Tate Brown analyzes Joe Kent's resignation and Trump's aggressive strategy to seize Cuba, potentially installing Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro to neutralize regional threats. He critiques Virginia's special election results, arguing identity politics hindered Republicans, before interviewing Mo Monuments on restoring civic ambition through massive statues like a 10-foot George Washington monument. This project aims to counter modern discourse with tangible history, suggesting America must rebuild its physical legacy to reclaim imperial status and historical connection. [Automatically generated summary]
This is Tate Brown here holding it down back with you guys for another installation of the Timcast News Noon Live.
I am so happy to be back with you.
It is a freezing outside.
We're just outside of our nation's capital and it is absolutely Baltic outside.
I don't know what's going on.
We got totally faked out.
We had some really warm weather last week.
This is how I know I'm getting old.
You know, I'm 25.
I mean, I got like one foot in the grave, one foot in a banana peel because the weather is like really having an impact on my mood.
This is like a new thing.
You know, I'm talking to everyone about the weather.
You know, I'm relieved when I see farmers because I can chop it up with them about the weather and they'll understand because, well, for them, their livelihoods depended on it.
I'm buying the farmer's almanac.
I'm literally thumbing through the farmer's almanac every night when I should be out, you know, having a night in the town, you know, seeing the sights, chopping it up with the other youths.
Instead, I'm sat inside reading the farmer's almanac.
But, you know, it is what it is because my job is to talk to you guys.
My job is to be, you know, a little news monkey, a news donkey, so to speak, and bring you guys, you know, what is going on in the world.
What is going on in the world today?
Quite a bit of action, I would say.
A lot of it's like smaller stuff.
There wasn't as massive, unbelievable stories today.
The big ones still, people are reeling from the Joe Kent situation.
Joe Kent resigning in Fury and Flames was really this dramatic exit from the Trump administration.
Some updates there that are interesting.
The Cuba situation, you know, Trump said two days ago that he would be the president and may be the president and has the privilege of taking Cuba.
There was a really interesting article on Axios today.
It looks like it's going to happen.
It looks like Cuba, we are going to take Cuba.
Things are getting wacky and wild down there.
We're going to get into all of that.
We have an interesting update.
Special election in Virginia.
Republicans trounce the Democrat.
So, you know, a lot of people are saying, you know, the midterms are going to be a Democrat blowout.
I'm not so sure.
We're going to have to see because, you know, some of these metrics, some of these metrics are actually looking quite favorable for the Republicans.
I don't think it's going to be a red wave.
I think it'd be more like a red whimper.
That'd be my estimate, but we're going to have to see.
We're going to dive into some of these election results.
Really, this one specific election result I want to highlight out of Virginia.
And there are some lessons to be learned from that.
We have a few other stories that we'll get into if we have some time.
And we will be joined at the half hour mark by a really interesting guest.
I told you guys yesterday we were going to have an interesting guest.
And his name is Mo Monuments.
You may not know the name.
He is a gentleman who has a business startup venture organization, operation, whatever you want to call it, where he is manufacturing these beautiful monuments.
And he really wants to see America beautiful again.
There's a whole chunk of our population that is increasingly frustrated with the direction that our nation has gone from an aesthetic perspective.
And he is one of the, you know, I would say one of the best guys I've seen, really with his finger on the pulse of what's going on.
Mo Monuments, as it's in the name, he builds these beautiful monuments and he's seeking to build a massive George Washington monument.
And so we're going to have to bring him on and ask him about it and see what his general consensus is on America, you know, the direction it's going aesthetically, because I totally feel that way.
I totally feel like the country is getting uglier.
There's really no question about that.
You can just take a look at any new construction.
Final bit of housekeeping, as you've probably seen, I am in Tim's studio today.
I actually shot a pre-record, a pre-recorded episode, which will go up on Friday with the great Raw Egg Nationalist.
We talked about his new book here, which I have.
It's a fantastic book.
And I was recording it in the studio, and then it kind of occurred to me.
Tim and the crew are in Austin for the last two weeks.
Why haven't I just been shooting out of here?
I don't really know.
I should have been doing it the whole time.
But, you know, it is what it is.
So I am operating out of a studio today, and I may be back here tomorrow.
Who knows?
We'll see how things go.
But with that, we have a word from our sponsor, today's sponsor.
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I mean, it was unbelievable what we were seeing downstairs, looking at the computer, looking at what's sold, what's not sold.
Oh my gosh, blueprint collection off the shelves already.
Who would believe it?
We got all sorts of other stuff, though.
It's okay.
If you're into skateboards, this would be the place to go.
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20th Amendment is sold out, unfortunately, but we still got a lot of t-shirts, got a lot of stickers for you guys.
A flag slap six by four grip tape.
If you're into that, you know, you could use that.
You don't need that for a skateboard.
If anything, you need to be gripping on.
Just buy some grip tape and you can freaking throw it on there if that's your kind of thing.
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Some fantastic stuff.
Before we get into everything, I wanted to highlight this.
This is what I saw this right before I went live.
This is pretty much as I predicted.
Joe Kent will be going on the Tucker Carlson show.
I think this kind of indicates maybe where Joe Kent.
You know, I like Joe Kent a lot, but maybe this is how he knew he could soften the landing is by penning such a vicious letter that could guarantee a fairly soft landing.
This landing being the Tucker Carlson show.
Obviously, Tucker Carlson is one of the biggest podcasts in the country.
And this basically solidifies that Joe Kent will be sort of a figure, right?
He's not just going to be a bureaucrat that went out with a whimper, but he's going out with a bang, you know, and he's going to be doing the podcast circuit.
Again, a lot of discussion on whether this is ethical or not.
You know, I still go back to my position yesterday, which is, look, regardless of how you feel about Joe Kent, his departure, what he said, I think what is worthwhile is guys like Joe Kent.
Again, if you're in charge of a three-letter agency, right?
If you're literally the director of cyber or counterterrorism, why vacate that job, right?
This, again, this is this tendency people on the right have, this principles, is it's better to like, again, you know, if something isn't, you know, aligning with you 100% of the time, you just like throw your hands in the air and walk away.
That just doesn't seem wise because, again, in a vacuum, yes, you know, if the country was in a good state of affairs, sure, I could see why you would want to do this.
You know, again, you don't want to compromise your principles.
But, you know, when you're in a civilizational battle like we are in, and you really have this strong conviction and you believe that, you know, the viable, I'd say the Trump administration is still quite viable.
It's the last viable political project, in my estimation, in the United States of America.
But, you know, there are some problems, major problems.
I mean, again, the Iran war, regardless of how you feel about it, you know, a lot of people aren't happy about it.
And Joe Kent is one of those people.
Why not stick in there and continue to move the needle in your direction?
I mean, there's something noble, I suppose, about you don't want to undermine the Trump administration if you're not 100% aligned with the commands he's giving you and the orders he's given you.
But I don't see, you know, you're in counterterrorism.
I mean, what could that possibly look like?
I don't know.
That's maybe he'll explain himself on the Tucker Carlson show tonight what his decision, what to what went into his decision-making process.
This is why I'm hesitating to just give like an all-out, you know, hot, nuclear hot take.
It's because I got to hear a little more from him.
You can't just drop that letter and then disappear.
So he is going to talk to Carlson.
I'd love to see what he has to say.
But a lot of people are saying, you know, okay, well, that's, I respect that.
You know, you're stepping down and getting out of the way.
You don't want to impede, you know, the Trump administration if you really do have these gripes with them, that sort of thing.
My contention is: look, liberals, they will bide their time 10, 15, 20 years operating, you know, with a low profile, keeping their head down.
They'll operate under Republican administrations and they just slowly move the needle in their direction.
So this isn't as much of an indictment on Joe Kent necessarily within the Trump administration because, you know, it's like, okay, if you are out of lockstep with the Trump administration, then yeah, maybe it is best to step aside.
But Republicans do this all the time.
Like they literally just vacate ground on the grounds of principles.
This happens all the time with policy.
You know, like you're seeing it in the Senate with the SAVE Act is the main reason it hasn't passed is because a lot of these senators are saying, you know, well, the talking filibuster, we have principles to stand by.
You know, there's Senate rules, et cetera, et cetera.
They don't realize we're in a civilizational fight, civilizational war.
So that's kind of my two cents on all of it.
I'm going to really, I'm going to, I'm going to tune in, obviously, and I'm going to see what he has to say.
And then that's where I'm going to really formulate my opinion because, you know, I'm still kind of a little split on this.
I guess the question would be with this statement.
I guess the imperative question is, is this productive or not?
And I don't know.
I don't know.
My gut says not really.
It's kind of created a debacle.
But, you know, a lot of people, again, with the Iran war, want to see it wind down.
And again, this is another way, I suppose, to put pressure on the Trump administration to wind things down.
Although I do suspect pretty much all the shot callers in the Trump administration are an agreement that this war needs to be winded down.
And, you know, there's the case to be made.
There's geopolitical aims here.
This is, this goes beyond, you know, Israel.
And there's actually like some, you know, some wins they're trying to rack up here.
And that's fair.
That's fair.
So we'll, we'll get into all that tomorrow.
I think we'll see what Joe has to say.
But with that, we'll go into the lead story.
This is the story that I went with for the title, that we went with for the title, actually, from Axios, why Trump's Cuba takeover plans could see a Castro return as ruler.
So obviously, this was the clip everyone was talking about.
This was from Donald Trump himself.
This was on, what's today?
Wednesday.
So this was on Monday afternoon.
Trump on Cuba, I do believe I'll have the honor of taking Cuba.
Take a look.
This is an interesting clip.
unidentified
And when will the United States do it?
I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba.
That'd be good on it.
That's a big honor.
Taking Cuba.
Taking Cuba in some form, yeah.
Taking Cuba.
I mean, whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it.
And I do like the president talking this way because it's so frustrating.
These presidents who like purposely like nerf the scope of the United States foreign policy, it really is our globe.
We can kind of do whatever we want with it.
There's really no question about that.
I think what I think of when I think of the way the president should be speaking about the rest of the world was the first state of the union, and Trump is going through all the Doge cuts.
I don't know if you remember this, and he was reading like all the different hundreds of millions of dollars he saved here, there, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, Doge obviously ended up being a bit more of a debacle than it needed to be.
But he got to the part where they were talking about Lesotho, and I think we were paying for like sex education and Lesotho or something.
And Trump just received reads the name Lesotho, wherever that is.
He says, it's just very dismissive of what even is a Lesotho.
And that's kind of refreshing because that's how the majority of Americans feel.
And the president previously would do this like faux, you know, this faux statesman kind of thing where like, you know, this, oh, the international community, you know, goes, you know, precedes the United States and these sorts of things.
Barack Obama was the worst culprit of this.
I mean, to the point where he's literally going to Japan and like apologizing for dropping bombs on him.
Most pathetic, weasly thing I think I've ever seen.
You know, there's a lot of scandals with the Obama administration.
That personally, to me, is the most offensive one.
I mean, I have family that served in the Pacific theater of World War II, including my great-grandfather.
And I knew him personally.
He lived quite a long time.
And he was upset by what Obama said.
And I can't really blame him because he saw a lot of his fellow brothers.
They didn't make it back.
And the fact that we're going to there and now apologizing for their sacrifice is absolutely pathetic.
I hate to relitigate something that happened 15 years ago, but it still bothers me to this day.
That being said, I like a president that gets up and he says the reality, what the reality is, the reality on the ground, which is, yeah, America kind of just does whatever we want because we're the United States.
And we demonstrated with Venezuela and we're demonstrating it now with Iran that, yeah, you know, the United States was probably underrated militarily.
The gap between us and the rest of the globe is actually much larger than I think even China thought.
Certainly what Americans thought.
I think it demonstrates that it wasn't really a personnel problem or a technology, certainly not a technological problem.
It was a leadership problem.
Because again, Afghanistan was such a disaster.
I think the primary reason for that would be leadership.
You know, you have to start looking at the generals, the Secretary of Defense, the president himself.
Compared to the Trump administration, personnel-wise, probably not that much has changed, certainly in special forces.
I don't know if you're out there and you're in special forces or knowledgeable on it.
Has there been a lot of churn since Afghanistan?
From what I understand, not really.
It's a lot of the same guys.
Again, because patriots have always been attracted to the special forces.
There's no question.
The special forces, the makeup of the special forces is probably one of the most right-wing institutions in the United States.
In addition to that, technologically, I mean, it's the same trajectory that it's always been.
I mean, under Trump, I know we've put on the gas a little bit, but for the most part, we're dealing with a lot of the same technological advancements.
It was a leadership problem.
But going to Venezuela, literally blackbag the president and leave, and we're back in Miami by dinner time really says it all.
I mean, that really showed how, you know, how formidable the United States really is in 2026.
And it's exposing our global adversaries as a bit of paper tigers.
You know, Iran, they keep getting their leaders killed.
I mean, it's like a complete disaster there.
I mean, they're able to rough up the Gulf states a little bit, I suppose, and the Israelis, but they're not really inflicting like fatal blows, certainly to Israel, like we, us in Israel and whatnot, are able to inflict on Iran.
So all this to say, I like Trump talking this way, and I do see, you know, he's saying, I will have the honor of taking Cuba.
He's saying, I mean, there's two and a half years left of Trump.
So in the next two and a half years, there's potentially we could be controlling Cuba.
President Trump, if Mr. Maxios, President Trump escalated his threats to seize Cuba this week, raising questions about whether he might seek to topple the communist Caribbean island leader, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
The big picture is Cuba's still attack.
Total totalitarian Cuba's totalitarian government faces a deepening energy crisis.
It saw an island-wide blackout amid a U.S.-imposed oil blockade.
Trump told reporters Monday that he believes he'll be having the honor of taking the island.
Cuba's power crisis worsened after the U.S. operation that captured toppled Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and Caracas and Trump's administrations has threatened tariffs on countries that provide fuel to the island, further tightening supply.
Again, Cuba's dealing with a massive energy crisis, massive energy crisis, which, from some reporting I've seen, has like literally brought like they're legitimately in a crisis.
The government, they're having these massive protests across the country.
This does look to be slightly different than before.
There seems to be an extra degree of severity to these protests.
Diaz-Canel said Friday there had been no fuel shipments to Cuba for three months as he announced talks with U.S. officials.
Trump confirmed Monday, we're talking to Cuba, but we're going to do Iran before Cuba, which indicates that, you know, he's not thinking years with Iran.
This is why part of the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because this little quote right here indicates that, yeah, they're thinking, they're thinking in terms of generational victories here, which I think this quote right here gives credence to the explanation that Iran is really just settling a score more so than like taking out the trash for Israel.
Because that look, Iran just could be one of the many geopolitical question marks that Trump is seeking to answer.
Cuba being another one.
Venezuela was one.
So there could be something to be said about Trump just doesn't really care about the Republican Party.
And I mean this in a based way.
He doesn't even really care about the midterms.
There's potential that he's not even really concerned with like Republican politics.
He is seeking to set the United States up for generational prosperity, generational dominance, generational hegemony over the globe.
And that is why he's slowly picking off all of these question marks, these geopolitical question marks.
You know, Venezuela goes, Greenland sort of resolved.
I think we've come to a good agreement there.
Iran, there's a chance this just gets mopped up in the next few weeks.
It's a strong reality, a strong likelihood.
Cuba could just be ours.
You start to look around, and slowly, a lot of these question marks are getting erased off the whiteboard here.
China, that's kind of the big one.
Well, what do all of these operations have in common?
They don't benefit China.
They actually work against China.
You know, people have laid out the geopolitical play happening in Iran, why this is sort of a containment operation with China.
I personally think that's a secondary effect, not the primary effect, why we went to Iran.
But all that to be said, that is an effect.
There's no question about that.
Again, we're just seeing a lot of these question marks get taken off the board, and there's something to be said about that.
So, Cuba, again, we're going to do Iran before Cuba.
That indicates that he is viewing just one country at a time, one question at a time, being resolved, Cuba being the next one.
Analysts predict Trump could leave some regime officials in power in Cuba as he did in Venezuela rather than pursue wholesale regime change, partially due to the disastrous moves to purge Saddam Hussein's ruling party after he was toppled in the 03 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
This was interesting.
I saw this last month.
Probably a lot of you guys saw this as well.
Axios Mark Caputo reported last month that Secretary of State Mark Rubio held secret talks with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of influential former leader Raul Castro, a nephew of the late Communist Party of Cuba founder and leader Fidel Castro, one of three members of Cuba's powerful family to emerge as potential successors to Diaz Canal, the island's only non-Castro leader since Fidel Castro guerrilla forces overthrew the Batista regime in 1959.
So again, we could be seeing a Castro, this one here, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez-Castro returning to power.
And that indicates that, you know, the Trump administration does view geopolitics a lot differently than the Bush administration, a lot differently than the neocons, a lot differently even than Obama.
He just sees it as if you can moderate a regime with bombs and by killing their leaders, that's actually a much easier thing to do.
And actually, it probably has long term much provides much more stability for the country.
Again, a Venezuela, a detoothed Venezuelan regime that plays ball at the United States and that kind of just follows all of her orders is much more worthwhile than trying to rebuild Venezuela and like install a democracy.
Why not just leave the regime there?
And if the regime is going to obey everything you say, what's the point of nation building?
The only explanation for why you would want a nation build afterwards if the regime is already just kowtowing to us is again, if you're like some sort of political wonk, right?
If you're some sort of, you know, if you're some sort of like ideologue, that would be the explanation.
And I think we've seen already that Trump isn't too preoccupied with spreading liberal democracy.
And again, the foreign policy so far indicates that that's the case.
If that were the case, that he was interested in that, if he truly was, again, this new world order, neocon, et cetera, you would have seen him trying to already, you know, install a democracy in Venezuela.
Again, you would have seen it flooded with, you know, NGOs and these sorts of things.
And we're not really seeing that.
It's not happening.
It just seems like he's sticking with the regime, but they've moderated.
They'll play ball with them.
And so he can live with that.
I think we'll see the same thing in Iran.
Honestly, I think that's the end goal with Iran.
I think it is just moderating that regime.
Again, they'll play ball with us.
They're in our sphere now.
That's good enough.
There's no need to get bogged down in a years-long regime change war.
That's what the Israelis want.
The Israelis want a regime change, but there's no indication that the Americans want that as of yet.
So, Cuba, it'll be the same thing.
I don't see why they'd be any different.
So, with that, we're going to get into this story right here.
This is a really interesting story.
Greg Price was the one that, you know, at least I don't know if he was the person that, you know, found that the first place, but he put out kind of the alert that this is what had happened.
He said Republicans just won a special election in Virginia HD 98.
Republican Andrew Rice is currently ahead 29 points in a district that was Sears plus seven in November, a 22-point swing to the GOP.
So, again, we're talking about a House district and state Virginia Assembly.
Is this really like a bellwether?
Is this really an indicator of what's to happen nationwide?
Yes and no.
Yes and no.
I think it'd be fair to say yes and no.
You know, I think what's happening here, I do think people are dooming a little bit too much with the midterms, what's going to happen.
I've spoken to some guys that I trust quite a lot.
I think are generally on it, you know, politically speaking.
And I share the sentiment that, you know, they're saying that the Republicans are going to win, which, again, you know, here's the thing about polling: polling sometimes does matter.
Polling sometimes is correct.
You know, a lot of times, you know, vibes, you know, don't overcome polling.
Okay, we're still seeing general ballot polling.
You know, Democrats are still up ahead, you know, two, three, four points.
Um, modest advantage, according to Caroline Soler, this polling researcher from the New York Times.
But that's not a massive spread.
You know, a two-point swing, according to youGov, that's a pretty decent pollster.
Um, you know, you gov is as a plus two.
Um, Republican and internals are saying plus four, plus three, plus three from the morning consult.
Um, you know, it varies a bit, but you're not really seeing like a complete evisceration.
I mean, look, you have 11% undecided here.
This is, we're not looking at a complete, you know, wipeout.
You know, you're not looking at a complete wipeout.
Um, and so it is what it is.
What I think is more important is that's what people are seeing.
They're seeing, oh, wow, the Republicans are dominating this Democrat in Virginia.
This must mean the midterms are actually going to play out favorably for us.
That's not what I'm seeing here.
What I'm seeing here, the lesson that should be taken away from this race, why is Andrew Rice ahead 29 points in a district that was only plus seven for Winsom Sears?
If you don't remember, Winsom Sears was the Republican candidate for governor in the last election.
She got spanked.
What is the lesson here?
I think the lesson here is actually fairly obvious.
Why did Glenn Young win?
Why did Glenn Young win actually kind of decisively?
And Winsom Sears got spanked.
Even though Glenn Young, by all metrics, was popular in Virginia.
I mean, he wasn't like, you know, they weren't in love with the guy, but he was popular, did a decent job.
Again, by metrics in Virginia, by most metrics, you know, the state was improving.
The conditions for Virginians was improving.
So what happened?
Why did Winsom Sears get spanked?
Why'd she get blown out?
I think it's kind of obvious.
You know, I think Solianath actually put it quite well here.
Would you look at that?
When Republicans run John Normelson, a regular white guy, they win.
When they run a Jamaican immigrant woman, they lose.
Will they finally start to learn?
Rog nationalist, who we'll talk to on Friday, put out something similar.
All the Republicans have to do to field, all the Republicans have to do is field normal white American men.
They'd have won Virginia if they'd done that.
And now they're making the same mistake in Ohio, running Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lose and should have been banished from the GOP forever.
Anyway, that's just correct.
He should have been banished from the GOP already.
Yeah, there's something to be said about, again, it's this fatal fly that just won't go away.
This line of thinking in the GOP.
And this isn't just reserved for the consultant class.
Like everyday conservatives think along these lines is they are convinced that minority voters in the United States will vote for the Republican Party if they see their like group represented in the you know officials of the GOP.
As in the GOP is convinced that black voters in Virginia will swing over to the GOP if a black lady's on the ticket.
That's genuinely what these people think.
A lot of them won't say out loud.
It's like a subconscious thing, but it feels good for a lot of conservatives to have their talking points regurgitated by someone that's not a white person.
The problem is people, again, you're leaving behind.
You're ignoring the majority of your base, like the overwhelming majority of your voters, which are like normal white American people.
They need someone they can relate to, someone they can resonate with, someone that, again, this isn't to say that someone that's not a white guy can't resonate with the American.
That's obviously not true.
There's plenty of examples.
But a Jamaican immigrant who no one's ever heard of, not a great strategy.
Again, again, there are people that white people love more than, you know, white people, like, you know, Dinesh D'Souza is a great example.
You know, everyone loves him.
You know, a lot of white people love the guy, et cetera, et cetera.
But that takes years of building up credibility and a name and prestige and everything.
Running one some series out of the left field, everyone's just a little confused.
Maybe we actually pretend we like our base rather than, again, just like begrudgingly have to, you know, accept the fact that your base is white people.
You know, I think a lot of people may have seen your work on Twitter, but for the people that are unfamiliar, maybe you could give a quick intro of who you are and what you do.
I've been running the nonprofit for about four years.
After dropping out of school in like 2023, I joined a robotics company.
And I think robots are really interesting.
I worked on like two robotics companies, one construction company.
And during college, I was still working on like economic development, helping people start their own companies, running meetups and stuff like this.
So I think it's like a good combination of those three things.
And what I would say is, like, I've always been into like the physicality of things.
And where physical things have really sold over, I'd say, like, the past few decades is sort of art, sort of large-scale statues, structures, sculptures, and especially those that are not necessarily functional.
You know, you think about, you know, a lot of the physical things that we're able to make today.
And that's part of the reason I'm in Prototown, by the way.
I love, you know, manufacturing.
You know, think about the physical things we have today.
It's like rockets, smartphones, tablets, computers.
Those are functional things.
But what about the physical things that are like artistic?
And I think that's sort of where America is really lacking right now, especially like if you think about the large statues in this country, Statue of Liberty was made in 1886 and now the year is 2026.
I guess let's get granular on the topic of monuments because this is one of those things that I don't think people think about for very long.
And it really has such a dramatic because a grand monument really becomes the centerpiece of a city.
I mean, this is kind of the problem with the United States.
You know, I don't want to fire off any shots here, but like you think about Columbus, Ohio, what's one landmark they have?
I don't know.
I can't really think of anything.
If they just had one massive monument, that would become the landmark.
But a lot of cities are missing this.
I guess to get granular, you go back to like, you know, 100 years ago, 50 to 100 years ago, 200 years ago, what was the motivation for a grand monument, right?
Not just from the sculptor themselves, but like the population.
What had to line up?
What had to align for that monument to come forth?
I mean, that's kind of what comes to mind for me is because a lot of these, you know, especially good, like France is a great example.
A lot of their great monuments went up following a triumph.
Like it was them taking a victory lap.
And I think there's something to be said about that is, you know, monuments for these people meant so much more than just having something nice to put at the center of a roundabout.
But it like literally was them trying to exclaim something to future generations and them also wanting to make a claim on like the future, because this is kind of to your point with history and people like lose this sense of historical like time and place, like where they are on the grand timeline of humanity, is they forget the fact. that the past will make claims on the present.
It does all the time.
I mean, you're seeing this now with these geopolitical, you know, you know, issues all across the world.
All these are just unresolved issues from 100 years ago and unresolved issues from 200 years ago.
Like the past is always making claims on the present.
And I think that's what like old, you know, people that came before us understood.
It really seems like in the last recently, like last 50 to 60 years is when people really kind of lost the ability to accurately place themselves on the timeline and accurately place themselves really like cosmically as well.
I mean, it's like really a spiritual issue, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Well, I have to ask, you know, with the monuments, with these sorts of things, this kind of gets to the, I guess, a more bigger philosophical question.
I don't know how you feel about this.
What comes to mind is I think Tucker Carlson actually was the one that talked about this a few years ago and kind of really got me to sort of think along these lines was the fact that everything, and you've talked about this already to a degree, is the fact that everything in the United States specifically has gotten to the point where it feels very artificial, very like detached from like tangible like humanity.
And like the example he used, and this is, again, like why this is always in the front of my mind, is a DMV where you think about a DMV.
I was at one yesterday.
You know, laminate floor, you know, sheetrock.
Who knows what sheetrock's made out of?
You know, drop ceiling.
Again, who knows what a drop ceiling is made out of?
The desk, it's like, again, it's like this like laminate, like plasticky feeling thing, you know, these plexiglass shields.
Everything about it, nothing in there would occur in nature, right?
Nothing in there would indicate I am on earth and this is like a place that human beings go to.
And that's like how the government presents itself to the human, to like to their citizens rather.
And I think that actually encapsulates like a lot of kind of the spiritual rotten.
Not to get too esoteric, but really encapsulates a lot of the spiritual rot we're seeing in the United States is, again, people just feel really detached from their environment and they don't feel like they actually belong, you know, here.
They feel like deracinated to a large extent.
And there's something about a monument where it's like, again, it's just the past trying to tell you something, trying to share a piece of information with you that's so beautiful and like grounds you very quickly.
I mean, that's why, you know, you go to New York City, where are the main places people are just going to be lounging around on a bench?
I guess it's, it's, I guess it's because because, oh, I've just said because four times in a row, the, the materials used are in conjunction with like the philosophy of like, let's just make this as cheap as possible and get it out of the door rather than utilizing them in a way that is beautiful, that is like, you know, uplifting and that sort of thing.
I mean, because there's nothing more beautiful than like a copper, you know, the Statue of Liberty, like that, that copper is really beautiful.
You know, that's not something you're just going to like find laying around on the ground.
Like these are things that had to be refined.
But I guess that my point was not necessarily a gripe with the materials themselves, but the fact that the reason they use those materials was because let's just get this out the door.
Let's just get this done as cheaply as possible.
Who cares the impact it's going to have on someone's mood?
Like, let's just knock it out.
And that kind of does seem to be like, in my estimation, like, yeah, the big problem with America.
And you, you contrast it with Europe.
And I think that's a great point.
You know, people are starting to get a little frustrated, I think, with the urbanism crowd.
And I share a lot of these frustrations where they seem to sidestep one of the major issues in the United States, why we can't have these beautiful public spaces is because we have a very dysfunctional social life.
There's a lot of antisocial behaviors that are just tolerated by the public and by the government themselves.
And so I do understand when people are saying like, okay, if we solve those, then maybe we could have like a return to these, you know, more like European style public spaces.
But I also think to a degree that people just don't know.
Like to your point, people vacation to Europe and they're like, this is fantastic.
It's like, well, you could have that here in theory.
Again, putting aside all the systemic issues that we have, we could have.
I mean, that's why people love Disney World.
That's people love Universal Studios is because they rebuild kind of the main street and people like that a lot.
It's just for a variety of reasons that you could probably get into.
I mean, zoning laws are a big problem from what I've read.
And then also it's like parking cars, you got to have room to park cars and that's going to require parking.
Like there's a lot of other issues that go into it.
And again, I've already dunked on one city, so I don't feel the need to dunk on anymore.
But you just take a quick look on Google Maps and you're like, you would need billions of dollars to like just fix a block.
Like it's a complete disaster zone.
Because in a lot of ways, we did just bulldoze.
Like a lot of these cities actually were, you know, fantastic and rivaled European cities once upon a time.
And we kind of just bulldozed.
Again, in some cases, for somewhat valid reasons.
Like I'm not one of these like people that's just like, you know, everyone in the 50s and 60s were just complete idiots.
But I will say a lot of them didn't have some foresight that, okay, maybe there was other ways to resolve or remedy some of these issues that led some of these pressures that led to these great bulldozings, for lack of a better word.
But to your point, that's what I love about what's going on in Austin specifically and in this culture that you are a part of, is because it does feel like one of the few bastions of that vital American energy that used to be kind of ubiquitous across the country that did feel like it went through a decline, but now we are seeing kind of a renaissance of it.
And Austin's one of those places and you're seeing these cities.
And this is what you're seeing with the monuments.
I mean, you know, for 30, 40 years, we really kind of were in this dark age.
We're getting innovation on consumer products.
There was no question about that.
I mean, obviously we had leaps and bounds on like phones and these sorts of things.
But as far as like tangible environmental things, like big picture items beyond just something you could purchase, it's like, seems like in the last few years, that's when people's kind of mindsets changed back around.
What do you think it is about the culture?
You're part of the generation of this new generation of entrepreneurs.
Is it where they kind of want to leave a bigger footprint than just a product?
And it seems like, I don't know, from my experience, when I've had conversations like this with people, everyone's like, yeah.
Because Americans are very much just like, yeah, why not?
Kind of people.
Like, I feel like you don't have to make that long of a pitch to sell an American on the thousand foot statue.
Like, yeah, it sounds sick.
Like, that sounds great.
Like, can we have our local quarterback be the statue?
Like, it's a very easy pitch to Americans because we're big and bold people.
And I think to your point With American decline, the kind of the cultural element that we've lost, I think, that really drove Americans and made American culture so great is this idea that we were temporarily embarrassed millionaires in the sense of like every American had like they really were desperate to leave a legacy, really desperate to go big, go bold.
And we kind of really have lost that.
And now you're seeing our global adversaries, and not just our global adversaries, but just other countries around the world are picking up on this to a degree.
Certainly on the monument front, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I always see massive monuments going up in China and in India, Indonesia, Russia.
And so it's like other countries are still building the monuments.
It's like for whatever reason, we've been left behind.
And I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like Europe as well to a degree, but certainly the United States.
That really kind of says a lot about how we view ourselves.
We were featured in the Dallas Express earlier this week.
So definitely recommend checking that out.
I've got my profile at Mo Monuments on Twitter.
So it started about, I want to say six, seven months ago.
I came up with the idea.
Yeah, I came up with the idea and I was like, you know, the 250th birthday is coming up.
Why don't we build something for that?
You know, I think it's really important.
You know, because the 250th is like, you know, regardless of what you think about politics, I mean, the 250th anniversary of America, like that's going to be a major inflection point.
Very important.
And so it's something where the 200th was celebrated really massively, the 150th, the 100th.
People would always parade in the streets and like paint everything red, white, and blue back in the old days of America.
So I think the 250th should be the same way.
And why isn't anyone building something for that?
I suppose they are.
The government's looking at an arch right now.
I wanted to dedicate something specifically to that day.
And so I went to France.
I met my artist, Paul, online on Twitter.
And he said, well, I'm too old to travel.
Can you come to me?
I was like, all right, let's do it.
I booked a flight.
I thought it would be about two weeks.
Ended up being about two months.
But it was a really good experience.
I prepared the plaster.
He applied it.
And, you know, we started with like a two-foot clay model.
We scaled it up to like a five-foot plaster model, and then we doubled it again to about 10, 11 feet.
And then we cut his stomach a bit.
So he ended up being 10 feet at the end.
But we've got it done.
And I think I sent you a photo, but I've got a photo here as well.
It's so obvious that this should be the moment where every artist is coming out of the woodwork to, again, celebrate this.
I mean, this 250 years is a massive, massive deal.
A lot of people don't even think we make it this far.
And absolutely, absolutely massive.
Another thing is like the World Cup's also coming this summer.
So not only is it a big deal for us, like, you know, everyone's going to be, you know, all eyes on kind of these public works and these sorts of things, but also like the globe is going to have an eye on the United States this summer.
In addition to like hundreds of thousands of tourists, presumably flooding the country for the different games and these sorts of things.
It just seems like this would be a layup that every city should be rushing to get, you know, these massive monuments done in time.
Like it should be that energy that we saw at the World's Fair where they're like anxious to display how fantastic America is and why this section of America is so uniquely wonderful and fantastical.
And it's just, yeah, it's kind of a shame.
That's why it was such a breath of fresh air, if anything, to see your project.
So what we're doing now is we're going to scan it with a 3D scanner.
My buddy Daniel is going out there to France.
He's from Spain.
He's going to be scanning it with a 3D scanner.
And then we're going to take the 3D scan.
And the goal is to eventually scale it up even larger.
And so we've got like a robotic panel manufacturer in the U.S. based in LA.
And they say they can do about 50-foot panels in one month.
So it'd be pretty awesome to do, you know, panels and a statue even larger of this George Washington that we have in America as opposed to China or Thailand, wherever the foundries are.
Because they have a robotic forming technology where they press on the metal from both sides and they can form it based on the 3D file we give them.
And we're able to make it fully in America, which is really nice.
Because otherwise we don't really have the industrial capacity to do it if you want to cast it at Foundry, for example.
And so, yeah, I mean, this 10-footer, we're looking for a place to put it.
I've got a couple of tentative spots I could put it if I needed to, like in Reno, Nevada in Houston, Texas.
But like, it'd be kind of nice to put it somewhere else, maybe at least do a tour.
So that's something else we're discussing is when the Statue of Liberty came over to America, it arrived in New York and they did a bit of a tour with it.
They put the panels on the ground.
They fundraised for the pedestal.
So we're looking to do something similar, take this 10-footer and raise for a 50-footer.
This is why it's almost like a no-brainer why we should be having not just, again, not just monuments, but like beautiful architecture because it seems like we have the capacity now where we can produce it at scale, you know, at a high volume.
And it's, and you're not losing any of the artistic elements of it.
I mean, I guess some people may have a gripe that it's not like an artisan coming in and chipping away every little thing, but it's like, it's 2026.
This is how the world works.
Like, why LARP?
You know, LARPing's annoying.
Like, let's, let's, let's celebrate the ingenuity of Americans.
Like, let's celebrate the technology we have and actually utilize it to make something spectacular, something beautiful.
And this is like a trend throughout basically every like sort of physical project I see out there.
Like even if they build housing, they don't build just housing anymore.
They build the robots that build the house.
And, you know, they build sort of the robot that builds X, Y, and Z.
They have to build the machines now because our generation, unfortunately, won't have housing unless we have robots and sort of automation to build these things because we don't really have the skill set anymore.
And a lot of these kids don't want to do the jobs.
That's sort of the situation we're in.
I think there is sort of a world where humans and robots work side by side to build massive statues.
And I'm very happy about that as long as we get the massive statues, right?
And I think kind of a white pill to see gentlemen like him taking on these massive projects because everyone's just kind of, I don't know.
I was talking about it with Charles with the Rogue Nationalists, and like the discourse has just gotten so bad where it feels like no information is being exchanged.
It's just people are just engagement farming, just mad all the time.
You know what it feels like in the discourse right now?
Someone tweeted at this at me one time, and it was very, very salient.
It was actually like the best thing I'd ever heard.
Is he's like, the discourse on Twitter right now, especially surrounding the Trump administration, is the exact same thing that you hear on like call-ins for sports radio, like sports radio call-ins, where it's just complaining about the coach non-stop.
You know, maybe like railing on a specific player, usually on the quarterback.
That's it.
That's you don't really learn anything.
You don't really gain any information from this.
You don't, you don't, you're not uplifted, certainly, in any way.
And you're not more informed.
Like when you're listening to sports radio, you're not really getting more informed from the talk from the call-ins, you know, and the callers are coming in and they're just, yeah, just complaining about the coach.
It's like, you're not really like, you're not learning.
You're not, you're not preventing or providing any solutions.
You're just saying, fire the coach.
Let's get a new coach in here.
No commentary on the project.
You know, what's the franchise's, you know, long-term goals?
What victories have we had so far?
Maybe this is a really good coach.
Maybe he has a good win record.
You know, and he's implemented some, you know, nice plays into the playbook.
No, one, one, one bad game, he's got to get fired, you know.
So, the sports radioification of the online discourse really has just gotten out of control.
And having guys like building monuments, I mean, come on, more of that, please.
You know, people like building things.
That's what it's easy for me to say.
I, you know, I'm a podcaster, racially insensitive podcaster, sitting in a gamer chair.
So, I suppose it's easy for me to say, to make that, you know, lodge that sort of complaint, but I do think there's something to it.
I mean, really, you know, let's get some stuff built, especially America 250.
I mean, what are we doing?
We should have statues in every city.
So, with that, you can follow me on X and Instagram at Realtate Brown.
Come give me a follow.
I really want to see you guys on there.
And so, come on over, come follow, and come hang out tonight for Timcast IRL at 8 p.m.
It's going to be a fantastic show.
I'm very excited for it.
I'll be tuning in.
Obviously, I'm not in Austin, but I would love to be.