon herrera
Intensive care.
tim pool
Fat acceptance.
You got low T. Anyway, we should go to callers.
ian crossland
Yes.
tim pool
Let's bring in Jared.
What up?
phil labonte
Jared, what's going on, man?
ian crossland
What is, Jared?
unidentified
Welcome.
Hey, guys.
Whoa, what are you doing?
ian crossland
Greetings.
unidentified
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
ian crossland
Yeah.
brandon herrera
And how?
unidentified
Hey, firstly, happy birthday, Tim.
Thank you.
tim pool
Appreciate it.
Yeah.
unidentified
Keep it going.
So my question is, how do we reconcile what's going on in Iran to family members that seemingly don't have a nuanced opinion no matter what?
And this is for the entire panel.
ian crossland
I just had a conversation with my mother about this.
So this is kind of exactly answers your question.
She was like, fucking Trump.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
I'm like, yeah, I listen, hear her out, and let her vent her frustrations for like a minute.
And then I say, but this Iranian theocracy is a big problem.
She's like, I know.
And that's where you start to, you know, total.
She's like, they got women over there.
They're covering up with Burke.
It's crazy.
So you kind of allow them to express their side and then show them this other demon, you know, whatever it is, the evil that you're trying to express.
That's helped me.
phil labonte
Yeah, I mean, look, I personally think that this is a broader thing than just Iran.
I mean, we talked about it a little bit.
I think this is about the United States trying to realign the global order, to be honest with you.
I think that this is in conjunction with Venezuela and the stuff with Panama Canal and Iran.
I think that a lot of it has to do with China.
And I think that it goes far beyond just Iran.
But if the person you're talking to is just determined to hate Trump, they're not going to be very receptive to any kind of argument you make.
So really, you kind of want to know what you're getting into and act accordingly.
You're not going to convince someone that this is a good idea if the impetus for their disagreement about this is, I just don't like Trump.
brandon herrera
Yeah, I don't think there's a way you can force nuance into a person.
If they've already made up their mind, they've already decided this is the take I'm going to have.
I'm not sure that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it think.
I just, I don't see a scenario where if somebody's already like, this is what I believe and there's no way you can change it, you might be spinning your wheels on that one.
And it might, there's certain family members that I have that disagree with me politically.
Still, you know, I'm very lucky.
They're very supportive and everything, but they disagree with basically every political take I have.
You just don't talk politics with that person.
You just ask them how their date was.
tim pool
You keep a cattle prod tucked into your sleeve and then use it.
unidentified
Exactly.
ian crossland
If you highlight the order, the liberal order, this war machine, this Trump machine, all this is the least worst.
It's not like it's great.
You got to empathize with them and understand.
I know it's not great.
They're doing, and then kind of like, you know, insinuate they're doing kind of damage control.
And it's not like they're the best.
It's just, this is what we got right now.
You know, kind of just splash them with the reality of the situation, broaden the perspective, but don't try and change their mind or anything.
You know, acknowledge what they're feeling, what they're thinking, and then point out the other things as well.
brandon herrera
Ask them if this has anything to do with the relationship they have with their mother.
unidentified
No, so it's actually interesting because most of my family, especially that I'm referring to, like holds the beliefs that I hold.
I'm a very conservative person with a very non-interventionist point of view when it comes to like foreign entanglement.
So it's not like we have like major disagreements or anything like that.
But for some reason, this particular topic, especially when it comes to Trump, is like one of the most hot-headed things that we can talk about.
And personally, I don't really see why it's the case.
But for as much as I don't like foreign intervention, I tell them myself, look, there has to be a nuance to this position.
You can't just strong-arm it.
phil labonte
Yeah, like I understand your frustration, but I think to Brandon's point, you can't force nuance on someone.
If they're determined to look at things in a negative light because they dislike Trump, you're not going to be able to convince them by saying, well, look, Iran has been messing with global shipping with the Strait of Hormuz and around the Red Sea.
And Iran has done this, and Iran has done that.
brandon herrera
I don't care.
I don't think we should be involved.
phil labonte
It doesn't matter because their objection isn't to the policy.
Their objection is to Donald Trump.
And so you're not going to be able to convince them by talking about any benefits of a successful mission.
They're going to say, no, I don't like Trump, and that's how I feel.
brandon herrera
And I think to a degree, it ties into Tim's point that we have intervention, not fatigue.
unidentified
What is it?
brandon herrera
PTSD?
unidentified
Yeah.
tim pool
Post-intervention stress disorder.
unidentified
Yep.
brandon herrera
It's just like we've screwed it up so much in the past that no matter what, it's like, man, we are.
tim pool
I like it.
We have pissed.
ian crossland
Sorry, Brandon, you were saying.
brandon herrera
No, no, that was clearly the better joke.
Never mind.
I do think people have a right to be pissed.
phil labonte
It's legitimate.
ian crossland
Yeah, you know what?
When you say you can't bring nuance, I want to bring nuance to what that means exactly because I don't think it would be easy to get to convince my mother or somebody to like Trump, but that wouldn't be my goal.
My goal will be to get her to understand why things are happening.
unidentified
Right.
brandon herrera
Well, I mean, it's kind of like if you bring two things together that are kind of butting heads and both get hotter and hotter and hotter the closer they get together.
It's like, maybe you just disengage.
Like for the sake of family, especially, maybe it's just better certain times.
Like you can try.
And if that doesn't work, honestly, disengagement is better because you want to preserve your family.
You want to preserve good relationships, even if you disagree on things politically.
ian crossland
Like it's better to get along than to win an argument when it comes to your family.
brandon herrera
If you can't change the person's mind, there's no reason to crater your relationship with that person because of it.
phil labonte
Anything you want to add?
I appreciate the responses.
unidentified
No, I mean, that was basically it.
I just wanted to feel kind of like vindicated on how I felt about it.
And I feel like you guys pretty much nailed it on every aspect.
phil labonte
Awesome, thank you.
Anything you want to shout out?
unidentified
Yes.
So firstly, Brandon, congratulations on your election.
You're literally a legend from all of my friends.
I'm from Florida, but I know you very well from your YouTube channel.
And all of the people around me love you to death.
We want you to succeed.
We want you to bring order and actual common sense to elections that we haven't had, honestly, in a long time.
tim pool
I'm a 30-year-old male, so I'm a little bit younger in that space.
unidentified
Oh, no.
brandon herrera
I'm the same, a 30-year-old guy.
But I appreciate it, brother.
I'm just going to try to do my best to not fuck it up, which I feel like is more than most can say.
unidentified
Yeah.
And just shout out to the Tim Cascaro.
Shout out, Tim, for his birthday again.
tim pool
Happy birthday.
Shout out, Phil.
Your band is amazing.
The last time I called and I told you that your band is one of the greatest of all time.
phil labonte
Appreciate it.
unidentified
But that's basically it.
Just thank you for taking my call.
tim pool
Right on, brother.
So thanks for calling in.
unidentified
Thank you.
Fighting for National Reciprocity 00:12:39
unidentified
All right.
tim pool
Next up, we've got Andre.
unidentified
What is up?
Hey, everyone.
ian crossland
Greetings.
unidentified
So first, happy birthday, Tim, and congratulations to Brandon on his primary win.
This is coming to you live from Communist Canada, where our government has given us until the end of October to surrender or destroy essentially all legally owned semi-automatic rifles.
brandon herrera
Ooh, next caller.
phil labonte
Condoling.
brandon herrera
Right.
unidentified
So basically, the compensation is not even going to cover a fraction of what's up there.
It's going to be a giant cluster fuck.
So my question is for Brandon.
There are thousands of beautiful rifles up here, Gucci ARs, CZ brands, you name it.
And they're all about to get crushed.
Legal export is still technically possible from our end, but nobody is pursuing it.
And I think the ATF might have something to do with it.
Do you know if there's any realistic mechanism like dealer imports, private transfers, or anything that can legally rehome Canadian guns to the U.S. before they get destroyed?
brandon herrera
Or are we just watching a funeral?
It's a little bit of both.
There are legal avenues for that, and there are definitely companies that do export from Canada to the United States or import in that regard.
However, a lot of the stuff that you guys have up there is stuff that is illegal for us to bring into the United States.
Like, you guys get a lot of imports from places like China.
Like, you guys can still have Narincos.
You have the Type 81s.
Like, you have a lot of stuff that we can't get here.
And unfortunately, for that, you're just toast.
Like, that stuff that, because of sanctions put in, I think, either in the Daddy Bush administration, the Clinton administration, especially with the Chinese stuff, we can't bring that in.
And so, unless you find another place, it's going to the torch.
And I'm sad to see so many American companies complicit in that.
unidentified
Yeah, it will be a sad day.
ian crossland
This is the first I've heard about.
I don't want to waste people's time, but what exactly happened?
Can you concisely tell me in like a minute or less what the government just did and how maybe American companies were involved?
unidentified
So, 2020, there was a mass shooting of somebody who was known to the police and who obtained a decommissioned police car.
He painted it up as a police car, obtained firearms from the U.S., and it was one of the worst mass shootings in Canada.
And right after that, the government had everything tabled that they're banning all military-style assault rifles.
I don't know how you define military-style, but anyways.
And since then, they've been adding to that list, and it's pretty much every semi-automatic that's been added to that list.
The only ones that they haven't been able to is the SKS because there's a lot of trouble with the First Nations getting them to comply.
brandon herrera
But other than that, pretty much all semi-autos are gone.
unidentified
Handguns are frozen.
You can't buy, sell them, can't do anything else.
brandon herrera
On top of that, exactly.
That was the biggest thing is like they even started doing like selling freezing, where even in like private transfers, things like that, you cannot change ownership of things like handguns, which that's thanks to, I believe it was Prime Minister Blackface Trudeau, put that in effect.
But it basically is just continuing to crunch that down to where there will probably be little to zero private firearm ownership in Canada in the next 10 years.
That is, if everyone complies, but yeah, well, based.
Right, right.
ian crossland
I mean, telling someone to commit a crime is like that's a heavy responsibility to do that.
But, you know, I'm here for you as an American in any way I can be to the best of my ability, legally and righteously.
tim pool
I will tell the president we should invade and take over.
unidentified
Please do.
brandon herrera
Northern hemisphere dominance.
unidentified
These guns, they've been safe queens for almost six years now, and nothing happened.
Yeah, it's like we still have our guns.
We still have them in our safes.
We just can't use them, and they're going to take them at the end of October now.
brandon herrera
It broke my heart.
There was at one point somebody that was trying to figure out a way to legally get me.
I won't say what it is to get too specific on the guy, but it was a World War II relic, and it was an anti-tank rifle.
He was trying to get it down to the United States.
I had to tell him, Look, you have a beautiful piece of history.
I really wish I could take it, but legally, I don't think there's an avenue to do it.
And so I'm sure it got saw cut at some point.
phil labonte
It's terrible.
ian crossland
Are there private islands that take them or anything?
Is that just going overboard?
brandon herrera
A little St. James, I think.
ian crossland
Oh, yeah.
Compiling weapons as we speak.
Well, you know, I'm still going to speak up for your rights to own guns.
You know, and you got a fucking king right now, and I don't like it.
So, your brothers to the south, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah, thanks.
Uh, thanks for the support.
Always appreciate it.
phil labonte
Yeah, man.
ian crossland
You want to shout anything out before you rock out?
unidentified
All good.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
tim pool
Thanks for coming in.
carter banks
Thanks, man.
unidentified
All right.
tim pool
Next up, we've got Randy the Chicken Captain.
phil labonte
Randy, what's going on, man?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You're just glad on the show here.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
phil labonte
Oh, I see the 8K guy right there.
And I got just one question for you, Mr. Brandon Herrera.
I feel like this guy's one of the usual suspects.
You know, time and time again.
I get all these people saying, I'm going to do what you need us to do when they let me down.
unidentified
What guarantee do I, as a fellow member of the great state of Texas, have that you will go into the ring with these other politicians and introduce the legislation the people been asking for?
phil labonte
Follow up to that.
unidentified
Will you oust anybody who votes against you?
brandon herrera
Well, I know, I don't think I have the ability to oust anybody who votes against me, but the truthful answer to that, and it feels weird to be able to say this without coming off, and I could say this on the uncensored after-show, without coming off like a fucking asshole.
But it's all the things that they use to tempt politicians right now is money, power, fame, women.
I've got all that.
I literally, I want for nothing in that regard.
Like, I'm actually taking a massive pay cut to be able to do what I'm doing right now.
I put about a half million dollars of my own money to make sure that my district was represented the way that I wanted it to.
So they can't buy me because they can't afford me.
They have nothing to offer.
They can't blackmail me.
tim pool
Nothing.
brandon herrera
They literally have nothing to offer.
So in that regard, it's like I can't be bought because I'm here for the right reasons.
And, you know, I was already independently successful.
And I feel like that's why we need more people from that background to do stuff like this.
unidentified
You mean to tell me that even if they threaten that they'll take rid of the ATF, get rid of it right away.
tim pool
Yeah, yeah.
unidentified
But you have to put into production all the cursed gun images.
You would do it.
brandon herrera
I don't, somehow I don't see that offer coming on the table, but we'd, we'd, we would approach that with a cautious eye if it ever did.
Already starting to learn how to talk like a politician.
I hate it.
unidentified
There you go, dude.
ian crossland
They're going to be like, you want to ban the ATF?
Just sign the omnibus.
We'll put it in there for you.
And like, you're signing over.
tim pool
I would say yes.
brandon herrera
Even in the Big Beautiful bill, like I was asking members of Congress that night, and I don't know if I've ever told this story, but I was calling members of Congress that I knew that were resistant on the Big Beautiful bill.
I was saying, listen, we need to fire the Senate parliamentarian.
Please do not accept this right now.
We have the ability.
If Thun would actually just fire the Senate parliamentarian and get the version of the Big Beautiful bill that completely basically removes the NFA when it comes to SBRs, suppressors, we could have the biggest gun rights win in this country in the last 80 years plus.
I was very disappointed with that, but that was a deal I was willing to take.
That was a deal.
I'm like, look, I'd rather get some wins.
tim pool
I got it.
I know how you get the ATF abolition or maybe the NFA repealed.
You just, when you get there, you just tell all the members of Congress: if they sign on to this bill and put it in, you will sign on to killing 20 kids in the Middle East.
20?
ian crossland
Is that 20 is reasonable?
tim pool
It's reasonable, but that's just.
And then you know, all the members of Congress are going to be like, ooh, I just want to kill as many kids.
Oh, yeah, and they're going to sign on.
brandon herrera
Oh, Lindsey Graham.
ian crossland
Would you have dinner with Lindsey Graham at his house?
Just the two of you?
brandon herrera
I would need a third party there.
tim pool
No, you see, just because I asked him, Lindsey Graham would be like, 20.
I'd have said yes to 10.
brandon herrera
I would have dinner with Lindsey Graham if we had an opportunity to talk policy, but I don't think I would do it alone.
For the same reason that Mike Pence does not have meetings alone with other women without his wife there.
ian crossland
You know, Paul Danz is running against Lindsey Graham here with South Carolina, and he was the architect of Project 2025.
He's been on our show multiple times.
He's a fantastic human.
brandon herrera
I haven't followed that race.
Do you think he's got a shot?
ian crossland
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
I think, I mean, I don't know.
He knows people, and he's got a great head on his shoulders.
I don't know Lindsey personally, so I don't really want to add hominimat the guy.
I've seen his work.
I thought he was an alcoholic, unfortunately, for a long time.
Maybe I was wrong, but those bloodshot eyes that checked out.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think he has a shot, but I don't know.
I haven't been following it at all.
I just know them both.
And I know that there's a, we have a lot of momentum with this show and like shows like this where you can kind of snap a guy into the zeitgeist.
And Paul would be a great guy to see.
Yeah.
brandon herrera
Thank you for not dropping the ball on that reference.
phil labonte
You anything you want to shout out?
Or you got any follow-ups?
Any more in your promo?
brandon herrera
Yeah, normal voice now.
unidentified
Okay.
brandon herrera
Brandon, thank you.
unidentified
Last time I actually got a personalized video from you when you were at the ranch sending off demo, you sent me congratulations for getting married, and then you told me it's kind of fucking gay, and I laughed my ass off.
So that was hilarious.
brandon herrera
I don't remember it, but that sounds like something I would say.
ian crossland
Yeah, it was great.
unidentified
Thank you so much, Tim.
brandon herrera
Happy birthday.
unidentified
Everybody, have a great evening.
brandon herrera
Thanks for having me on and putting up with my bad impressions.
unidentified
It was nice.
ian crossland
I really nailed it a couple times, like throughout.
unidentified
It was nice.
tim pool
And last but not least, we got Penmaker.
What's going on?
phil labonte
What's up, man?
unidentified
What's up?
Yo.
Hey, everybody.
Happy birthday.
tim pool
No, you're not.
unidentified
Break my first time calling in.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to be up here.
tim pool
Can you hear me?
ian crossland
Yeah, now.
unidentified
Okay.
I have a couple questions for Brandon, but I'll just roll them all together.
Brandon is a former 2nd Battalion Army Ranger.
I'd like to thank you for your service.
I'm a big fan of you.
I'm excited to see you in Congress.
Do you have any plans on figuring out a way to repeal the NFA?
Are you working with anyone already, or at least in talks with any members of Congress, on how to go about doing that?
And if so, what is the best way to realistically have a chance to get it done?
brandon herrera
I'm in talks with several people.
Honestly, my biggest legislative priorities right now when it comes to the Second Amendment in particular are trying to fight for things like national reciprocity.
I think that the NFA is something that we've seen as weak.
It's something that I think can be handled in the Supreme Court.
I'm going to help that as much as humanly possible, especially when it comes to now the fact that the Big Beautiful Bill passed and reverted that down to the 0% tax, which, according to the Supreme Court from 1937, when they put it up on Second Amendment grounds, the only reason why the NFA is still legal and constitutional is because it's a registration of the tax.
Now that the tax has been removed, I think that there's space to move on that as far as that being unconstitutional.
At least I hope so.
But I think our biggest priority Second Amendment-wise should be national constitutional carry.
I think that constitutional carry was a pipe dream in the 90s, and now more states have it than don't.
And so we've made very positive progress in that.
And I think that that should be something that we are eyeing like a Christmas turkey.
ian crossland
What's national reciprocity?
brandon herrera
National reciprocity just means that if you have a concealed carry permit in any state, then you have it is reciprocated by other states.
So if I have a concealed carry permit in Texas, it is immediately recognized by California.
We don't have that right now.
A lot of states do have reciprocity, but not all of them, especially like New York, New Jersey, California.
I think that's an easy win.
But national constitutional carry means that everybody has the right to carry a firearm.
National Reciprocity and Johnny Rockers 00:01:14
brandon herrera
Period.
So that's a little farther out, but I think at least we can settle for national reciprocity.
ian crossland
You said you had a good time.
tim pool
That was a good fight, brother.
ian crossland
Yeah, you said you had some more questions, another follow-up, too.
unidentified
No, that was all rolled together.
I got a shout-out.
That's about it.
ian crossland
Yeah, dude.
phil labonte
Okay, which shut up man lay it on me, bro.
unidentified
All right.
Check out my Instagram page, the underscore patriot underscore penmaker.
If you want to be a classy gentleman who carries a custom fine writing instrument, if you can read, you can write.
And if you can write, you should order a pen.
That's the underscore patriot underscore penmaker on Instagram.
Check it out.
Remember, everything is fake and gay.
Thank you for taking my call and Godspeed.
tim pool
Thanks for calling in, brother.
And for everybody, thanks for hanging out.
Brandon, it's been a blast to have you.
brandon herrera
It's been a pleasure, brother.
Thank you for having me back on.
tim pool
And we're excited to see you where we go from here, but we'll be tracking and keeping up.
And tomorrow's going to be crazy.
We've got Johnny Rockers coming back on.
And we have two guests tomorrow.
And then next week's going to be even crazier.
I think Alex Jones is coming on this week.
unidentified
I saw.
tim pool
It's been too long, TJ.
So it's going to be a lot of fun.
And then we've got so much going on.
It's just so great.
So great.
Some say the best.
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