Michaela Peterson and Candice Owens debate the H-1B visa program, arguing it fuels racism against Indians while abusing the system to hire non-specialized workers like janitors. They critique Elon Musk for amplifying extreme right-wing figures and discuss the resignation of Justin Trudeau alongside a rejection of "woke" culture. The hosts note how independent media now controls narratives after eight years of left-wing policies, citing gender-affirming surgeries for minors as evidence of pushed limits. Ultimately, they praise Donald Trump's instincts on borders and sports while mocking Meghan Markle's tone-deaf Netflix show, concluding that common sense has finally prevailed against distorted reality. [Automatically generated summary]
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MAGA 101 and H-1B Racism00:02:00
This conversation that we're having is something that I would almost refer to as MAGA 101.
This is like a freshman year class in MAGA college.
When I saw the H-1B debate going around, mostly what I saw was racism against Indians.
Steve Bannon and the Die Hard MAGA group, they look at this as a betrayal.
Elon Musk has been at Mar-a-Lago for a bit too long and thinks that that is the sample of what MAGA is and it simply isn't.
I think it's funny that you mentioned an ad hominem attacks after you released a 26-minute video detailing my dad's benzo withdrawal and allergic reactions out on YouTube.
Do you mind if I finish my sentence, Michaela?
You've just been talking for a long time.
Do you mind if I finish it?
Kind of, you still have to.
There's not a time.
There's not any kind of time.
You might have finished my sentence.
Do you mind if I finish my sentence?
I feel like I've let you speak.
I mean, but go ahead, everyone speaking.
The so-called MAGA civil war over visas for skilled workers has put some Trump supporters on a unusual collision course with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
The latter criticize U.S. attitudes and work ethics, saying a culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorium will not produce the best engineers.
Well, this was Steve Bannon's response.
I've said many times that Elon came and Elon's money helped organize the grassroots of it.
In his engineering mind, he saw what the problem was as we saw it and he supported it.
And for that, he gets a place at the table.
There's no doubt.
We loving converts.
But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.
Don't come up and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be.
If you're going to do that, we're going to get and we're going to rip your face off.
Wow.
Well, it's not just a battle of the bros.
Conservatives Argue Over Open Borders00:15:11
Two influential voices on the right, Michaela Peterson and Candice Owens, traded barbs on this issue too.
Peterson said, why did the woke right pretend it was illegal immigration they were against when it turned out it was immigration in general?
At least be honest about it.
There's assimilation into the culture, illegal immigration.
What is the problem other than skin color?
To which Candice Owens replied, Jordan Peterson's daughter thinks the visa debate comes down to Americans being upset about immigrant skin color, lol, and the nerve to call the right woke as she makes it about race.
2025 is going to be so much fun.
Well, indeed, it is, because I'm now going to bring these two together.
Candice Owens, host of the Candice podcast, and Michaela Peterson, co-founder of Peterson Academy, both joined me now.
Welcome to both of you.
Happy New Year to both of you.
And Candice, you said it was going to be fun this year.
Here we go.
What was your big objection to what Michaela said?
Well, first and foremost, just to be someone that's so new in this country and then to immediately castigate or to cast aside everybody that's in here and say, well, guess what?
You're just a bunch of racists.
You don't like brown skin while at the same time referring to us as woke was just mind-boggling to me.
Just as Dee Bannon said, it means that she hasn't spent the time to understand who and what the American people are, what the MAGMA movement is, and why they have concerns about this program.
And so to make sure that everybody around the world understands why this is such a big debate, the H-1B visa program is essentially a foreign worker visa that allows employers to hire workers into quote-unquote specialty programs, essentially for people who have some sort of a specialized knowledge.
But to be clear, the program has been around since 1990, so the results aren't up for debate.
We were just simply lied to about what we were told it was going to do, which was to source the top 1% of talent globally.
Instead, they're using the program to source cashiers, teachers, janitors, PR people.
So, I'm going to have to believe that the American people are very much capable and willing to fulfill those positions and that instead this program has been completely abused to get foreign workers here who then have a pathway to citizenship.
And it lowers worker wages and it's harming the American people.
So I am not fond of it.
And I'll add here that prior to his passing, Lou Dobbs of Fox News looked into the program and he determined that seven out of the 10 H-1B positions were being outsourced from Indian corporations to American corporations.
So it's not globally looking at the 1%.
And five of those seven positions were category one, which essentially just means that they didn't require any specialized knowledge.
These are the janitors, these are the teachers, and they are just taking jobs away from the American people.
So I just found her referring to this as an issue with being brown or Americans having an issue with brown people to be almost comical, to be honest.
And I'd love to hear her further explain that position.
Okay.
Well, we're not going to hear it, Michaela.
Over to you.
So I don't know, Candace, if you're seeing what I'm seeing on X, but when I saw the H-1B debate going around, mostly what I saw was racism against Indians specifically.
And I'm not saying there isn't a problem with the visa issue in the States in general.
Getting top talent here is very difficult.
Like I had a very difficult time getting in and I'm married to an American and it was long and annoying and they don't have a proper way to test people.
So there's plenty of flaws to talk about.
But I think right before the inauguration, having conservatives argue amongst ourselves about an H-1B visa issue when we have an open border is silly, especially when it does kind of dredge up what I called the woke right on X.
And I know you've scoffed at the term the woke right, but it encompasses these people that are focused on anti-Semitism, Jews, and are very, they're pro-America, but their idea of America is this white America, similar to, I guess, what everyone's been arguing about for the last 200 years, whenever anybody new comes into the country.
And I do think it has to do with race.
And I think you can see that from comments on Twitter.
I mean, Vivek put up a picture.
I don't know if you saw it.
It wasn't Vivek.
It was this horrible woman on Twitter.
What's her name?
Something lupus.
She's a doctor.
She goes, what do you guys think about this thoughts?
And it's a picture of Vivek and his brown family.
And one of the most interacted with comments was subversive brown poop-eating parasites.
And that's what flooded my feed.
And I think I had some irritation because I'm, you know, aligning with conservatives because the woke left has been a disaster for America and for Canada and for the West for years.
And it's just frustrating to see them go at each other over something like an H-1B when there are bigger issues like an open border.
And I think people are misunderstanding the H-1B, although it does have its issues as well.
There's also the H-2B, which nobody knows about, and that's for people who are paid lower.
The average rate, the average wage for an H-1B visa is 118K.
So there was all this talk on Twitter about how these people are underpaid and everything.
118K is pretty good.
You know, companies, I don't think most companies, especially tech companies, are hiring H-1Bs to become more successful to make more money.
You're not making more money by getting H-1B visas in.
You're making more money by having a successful company by hiring top talent.
So I don't think we're completely not aligned entirely because I agree the visa process in America is ridiculous and it doesn't test people, like I said, properly.
But I think it's silly to fracture the Conservative Party by arguing about 85,000 H-1B visas when we have an open border.
And I don't like the racism.
Okay.
Candace, I mean, do you see common ground there in what you just heard from Michaela?
And what do you also feel about the fact that for Steve Bannon and the diehard MAGA group, they look at this as a betrayal when they see Vivek and Elon and now Trump as well all piling in enthusiastically supporting this.
They say, well, hang on.
That's not about making America great again.
They're not buying into, we need to get all these brilliant people coming here.
They think the system is being abused, and that it goes against the spirit of MAGA.
So you're seeing a real interesting debate raging about the heart of what MAGA really means.
I think Steve Bannon fully has his finger on the pulse there.
So he's completely right.
And just to respond to the point about seeing racist comments on Twitter, I've heard this argument a lot of times from people where they'll suddenly pretend that if you take a position of something and they can find a racist comment beneath it, then you're on the side of racism.
That's what I'm doing.
That's just called, I'm just saying that literally since the day that I started my accounts on Instagram, I've been called the N-word from left and the right.
It's just welcome to the internet.
You know, doesn't mean that these are the positions that are represented.
In fact, this conversation that we're having is something that I would almost refer to as MAGA 101.
This is like a freshman year class in MAGA college.
I've been hearing this debate, have spoken about this debate on stage.
I mean, I've spoken at more than 100 universities.
And to be frank with you, because I came over from the left, when I first got into this movement, I thought the same thing.
I thought, okay, well, I don't understand what the issue is if it's legal migration.
But I then listened to people and I wanted to understand where people were coming from.
And I opened my mind to what they were saying and realized that they were very much correct.
And I think that's sort of where you get into trouble with the MAGA movement when you just instantly sweep away and condemn everyone and say, well, some people were saying racist stuff about Indians.
And so this entire argument now is based on racism.
It simply isn't.
You know, Vivek, I personally stumped from Vivek.
So if you think that I'm going to be on board with people being racist for him when I went on the ground with him all throughout Iowa when he was running for president, of course not.
I'm also brown myself.
But I understand that this has nothing to do with the merits of the arguments that are being presented here.
And it is just a fact that the H-1B visa, the majority of the people that are coming into this country are not coming in with any extraordinary skills.
They're not coming in because they're a part of the 1%.
It is being completely abused and jobs are being taken away from the American people.
Now, Piers, to your point about the MAGA rift, I'm glad to see it.
I very much agree with Steve Bannon.
I mean, the last estimate that was done, by the way, and this speaks to Michaela, you saying it's just 85,000 people that are allowed annually.
Well, the last estimate that was done in 2019, approximated that 600,000 foreign nationals were here on this visa program, all of them being provided with a pathway to citizenship that doesn't include in two years, you can then get out of that program and become a permanent resident.
Okay.
So they're allowed to stay in this country from up to six years.
They don't apply for permanent residency.
Of course, we can assume that the majority of them do.
And they're allowed to stay up to 10 years if they go to work for the Department of Defense.
Again, all of these applicants have a pathway to citizenship.
So you just imagine you're like, yeah, I just went to work in America as a teacher for a couple of years and I became a citizen or as a janitor for a couple of years and I became a citizen.
It's just, it's not okay.
And I want to be clear all across the board, it's not just the H-1B.
There's a ton of visa programs that are being routinely abused.
And like I said, I have faith in the American people.
I think that the American people can fulfill those positions.
I know they can fulfill those positions.
And so I am not on the side of Elon Musk and Trump in this debate.
And I think that, you know, Elon Musk has been at Mar-a-Lago for a bit too long and thinks that that is the sample of what MAGA is.
And it simply is.
And Steve Bannon has been on the ground and spoken to those people for years.
He understands what they're saying.
And it would be gracious for Elon Musk to kind of step down and recognize that he's simply wrong in this debate.
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I mean, you, you as you posted to me on X, of course, owned by Elon Musk.
You said, we'll have to get together the new year so you can let me finish what I was going to say about Elon Musk.
A lot has happened since I didn't finish that sentence.
Exciting dialogue awaits.
And we did leave people on a slight cliffhanger about Elon Musk.
So now's your chance to finish that sentence and I'll get Michaela to respond.
But I mean, Musk is, he's everywhere right now, literally poking his head into every country, it seems, in the world, particularly my country, where he's just in the last two days.
He's called for the king to dissolve parliament, which he can't actually do.
He's called for Sakir Starma, the prime minister, to be imprisoned.
He's hammered a previous prime minister, Gordon Brown.
He's called another senior member of the cabinet here, an evil woman, Jess Phillips, who's been waging a rape, genocide, apology tour, I think is how he put it.
I mean, this is inflammatory, incendiary stuff.
What do you think his game plan is here?
Well, that was what I was going to say to you.
And for people that haven't watched it, we were able to sit down and speak about a variety of issues, but we did disagree on Elon Musk.
You said that he was a superhero.
And I didn't say that he hadn't done superheroic things.
You know, I thought that he was going to rescue speech on X. Even that's up for debate now, given the H-1B visa debate.
But I was never keen on him essentially buying a seat at the table, which is what he's done, because we don't know what Elon Musk believes.
You know, I am a Christian conservative.
Elon Musk, of course, is going to be at odds with me and my beliefs because he wants to put brain chips in people's minds.
He wants to go to Mars.
You know, these things conflict with me theologically.
You know, I think he's a transhumanist.
What are his perspectives on marriage?
He's had how many different women?
I think he has up to 13 different children.
What is Elon Musk's endgame?
And we have not seen people interview him fairly.
They're either incredibly hostile to him, like you saw with Don Lemon, or they're too friendly to him, and which they just see him as a superhero.
And I would actually like to see someone sit down and flesh out what Elon Musk actually believes.
What is his goal?
What is he trying to contribute?
Because I don't think you can say that you are a conservative if you are not ultimately trying to conserve the nuclear family unit.
And I don't think that he's trying to do any of those things.
And so we're now seeing that, okay, maybe this is about AI for him.
Maybe this is about data collection for him.
Maybe this is about him wanting to be the first person and getting a leg into federal governments so that he can do things that are on a larger scale in terms of artificial intelligence.
I don't know the answer to that.
And not knowing the answer to that made me uncomfortable when people did what we always speak against, which is essentially turn him into a celebrity, that worship him like he's Taylor Swift and think that because he's got tons of money and bought X, that he's now suddenly allowed to direct us on politics.
I just am not into celebrity worship culture.
Michaela, interestingly, Elon Musk began following you on X just three days ago.
And that happened after you complained that you thought YouTube was trying to shadow ban your father Jordan's interview with Tommy Robinson, very controversial figure over here in the UK.
What did you think when Elon began following you?
I mean, I'm an Elon fan, so I kind of had a bit of a fangirl moment.
And I'm not a fan of celebrity culture, like Candace said either.
I don't usually follow that stuff, but I, you know, I appreciate what Elon is doing.
And I think it's totally fair if you're trying to give the world internet and doing what he's doing for the better of civilization, which I totally believe that he has a seat at the table.
He's also brilliant.
So maybe some people don't understand what they're doing, but maybe it's an IQ difference thing.
Well, okay.
I mean, look, I think he's a genius, no question.
But I also think he does, he does seem to amplify to his own gigantic audience.
I mean, I don't know how many gazillion followers he now has, but well over 150 million.
I think two, I think it's 200 million.
He amplifies all sorts of random people, some of whom are utterly appalling, the worst kind of horrible, extreme right-wing headbangers.
And he's giving them this massive platform to spew often complete nonsense.
Now, underpinning it, I think he's well-intentioned.
And if you take the rape scandal in the UK, for example, he's not wrong that it was a disgraceful scandal.
There was an appalling cover-up and there should be a big national inquiry.
But when he calls for the king to dissolve parliament, which he can't actually do, when he calls for the prime minister to be jailed, all these kind of things, when he really personally abuses in the most awful way, Jess Phillips, who's a female MP, when we've had two members of parliament in the UK murdered in the last 10 years, and he's basically putting a massive target on her head for random headbangers to, you know, go after this, as he put it, genocidal rape apologists.
I mean, you couldn't think of a worse thing to say about a woman who's actually campaigned a lot in this area for many years.
Accusations of Islamophobia in UK00:08:44
So I think there is a danger with that Elon doesn't quite perhaps comprehend his own power on his own platform.
I mean, I mean, that's probably true.
I think anybody at his level is going to be impossible to comprehend what kind of power you have.
Having any type of social media following, it's shocking when people agree with you.
So that's definitely true.
I don't know enough about Jess Phillips, but after reading what happened to, I mean, apparently at least 250,000 girls in the UK.
We don't know how many.
I mean, that figure, I think, has been plucked out of thin air, really.
I mean, what we do know.
But then some people have said more, right?
And some people have said less.
It's still an alarming thing.
What we can agree on is that thousands of young girls, very young, mainly underage girls, were systematically raped and abused and drugged and fed alcohol and treated like underage prostitutes by predominantly British Pakistani men in the north of England in up to 50 towns and villages.
That is a horrendous scandal.
And there was an equally horrendous cover-up from right from the bottom, right to the top of local council authorities and councillors to police who are supposed to be doing their job investigating it to government at all levels.
So all of that is true.
And it's been a scandal.
It's not true that mainstream media ignored it.
In fact, it was exposed originally by the Times in the UK, one of the big selling national daily newspapers.
They ran a campaign for many years.
They started it.
They had a whistleblower who'd been one of the victims.
It's not true that Tommy Robinson exposed this in the way he tries to pretend.
And I'm also not sure that people in America fully understand who Tommy Robinson is or what his record is.
I mean, this is a guy who's been to prison three times now.
He was convicted for attacking a police officer, convicted of, as we now know, contempt of court.
He nearly wrecked two of the cases involving the rapists.
Two of their cases and he collapsed because he was outside court saying defamatory things.
He's been convicted of mortgage fraud, convicted of using a fake passport to get into the United States to avoid them discovering his criminal record.
He was a leader of a football hooligan gang in Britain committing endless acts of violence.
This is, you know, this guy is not, I think, the hero that you really want to choose your hill to die on publicly supporting.
And yet many Americans are doing that, which I find quite concerning.
I would have thought it should at least at least make Americans stop when they see that.
And I know you're not American, you're Canadian, but if you take someone like Nigel Farage, who runs the Reform Party in the UK, the fact that he won't have anything to do with Tommy Robinson ought to ring alarm bells to the right in America, I think.
Yeah, I mean, that's all fair.
And as soon as I posted something that said free, it said something like, free Tommy right now, right?
And that gained a lot of support.
And I had a number of people reach out and explain all that to me.
But I don't think somebody like Tommy would have risen to where he's at now and gained the amount of support he had if there hadn't been so much corruption in the UK covering this all up.
Well, I think that may be true.
I think that may be true.
And I also think on that point, just to jump in, I also think not only is that undeniably true, but also he has been deliberately amplified as a kind of bogeyman by the other side because they know he's so flawed and so damaged and so in many ways lacking credibility because of his extensive criminal records and so on.
They're quite happy for him to be the front man having a go at them because they think it gives him a bit of a pass.
I think that can also be true.
Yeah, yeah, agreed.
As for Elon getting involved in it, I think that's probably a reaction because there's been so much jumping up and down about Islamophobia for the last 10-ish years that if people in the UK, especially in the government and police officers, were actually scared to talk about what was going on for fear of being deemed Islamophobic, that's a huge problem.
If we can't discuss, if we can't discuss child rape because we're worried about being called racist.
Like I understand where Candace is coming from saying don't throw the, you know, don't throw the racist term around.
I do get that.
And it's a slippery slope.
I completely understand that.
But I think what happened and what's going on in the UK is so egregious and so awful.
Like I can't think of, I can't think of a lot worse than finding out about something like this, especially given it's been going on for so long.
And especially even people who haven't been talking about it because of the fear of being called Islamophobic.
I can't think of anything worse.
So I can see why Elon's freaking out.
I mean, I agree with you.
And I, and I listen, I've just, I've discussed with Candice before this, this very lazy trait people have of apportioning that kind of label to anybody for absolutely anything to shut down debate.
I've got to say, in the case of Tommy Robinson, I think he's an unashamed Islamophobe.
I mean, this is a guy who, when I interviewed him, once I interviewed him, started waving the Quran around and just openly abusing everything about Islam.
And to me, that is the definition of an Islamophobic person.
So it doesn't mean there aren't people who aren't racist or Islamophobes or sexists or transphobes or any of those things.
It doesn't mean there aren't any.
But it just means you have to be careful about how you throw that kind of accusation around and that your primary motivation is not to shut down debate.
I think Tommy Robinson was right to continue to highlight the scandal of the rape gangs, but he didn't expose it.
And I also think there's a big self-interest with him in spewing deliberate lies about the Muslim community and constantly attacking Islam because it makes him money.
And I'm very cynical about that.
And I think that can also happen.
Candace.
Yeah, I also want to add here, just in ref just regarding Elon Musk shifting gears and even speaking about that issue, you are correct.
Obviously, I follow UK politics to some degree because of who I'm married to.
And I will tell you that it very much seemed to me like he was drudging up this issue because he was getting so much backlash on the H-1B visa.
So I don't even, I don't really know how sincere Elon Musk was when he weighed into that issue at all.
Suddenly, there's no, no one's going to be able to do it.
Do you mind if I finish my sentence, Michaela?
You've just been talking for a long time.
Do you mind if I kind of used to be aware of that?
There's not a time.
There's not a time.
It's hard to address them all.
Do you mind if I finish my sentence?
I feel like I've let you speak.
I mean, a bit, but go ahead.
Everyone's speaking.
Go ahead.
You mind letting me finish my sentence.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Michaela.
So what I was just going to say is it seemed very much to us that he was just trying to shift gears because basically he was trending for almost two weeks over the H-1B visa and he was doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down.
And then suddenly he's just advising on UK politics.
And like you said, this issue hasn't gone on forever.
It was extensively covered by the mainstream media.
It was not brought up by Tommy Robinson.
We can have a discussion about what's going on in the UK.
That's great.
I'm glad that he has spotlighted the issue.
But you are correct that most Americans are not up to date on what's happening there.
So it did seem like a random shift.
And Michaela, I do have to say, you say that you're not into celebrity culture, but the way that you respond regarding Elon Musk is very much like a swifty.
I mean, you haven't even heard what I have to say.
You're defending everything he says and does to the point that all you do is issue ad hominem attacks.
I mean, your first response back when we were speaking about Elon Musk is, well, it must be an IQ thing if people don't understand him.
You keep just calling people stupid.
People are racist.
No, people are having a different opinion than Elon Musk.
And you don't have to have a higher IQ than Elon Musk to have a different opinion from him.
Quite frankly, I don't think he is the most socially sharp person in the entire world.
He's done incredible things.
We can definitely say that he is a genius.
It does not make him write on issues of immigration spanning from here to the UK.
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Psych Med Withdrawal and Criticism00:09:53
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It's ridiculous.
I mean, he's not a king.
Michaela?
I think saying that Elon is upset about child rape because a bunch of people, he doesn't really care about were flapping about about the H-1B visa is ridiculous.
And I think it's funny that you mentioned ad hominem attacks after you released a 26-minute video detailing my dad's benzo withdrawal and allergic reactions out on YouTube.
It's just funny.
Like you're going after me for ad hominin.
Well, actually, now you mentioned that.
I was going to bring that up.
Well, hang on.
Hang on, I was going to bring that up.
For those who didn't, don't know what you're talking about.
Let's play a little clip from that.
Well, I didn't sleep that month.
I didn't sleep for 25 days.
I didn't sleep at all.
I didn't sleep at all for 25 days.
How is that possible?
I'll tell you how it's possible.
You lay in bed, frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours, and then you get up.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah.
No, I knew some cider.
I feel like Joe Rogan is all of us.
I'm listening to that, and it doesn't pass a sniff test.
I'm just going, wait, apple cider.
You didn't sleep for how long?
What are you talking about?
He brings up Michaela, by the way.
That's his daughter.
We're going to get into it.
That explanation does not make sense to me whatsoever.
Again, I'm not a doctor.
I'm not claiming to know how everybody's body reacts to apple cider, but I just don't think that you wouldn't sleep for that long because of it.
Okay.
So Miketa.
Well, I'll come to you in a moment, Candace.
Michaela, how did you feel when you, when you heard about that?
Well, I think it's funny because like we're connected online, Candace.
So if she has an issue with my family, she could literally just message me.
Her husband has my husband's phone number, you know?
So it's just like a weird thing to do.
I don't know where it came from.
As for the apple cider reaction, I've gone over this so many times, but I can like, it's fair if Candace didn't know this.
Although I don't know why you would make a 26 minute video without doing some research.
It wasn't apple cider.
It was a sodium metabisulfide allergy.
And it was near anaphylaxis.
People don't sleep in that state.
And when we went through that, which was horrible, it was horrible.
We had a hard time with the medical system.
We didn't know how to treat it.
It took us like years to figure out what the allergy was.
If you talk to a doctor and say you have that allergy, they go, what's that?
Like, it's not a common allergy, but it's not uncommon.
You can Google it.
And it just seems a little bit cruel to like pull that up.
You also started that video by saying, you know, why is Jordan Peterson's audience, male audience, like diminishing?
Let's get into it, which is just, it's manipulative, right?
It's not true.
So you have this giant audience, Candace, and you say these things as if they're true, which confuses people when they're not.
So I like, I don't know what to say about it.
It's aggravating and I think it's a mean girl high school tactic.
Okay, Candace, you're a mean girl.
Again, accusing me of ad hominem attacks when I feel like she's engaging in them.
Just to be clear and to contextualize this clip, Jordan Peterson was trending.
I cover trends.
I cover the news and I think it's fair to cover topics when they come to the surface.
He was essentially tweeting ad hominem attacks that were written like sonnets.
It was very bizarre and people were going, what's going on with Dr. Jordan Peterson?
And it became a Twitter trend.
And so I covered it.
Is there something wrong with covering a trending topic?
I certainly don't think there is or I wouldn't have a podcast or things to speak about.
Regarding your father's audience, there were a lot of people who, after his addiction and feeling like he was not honest about his addiction, a lot of men who sort of switched off from Jordan Peterson.
I mean, that is just a fact.
I understand and respect that it is your father.
And so you're naturally going to be defensive of him.
And if it was a family member of mine, I would naturally be defensive of him.
But to pretend like I plucked the topic out of pure, out of pure air, simply to be a mean girl and not because it was trending, literally saying that people are wondering what's going on with Jordan Peterson.
I think that's you not being very genuine about why I was discussing it.
And I think that I was tremendously respectful.
I also paid him a huge compliment.
I think his book and what it did for men worldwide at a time when men were being completely stomped on and masculinity was being questioned.
And I said I would never remove that and would never take the credit away from him.
But there have been some things that have just registered to the public as odd.
I didn't make your father trend that day.
So I think he's able to deal with a little bit of criticism.
You want to respond, Michelle?
I guess I'm just confused because Candace said she wasn't into celebrity culture.
So then I thought maybe it was just a personal thing if it's not about a celeb, a celebrity, but maybe I just got that wrong.
I don't know what else I can respond to about that.
People can listen to, can I finish?
Thank you.
People can listen to the 26 minute.
Like you can say, oh, I said something nice at the end.
It's the same thing when you say these things and your tone is off.
You can be like, oh, tone doesn't matter.
You say things sometimes in a bit of a manipulative fashion to get people to think a certain way.
And then when people bring them up, you go, well, those aren't the words that I said, but tone matters too.
Anyway, people can go on YouTube and listen to the 26-minute section of your video on dad and see what they think.
I think it's high school mean girl tactics.
I don't care if you think that's ad hominem either.
Candice?
Well, I would just say that when I was referring to celebrity culture, I meant worshiping people because they're celebrities.
So I think that would make me ideologically consistent.
And like I said, he was trending that day.
I covered it as a trending topic.
It's not a mean girl thing, but it might feel that way to you because it's your father and you have a personal relationship.
You know, I apologize if you are hurt from me covering the news.
But like I said, we have to develop a thicker skin when we're in the public.
How many things are said about me routinely on a daily basis?
If people want to cover after I have, you know, an addiction and people say, hey, after this, I think people lost faith in Candace Owens and that becomes a trending topic.
I think that's fair game.
It may not feel good to me, but I think that it would be fair game and it would be newsworthy.
Okay.
You do know that one-fifth of Americans are on psych meds, right?
Are you aware of the statistics?
Yes.
Are those all people with addictions?
Like, is that your view of people on psych meds, just in general?
No, your father spoke out about his benzo addiction.
So I don't understand why you're asking stigma.
Dependence, benzodependence.
Maybe you don't know anything about this.
If you're on a psych med long term, you form a dependence on it and it's very difficult to get off of.
They're starting to teach this in medical school.
It's a disaster because so many Americans are on psych meds.
So yeah, he suffered from psych med withdrawal because they like they make you form a dependence on it, especially long term.
Now calling it an addiction as if he was on heroin or something is manipulative, you know?
So when we talked about it and we were very honest about what was going on, part of it was to spread awareness that one fifth of Americans are on medications that cause dependence and don't know it.
It's horrible.
People die because of it.
So I think laughing about it is like, it's just, it's not cool.
I certainly don't think I laughed at it.
I think benzodependence is pretty much a euphemism for an addiction.
And if you know anything about my work, that's super crunchy and speaking about why I think medicines are bad because they do create dependencies, which then yield people going onto the streets for something stronger.
I mean, the benzo addiction becomes a heroin addiction because the doctor won't write you the prescription anymore.
So you turn to the streets for something stronger because your body is dependent on it.
I'm sorry that, again, you are offended by this conversation simply because it is your father.
I don't think I've been offensive in my language.
And if you find it to be manipulative, that what I think that it impacted the way that men saw him when they publicly were saying that on Twitter, we covered the tweets that people were writing on that day about how they used to idolize him.
They're so grateful for his book, but this is not the person that they knew.
Again, I'm sorry you're offended by that, but it's just the reality of what happened.
And I can tell this is a sensitive topic for you, but it is what it is.
Michael, I don't know what to say.
I don't think anybody's laughed at it.
I think it's a good conversation to be had.
And no one is more anti-big pharma than me.
I mean, I have an entire series against big pharma.
I don't even know where to start with that.
You know, benzoadics will go to the street for a heroin.
There's just, we were trying to spread awareness about psych med withdrawal.
And we were very honest about what everybody was going through.
I went through psych med withdrawal myself.
It was one of the worst experiences of my life.
It kills people, causes akathesia, which gets makes people suicidal.
It's a terrible side effect.
So that's what we were talking about.
Now, if you want to twist that a little bit and be like, he's losing his audience because he's an addict, you know, I don't really know what to say.
Okay.
I think we've, we've had a robust exchange about that.
And you both made your views very clear.
Let's slightly lighten the mood here.
Turn to some cultural matters that have been in the news in the last few days.
Spreading Awareness on Addiction00:09:15
The Golden Globes last night, Candace, the host, Nikki Glazer, seemed to take us back to the good old days where you could roast the audience and nobody seemed to mind.
Let's take a little look.
Good evening and welcome to the 82nd Golden Globes, Ozempic's biggest night.
But I am not here to roast you tonight.
I want you to know that.
And how could I, really?
You're all so famous, so talented, so powerful.
I mean, you could really do anything.
I mean, except tell the country who to vote for, but it's okay.
You'll get up next time.
I look out and I see some of the hardest working actors in show business.
And by that, I mean your servers.
Yes.
Yes, give it up.
They'll be bringing you your cocktails to drink and your food that you'll look at.
I made some digs about P. Diddy and freak out parties and basically gave them a good old roast.
Is this a sign perhaps that post-Trump's victory, Hollywood needs, it's got to move with the times and get rid of the woke crap?
I certainly hope so.
I mean, I'm looking forward to the next election cycle because we couldn't have sent a stronger message to them this year.
They brought out everyone they could possibly bring out from Beyonce to Taylor Swift to tell us who to vote for, and Americans firmly rejected it.
I mean, I've never seen so much star power in any election of people coming out.
I mean, they dragged, they even tried out M ⁇ M and Americans just forcefully said no.
And I think they're quite embarrassed by that.
And they're realizing that they have no idea what's going on.
They do not have their finger on the pulse of America and that we are laughing at them, that Hollywood is no longer this sparkly, glitter, glittery, unattainable thing.
For the most part, Americans think they're out of touch elitists who don't even touch their own door handles.
So I'm happy to see that.
Her jokes definitely, I mean, I just chuckled a couple of times.
It definitely seems like it's not about just being angry that the country isn't listening to you.
So good for her.
Yeah, I mean, Michaela, I thought it was interesting because since Rookie Gervais bowed out of doing these things or was probably encouraged to, because they couldn't dare take the risk of him taking the piss out of people, it's been crying out for a host to come and do that to just have a bit of fun.
You know, the thing about the woke brigade that I find so unutterably boring is they're so joyless.
Like every single joke they're so offended by.
There's no room for humor anymore because the whole point of humor is it sends up somebody somewhere.
Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with what Candace said and what you said there.
I think everyone's breathed a sigh of relief.
And the people that were concerned for their jobs, especially people in Hollywood, and I don't think that's an excuse for not speaking out because they're just, they were just propagating like evil for years.
So that's not an excuse.
But now that their jobs aren't necessarily in as much jeopardy, people are loosening up.
And I'm pretty thrilled with the direction we're heading in.
Like there's definitely problems.
There's visa problems.
There's immigration problems.
There's like people bickering amongst themselves.
There's problems, but I think we're headed in a really good direction.
And I think Canada might be headed in a good direction too.
Well, I was going to ask you about Canada.
I'm excited.
Because Justin Trudeau has quit.
And many people say, yes, it was down to policies, but also down to just the fact he was the most woke leader in the history of wokedom.
That just happened.
I know that there was like talk a couple of months ago about him stepping down and then nothing happened, but I mean, apparently it's true today, which is huge.
I think most people can get, maybe most people in Canada can't get behind that, but I think it's very exciting.
My only concern is I think the process after he steps down is liberals get to choose another leader.
So maybe they've learned something.
And I know it's only for an interim period and Pierre Polyev is most likely going to take the next election, which will be so good for Canada.
So it's very exciting.
But I've never seen a prime minister.
Maybe it happened when I was very, very little, but I've never seen a prime minister step down.
So I'm not even sure what the process is after that happens.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think it comes from within until there's an election.
I mean, Candace, think about Trudeau's, he was like a lot of woke people.
He was an unbelievable hypocrite, but he wasn't lecturing about racial injustice.
He was putting on blackfaith repeatedly.
It's almost like there wasn't a moment in his life when he hadn't put on black faith to some party.
And yet he felt he had the right, the moral right and self-righteousness to lecture us about stuff like racial injustice.
He just seemed like a bad faith actor from the very beginning.
And I think Americans really got tuned in when we saw how the truckers were treated throughout COVID.
That was absolutely ridiculous.
And so I'm definitely glad to see him go.
He's been a terrible leader.
But sometimes, and this is my faith speaking, these bad things happen for a reason because does awaken us.
It awakens us to how bad things really could get.
And I think that he played his role.
I call him Little Castro.
He definitely played his role and played his part.
And I think jolted Canadians and Americans into what's really happening in this region of the world.
Is that it seems to be happening everywhere?
Partly it's a rejection of incumbent leaders where people are just now, I think probably post-pandemic and all the fallout from that.
They've just lost trust in governments generally.
They're angry, perhaps.
They're impoverished by what's happened and they want change, partly.
But I also think there is an ongoing, pretty dramatic repudiation of wokery, you know, of what woke stands for.
People are just sick of it.
Absolutely.
People are totally sick of it.
And that's why I said, as much as we can hate these individuals, it took them being so radical.
It took them being so left for most of us who were just kind of going along and saying, okay, this is totally fine to realize how extreme things were and to fight for sanity.
We needed the trans lobby and the trans people to come out and say, women can be men and men can be women for us to wake up and stick our head up of the water and go, wait, what are you saying?
What's going on?
And so I welcome that.
I'm glad that it happened.
I'm actually glad even for the Joe Biden presidency.
I know that sounds insane, but for people to realize that you can just fully have a puppet in office who is actually not doing anything to start to question who's really in control of the government, because that wouldn't have happened if we didn't see the obvious mental decline of Joe Biden and wonder who were making those decisions.
So all of these conversations, plus the independent media, is here because of the mistakes that were made throughout COVID and with these sorts of leaders at the helm of their nations.
Yeah, Michael.
Right.
And Michelle, the mere fact that the three of us all have big platforms that are not conventional legacy media shows you the way that it's going and the way people are now consuming information.
It's no longer being controlled by traditional mainstream media.
It's being controlled, the message actually by people like us.
And thank goodness for that.
So that's true.
That's one really good thing that came out of like, I would say the last, I don't know, maybe eight years when it was extremely, extremely left and woke.
I also think it's, I suppose, a good lesson in what people, how far people will go along with something, you know, how far people will follow authority before they turn away.
I was definitely surprised that it got to where it was.
So say even the, you know, the trans kind of mutilation, the surgery that's been going on with underage people in the U.S. and in Western like society, I didn't really think it would get to that.
You know, I remember when dad started speaking out about the trans debate in 2016.
And I thought at the time that he was going too far.
I was like, it's never going to, you know, I just didn't think it would get as bad as it did.
And then we saw what happened with COVID and we saw what happened with the vaccines.
Like it got way worse.
People can get pushed way further than I thought the average people could get pushed without pushing back.
But I think that's a good lesson for at least people like me to learn that you can push the average person very far before they start pushing back against authority.
Yeah, I think a lot of people actually have inherent common sense.
And when Trump won on the night he won, he made a very powerful statement of victory, but he also said that he felt at the core of bringing so many people together to vote for him from so many disparate groups was at the heart of what he was about was a core of common sense.
I agree with him.
Trump, whether you like what comes out of his mouth, the rhetoric, the style, whatever, his gut instincts actually normally are pretty sensible.
You know, he wants a secure border.
He wants not to go to war.
He thinks that biological men should not be destroying women's sport, etc.
These are not outlandish views.
They're probably the views of the vast majority of people.
But we've all been hijacked by the woke brigade, a small number of people, but very vocal into believing that black is white, white is black, and the sky is green when it's blue and so on.
Glamorous Moments in Montecito00:05:10
And eventually people go, you know what?
I've just looked out of the sky and it's not green.
It's blue.
Sorry, you're out of here.
I want to end on something which I don't even really want to do this, but we kind of have to.
Megan Markle and her absurd new venture, Candace.
Yes.
She's going to become just a jolly old normal housewife doing cooking with her jolly little friends.
Let's take a look at this Netflix trailer.
Let's go.
I've always loved taking something pretty ordinary and elevating it.
Surprising people with moments that let them know I was really thinking of them.
What?
This is probably one of the most glamorous moments of my life.
It's magic.
I'm going to share some little tips and tricks.
I see what color I gravitate to and everything goes from there and how you can incorporate these practices every day.
That's what you want.
You want that shape and texture.
Candace, not much leaves me speechless, but I'm kind of speechless.
Can you find the words?
It's amazing, Carrick.
It is absolutely amazing.
Okay.
So, you know, she left the royal family because it was just so unattainable and out of touch.
And here she is in Montecito putting together perfect little baked pies to, do you believe in magic?
Like it's an e-prey love sequel because that's so attainable and relatable.
Right now we can't afford groceries and people can't put gas in their tank.
But yeah, here's Megan Markle showing you that she likes to take something and elevate it because I'm sure this is exactly what she was doing before she met Prince Harry when she was a D-list actress that was like stripping down on suits, but she wants us to believe this is like, this is the real her.
I've never seen someone that just struggles to be a person, like just be a human being.
They don't know.
They sit in a room.
They're like, how can we humanize you?
And she's like, I know.
I'm going to go in full hair and makeup too because I know when I bake with my girlfriends, you know what I'm saying?
I'll invite everyone over.
In a white outfit.
Who cooks in a white outfit?
Literally, no one.
But apparently, we're supposed to relate to this and somehow go, oh, now I see why she left the royal family to essentially create a royal in Montecito.
It's so patently her, so patently tone deaf.
I love it.
I give it an A.
It's also, Michaela, it's so painfully deluded.
I can't work out if she really believes this stuff.
I mean, I knew her a bit before she met Harry, but it just, I watched this with my mouth open, like we all seem to.
And think as nobody told you how you look in this.
I don't know how, I don't even, I don't think I have the words to describe my reaction to that.
Like Candace said, it's, it's super out of touch.
Uh, she must not know how she looks.
Like, it must be as simple as that.
She's like, I have my fan base, they love me, and they're going to love a cooking show.
And then there was about that much thought put into it.
Yeah.
I don't know whose idea this was.
I don't have the words to describe.
It's not even her mansion.
It's a neighbor's friend's mansion, apparently.
But the whole idea of doing a cooking show from a massive mansion in one of the richest enclaves in America in Montecito and pretending you're relatable, as Candace said, is utterly preposterous.
Like, laugh out loud.
It's like the kind of thing you'd do if you were doing a parody spoof about them, isn't it?
It is, but that's what she really has become a parody spoof.
And at the end of the day, look, Netflix wants their pound of flesh.
She owes them.
That's it.
You signed a $100 million deal.
He's got to do and vict this game.
She's got to do something.
And unfortunately, there's just not much for her to do.
So she's trying to lean in and make people think she's some cross between Victoria Beckham and Oprah.
And she's just not.
Everyone sees exactly who you are.
Like Victoria Beckham and David, that's actually who they are.
You know, that's actually where they're from.
They speak about their backgrounds.
It's super cute.
She's somebody that is pretending.
She's been pretending for so long, truly.
She is cursed with being a D-list actress.
And that's what this is.
It's D-list acting, trying to sell normalcy.
None of this is normal.
If I'm a person and I'm sitting in that production room and I'm like, how are we going to produce you and make you likable?
I'm like, girl, you're just going to wake up out of bed.
We're going to see you just be yourself with your kids running in the background, how everybody else cooks.
Like, I've got to hide if I want to film something without the pitter patter of my children's feet.
That's what people want to see.
We want to actually know who you are.
This obviously is not who you are.
I'm never baking that sort of a cake for my friends to elevate it with Mindy Caitling, who also came over and happens to be in full hair and makeup.
Oh my gosh, how glamorous.
Well, the great thing is she's such a unifying force because we all feel exactly the same way.
So after a few little wobbles in this debate, we've all come together in a mutual revulsion of the new Mega Markle project.
But it'll be entertaining, if nothing else, but all for the wrong reasons as far as she's concerned, I suspect.