Trump Allies Are FURIOUS Over Deportation Numbers, Pushing For MORE
Tate Brown and Mike Benz dissect the fury among Trump allies over deportation numbers, highlighting that 82% of voters support enforcement despite administration rhetoric softening. They argue that blaming state-sponsored disinformation for online disagreements is a coping mechanism that ignores real global populations on X debating American politics. The discussion critiques Senator John Curtis's opposition to the SAVE Act and exposes how outlets like the OCCRP undermine credibility through petty attacks, ultimately suggesting that information democratization naturally drives polarization rather than foreign manipulation. [Automatically generated summary]
From Politico, furious allies lobby Trump to keep deporting migrants.
This hit the timeline and everyone was pissed.
Everyone sort of chimping out right away.
People were absolutely furious over this because this dropped in conjunction with this article.
Let me find it in the stack.
Where is everything?
Main cam.
Ah, this right here.
It was next up in the stack.
This is from Axios.
Scoop.
White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations.
So obviously these two pieces dropping back to back freaked a lot of people out.
Obviously, mass migration really is the number one pressing issue in the United States.
Mass deportations was the one thing that obviously MAGA Trump has been driven by.
And they're absolutely key issues, core issues to the MAGA base.
And dude, my throat hurts so bad.
It's like I talk normally and I'm fine.
And then I start trying to project my voice for the show and it's just like tightens up.
I got to get like I got to get the, I think it was the Charlie Kirk order from Starbucks.
It's like Earl Gray and then like two packets of honey or something like that.
That's what I got to go with because I mean, it is unbelievable what's going on here.
So obviously these two headlines dropping in conjunction, you know, gives people a bit of reprieve because everyone has been so hot and heavy on the Iran stuff.
Everyone is obviously rightfully so pretty upset with what's going on.
So then these two drop and it just really feels like really feels like we can't get a win here, right?
It feels like, you know, we're really doubling up on L's in many ways.
It's a little tough to say.
I mean, I think this Axios headline can just kind of be chalked up to the Trump administration and the run up to the midterms is obviously just trying to keep the narrative off of something that can be seen for these House members and high-profile Senate races that are tight, razor-thin margins, you know, could potentially be a disadvantage for a lot of these independent voters.
But it's interesting because I'm going to go through it here.
There's a lot of polling that indicates that mass deportations, again, are popular.
Certainly the deportation of all illegal immigrants is a popular position.
The majority of Americans agree with it.
And so there's really something to be said about that.
I'm going to talk a little quieter here so that way I can save my voice.
But it's really wild stuff to see.
This headline, though, this is what was interesting to me.
This was obviously in Politico.
This group, this new, they call them the Mass Deportation Coalition, is pushing the White House to continue with its deportation operation, just as the White House tells GOP candidates to back away from that message.
So again, the White House, they do this thing that Trump's done this thing for a very long time, is which, you know, he says one thing and then his actual policy looks very different.
And this is obviously for better or for worse.
Oftentimes, it's for the better.
And this is one instance where, again, we do see that things are moving in the right direction on deportations.
We're not getting the 20, 30 million deported within year one that I think some people thought would happen, which was just unrealistic.
But the fact that we're at net negative migration, I mean, that really is something that is worth popping the champagne over.
I mean, this is, I've said it on the show a million times.
This is a policy that, you know, if it were, if you were to suggest or advocate for this sort of policy literally five years ago, you would have been tossed off of a panel.
You would have been tossed off a conservative panel.
They would have lambasted you as some sort of, you know, racist xenophobe or something like that.
And now it's the official policy of the United States.
So it's really something, really something special to see.
So this is why I think people can be a little frustrated because they're saying, you know, we have these policies and they're popular.
You know, people like them.
People are feeling the relief.
Because I mean, you know, there's a point to be made that with deportations, everything, you know, Ann Coulter made this point on the show.
With mass deportations, with the deportation of quite a substantial amount of people, everything in your life gets easier, right?
It reduces pressure on housing, reduces pressure in the job market, reduces pressure in college admissions, reduces pressure and what not enough people talk about it.
It reduces pressure in the vehicle market.
I mean, you know, Americans, we have to, you know, we have to, you know, drive everywhere.
We don't really have like walkable cities.
It's a very car-oriented society.
And so obviously, you know, the used car market's a big deal.
It's a big deal, especially for young Americans who are just trying to get on the road.
You know, you turn 16, 17 years old and you need, you know, you need a set of wheels.
You can't drive your parents' car forever.
And so you go and you get a used car.
And now, you know, for these 16, 17 year olds entering the used car market, you're competing against, what, 10, 20, 30 million people.
I mean, certainly the 10 or so million that arrived under Biden.
But, you know, you have 30 million illegals, not to mention the legal migration.
I mean, you know, 40, 50 million foreign-born is some of the estimates I've seen.
We're talking all in, like 100 million people in the United States of foreign extraction.
And Americans have to compete with that.
I mean, it's just totally untenable, completely untenable.
This is why, you know, you see these groups like the Mass Deportation Coalition pushing the White House to continue with its deportation operation.
Now, again, you know, some people, a lot of, you know, our guys, I would say, are stepping up and they're saying, well, look, you know, the deportations are continuing.
We're at mass, you know, we're at mass, we're at net negative migration.
That's all true.
And I totally agree.
But, you know, when you see headlines like this, you can understand why people, and then also the headlines you see in political, you can understand why people get a little squeamish because, you know, of all the things that we need Trump to deliver on, the one thing that's non-negotiable, which people will, you know, the base MAGA broadly will tolerate war with Iran.
They really will.
The one thing that you cannot concede on, the one thing that you cannot fold on, the one thing that you cannot lose on is mass deportations.
Because again, the composition of the country is at a point where it's just untenable.
You know, people, Americans, are having a really tough time sort of envisioning a future because everything is changing.
Everything is getting more expensive.
Everything is getting more foreign.
Just in general, it's becoming more and more difficult to really find fulfillment in life.
And unfortunately, a lot of that does stem from your environment, right?
Your environment needs to reflect you.
You need to be able to see yourself and other people.
And that's kind of the point of a nation is that's kind of a broader familial bond.
And then, in addition to that, you know, people do need a degree of economic security to feel fulfillment.
That's just the reality of the situation, right?
I mean, people need to understand, you know, people need, like young people specifically, need to believe that they are going to own a home one day, right?
That they are going to be able to purchase a car at a reasonable price, right?
You know, people, they, they need to, you know, especially younger Americans need to believe that they can go to college and that that college degree is going to be worthwhile.
All of these, you know, indicators, these economic indicators, these economic promises, right?
The promise of the American dream, these things all need to be extended to Americans for them to, again, feel a degree of security in the future.
And that's just not happening.
And when you have this mass migration experiment that's been under under, you know, underway, not just in the United States, but across Europe broadly, it has those effects.
And, you know, again, I talk about on the show quite a bit.
You know, everyone talks about the economic impacts of mass migration, right?
And we're all familiar with all the talking points.
But again, I think the demographic composition of your country is a worthwhile conversation to have.
And I think that's kind of the secret sauce, quite frankly, behind the Trump thing, the Trump administration, but the MAGA movement broadly is that people are saying, look, it doesn't matter if even if these people were economic miracles, we have the right as Americans for, you know, to advocate for an America that looks like America.
We have the right to advocate for our country to look similar to the country that we grew up with.
We want to leave a country to our kids that's somewhat similar.
We don't want it to change.
And if you're a conservative, this shouldn't be a controversial point to you.
But for the longest time in the conservative movement, this was like a hush-hush kind of thing.
We were only, when we're talking about immigration, we were only supposed to talk about the economic impacts.
We weren't supposed to talk about some of the other impacts because it was perceived as racist or xenophobic or again, something along those lines when it's not.
I mean, really, I have zero prejudice when I make these sort of arguments.
I'm just saying like it would be very natural for someone from Pakistan to want their country to remain Pakistani or someone from Indonesia to have their country remain Indonesian and the tribes that make up that population.
They want those tribes, as proportions of the population to remain, you know, vaguely the same.
The United States is the same way.
We have sort of subcultures that are being eviscerated as the country becomes more diverse.
I mean, you go look, you know, look around the country.
You know, you have the Yankees and New England.
You know, you have your Midwesterners and the subcultures within there.
You know, these German Lutherans.
And then over here, you know, you got like these Polish in Chicago and these sorts of things.
But even like some of the more ancient American subcultures, you know, you have your Cajuns down in Louisiana or your kind of Cavalier Southerners kind of in the Carolinas and in Virginia.
I mean, even like black, like Black Americans, even you're seeing some of those differences sort of trampled under.
I mean, you had like the Gola, you know, the Geechee or whatever they call them, the Gola speakers in the lowlands of South Carolina.
So all of these kind of ancient groups are just kind of being ground up because of this multiculturalism, because of this mass migration.
It's just completely robbing us of a serious cultural identity.
And it's really tragic stuff.
So to get back into some of the meat and potatoes here, this mouse dies.
Goodness gracious.
It's like nothing works anymore.
So to get into it, I mean, look, we got some polling here.
This is the Immigration Accountability Project Action.
This is an account that I've seen, you know, putting up some interesting numbers.
Really interesting stuff here.
This is the title of the poll here.
Trump voters were and continue to be highly motivated by deporting illegal immigrants.
Big GO TV opportunity.
In the 2024 presidential election, four in five or 82% of Trump voters were more likely to vote for Donald Trump because of his promise to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in American history.
The majority, 57%, was highly motivated, much more likely to vote for him.
So again, you know, this was kind of the secret sauce behind the energy going into the 2024 campaign.
If you remember, like things felt a bit slow heading into the election.
Things weren't, the energy was very low, right?
You know, you know, we're talking like, you know, halfway, maybe like the first half of 2024, the energy around the Trump administration, the Trump campaign was very low.
It was very low energy.
People were not terribly excited.
Certainly people were looking back to 2016 and they're saying, where did that magic go?
You know, where did that enthusiasm, that kind of feeling that you were part of history?
Where did that go?
And I think what it was is because the Trump campaign really wasn't making border security, mass deportations the centerpiece of the campaign, right?
They kind of had other fish to fry.
You know, they started proposing some of these kind of economic proposals.
You know, no tax on tips ended up becoming kind of a big thing.
And some of that stuck, but it really wasn't until right before that debate with Kamala.
And Captain Dreamer, out of all people, he was the one that kind of sort of dug up and really kind of pushed out the story about the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating the dogs and eating the cats.
The story goes everywhere.
Everyone's furious because everyone in America, you know, we love dogs and cats.
And so, you know, Trump obviously eventually sees this and then on the debate stage says they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats.
And it turns into this big thing.
And it turns into, again, this moment that kind of, I think, allowed Trump campaign to really kind of consolidate back and refocus on what specifically it was that separated them from any other, you know, Republican or certainly any other Republican campaign.
There's really just this magic moment.
And it's because of this.
I mean, this is the poll.
You're not going to find many things.
You're not going to find many things in the base where they come together and support more likely than that.
82%, number four and five Trump voters were more likely to vote for Donald Trump because of his promise to conduct the last, the largest mass deportation operation in American history.
The majority, 50, 57%, was highly motivated and much more likely to vote for him.
I mean, that's really just something.
Isn't that really tremendous stuff?
Trump voters universally support at 87% the president, exceeding the previous largest deportation effort led by President Eisenhower, which has resulted in around one-third of illegal migrants leaving the country.
The support has intensity with the majority, 61%, strongly supporting it.
If President Trump exceeds 1 million deportations of illegal migrants in 2026, three-quarters, 74% of Trump voters would be more likely to vote for the Republican candidate for Congress.
The majority, 53%, would be much more likely to vote for the Republican candidate.
Clearly, this accomplishment would energize Trump's base to come out and vote Republican.
So again, as you can see here, this is just widely, the vast majority of Trump voters support mass deportations.
And we just want to see, We want to see, like, we want to see the we want to see the results.
This is a really interesting polling here.
I'm not going to like bore you guys with all the granular details.
What is interesting is, even among Hispanics, you know, there's majority consensus on all of these things.
I mean, look, America has an obligation to enforce the immigration laws Congress enacts.
The majority of Democrats agree with this.
Obviously, the majority of Republicans are certainly going to agree with this.
But, like, an overwhelming majority of Hispanics agree with this.
You know, they're the groups that supposedly, you know, supposedly, you know, pissed off about these sorts of things.
State government should share information on illegal migrants with the federal government.
I mean, Democrats are really split on this.
Popular with Hispanics.
Hispanics agree.
And then this is the big one down here.
Failure to enforce immigration laws places additional strain on local schools, hospitals, welfare services, and first responders.
Obviously, Republicans are going to agree with this.
Certainly, Trump voters.
Democrats, you know, two points disagree over agree, which is quite funny.
And then the Hispanics, this is where you see it: 58 to 35.
So 58% of Hispanics agree, while 35% disagree.
So again, these are just very popular policies.
And so this is why it doesn't make too much sense for the Trump administration to be backing away.
You know, this account, great account, data Republican provides some commentary here, and it's very salient.
I'll just read here what Data Republican had to say.
The conventional wisdom that moderates moderation wins elections died in 2024.
Trump ran on an unapologetic mass deportation and built the most diverse coalition in a generation.
So why is the administration still playing by 2012 rules?
And then they say the Minnesota raids hurt the polls, but that's a media optics problem, not a policy problem.
And I agree.
It's like, look, you can't operate out of fear, again, of what the New York Times is going to publish because we talked about it on Timcast.
I believe it was the New York Times had a video that they put out where they kind of had commentary over it and then they showed kind of stops and starts.
And again, with the Renee Good shooting, no one, at least no, you know, mainstream figure was saying like, this is awesome, right?
This is great, great stuff to see.
They were just making the point that, look, this is a clean shoot.
You know, it's ugly.
It's tragic that it happened, but it is.
And you know how you can prevent shootings like this?
Is you can let ICE do their jobs.
You know, you can let ICE conduct these operations without trying to be a you know, whatever, you know, jumping in front of cars and blocking streets up and then harassing these guys because these operations are going to happen one way or the other.
You know, we're in charge.
We're wearing the boot.
So you better either get prepared to lick the boot or get out of the way.
That's your two options.
That's just the reality of the situation.
We're in charge here.
And that's what happened.
And so, you know, to Data Republicans' point, okay, yeah, it hurt a little bit in the polls.
Again, that's not really a policy problem.
It didn't hurt in the polls because it was a bad policy.
Again, it was the extension of a policy that's massively popular among Americans.
It was really a media problem.
They fixated on one specific element of this policy.
And that's what caused all the hubbub.
So yeah, I totally agree.
Like we can't, we can't be, we can't be operating because again, this is just such a popular policy and it's such an existential issue.
I mean, I laid out why immigration is such an existential issue because it affects every degree of your life, like quite frankly.
Let me get some more water here.
Yeah, I need a, maybe I get like horse tranquilized, tranquilized.
Would that kill me?
Horse tranquilizer?
I'm not sure.
I need, or maybe like boat.
Maybe I Botox the throat.
Maybe that's the thing.
I got to ask Tim what he did.
Tim had a problem with his throat last summer, and he was out for a considerable amount of time.
I hope I don't have that problem.
I never had my tonsils take.
I was thinking about these other days.
I never had my tonsils taken out, and it feels like when I was in grade school, that was like the thing to do.
It seemed like everyone was getting their tonsils yanked out, and it was really a big deal.
So with that, I think we should maybe move on to another story.
Ryan Newhouse had some great commentary here.
87% of Trump 24 voters surveyed, including 79% of Hispanic Trump voters, want the president to exceed the previous largest deportation effort led in 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Trump voters don't just want the largest mass deportation operation carried out in U.S. history.
They expect it.
And that includes Hispanic voters, despite what the swamp might suggest.
So again, this is true.
Just, again, overwhelming data.
Don't back down from this.
Go harder, right?
This is what the entire base wants.
You're not going to find many Republicans who will be upset about us going too hard in the paint.
There's zero, zero question about that.
And again, he lays out kind of that same data.
Now, we are, this is the thing, because even though the Trump administration is softening the rhetoric here, the actual policy is still good.
There are still ICE raids being carried out in Minneapolis, nationwide for that matter.
Again, retinette negative migration.
The asylum refugee system has been completely overhauled.
Like the only people allowed in are white South Africans, which is really something.
So we are good on the policy front.
There's no need to like freak out.
But again, it's hard to blame people when this is the headlines that they're seeing.
It just seems like it undercuts, it undercuts the point of mass deportations when, again, you're saying stop talking about them.
So yeah, there's always something to be said about that.
But I think what we should move on to is the SAVE Act because we have about five minutes before the interview portion of the show.
And we are bringing on the great Mike Benz.
I'm very excited about bringing on Mike.
I'm going to ask him on a few different points, you know, some questions, obviously, we're going to ask about, you know, there's been some talks about potential cybersecurity threats in the United States, you know, following the Iran stuff, you know, situation over there.
Senator Lisa Murkowski has come out against the Save Act.
Now, this isn't really a shock.
We knew she wasn't going to support it.
But this is a really interesting point here.
I'd not seen this point made.
And it really is a very salient point here.
SKS Cartoon posted this.
I have a feeling that the GOP is actively sabotaging the SAVE Act because they also need a voter fraud to keep challengers out of their primaries.
That's a very excellent point.
Very excellent point.
Because you have these situations.
You know, I'm going to use this.
You know, we talked to Tony Ortiz yesterday about the Texas primary for the Senate primary.
And he made the point that a lot of people are just concerned about electability and concerned about head-to-head polling.
And they're saying, well, Cornyn does perform better in head-to-head polling against these Democrat candidates against Tallarico.
Paxton performs a bit worse.
And that's fair.
It's fair.
But I'm just, when you speak to Texans, is that really their primary concern?
Or are they kind of just frustrated with John Cornyn?
I think that's broadly true.
So every time these primaries happen, you just kind of wonder what's going on.
There's one of two things happening, I think, simultaneously.
One, there are a lot of Republicans that are just not super engaged in the discourse that aren't giving their thoughts very often.
They call it quiet Republican voters.
You know, they're not keen on breaking down, you know, everything that's wrong with John Corn at the dinner table or next to the person in track.
They just don't really like to talk about politics.
And I think that is a large proportion of Republicans, and those would be the ones voting for John Cornyn.
Because, again, the reason I'm making this point is because if you ask Texans, you know, no one's really an avid, you know, vocal supporter of John Corn.
It's just not really happening.
But then you would meet tons of people that were all over Paxton that were Paxton glazers and they were loving Ken Paxton.
So this is why I think this is a very salient point here: there's a likely chance that, you know, for someone like John Cornin, again, I'm saying he's not very popular, but there's this quiet, you know, proportion of the base that's going to vote for him on the base, but a quiet proportion of Republicans are going to vote for him.
In addition to that, I think they probably are potentially, maybe I'm not saying what the Corny race, but you are seeing other races where really unpopular incumbents like Mitch McConnell win decisively.
You got to wonder if this is what's going on here.
I think this is a really excellent point.
You know, fugitive Caesar kind of jumps on here and provides his take, which I think is absolutely true.
Best explanation I've seen seems very possible that half the Republican Senate would lose a primary in an ecosystem with voter ID and fair elections.
And I think this is very, very true.
And this poster down here, John Eston Cook, you know, makes a great point.
Actually, I'll hit up the like while I write here, like live in action liking.
It's much harder to rig a primary via outright voter fraud at the state level.
The Alaska and Utah primaries were rigged via ranked choice voting and the weird parliamentary gay ops, respectively.
That's why Curtis and Rakowski opposed the bill for sure.
And I think that's 100% the case.
I mean, look at this.
This is what John Curtis is talking about.
This is what he's up to right now.
You know, everyone's focused on either one of two things.
They're focused on Iran.
They're focused on the SAVE Act.
Those are the two things happening in the Senate.
And I guess now you have a proportion of Congress that's concerned about, you know, potentially the deportation strategy changing.
But John Curtis, this is what he's up to, the senator from Utah.
I don't know what it is about you.
Oh, it's maybe it's some, I don't, I don't want to slander Mormons here because they're, you know, very reliable Republican voters, but I know their sort of way they view politics, you know, again, the way they view politics, and this is not to exonerate like Southern Baptists because, you know, you have your Russell Moores and stuff.
I'm just saying, you know, Utah is entirely ran.
You know, their GOP is dominated by kind of the top brass of Mormons.
I don't know if it's a Mormon thing.
I don't know what's going on.
So maybe if you're Utah and you are Mormon, you can kind of lay out what's going on here.
But the Utah GOP produces some really horrific, horrific candidates.
And it's crazy because it's such a ruby red state.
I mean, John Curtis is awful.
Spencer Cox is terrible.
He might be the worst Republican governor in the country.
And we had like Charlie Baker was literally a governor in Massachusetts.
Literally the worst governor, I think, in the country.
A few years ago, he was like, you know, simping over the LGBT stuff.
I mean, the trans stuff and the pronouns and all that.
I mean, it's really just bizarre, bizarre stuff.
But this is from John Curtis.
He put this out.
The national debt is over $38 trillion, and without action, we're pushing the bill onto our children and grandchildren.
It's high time for reform, which is why we've introduced legislation to stabilize spending and secure a better economic future for rising generations.
Well, happy new year 2012.
You know, we've got some nuclear hot takes coming in from John Curtis here.
This is, again, turning back the clock to a time, you know, when the GOP was probably at its least effective.
You know, we're talking about, you know, just before the Tea Party.
This is, when I was growing up, this is all anyone could talk about in the GOP.
No one was talking about immigration.
That was certainly the case.
I think they were probably just as pro-immigration as the Democrats.
Actually, I think you kind of look and spot check.
There's moments in history where the Republican Party was actually more pro-immigration than the Democrat Party, which is hilarious to me.
Because, you know, the Democrat Party, for the longest time, had a huge, a huge proportion of the base were unions.
And obviously, these unions were looking, you know, they're stressed out about scab labor and these sorts of things.
And so, yeah, really something.
So let me get an update from the team here.
I don't have a producer anymore, so that's just me on the fly.
So I'm going to have to see if anyone here has gotten Mike, a status of Mike.
I put a chat in and we'll see.
Oh, am I not in?
I wasn't in frame the whole thing.
See, this is the problem having a producer.
I wasn't even in frame the entire freaking show.
I guess I got to move this way.
Is that better?
Jeez, Louise.
So, where was I?
I was dunking on John Curtis.
Yeah, so John Curtis, you know, dude, really, really?
Who is concerned about the national debt right now?
Because we're not even going to have a country.
You know, we're not even going to have a country in 10, 20 years at this rate.
And we're talking about the national.
Who cares about the national debt?
We're returning it to Brazil.
You think Brazilians, they're thinking, like, okay, what's the number one issue in our country right now?
It's the national debt.
Probably not.
It's probably not the typical concern.
I think they're concerned about getting robbed on the street or something like this.
So just total, total disaster, right?
Quite frankly, this is our brave freedom fighters that we have.
And it's really pathetic, pathetic stuff.
So with that, I still haven't heard any news on if Mike is ready or not.
I'm going to preview, you know, just to lead in here.
I'm going to preview what specifically I wanted to ask him about.
There was this really interesting article here from Axios.
They were trying to make the case that America is actually not divided and that it's like right-wing chuds are the ones producing.
I'll just read here what they had to say.
It's the terminally online news junkies who are detached from the actual reality.
We've been manipulated by algorithms and politicians amplifying the worst of humanity.
Our feeds and screens spread a twisted and accurate view of America.
And so it's like, you know, okay, okay, buddy.
And so Mike comes in here and dunks on him.
You're a news agency posting this online telling us we're detached from reality for reading you.
Because when you think about who, let me get some water.
I'm dying.
I'm dying.
When you think about who's responsible ultimately for twisting and contorting an inaccurate view of America, sometimes a lot of people would say Axios.
So this is interesting.
I'm going to keep reading here some of the stuff they had to say.
Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet.
They work, raise kids, coach Little League, and never post a word about any of it.
This isn't a small minority.
It's silent, if silent, majority.
Let me get back in chat with my team here.
let's see what's going on okay so nothing Okay, so we might not have a mic.
I'm going to have to go for another hour here.
don't know if my throat's gonna survive to be completely honest um so yeah I also wanted to ask him about this.
This is just kind of random, but I'm going to see what he thinks about this.
If we can get him, I don't know if we're going to get him or not.
Wall Street Journal.
Iran expands war with major cyber attack against U.S. guy.
I'm afraid my voice might go out before the end of the show.
This is so bad.
But I think Mike might be ready.
I think I heard some chatter going on in the other room.
So I'm going to get situated here, and we're going to bring him in, and hopefully he does most of the talking because my throat is just shot here.
I had to bring you in specifically for this interesting – I wouldn't have seen it unless you put it on my timeline from Axios where they're saying it's the terminally online news junkies who are detached from the actual reality.
This is the weirdest retconning I think I've seen in a long time coming from Axios of all people.
You said you're a news agency posting this online telling us we're detached from reality for reading you.
So I had to bring you in to talk about this specifically and this, I guess, like ethos that these journals have these days that it's the right-wing chuds that are really the ones stirring the pot and everything.
I was wondering what your thoughts were on all of this.
This really started in the 2016 era when Trump won initially on the back of social media.
And it was really kind of the first election in which social media was dispositive over legacy media in terms of influence.
And that caused, I think, not just financial shocks in the news industry, but also psychological ones.
And there has been this kind of idea that, you know, social media is not as it's still not as important.
It's still not where reality is really made.
I happen to think, frankly, it's kind of the opposite.
I think actually social media is even more real and scales with much more impact.
Frankly, I think unless something trends on social media, regular media almost doesn't matter.
But what they cite are statistics like only 21% of the U.S. population uses X and only 10% uses it every day.
Well, okay, well, what percent of the population reads the New York Times every day?
And frankly, when you say reads the New York Times, just because you order it and shows up at your doorstep doesn't mean that you've really been hit by it.
I think when you, you know, the feed on something like X and Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is, it just hits you right away, whatever's trending.
Yeah, well, I mean, to your point, I mean, the majority of people ordering the newspaper nowadays are just doing the crossword chunking it.
So, I mean, like, I actually read somewhere that that is true.
Like, the majority of the New York Times readership is subscribed for the crossword, which is really funny, very salient.
But yeah, I mean, to your point, you know, the majority of Americans, I think, are tapped out from the actual zeitgeist, but the zeitgeist is being developed on X for the most part nowadays.
And the proof for that is literally everything that comes out of the Trump badminton and like the Senate Democrats.
It's literally just like the timeline being regurgitated by these figures.
So, you know, again, people point that out all the time.
And they say, well, the majority of Americans aren't even on X, but the reality is that's where the discourse is being formed.
And for the 80% or so of Americans that aren't on X, the talking points they're using, that they're throwing at each other were developed on X, whether they like it or not.
There's very rarely are we seeing stories, narratives, discourse, again, that's developed independently outside of the online space, for lack of a better word.
There's a famous neoconservative who I think back in the 1980s was in a debate and there was an argument that your ideas are unpopular.
Your magazine only has 2,000, a circulation of 2,000 people.
And, gosh, I forget who it was who said it, but I remember the person quipped back and said, but it's the right 2,000 people.
And that really, I think, gets to the heart of why X is so much more influential than Axios, frankly, when it comes and why it is that I think Axios has a little bit of, I guess, penis envy over the reach of social media.
Which is that it may only be a fraction of the population, but it's the fraction of the population with influence.
It's every world leader.
It's every politician.
It's most captains of industry at this point.
This is where press announcements are made.
If a company doesn't make a social media statement about, I don't know, a new line of burgers, it's almost like they didn't really do it.
I mean, and this is one of the things, I don't know if you agree with this assessment, but a lot of people over the last, like literally, this has happened over the last few months.
A lot of guys I know who have either have the ear of a lot of top Republicans or at least are influencing a lot of top Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated with the direction the discourse has gone specifically on X regarding political commentary.
A lot of these guys are tapping out.
I don't want to name names here, but a lot of guys are just like, I'm kind of done.
Like it's gotten so bad.
The incentive structure for political commentary has been completely inverted, where it used to be like if you presented something novel, then people would kind of listen and they'd follow and pay attention.
But now it's like it's always been this way to a degree, but it's really on steroids now.
Is it's like whoever can Mr. Beastify their content the most is going to dominate and they're going to occupy the most space.
And so a lot of people are just kind of throwing their hands up and they're frustrated because, I mean, like you said, it's about the right 2,000 followers, but only so many people can, you know, pay the bills with, you know, like that limited reach.
Like a lot of these guys are getting frustrated that their potential audience is being captured by, quite frankly, a lot of slop.
Well, I don't particularly feel the pressure to Mr. Beastify the content.
I can see that if you have a frustration with the direction that politics are trending in general, being in the line of business of trying to influence politics when things are not going your way is a lot less fun.
And, you know, I, to some extent, am feeling some of that with some of the events that are happening right now in the world, you know, for at least for the past 12 days, let's say.
And so I've posted a lot less.
My motivation has been, you know, pretty not insignificantly hit just because you don't necessarily want to post into a cycle where there might be an amazing story about NGO corruption or, you know, some censorship event in Spain.
And you put that against what's happening here and you go, Yeah.
You know, is this, is this, is this really what I consider to be the most important thing in the world right now?
And I think that a lot of people are feeling things like that.
That there were so many other issues, for example, before the past two weeks, whether that's immigration, whether that's the cost of housing, whether that's anything happening in the homeland, whether that's a number of other foreign policy issues.
And it all gets swallowed in the face of war.
And then there are other things I think that have been happening around just certain developments within MAGA that leave a lot of the MAGA faithful a little bit disenchanted to, I mean, if you look at like this rally right now against Thomas Massey, who I think a lot of people in the MAGA base consider to be a hero, he's the one who got us the Epstein files.
And in the middle of the Iran war, the president is stopping everything to fly to Kentucky to personally campaign against him.
And it's like, make it make sense in a way that we can live with.
Yeah, it's really frustrating to your point for the MAGA faithful because we're the only ones here that don't really have like there's not really one strong way that we're leaning.
I mean, it's because you have your neocons who are like over the moon about all this.
And then, of course, you have what's been dubbed the retard right now, plus the left who are just going to counter signal every single thing Trump does.
And it kind of leaves the MAGA faithful in a weird spot because, again, I think the number, and I've talked about this, you know, at length on the show is the number one issue, I think, with this war is that it's a gift for like some of these worst people in politics.
And there's just very little in it for the MAGA faithful.
And so that's why I think a lot of us kind of feel a bit rudderless right now.
I wanted to ask you, because I mean, you would be, you know, one of the guys that would be in the know on this.
I mean, in regards to wartime propaganda, these sorts of things, these sorts of elements, I mean, there's so many accusations right now of, oh, well, this person's acting on behalf of a foreign country or this person.
It's everyone on either side of the work right now.
How much of that is legitimate?
How much of that is real?
Like, how does like international influence operations, how do they work in a moment like this?
Because this kind of feels like a big flashpoint.
And again, these accusations are flying left and right.
In general, I think state-sponsored influence operations tend to be vastly overstated.
You do have mostly organic affinity networks that certainly pile up very, very strong.
And so, and you see that, for example, even within MAGA, you don't really have the Trump campaign going out and paying influencers to promote Trump.
That was never really a thing.
You have a few of these kind of influenceable type things and a couple of these agencies, but that's a tiny little pinky finger.
But there is a kind of almost organic commercial base in terms of people build their brand as influencers or as journalists covering stories on certain beats.
And it's the same thing when it comes to state-level affinities, whether that's the pro-Israel side or the pro-Palestinian side.
And, you know, and now we're seeing this new emergence.
I just saw this, and I think the Wall Street Journal earlier, the Iranian disinformation, they're kicking up.
This is the whole thing with Russian disinformation.
It was all this kind of state-sponsored internet research agency type stuff.
And now I'm seeing the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which is this big CIA cut out that was funded by the State Department and USAID, and I think even the Justice Department.
And they just came out with this new study about Iranians.
Oh, here's what it was.
It said that the attempt to dub Operation Epic Fury Operation Epstein Fury was an Iranian disinformation campaign that Americans are unwittingly falling for.
So basically, almost threatening that if you dare say that this is anything to do with Epstein, and I'm not even making that accusation, but the fact is, like, for example, I mean, Trump flying to Kentucky in the middle of this.
I agree that it seems like people completely overstate foreign influence, whether, again, it's people on the right left, et cetera.
Because, and kind of to the point with the Axios article where they're kind of outsourcing all the blame to like these nefarious algorithms, that sort of thing, is because I think for the majority of people, and this goes into the conspiracy world and these sorts of things, is they just need to feel like there's an explanation, something is in control, like there's something controlling this, that this isn't just kind of a random, you know, ever-changing situation.
But I think the reality is with discourse, certainly, a lot of these people I know that are fervently like pro-Israel, for example, and they're getting all these accusations being paid.
I'm like, I've talked to these people off camera.
That's all they talk about.
That's like their thing.
Trust me, they don't need any payment to talk about these things.
And so, but, you know, I think it's just, it's easier for people to explain as they say, well, this person's being paid by Iran, you know, to spread this propaganda or these sorts of things because it kind of gives people the sense of, okay, well, no one could actually held that position.
It's just someone's in control.
That's what's going on in things.
People are being paid.
When I'm like, the reality is, you know, again, with the internet, information has been democratized.
People are going to have a wide range of disagreements on a variety of topics.
And I mean, I'm sure it does exist to some degree, to your point.
I mean, I just think it's been overstated, to say the least.
And also the fact it just, it does just straight up delegitimize the other school of that.
So it's a way to try to use kind of a dirty trick to argue that, you know, the entirety of the argumentative framework against what you want is illegitimate because it's synthetically produced because of state propaganda or something.
And what's so funny is, you know, these will be the same people who tell you that USAID needs to spend $10 billion a year on propaganda because journalism saves lives.
And people are just like blaming the wrong things for situations where, okay, maybe there is a thumb put on the scale in a situation on a certain set of discourse.
They refuse to say the issue, which I primarily see on X, which is the entire third world now has smartphones and they're like weighing in on American topics.
And so they're, again, like, you have a billion and a half Indians and they're generally in agreement on everything regarding American politics.
And so, yeah, they're going to like weigh in on one side or like the entire like a country like Indonesia.
Yeah, I don't think anyone, I mean, have you ever had the experience of having this months-long colloquy with an account and you later discovered it was a bot?
I mean, this would be like dating a girl and finding out she's a robot, uh, you know, six months into the relationship.
I don't know, literally, you know, the bots when you see them, yeah.
They are like, it'll like appear instantly after you, because they're, I'll like do a tweet, and there'll be like a stock account that'll be like, this post makes the point that sunshine and rainbows are really, you know, it's not really rain today.
It's this, and it's like, okay, you managed to do this like 279-character tweet within a microsecond.
You're the first comment, uh, your avatar is like some Japanese, you know, like, I don't know, it's, it's, these things are obvious.
This attempt to delegitimize people by saying that they're, they're bots.
And the fact that they even conflate that with trolls, they'll say bots and trolls.
Have you ever seen a professionally journalist when I mean, this is a big mistake when all the big journalists got on Twitter and they, you know, because we got to see who they are.
You know, if Walter Cronkite had a Twitter account, all the mystique of it would go away because you'd know what he thinks about when he's going to the battle.
You'd know his opinion on, you know, things he's, he'd be too tempted to be way out of his depth on everything.
But it's like, we, these are the most trollish people of all.
I mean, all this tongue wagging about, oh, you know, the internet dog piles and these troll accounts.
And it's like, then you see all these, all these journal.
I mean, this just happened to me.
John Oliver just attacked me in this segment two nights ago on his whatever HBO show.
And I only found out about it because another news outlet, which is supposed to be the, it's called the OCCRP, the Corruption Reporting Project.
The world's largest consortium of investigative journalists, every year they win, you know, all the awards.
They are the ones who publish the Panama papers and things like that.
50% of their paycheck came from the US State Department and USAID.
Their seed money came from a CIA cutout.
Their initial funding came from the State Department, INS, the intelligence wing of ODNI.
And it's like, I found out about this hit piece about me from John Oliver because this outlet, funded by my tax dollars, wrote this super petty post saying, John Oliver has identified the source of the problem, far-right activist Mike Benz, who campaigned against us.
It's like, you know, it's like what you said, like the aura loss, negative 10,000.
It's like, okay, that's the sort of thing that I would expect my kid sister back in like high school to write about like a girlfriend that, you know, like, you know, didn't call her back on a Wednesday or something.
It's like, this is like I, it's fair game, I suppose.
I don't want to be paying for tweets against myself.
That feels a little weird.
I'd like the government to give me money so that I can retaliate against them.
But leaving that aside, it's like, you don't get to talk about trolls now.
You're doing like these personal petty, this is not breaking news.
I got to get a new double A. Let's see what brand we got here.
We got Amazon Basics in the hatch.
That's what we got.
Shout out, Amazon Basics.
Got to improve the mouse, boys.
With that, that was awesome.
Thank you to Mike Benz.
Fantastic.
You can follow me on X and Instagram at Realtate Brown.
I really got to get this throat sorted.
I don't know if you noticed, like, as soon as it starts hurting a little bit or I have to talk quieter, it like throws off my entire way of thinking.
Like, I like to think I'm pretty quick on my feet.
Dude, when you start getting hit with a little pain in the throat, it throws you off.
You know, it's kind of to the great philosopher, intellectual philosopher, Mike Tyson, where he said, you know, everyone's got a plan until you get punched in the mouth.
And that's so true.
It's so true.
So with that, X and Instagram, Realtate Brown, come follow me.
A lot of people, you guys don't even realize you're not following me.
Come follow me and promise the show will pick up again next week.
I will get everything sorted.
And with that, we'll be back for Timcast IRL at 8 p.m. tonight.
Again, the crew's live from Austin.
So make sure you tune in.
It's going to be a good show tonight.
We got a very interesting guest.
So I'm sure you guys are going to love that very much.