Tate Brown and Libby Emmons dissect Trump's ultimatum to sign an Iran deal today, analyzing how the seized tanker Tosca and Strait of Hormuz tensions threaten to forge a Russia-China-Iran anti-Western bloc. They critique US strategy against a civilization-state like Iran, contrasting it with Imperial Japan's capitulation, while Emmons warns that Democratic plans to expand the Supreme Court and statehood for D.C. signal a radical power grab. Ultimately, the episode urges conservatives to reject demographic complacency and engage in immediate local grassroots action to prevent liberty's erosion by an expert class. [Automatically generated summary]
This is Tate Brown here holding it down, and I am back with all of you on this beautiful, beautiful Monday morning.
It's actually got really cold again in DC.
I don't know what's going on.
I don't know what's going on with this weather.
I was celebrating, I was popping the champagne last week that summer was upon us, and then all of a sudden, I just get blasted with this cold.
I went to bed like Saturday night and it was hot, so I had the windows open, and then I wake up and there's rain blowing in the house and it's freezing.
I mean, it was a total disaster.
So I don't know what's going on again.
I don't know what's going on with the weather, you know, weather changing methods.
You know, HARP has been discussed.
This could be possibly explaining why there's such volatile weather in Northern Virginia right now.
Some have pointed fingers at Israel, quite frankly.
Maybe this is some recourse from Israel.
I don't know what's going on, but it's getting a little out of hand.
I don't know if I'm ready to break the shorts out, you know, in perpetuity.
I don't know.
With that, we have more pressing issues.
Obviously, Iran, not good news.
I would say not good news coming out of Iran.
Trump came out, well, Via Maria Baratomo, she had said on her show this morning that Trump called her yesterday and said that there was going to be a deal signed today.
So, you know, we knew that this was on the schedule.
We knew that, look, there's going to be another round of talks in Pakistan, Pakistan mediating these peace talks between the US and Iran, and that JD Vance was going to fly back out to Pakistan again to, you know, see if we can move a little more on a peace deal as the ceasefire is, you know, running out, running out of clock.
And Trump said, apparently, he told Maria that, look, a deal's.
Going to be signed.
Like, we're ready to get this over with.
You know, he's, we've won this war like eight times.
According to Trump, we've won this war like eight separate times because it seems like every like three days he says we've won the war.
Which, you know, I guess I'm tired of winning.
You know, I mean, he did warn us and I am at this point a little tired of winning because we've said we've won the war like eight times and it's still going.
So, anyway, you know, he tells Maria yesterday, look, we're going to sign a deal today.
But Iran has come out and said no.
Iran has come out and said, No such deal is going to be signed.
They're still mad about that tanker getting fired on, which we'll get into.
There's honestly a whole bunch of Iran related news that we'll get to.
And we have a few other stories that we'll try to rush.
I'll try to get through the Iran thing pretty quick because I mean, like, you know, it's kind of more of the same in some ways.
That being said, we have Libby Emmons coming on at halftime.
It'll be great, Libby Emmons.
And she'll be discussing James Carvel's comments that he made regarding the Democrat strategy going forward.
You know, a lot of people have been saying, well, the Democrats, you know, when they get back in, you know, they'll just kind of coast along.
But some of the propositions that James Carvel has made, who, I mean, look, he's not as big of a power broker in the DNC like he used to be, but he's still a very prominent voice.
He's still very well connected among all strategists throughout the Democrat Party.
And people listen to him in the Democrat Party when he says, look, we need to make adjustments here.
You do tend to see some movements made among different congressmen, some different power players within the Democrat Party.
So, he is, when he speaks regarding Democrat strategy, you can guarantee that Democrat strategy going forward won't be necessarily divorced from what he has to say.
There's certainly a possibility that that is going to be aspects of his sort of propositions would be consumed and digested within the Democrat Party.
So, we'll get into that.
We'll get into that with Libby.
I'm very excited to bring her on and have a conversation about it.
But before we do, I'm just going to jump straight in here because this is a wild story.
This is, again, This is the clip.
This is kind of what I think is frustrating some people at Iran, the Iran war so far, even among Trump loyalists like myself, is that there's two things you can do here, right?
There's two things when you're approaching war with Iran and how you're going to communicate, how you're going to handle PR.
You can do one of two things, as I see it.
Again, I'm not a geopolitical expert, I don't have security clearances, but there's one of two things you can do.
One is total communication, having press briefings every day, sending your generals out.
To discuss what's going on, give as much transparency as you can with the different members of the press, giving addresses, constantly keeping us updated via social media platforms.
What are we doing?
What's the strategy?
What's the latest?
That is one route you can go, and that's been done before.
I mean, I think if we had social media in the past, obviously, and more of an expanded press pool in the past, we would have seen this through previous.
US engagements, or the second strategy you can do is actually go radio silent.
So give minimal updates, conduct the operation, wrap it up, and only communicate like when you've accomplished objectives.
That's what you would communicate to the American people.
What's going on right now with the Iran operation, this is kind of frustrating, is they're blending both.
So they're giving us information regarding certain aspects of the operation.
Hegseth has been doing this and Trump, not so much.
Trump has mostly just been, again, just kind of declaring that either we won the war and the war is about to be over, or he crashes out on Truth Social and like threatens Iran with like, you know, devastating force.
Again, I don't have a problem.
I'm not like pearl clutching over that per se.
I'm just saying it's kind of one of those moments where it's starting to get a bit hard to believe that this entanglement could be wrapping up because, again, it's just like he comes out and he says, okay, it's going to be done.
He tells Maria here a deal will be signed tonight.
And then in the morning, you check the news and it's all blow up, right?
But Iran is upset about something.
I mean, you're dealing with Iran, right?
We're not dealing with an extraordinarily, you know, we're not dealing with like a democratic, liberal democracy republic with, you know, a set regime and all these things where it's like negotiations, you know, they can move a little bit.
We're dealing with, and this is what the sort of neocon establishment has correct about Iran, actually, is that they are a fundamentalist state insofar as they do not.
They do not negotiate along the basis of material goods, right?
They're not necessarily in it for material goods.
They view the Islamic Republic of Iran as like a civilization, right?
And if this Islamic Republic, so to speak, if this Islamic government collapses, then their civilization as they know it ceases to exist.
So they're negotiating in terms of stuff that's immaterial, right?
They truly are ideological.
And so it's really hard to negotiate with.
An ideology, right?
There's not going to be much room, wiggle room.
So, effectively, I think what we've realized with Iran, and I'm not even sure if this was part of the initial math or part of the initial calculation, is that you can't really just bomb them into submission, they will go down with the ship.
It's looking a little bit more like maybe, I don't know, Imperial Japan in World War II, where it's like you're basically going to have to completely devastate them in order for them to finally capitulate, right?
You're going to have to show such an extreme amount of force that it will basically give them no choice but to surrender.
Trump has told Maria on the phone that there will be a deal signed.
Now, that could just be a throwaway comment, or that could be him sort of laundering this message through.
It's hard to say.
We don't really know.
Now, here's what comes out again.
Again, she said in the clip the state media, Fars, had come out and said Iran's not going to show up.
Iran's not going to show up.
For a variety of reasons.
And so, you know, there's no need for the US to even send a delegation over to Pakistan.
There's no talks.
But then we saw again the report she's referencing from AP that no, they're going to show up.
That was the state media.
They run independently from, you know, the central foreign ministry.
And so you should take what their word, you know, take it for what it's worth, I guess.
But then we get this report from Al Jazeera.
Iran war, Tehran will skip talks as tensions over U.S. ship seizure.
Now, thank goodness, this is one of those articles that just refreshes automatically, which I love those articles, but I hate them for the show because I'll pull up a segment from the website.
And then when I come back, it's refreshed and what I was looking for is gone.
In this case, it's still here, thank goodness.
This was the segment here.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson says government has no plans regarding a new round of talks after the United States seized an Iranian flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
And then obviously, Donald Trump says JD Vance and his team are on the way to Pakistan's capital Islamabad for talks.
Pakistan is anticipating talks happening.
They're tightening security, as you can see, deploying 20,000 security personnel.
That really just shows what's going on here.
And then obviously, people in Europe are starting to cry.
The European leaders are starting to cry uncle over the whole situation because it is.
I've maintained this position and I still will maintain this position.
I'm not ready to declare this is a disaster, declare this is a total failure.
I'm saying as it stands right now, we are in a worse place than we were before the war started.
And a lot of people, it drives them crazy when I say this.
But look, I understand the argument that we're sort of rewiring the global economy.
That is true.
But the question is, will that hold?
Because look, you got to look at what is the ultimate strategic goal, right, in this whole operation.
I would say, from my analysis, that look, the whole goal is to, again, shore up an anti China posture, whether that be in the Middle East, whether that be in the Indo Pacific, whether that be in Europe.
I mean, quite frankly, That is what is sort of breaking down here.
Is again, we're trying to further bolster a position in the world to sort of stitch together a global block against China.
Now, the problem, as I see it, that's happened in the war so far yes, we've taken away Qatar's NLG exports.
I say we, Iran took it away, but you know what I mean.
So, Qatar, who is the global leader in NLG, the liquid natural gas, they are no longer able to ship.
LNG to Taiwan, for example.
Now, like 50% of Taiwan's energy consumption is natural gas.
Well, they got to buy it from somewhere.
So they've been buying it from Australia, who does produce quite a bit of natural gas, and they've been buying it from the United States.
Crude, we've rewired the entire global economy in regards to crude.
We're booming.
I mean, exports are booming in the United States.
Crude exports are booming.
And Japan and South Korea, for example, are now having to buy American crude.
So there's an argument to be made that look, well, that's good.
We've shored up the alliance in the East Pacific.
We've made these countries more reliant.
On the United States.
The problem is that they're paying much higher prices for that oil.
And so you have, yes, you know, you've pulled them off of buying oil from our global adversaries, and they're now buying it from the US.
So they are coupled at the hip to us, so to speak.
But they're paying a much higher price, which is a problem because, again, the main utility of these allies in South Korea and Japan and Taiwan is that they are sort of the key linchpin of our China, our sort of China box-in strategy.
We need those countries.
Firing on all cylinders in order to properly contain China.
I mean, that's absolutely what's going on here.
I mean, I saw reports that look, a lot of the Pacific countries are now having to buy surplus NLG from China, which is a problem.
Japan, South Korea are importing oil from Russia.
That's a problem.
This is what's driven a lot of people crazy throughout Trump's foreign policy.
Now, I'm not necessarily seconding this, I'm just sort of Throwing out there what a lot of people who are right wing, you know, they are like our guys, but what their frustration has been with Trump's foreign policy, specifically in regards, and in addition, Biden, and specifically in regards to Russia, is that the whole Ukraine conflict, right, where we threw everything behind Ukraine, all that does is it further stitches China and Russia together.
So the whole goal, if you're the United States, is you would want to break up this shift towards a multipolar world that had been occurring.
You know, up until recently.
And one way you would do that would be to try and maybe not pit China and Russia against each other, but at least not give them the impetus to further deepen ties, I suppose.
That would be the way to put it.
Now, the problem has been with this war with Iran, Russia has been directly supporting Iran.
I mean, that's been what's going on because, again, you took out Syria, you took out Assad.
So Russia is kind of flailing.
They're like, we don't have any other ally in the region besides Iran, right?
And so what's happened here is, I know Russia has been able to divert some of their resources away from Ukraine and invest it in Iran, which I guess if you're like a Russia hawk, that is a good thing because, again, it sort of strengthens Ukraine's position.
But that war's been a stalemate for like three years.
So nothing's really going to change there.
And I don't even think anything's going to change anytime soon.
But now you have Russia and China both have a direct interest in what is going on in the Middle East in regards to Iran.
And that further deepens their ties.
Look, I know the liberal media, the left wing media will say, well, Trump is a puppet of Putin or Trump is.
Playing softball with Putin.
But Trump's met with Putin one time in the second term.
They met in like last August and was in Anchorage.
Xi and Putin meet all the time.
They meet all the time.
They conduct joint military training all the time.
What's happening right now is that there's been this anti Western, specifically anti American power block that has been developing, that's been stitching themselves together, which is Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
And they've been kind of looking around saying, well, we don't really have any other allies around the world.
So we kind of have to stitch ourselves together.
And Iran, all that's really done is just further deepen the tie between Russia and China.
And honestly, whatever China gets, you know, China getting hit on energy, right?
Like because they, you know, they buy like 20% of their oil from Iran.
All you've really done here is tighten up their ties with Russia.
Because by all accounts, we've seen that they're just importing their energy needs from Russia.
Russia is a massive, you know, they're the gas station of the world in a lot of ways.
So I'm just still skeptical as it stands now.
And I think that we have succeeded on some of our initial objectives, but I think we have, as it stands right now, fallen short on some of those objectives.
I mean, one of them was to, again, either replace the Iranian regime or at least weaken them, right?
And I don't, we certainly haven't replaced them.
And then, as far as weaken them, all that's really happened was we've taken out their leadership, and then the personnel that's replaced that leadership still has the same ideology.
They still have a rabid anti American disposition.
So I just kind of fail to see how this has sort of improved our relationship with Iran or given us any leverage really at all.
Now, the war is not over, things could still develop, but that's kind of the problem the war is not over.
You know, the whole plan was shock and all, bomb Iran into submission, and they would sort of come to the negotiating table.
Table with their tail between their legs.
And we just haven't seen that happen.
And I'm skeptical if, look, Iran's kind of pulled out their trap card here.
Maybe not the trap card, but they've bought back some leverage.
They're refusing to show up to Pakistan.
The United States needs this war to end sooner than Iran does.
Like, victory for Iran, or, you know, and their, from their point of view, is if they can just survive the war.
Victory for Russia, victory for China, is if Iran just survives the war.
Because if they can just survive the war, They can just build back up.
Russia and China can reinvest back into Iran.
And they'll probably reinvest heavily because they realize how vulnerable Iran's position is.
So the only victory condition for the United States is to fully capitulate Iran, whether it be weaken the regime and force them to play ball with the United States, as we've seen with Venezuela, or to just replace the regime, which I don't think is going to happen.
And it's not happened.
It's the reality of the Iran.
So, Iran, OK, you're going to block our ports.
We're just not going to show up for negotiations.
You need these negotiations more than we do.
You know, we don't have a democracy.
We don't have midterms.
We don't have a general election in three years.
We don't have to deal with any of that.
The United States does.
The United States has an hourglass that gets turned over when you start a war.
Trump's base is against forever wars.
I mean, they can tolerate, you know, despite what a lot of people online are saying, where, you know, they're like, oh, MAGA's, you know, done and everyone's, you know, abandoning Trump.
That's, we've seen polling that's not the reality on the ground.
But if this war goes months, you know, and tanks us in the midterms, actually, yeah, there is a chance that Trump's base does start to dissolve a little bit, you know, further, I should say.
Because again, the forever wars is really what frustrated people.
Iraq, I mean, we remember Trump in 2016 railing on Jeb Bush about Iraq.
We all know what's going on there.
So I'll just blast through this quick.
This was yesterday, yesterday morning, regarding Iran sort of striking vessels that were passing through the strait.
Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz, a total violation of our ceasefire agreement.
Many of them were aimed at a French ship, a freighter from the UK.
That wasn't nice, was it?
My representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan.
They will be there tomorrow evening for negotiations.
Iran recently announced that they were closing the strait, which is strange because our blockade has already closed it.
They're helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage.
$500 million a day.
The United States loses nothing.
In fact, many ships are heading right now to the US, Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be the tough guy.
We're offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope that they will take it, because if they don't, the United States is going to knock out every power plant, every single bridge in Iran.
No more, Mr. Nice Guy.
They will come down fast.
They'll come down easy.
And if they don't take the deal, it'll be my honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran by other presidents for the last 47 years.
It's time for the Iran killing machine to end.
President Donald Trump.
Now, the problem is he's made these threats before and hasn't followed through on it.
So, Iran is getting to the point where they just are kind of balking at these messages from the president.
That's just the issue here.
And it pains me to say that, but it's true.
Today, an Iranian flagged cargo ship named Tosca, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost.
As much as an aircraft carrier tried to get past our naval blockade, and it did not go well for them.
The United States Navy guided missile destroyer USS Spruance, my bad guys, intercepted the Tusca, Tausca, and the Gulf of Oman and gave them a fair warning to stop.
The Iranian crew refused lessons, or a Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room.
Right now, the U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel.
The Tusca is under U.S. Treasury sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity.
We have full custody of the ship, and we are seeing what's on board.
Jay Trump and you can see here the video which is actually quite dramatic.
Some people get gay where they're like, okay.
I mean, I don't know.
This guy isn't making this point, but this is the first time the Navy's opened fire on a container ship.
I actually, it's tough to see if we have before, but a lot of people are reacting like, this is a war crime.
Like, that's gay.
This is really cool.
This video is really cool.
It's literally like Arma in real life.
So I'm not, again, I'm not pearl clutching over this necessarily.
It just shows that the situation is very volatile in the region.
This isn't, we don't have total control like I think people are speculating.
And yeah, again, Trump here is saying that they were firing bullets.
And then he made a statement.
Let me go on his Truth Social and find it real quick.
Right here.
Israel never talked me into the war with Iran.
The results of October 7th added to my lifelong opinion that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.
Did I watch and read the fake news pundits and polls in total disbelief?
90% of what they say are lies, made up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as the 2020 election was rigged.
Just like the results in Venezuela, which the media doesn't like talking about, the results in Iran will be amazing.
And if Iran's new leaders, regime change, are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future.
President Donald J. Trump.
We did see Trump basically reprimand the Israelis because they are actively wanting this war to continue.
I do agree that I don't necessarily buy the argument that we had no interest in making any move on Iran until Israel bombed Iran.
That's what Marco Rubio said.
But I don't think that actually told the full story because, again, we built up the largest military buildup in American history around Iran.
And then Israel struck.
So, I mean, like, you could maybe make the argument that Israel jumped the gun, but this idea that we weren't going to make a move on Iran is ludicrous.
Obviously, you don't build up the largest armada in history if you aren't planning on utilizing it in some capacity, even if that's a negotiation strategy.
I don't know.
But again, I agree.
I mean, Trump, this has been his position.
We've seen clips through the 80s that he has viewed Iran as a global adversary, as a problem that needs to be solved.
So, with that, we're going to jump into this next story.
Just put a bow.
We'll see how the negotiations, if Iran even shows up, I guess.
I mean, that's kind of what we are looking for, is that Iran really just to show up.
That would be a W. With that, we're going to get into our next story here.
This was from the great Libby Evans, who will be joining us shortly, regarding James Carvel.
This comment that he made kind of took people aback.
I think they realized that the Democrats are playing for keeps.
The Democrats aren't going to sit back idly, it's going to be the Biden administration on steroids.
Take a look at this from the post millennial Libby Emmons speaking on their Politics War Room podcast.
Political strategists James Carvel and Al Hunt said that when Democrats take back the House in 2026, which they believe is a fight accomplished, oh, a little Latin word there, they should make Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., states to pack the Supreme Court with little justices and hold President Trump, quote, accountable, meaning impeachment.
F it, said Carvel, laying out the plan, eat our dust.
Carvel and Hunt get their way.
The representatives who would come into Congress from both PR and DC would necessarily be leftists and would skew the votes in their favor on issues such as border security, abortion, child sex changes, and international law.
Quote I'm really focused on what they should do when they win the House and maybe the Senate in 2027, and that's to hold Trump accountable as they possibly can.
My bad here.
My throat's going out a little bit.
Quote If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, said Carvel, I think that on day one they should make Puerto Rico and DC a state and they should expand the Supreme Court to 13.
F it.
Eat our dust.
They've done everything they could.
They've held up the 2020 election.
They stole it.
They've stolen the Supreme Court seats.
They've gerrymandered everything they can.
And the only way to fight it is to don't run on it, don't talk about it, just do it.
So, again, this really illustrates my point that I make on the show, on IRL, and on this show as well.
When we're discussing, you know, what direction are the Democrats going to go in 2028 as far as presidential nominee goes.
And you're seeing kind of a similar fracture in the Democrat Party now that, you know, everyone, all eyes are on the Republican Party and the divisions within it, you know, and the broader.
You know, right wing coalition.
But the Democrat Party is also, I think they're kind of more of a 2016 spirit.
You know, 2016, you know, the polling showing like Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush as front runners.
And everyone in the GOP was just like, are we doing, are we seriously, we got to throw up another GOP apparatchik who has nothing to say except for like tax cuts.
You know, that's like their most base position.
Like, we're going to deal, we're going to do that again.
And then Trump comes down the golden escalator and gives them a lever they can pull.
The Democrats are kind of in the same position where everyone in the Republican Party and conservative media is almost christening Gavin Newsom.
They're saying it's an inevitability that Gavin Newsom's going to be the nominee in 2028.
But I look at how the Democrat Party, the general environment, the Democrat Party, they're kind of in an anti establishment mood right now.
I mean, you don't elect Zorhan Mamdani.
Zorhan Mamdani wiping out Andrew Cuomo, that kind of tells you what the mood is in the Democrat Party right now.
I don't know.
I think they're going to go an anti establishment direction.
And James Carvel is like a great example of that.
He is a great example of sort of the anger and frustration in the Democrat Party right now, right?
Does that sound like a man who has any appetite to moderate right now?
Does that sound like a man who just wants to win for winning's sake?
No, that's the sound of a man who sort of feels personally transgressed by what the GOP has been up to.
And this is a man who really just wants to see the Democrat Party get more and more radical.
And I don't think he's alone in that.
I think the majority of Democrats that I speak to personally, when I meet them and I talk to them and I ask them kind of what their thoughts are on the Democrat Party and sort of the different figures of the Democrat Party, they have no appetite to moderate right now.
They're not really keen on just running Andy Bashir to win the election because, again, that's what a lot of GOP folks said to the base they said, well, you elect Scott Walker, that's a guaranteed win, right?
He's guaranteed to beat Hillary Clinton.
Or if you nominate Jeb Bush or nominate Bobby Jindal, that's a guaranteed victory.
And you know, okay, so what?
They're a little lackluster on policy.
They don't think big, they don't dream big.
They're not looking to completely dismantle the previous Obama administration.
We just need to win.
And that's kind of, I think, the mood right now in the Democrat Party is I think a lot of the people in the base are saying, no, we want like a real win.
We want a real transformational presidency.
We want to basically lock out the Republican Party from power in perpetuity.
I mean, you don't nominate, or sorry, you don't make DC and Puerto Rico states if you're not playing for keeps.
You don't pack the Supreme Court unless you're paying for keeps.
When you make moves like that, you are doing that with the full intent of locking the Republican Party out of power forever.
So this is why I say, you know, look, you got to, if you're the Republican Party, You kind of have to believe these people when they say these things, right?
You have to believe the Democrat Party when they say these things.
Like, I understand the frustration with the GOP right now, but like, we're in a pretty dire situation.
So, I think what we'll do is we'll bring in Libby Emmons, the great Libby Emmons, and we'll have a conversation with her regarding Carvel's comments and kind of where she sees how the GOP should react.
Obviously, I would say you're like, Kind of the main attraction on the show.
Really, people are just waiting for me to get out of the way.
I kind of hold them over for the next Libby cast.
So I'm sure everyone in the audience is more than familiar with you, but maybe for those three or four people who don't know who you are, could you give a quick intro of who you are and what you do?
Three year piece that you wrote for the post millennial regarding James Carvel's comments regarding what he would like to see from the Democrat Party if they are to win the House.
And I was kind of making this point is that, look, you know, there's been all this discussion in conservative media regarding, you know, which direction are the Democrats going to go in 2028.
You know, a lot of people have already kind of appointed Gavin Newsom as like, you know, the next Democrat nominee.
But I was looking at what Carvel was saying there and I'm like, does that sound like a man with any appetite to moderate right now?
And I think he probably echoes.
Um, a lot of the same sentiment that you're seeing in the Democrat base right now when I speak to Democrats is they're not looking to just win, they want to win for keeps, they want to lock the Republican Party out of power.
That doesn't seem like a base that's ready to moderate.
So if you see them running a moderate like someone like Gavin Newsom or perhaps Abigail Spanberger, then what you want to do is really watch out for what they're actually intending to do and what they're planning to do.
Spanberger was elected in Virginia as a moderate.
She is far from moderate.
She's icing out ice.
She's flouting immigration laws.
She's allowing women to be murdered at bus stops by criminal illegal immigrants who should have been locked up multiple times in the past where a judiciary had multiple opportunities to lock them up.
This is a man who says one thing and will do whatever it takes, right, to get into power.
But then once he's in power, you will see his very progressive ideology.
And we had an opportunity over the weekend to see what the progressives are up to worldwide.
Governor Tim Waltz, who narrowly missed being our vice president, as well as Senator Chris Murphy, Hillary Clinton via video, Mom Donna via video.
And Bernie Sanders, same, all went over to Barcelona to talk about their massive global progressive agenda.
This is something Newsom is on board with.
James Carville, who of course was famously Bill Clinton's campaign advisor and part of the Clinton administration, he was on board with this.
This is what we're talking about.
We're talking about massive taxes on billionaires.
And I gave this some thought because I thought to myself, I'm not a billionaire.
I want people who make a lot of money to get.
Taxed because they're making that money and they do get taxed, I think something like 40% in New York, stuff like this.
And so I was like, why am I annoyed about massive taxes on billionaires?
Why am I annoyed that you have economists running around the world getting global leaders like Lula, Sanchez in Spain, and Momdani in New York on board with a plan to tax billionaires all over the world so that billionaires have nowhere to run to hide their money?
And here's what I gave it some serious thought.
And here's what I discovered.
I'm not upset with taxing billionaires per se.
What I am upset about is a massive power grab.
And that's what we're looking at when we hear about this.
What they want to do is they want to tax the billionaires.
They want to take that money, they want to put it into government.
And so now instead of billionaires having the money, government has the money.
So now government is the billionaire.
And what does the billionaire government want to do with it?
They want to commission a lot of studies for their cronies.
They want to do a lot of kickbacks to all of their corrupt ideologues who want to run racial reparations studies and whatever else.
And then their ultimate goal is to take all that money and buy up all the housing, right?
Just like they complain about whatever BlackRock or whoever else doing it.
Government, progressives in government want to buy the housing.
They want to provide the jobs.
They want to provide the health care.
They want the entire population to be dependent on the government for all of their things and resources.
And what does that do?
That deprives us of our liberty.
We can trade our liberty for ease, but then we have no liberty.
And that's a real problem.
We heard last week.
Clarence Thomas speaking at the University of Texas, talking about this very thing.
It was absolutely spectacular speech.
Any of you guys who haven't listened to it yet, go find it on YouTube, sit down, and just listen to it because Clarence Thomas is, I mean, he is a gem of our time, right?
He is a national treasure.
So, what we understand when we listen to Thomas talk about the rise of progressivism, starting with our 28th president Woodrow Wilson, how it's clobbered all of our institutions, right?
That long march through the institutions that we hear people talk about, that has happened.
Here we are.
We have a relatively uneducated populace who hears, have the billionaires pay their fair share and think, yeah, have them pay their fair share.
Then I can buy what I need.
Fact of the matter is, no matter how much those billionaires are taxed, you're never going to get that navy blue caddy with the red racing stripes and the tan leather interior, right?
We're never going to get it just because we're taxing billionaires.
We have a better chance of becoming millionaires ourselves and going to buy it.
So that's what's going on here.
And when you have Carvo coming out on this podcast with AI Hunt, And Carville does a podcast.
You know, I don't know if they're weekly or what, but they do a lot of these podcasts.
And he says, Hey, Democrat leaders.
Hey, Democrats who want to run for office, don't tell anybody that this is what you're doing.
But here's the plan.
Don't run on it, right?
Run on whatever else you're running on.
Don't run on this.
But this is the plan.
Get into office, make D.C. and Puerto Rico states.
And then you have what, like 53 senators?
You've got a supermajority, right?
You can't do anything.
And then what you want to do is pack the Supreme Court, which means change it from nine justices to 13, put in all your liberals.
And now you run everything.
And then the plan is to get into the White House, of course, with whoever, you know, whatever puppet progressive leader they have.
So that's the plan.
The plan is just like Gavin Newsom in California and Spanberger in Virginia have stripped the conservatives of their votes with insane gerrymandering practices and then blaming Texas because, you know, they gerrymandered even though they had a massive population change, blah, So when you look at this, the plan is to strip conservatives of power because the progressive.
Left in this country, believe that experts should rule the country, not the people who are governed.
And we know that the government runs with consent of us.
It is there to serve us, not the other way around.
And I would much rather have no comfort in my life, but have my liberty than to be fed with spoons and wearing diapers courtesy of the government.
And I think it's very clear, specifically in regards to the billionaire taxes, that we're talking, because look, there's been this kind of populist surge.
In the Republican Party, really, since Trump came down the escalator.
And, you know, there's been a lot of discussions around economics where they're saying, like, look, sort of conventional GOP, kind of Rockefeller era economics, like, is not working for us.
We need to reshift.
You know, we need to abandon sort of globalism, broadly speaking, and sort of reshift manufacturing back to America, increase wages.
And I remember Trump rather famously talking to Sean Hannity, you know, I don't even know if he had broken 10% of the polls yet.
And Sean Hannity just kind of offhands says, like, oh, of course, you know, the flat tax.
And Trump's like, flat tax.
And he's like, yeah, you know, the flat tax.
He's like, Why wouldn't there be a progressive tax system?
I made more money.
I should pay more.
So that kind of illustrates that there has been this impetus in the GOP over the last 10 years to sort of look at the billionaires and look at them and say, I mean, to your point, they have the money.
Why aren't they paying their share of the tax burden, that sort of thing?
So there's that impulse among conservatives to not take that seriously.
But what you're saying, I think, gets to the heart of what's driving sort of this punishment, I suppose, for lack of a better word, of billionaires on the Democrat side.
Again, a consolidation of power.
Carvel, like, you know, gives away the game there.
She says, We want DC and Puerto Rico to be states.
We want to expand the Supreme Court.
So when you hear that kind of language, you should just assume that any policy that, again, would be an extension of that policy platform would be sort of pushing towards that same goal, where he lays out those policy positions as a way to shore up the Democrat Party's political power.
So you would assume that any other policy that comes in tandem with that would be part of the larger goal of, again, just locking out conservatives from power.
Really, in perpetuity.
Because, I mean, as I see it, again, if you add DC and Puerto Rico as states, you know, the Congress is gone.
I mean, it's the Senate, you know, kiss the Senate goodbye forever.
And in addition to that, I mean, the Supreme Court, you know, which is a little bit of a tougher route forward to make that happen.
Again, it gets the Supreme Court goodbye.
Four justices will nominate 35 year olds.
They'll be on there forever.
It would legitimately plunge us into effectively a one party system.
And besides that point, there's been a lot of frustration among certain aspects of the base.
And they're saying we should just punish the GOP at the midterms for their inaction.
The Save Act is commonly cited as a reason that it's like, well, why do we even need Mitch McConnell?
You might as well have a Democrat.
But as I see it, and this isn't me doing a get out to vote campaign.
Really care about the GOP that much.
I'm just, again, this is more of an anti-Democrat Party vote.
I mean, look at what they're planning.
They're sharpening their knives right now.
I kind of learned after some events over the last year that when the left tells you what they're going to do, they usually follow through on it.
That's what separates them from the Republican Party.
The Republican Party just throws ideas out there and they're like, I don't know, that could be a good idea.
Maybe we'll do it one day.
The Democrat Party is like, yes, when we take power back, we will plunge this knife into your back.
Because they think that they're smarter than us, they think that they're better than us, and they think that they deserve everything we've got, not just our cash, but our votes.
And our kids and our homes and our jobs.
And I don't want any piece of that.
You know, I left New York City, a place that I absolutely love and adore, and moved to someplace where I thought I could put down a house on a piece of land and no one was just going to take it from me.
And if we put these people in the federal government, why wouldn't they just come take it like Mamdani's trying to take everybody's homes in New York City?
And we saw this in Barcelona.
And I can't stress enough how crazy it was to watch this whole thing.
They went on for two days.
Tim Waltz was out there slamming America, saying, you know, Trump is evil and fascist.
Chris Murphy was out there slamming America and Americans.
And that's what they really think of us.
They think experts are better.
And when you talk about, you know, who cares, the GOP sucks anyway, sure, sure they do.
Democrats suck.
The GOP sucks.
Why do you think we have seen so many iterations of a third party starting with, you know, what's his name back there in the 90s?
And those third parties, when they've been started on the conservative side, Have had a really big impact on the GOP.
That's how we got where we are now.
That's how we have Rand Paul.
That's how we have Donald Trump.
That's how we have this populist movement because these things over decades have had an impact.
Do things happen fast enough?
Absolutely not.
But the Democrats want to steal your freedom, and we know that they can do it.
They did it in this crazy time called 2020.
They did take our freedom.
They closed our schools, our churches, took away our jobs, tried to get us all hooked up to government funding so that we wouldn't complain about anything.
And if your government is feeding you and housing you and clothing you and giving you jobs, they can take all those things away.
That's what they can do.
And I don't want a government that can take things away.
I want to be able to take things away from government because that's my right as an American.
That's my right here when I vote.
And so when I think about voting for the GOP or voting for Democrats, I think about what the Democratic Party actually stands for.
And this is something that you'll even hear them say, right?
They'll go out there and they'll talk about, well, we have really good Democrat candidates.
The party doesn't have such great branding right now, but just don't talk about the party.
Get your candidates through.
The Democrat Party is what all of this is about.
Their base is the base that will be voting for these people and will be the ones controlling these people in the end.
These experts who they get in there, who give them the money, will be the ones controlling these candidates.
And we can't forget that.
So when you think about GOP versus Democrat, I'm registered as a Republican.
First time in my life in the past few years is when I registered as a Republican.
I was always sort of a 1986, you know, Catholic, liberal, Democrat, anti abortion, pro union.
Like that was sort of my baseline, free speech stuff.
All of that really changed.
And the issue right now is the GOP great?
No.
Are they the only thing standing between us and losing all of our rights to an expert class that hates us?
And this is why you're seeing a lot of cope right now from conservatives.
And I'm being very precise when I say cope because you're seeing all these headlines that people trot out and they're like, see, the Calvary's coming, right?
You know, we were waiting and finally we're going to get bailed out.
You see headlines like where people are like, you know, conservatives are out breeding liberals.
Right, like you know, conservatives, the birth rate's much higher, and in 50 years, there could be no more liberals.
Or you'll see headlines like Gen Z is the most conservative generation ever, or you'll see like all these different headlines that are coming out.
I see those, and that's true, a lot of those things are true, but it's coke because again, it sort of makes it give us a false sense of security.
Like, okay, thank goodness, like it's been bad, but the Calvary's coming, like we're finally going to get bailed out.
You know, it's about time, like these things happen.
I don't think people realize how close to South Africa we really are, like how close to Brazil.
We really are.
Is again, it sucks.
Honestly, it bothers me to have to come out and say, like, yeah, we probably should be voting for the GOP because I think of like these ghouls like Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell, who I guess he's not running, but you know what I mean?
And I'm like, I don't want to reward those people.
But then again, you just look over at the other side.
You know, they're sharpening, they're not, they're ready to go.
And again, all these long term projections of ways that conservatives will eventually win, I just see those and I'm like, it's just kind of cope.
I mean, it really is because it's like, It doesn't matter what happens in 60 years because, oh, well, okay, there's more conservative than liberal births.
It doesn't matter.
They'll open the border to 30 million illegals and then grant them amnesty.
Congrats, you're done.
You're dead in the water.
I mean, it's just like, it's just not productive.
And I think it's giving the reason I'm hitting on that point specifically is because I'm seeing a lot of complacency right now from people.
I'm seeing a lot of people that are just like resting on their laurels and saying, well, see, the Calvary's coming.
You know, someone's going to come save us.
I knew that would happen.
And they're kind of losing, um, I mean, we could rattle off a million reasons why people are getting distracted and not focusing.
I don't think they realize how desperate things are.
And from my point of view, I think we've kind of ran out of time 10 years ago, and this is really about salvaging this whole republic as it stands.
And I'm not trying to blackmail everyone in the audience, but it's like, because we shouldn't.
I mean, we still have, obviously, we still have kind of this one last fight, so to speak.
But I'm really not confident that we're going to get bailed out of all of this.
Like, I'm not confident that the birth rate and, you know, the presumably the GOP.
Or, sorry, Zoomers being more conservative is going to arrive in time.
When the boomers die off, the GOP's coalition is going to be a mess.
If you feel like, you know, things aren't going well, if you want someone to save you, Be that person, you know, like go run for office if you think that's the right thing to do.
Run for school board, go talk to people, go flyer, go do whatever things you can come up with.
Hold a benefit concert.
I don't know.
Like there's stuff we can all do in our communities.
And it's in our communities that these things really matter, right?
So if you have a congressman, go find your congressman, tell him what you think.
If you have a senator, you know, we all have these guys, go find them, tell them what you think.
Your governor, your mayor, your school board, the principal of your kid's school, whatever it is.
Go make yourself heard.
Get together with your friends.
Make yourselves heard.
Become a coalition.
The only one who's ever going to save you is yourself.
And the only one who's ever going to save this country are the people who get their hands up there, get their own shovel or their hammer, you know, pick your analogy and go for it.
This is not a country that has a founding story or that has myths and fairy tales about people coming to save us.
Save that for the Europeans.
They have their kingdoms and their towers and their whatever else.
They have that.
Here in this country, our founding legends, our myths, Our stories about who we are are about all of us picking up our own tools and getting on with it.
If you don't like where you are, you go somewhere else.
If you don't like who's around, you find new people.
This is a country where we do for ourselves and we do for the people that we love and care about.
And that, I think, is something that can so easily be lost when we look at a government and we say, oh, the government's not doing this.
Government's not taking care of that.
This thing is too expensive.
I don't like this national policy.
Who cares about all of that stuff?
What are you doing?
Are you picking up your stuff?
Are you feeding the people at your church when they put out a call and they say, hey, we need food?
Are you going over there and packing up bags, delivering Thanksgiving baskets?
Go do the thing.
And we're all at fault because it's easier to just sit on our couch and pretend we have not traded our liberty for ease, even though in many cases we have.
But just go do the thing in your community.
Be part of it.
Make this country yours.
And if you feel like it's headed in the wrong direction, you know, it's not your government that's necessarily to blame.
I mean, anyone that's gotten to elected office or has, you know, at least been a nominee, is they'll tell you like these county GOP offices are wide open.
Like if you just go in there and you be like nice to the old people there, again, it is wide open.
I guess what I'm trying to say.
There's not much competition, maybe for Senate, sure, certainly for President, probably even for Congress.
But again, like state, like look how many jokers there are in your state house.
Just look up your state, look up house, and look up scandal.
You're gonna see like ridiculous Looney Tunes level scandals happening because a lot of these people just run unopposed.
There's zero accountability in a lot of these county GOPs.
It is very easy to get in there and mix things up.
It is very easy.
As long as you have like a clean record, you've kept your nose clean, you're not a crazy person, it's actually quite easy to get in there and impose your will.
And even if you are a crazy person, there's this guy who just got elected to like the State Board of Elections or something in Pennsylvania.
And I haven't dug into it yet, but Libs of TikTok and a bunch of other accounts are posting this guy's like very trans and very laying on his bed in lingerie and posting pictures of himself.
You know, this is what I'm kind of imploring to people is that, again, you can just get involved.
I mean, most of these state reps, you talk to them, I mean, they have day jobs.
They have day jobs.
Like, these are very ordinary people.
These aren't, I guess maybe it's the fault maybe of the commentariat that they haven't communicated to the people how.
I'm not saying easy.
I mean, it is a lot of time and you do have to invest, you know, some money.
But again, it's like wide open.
They haven't quite communicated how easy.
Look how the progressives have just swept through the Democrat Party.
You know why that was?
It wasn't because the Democrat establishment just like fell asleep.
No, it's because it's wide open.
Like you can just change things at the grassroots level.
You can get involved because I have a lot of my friends and, you know, they will sort of armchair quarterback all day about what the GOP should be doing, what the commentary should be doing, et cetera, et cetera.
But then when we're at dinner and they give a controversial take, they speak.
Very quietly.
They speak very quietly.
They don't want anyone around them to hear them say that.
And I'm like, if you can't even stand on business at Denny's, what are we doing?
I think you lose a bit of the right to armchair quarterback.
And I'm obviously not in elected office, but I'm going to have a lot of difficulty if I ever wanted to go back into the private sector.
I have like five Media Matters quotes that take up my name when you search it.
I guess that's what I guess I'm trying to say is, you know, you do have to start the boss fight at some point.
And I'm not saying anyone's like, because it's like you can actually, if you're making a lot of money, right?
If you have your own business or you're sort of a local patron, you can influence politics that way.
You can donate to candidates that you like.
You could go down to the county GOP and say, this guy's clearly an establishment shill.
This guy's clearly a neocon.
This guy's got some interesting things to say.
Here's a couple thousand dollars.
Print some flyers off.
Get a door knocker for you.
Like, there's ways that you can basically become a kingpin in your local area by just throwing out a little bit of money and just showing up on these very boring, you know, county GOP meetings or showing up these very boring city council meetings.
It's boring, but you know what?
The progressives love that kind of stuff.
They love going to the boring, they love going in there and mixing things up.
We should probably be behaving that way if we're serious about sort of saving not just this country, but the civilization.
Yeah, so fund it or run yourself or talk to other people about doing it.
I mean, I think that one thing that is true that we're both saying is that we have to be responsible for our own communities.
So when you have American leaders going overseas to blast us and to say that we're all terrible and to say that our government sucks and to promise EU leaders.
Now, you had Murphy, Chris Murphy, promising basically that they were going to take the midterms.
You had Nira Tandon essentially promising they were going to take 2028 because she was over there, this former Biden aide who's a disaster.
These are the people we have representing us for the Democrats on the world stage.
And when you listen to what they say outside of our borders versus what they say to us, you really get a sense of what it is that they're all about.
They're not here for our values, they're not here for our founding principles.
They want to remake those principles.
There's this whole thing going around.
I think it's been a year or two, a couple of years, the Declaration of Interdependence.
Have you seen this?
This is this idea, and they want everyone to sign it where they essentially replace our founding principles with a bunch of nonsense about, you know, I mean, I read through it a couple of times.
I was like, what are you even saying?
Do you know what you're saying?
Do these words actually mean anything?
But this is what they want to do.
They want to overturn our Declaration of Independence.
They want us to move away from that.
And so that's why when you have guys like Clarence Thomas who are out there saying, what are your principles worth?
Are they worth your life?
The answer has to be, oh, yes, they are, because nothing less would have gotten our country away from the British.
And they did this over what, like a 3% tax on stamps or something.
And we're allowing this nonsense to go forward.
You see what's going on in New York City.
That city's going to be destroyed by all of this stuff.
And they're still putting together all of these commissions to study various racial inequities in whatever different area of government.
And these are essentially just kickbacks to their cronies.
None of this is going to.
Do anything for the people of New York City.
And whenever you see a government funding a reparations study, that's just a way to say, I'm going to give a bunch of money to the people who supported me.
And in addition to that, I mean, kind of going back to my earlier point about like cope, I mean, it's a little bit of cope is again, people say, well, Zoran's going to destroy the city and all the big companies and billionaires are leaving the banking industry or relocate.
And they say the same thing about California.
They said, well, California, you know, Silicon Valley, they all, a lot of them moved to Austin.
That's true.
But they've moved back now.
And again, there's so much institutional power built up in those cities, in New York City and San Francisco, that I agree like 30, 40 years of Zoran might shake out a lot of those sort of institutions.
But again, in the short term, a lot of them just have to play ball.
I mean, we saw this.
I mean, that's what that Jacob Savage piece broke open that was in Compact Magazine is that most of these big companies aren't really ideological.
They just kind of follow the incentive structures that are set up.
So again, if there's directives coming down from their local government that you have to have these DEI requirements, that you have to have these equity requirements.
A lot of them just play ball.
It takes a lot of pressure for them to actually just get up and move out of town.
Again, some of them have, and that's been reported on extensively.
But again, if you walk around the streets of New York, you're going to see massive companies with their headquarters there, and their entire E-suite has to deal with the New York City government.
It's going to take a lot for them to relocate out of town.
So that's why I'm like, we shouldn't bank on the red states bailing us out of this because it's like, for one, I mean, the state of the GOP, but two, a lot of these institutions just stay put in New York and just kind of have to play ball.
And they're going to take that out on us.
So it does affect people in the red states, what happens in New York City, because a company headquartered in New York City.
Again, they have operations that occur all over these red states.
All those directives are going to come from New York City.
Like, this is all interconnected.
We are one nation here.
And I guess that's why I'm like, I don't know if cope is a bit of a harsh word, but it's like people are just banking on, well, if he raises the taxes, they'll just leave.
And it's like a lot of them won't.
And a lot of them, quite frankly, are signed up.
They still are all behind Zoran.
They do have some sort of ideological drive to them.
And it's just like, we shouldn't bank on that happening because if we look at how California has worked, they've just become more powerful and more powerful and more powerful.
On IRL soon because we're desperately needing some of her analysis in these times as we approach the midterms.
Again, I'm not really, this is that whole diatribe that I engaged on is not a pro GOP position.
Believe me, I want to see a reshaping of the GOP as much as the next guy.
I'm just trying to illustrate the point that you shouldn't kneecap yourself and purposefully sort of intentionally reward the Democrat Party because, again, I just reject the notion that the GOP will like learn their lesson.
No, you just have to force the GOP into submission through the primaries.
Through money, etc., etc., it's a bit more complicated than just like, oh, they'll lose and have a come to Jesus moment.
It's like, no, they'll lose and be like, it's the Trump populism that cost us.
Let's just go back to neoconservatism.
That will probably be the lesson that the GOP learns if I had to take a guess.
So, with that, you can find me on X and Instagram at Real Tape Brown.
Thank you very much for watching.
Come give me a follow on X, and we'll be back tonight for Tim Castellar at 8 p.m.