Uncensored - Piers Morgan - “DESTROYING This Country!” Government SHUTDOWN + Trump Gaza Deal | With Victor Davis Hanson
Aired: 2025-10-06
Duration: 01:05:13


=== A Better Deal Than War (15:13) ===

[00:00:00]  Peace in the Middle East for the first time in, they say, really, 3,000 years.
[00:00:05]  And I think it's a brilliant deal and giving prosperity to the Palestinian people, and God knows they deserve it.
[00:00:11]  He's transactional, and he does want peace.
[00:00:14]  And again, I think his motives are humanitarian.
[00:00:16]  Everything is more expensive since Trump was in office.
[00:00:19]  People are starving to death in this country because the economy sucks.
[00:00:24]  Just like they're peeing on us and telling us it's raining.
[00:00:27]  We pay $5.70 a gallon for gas.
[00:00:29]  That didn't come from Donald Trump.
[00:00:31]  So don't blame everything on him.
[00:00:33]  The reason why nobody can afford home insurance anymore is because climate change is devastating the coast.
[00:00:39]  That is a complete fantasy.
[00:00:41]  Climate change.
[00:00:42]  Are you a climate change denier?
[00:00:44]  Or what are you, a climate change exaggerator or fanaticist?
[00:00:47]  It was the tightest, closest presidential element.
[00:00:52]  There was active voter suppression.
[00:00:55]  What she cheated there.
[00:00:56]  Jalenda.
[00:00:58]  There will be a man.
[00:01:01]  The U.S. government shutdown has unleashed an almighty blame game in U.S. politics.
[00:01:05]  And much the same can be said of Carmela Harris's new book in which she castigates just about everybody other than herself for November's crushing defeat.
[00:01:13]  Her latest eyebrow-raising claim on the promotional trail is that President Trump has no mandate.
[00:01:19]  Here's the other thing that is quite unprecedented.
[00:01:23]  And it was the tightest, closest presidential everlasting.
[00:01:30]  In the 21st century, it is not a mandate.
[00:01:36]  It is not a mandate.
[00:01:39]  It is not a mandate.
[00:01:42]  Last time I checked, he literally won everything.
[00:01:46]  That's called a mandate.
[00:01:48]  So what Kamala's attacks on Trump becoming a self-inflicted boomerang smack in the face of the Democrats is the same now true of the shutdown crisis, which they'd hoped to pin on the president himself.
[00:01:57]  And the question looming over almost everything else in the world right now, is the war in Gaza finally about to end?
[00:02:03]  It's a great deal for Israel.
[00:02:05]  It's a great deal for the entire Arab world, Muslim world, and world.
[00:02:09]  So we're very happy about that.
[00:02:14]  I think very soon.
[00:02:15]  They're in negotiation right now as we speak.
[00:02:18]  They've started the negotiation.
[00:02:20]  It'll last a couple of days.
[00:02:22]  We'll see how it turns out.
[00:02:23]  But I'm hearing it's going very well.
[00:02:25]  Well, joining me to debate all this is the real wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, the historian, author, and commentator Victor Davis Hansen, Palestinian-American journalist Omar Bada, the former Republican congressman who writes social contract on substat, Joe Walsh, and the Texas State Representative and Democratic candidate for the U.S. House, Jolanda Jones, making her uncensored debut.
[00:02:45]  So welcome to all of you.
[00:02:47]  Jordan Belfort, let me start with you.
[00:02:50]  You've done a lot of big deals in your time.
[00:02:51]  There aren't many bigger deals really in the world than trying to forge peace in the Middle East, nor more complicated ones to actually succeed at doing.
[00:03:02]  Are we on the verge of a bit of history here with Trump, do you think?
[00:03:07]  It looks like it.
[00:03:08]  I think it's a brilliant deal.
[00:03:09]  I mean, I read through it carefully.
[00:03:12]  And I think what it really addresses is like the key thing of giving prosperity to the Palestinian people.
[00:03:19]  And God knows they deserve it at this point.
[00:03:21]  I mean, I think that without prosperity, you're always going to have massive problems there.
[00:03:25]  I mean, of course, there's the ideological thing, whose land is it, but you're never going to resolve that.
[00:03:29]  I don't think that's ever going away, at least not in my lifetime.
[00:03:32]  But I think the fact that a good part of this is about rebuilding and allowing this area to thrive economically and giving people freedom of choice.
[00:03:40]  They can stay, they can go, they can build lives.
[00:03:43]  I think that is really the cornerstone of what can make this super successful.
[00:03:48]  And also getting Hamas out.
[00:03:50]  They're no friend of the Palestinian people.
[00:03:51]  I think the Palestinian people are oppressed by Hamas.
[00:03:56]  You know, massive money went in there for years and years.
[00:03:58]  They use the big tunnels and buy weapons.
[00:04:00]  So I think that, you know, on its face, this plan is brilliant.
[00:04:04]  And I sincerely hope that it works out.
[00:04:06]  Jolanda, welcome to Uncensored.
[00:04:09]  Would you give Donald Trump credit if this works and this war ends, that he has personally barreled this through?
[00:04:18]  Will I give Donald Trump credit?
[00:04:21]  Interesting question.
[00:04:22]  I don't know.
[00:04:23]  I hope it works.
[00:04:24]  I hope this war is over.
[00:04:26]  I hope the hostages are released on both sides, whether living or deceased.
[00:04:31]  I hope that there's unilateral disarmament.
[00:04:34]  But Trump is taking credit for it.
[00:04:37]  I'm presuming that if it happens, he did it.
[00:04:39]  But I have my fingers crossed that it'll work.
[00:04:43]  But I just don't know because I think we have a number of people who I don't trust Trump.
[00:04:48]  I don't trust Netanyahu.
[00:04:50]  I don't trust Hamas.
[00:04:51]  So we'll just have to see.
[00:04:53]  I mean, at some stage, he sort of moves beyond a question of trust and a question of reality, though, right?
[00:04:59]  I mean, you know, you can distrust every person involved in these negotiations and yet still will them to be successful.
[00:05:06]  And, you know, I predicted at the start of this year that Donald Trump, if he succeeded in getting a peace deal here, would deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:05:16]  If this works, do you think he should get the Nobel Peace Prize?
[00:05:19]  Unless remember, Barack Obama got one after eight months of his tenure as president simply for making a couple of fancy speeches.
[00:05:28]  He also found Osama bin Laden, but I think that's a- Well, that came after he got the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:05:35]  I believe that if the war in the Middle East ends and that's it, perhaps, because it's been going on since the beginning of time.
[00:05:45]  So, yes, but we'll see.
[00:05:46]  Trump always makes promises and they don't always come through.
[00:05:50]  Okay, Victor Davis Hansen, you know, the thing, Trump is a very divisive character.
[00:05:55]  He remains a very divisive character.
[00:05:57]  Whenever I defend him about anything, I get massively attacked.
[00:06:00]  I don't care because I try and see, you know, the trees in the wood.
[00:06:07]  I think with this deal, what it says to me is that Donald Trump, at his core, is somebody who hates war.
[00:06:14]  He doesn't want to go to war if he can absolutely avoid it.
[00:06:18]  He's not declared war on anyone in either of his terms as president.
[00:06:23]  He's someone who does the occasional, pretty surgical strike, but really spends most of his time trying to find peace to existing conflict.
[00:06:33]  And we see that whether it's Ukraine or obviously in the Middle East now.
[00:06:36]  But it just feels to me that there's real momentum here.
[00:06:39]  And that if this works, Trump should get tremendous credit for this.
[00:06:45]  Yeah, he said that to the Saudis.
[00:06:47]  He said that war doesn't make sense.
[00:06:49]  I don't know whether he was talking as a builder and it doesn't pencil out to destroy things rather than to build them.
[00:06:54]  But he's the only one also that's talking about the million and a half dead, wounded, and missing in Ukraine.
[00:07:01]  That's all he talks about.
[00:07:02]  It's a waste, a waste, a waste.
[00:07:03]  And he's saying the same thing about Gaza and what happened on October 7th.
[00:07:08]  The other thing really quickly, Pierre is he's transactional.
[00:07:10]  He's not an ideologue.
[00:07:12]  So he hits the Iranian nuclear facility.
[00:07:15]  They hit back in a ceremonial performance art attack on our base and gutter.
[00:07:21]  And then all of a sudden he says, I want to make Iran great again.
[00:07:23]  That's it.
[00:07:24]  We're not going to retaliate.
[00:07:25]  And the same thing with Gaza.
[00:07:27]  I mean, he's a friend of Netanyahu.
[00:07:29]  He's a friend of Israel.
[00:07:30]  And all of a sudden, he tells Netanyahu that's enough.
[00:07:34]  And so he's transactional.
[00:07:36]  He does want peace.
[00:07:37]  And again, I think his motives are humanitarian, but he's also a pragmatic.
[00:07:41]  And he thinks that the Middle East, that corridor along Gaza, can be, as he says, another Dubai.
[00:07:46]  I don't know if that's possible.
[00:07:48]  The biggest obstacle very quickly is that the Arab community doesn't want Hamas.
[00:07:55]  The Israelis don't want them.
[00:07:56]  The Western Europeans don't want them.
[00:07:58]  We don't want them.
[00:07:59]  I don't think the Gazan people want them, but that's not the same thing as them having, I mean, had one election one time 20 years ago and they're still there.
[00:08:07]  It's going to be very hard for them to be, I don't know what the word is, delisted or rehabilitated.
[00:08:15]  I don't think that's possible, but that's the big sticking point.
[00:08:18]  I mean, it could be, of course, that the deal in the end is that there is a guarantee of safety for the future of Hamas commanders.
[00:08:27]  That often is how these things get resolved, where they agree to give up power in return for their own personal security.
[00:08:36]  Yeah, I think that's true.
[00:08:37]  I think they all know that they're on a particular list and their number comes up pretty soon.
[00:08:43]  And that would be a powerful incentive.
[00:08:45]  But it's also a powerful incentive.
[00:08:47]  They've made a lot of money.
[00:08:48]  There's a lot of people in Ghatter that are billionaires, at least three or four of them.
[00:08:52]  And they don't represent the people in the sense that they divert funds for this forever war that they're waging.
[00:08:59]  But we'll see.
[00:09:00]  Yeah, I mean, it's certainly an exciting development here.
[00:09:03]  Omar Bada, I mean, I saw even Mehdi Hassan, who's giving credit for a lot of this deal.
[00:09:10]  He thinks a lot of it makes sense, not all of it.
[00:09:12]  He has issues with some of it.
[00:09:14]  But that was a surprising concession to a plan put forward by somebody he detests.
[00:09:20]  What is your view of this Trump plan?
[00:09:23]  Look, I mean, anything that stops a two-year genocide certainly has to be welcome.
[00:09:28]  What we're watching right now is the complete annihilation of an entire people, the deliberate killing of children, the starving of entire civilian population.
[00:09:36]  So yes, anything that could have put a stop to this, you would have to welcome it.
[00:09:39]  But I think it's really important to press on the fact that if you look at the totality of the 20-point plan, it's frankly ridiculous because it puts us back precisely at the point that led us here in the first place, which is that it says nothing about the Palestinian people's right to live as a free people in their own land.
[00:09:57]  It says that Gaza is going to be administered by some sort of board of peace that is led by Trump himself and by Tony Blair, two people whose records of crimes in the Middle East, frankly, are fairly lengthy.
[00:10:10]  That itself is laughable.
[00:10:11]  And the fact that then Israel gets to retain a security perimeter inside Gaza so they never have to fully withdraw.
[00:10:18]  And it's up to them when they decide to withdraw.
[00:10:20]  You're effectively putting Palestinians once again under Israeli control and domination.
[00:10:24]  And that is not going to solve the situation long term.
[00:10:26]  So yes, it's welcome to stop the killing and starving that we're witnessing right now.
[00:10:30]  It's frankly insane that it took two years for us to reach the conclusion that somebody has to put a stop to the way Israel is conducting itself.
[00:10:37]  But we're not dealing with a long-term situation and we're not dealing with the fundamental problem, which is Palestinians are still not going to be a free people.
[00:10:45]  Just on the point of Hamas specifically, it's a done deal.
[00:10:48]  Hamas has already conceded many months ago that they're willing to give up governing Gaza.
[00:10:53]  So that's not even on the table anymore.
[00:10:55]  The question is, what is the future of Gaza?
[00:10:58]  And frankly, I'm worried that Netanyahu is still angling for a way to continue this genocide or to put, you know, to re-impose Israeli dominance over Gaza.
[00:11:08]  And he's playing Trump.
[00:11:09]  And we're in a situation where we're going to have to see who gets their way.
[00:11:12]  But I'm not optimistic because I don't think Trump is particularly knowledgeable or sophisticated about any of this.
[00:11:18]  He still looks at this from the term from the perspective of a possible real estate deal and what money could be made instead of trying to solve a fundamental problem of a people who are not free.
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[00:12:26]  But do you accept that with their actions on October the 7th, which is two years ago tomorrow, do you accept that with the scale of that terror attack, that Hamas surrendered right then and there any right to be part of any government after all this?
[00:12:44]  Yeah, if that is the argument, and I have no problem with it, then the Israeli government has long surrendered its right to continue governing any part of historic Palestine because there are crimes against Palestinians even before October 7th.
[00:12:57]  And that's a point that nobody talks about.
[00:12:59]  Even before October 7th, Israeli crimes against Palestinians are far greater than anything that had happened on October 7th.
[00:13:05]  And that, if you erase that, if you erase the fact that hundreds of Palestinian children were massacred in Gaza before October 7th by the Israeli military, if you erase the fact that Palestinians were never allowed to be a free people in Gaza or the West Bank and they're treated as second-class citizens inside Israel itself and many of them are not are refused, are not allowed to return to their homes.
[00:13:25]  If you erase all that, then yes, what you're saying makes sense.
[00:13:28]  But in a context in which Israeli government crimes against Palestinians are infinitely greater, it's fine that we're at a point where we're saying, okay, fine, Hamas is not the right leadership.
[00:13:37]  They've done horrible things and no doubt they have.
[00:13:39]  But the one-sided way we deal with this question, I think, is deeply frustrating, that we continue to treat Israel as the protagonist and Palestinians as just, you know, some people that we just can be ruled by whoever we decide to do for them, instead of looking at the fundamental problem here in Israeli society and the fact that a majority of Israelis support genocidal policies, vote for people like Bentimen Netanyahu and Smochert and Ben Geer to rule the country.
[00:14:06]  That itself is a problem, but we give Israelis the right to self-determine who leads them.
[00:14:11]  But we're constantly talking about how we can't accept that for Palestinians and somebody from the outside has to determine who rules Palestinians.
[00:14:17]  That's a double standard that nobody has been able to address.
[00:14:20]  Okay, Joe Walsh, it's been interesting to see the reaction of the Arab world to this proposal, almost unanimous support for it, albeit with some caveats.
[00:14:30]  I mean, no one assumes this is going to be the final draft of any final resolution here.
[00:14:36]  But it certainly seems like everyone, there's real momentum here.
[00:14:40]  And, you know, it may well be that Trump is not all over every spit and cough of every part of this deal, but he is a big picture guy.
[00:14:48]  And actually, in the end, if his vision for Gaza is that the Palestinians get to stay there, which is different to the vision of people like Smodrich and Ben-Gavir, that they get to stay there and that eventually they have their own government, which oversees both Gaza and the West Bank, and that the West Bank, as Trump has apparently made clear to Netanyahu, is a red line that the Israelis cannot take the West Bank.

=== Social Media Pressure on Netanyahu (03:52) ===

[00:15:13]  I would say that given where this has been looking for the last few months, this is a much better deal, albeit I totally hear where Omar's coming from in relation to ultimately you have to get, I think, to a two-state solution.
[00:15:26]  But it certainly seems like we've got real momentum to a place that is going to be a lot better for the Palestinians than it looked a few months ago.
[00:15:34]  Oh, I agree, Pierce, and you make the key point.
[00:15:37]  Look, the only way to peace in the Middle East has always been that the moderate Arab Muslim world allies with Israel, right?
[00:15:47]  Against the Islamists, against Islamic terrorists.
[00:15:51]  That's the only way you're going to get to peace.
[00:15:54]  And I agree with Omar, the Palestinian people need to be empowered.
[00:15:59]  But the way to do that is to get rid of Hamas and empower the Palestinian people to work with kind of a multi-nation Arab coalition to initially take over and run Gaza until some sort of a neighbor can be put in place by the people of Gaza, by the Palestinian people.
[00:16:25]  Israel is not going to live next door ever again to an organization like Hamas.
[00:16:31]  That's clear.
[00:16:33]  So, yes, unify the moderate Arab world with Israel.
[00:16:37]  That's ultimately the best way to get there.
[00:16:40]  I want to play a clip.
[00:16:42]  And Jordan, I'll come back to you here.
[00:16:43]  This is Van Jones on the Bill Maher Show.
[00:16:45]  Let's take a listen.
[00:16:47]  But isn't part of that because we had to fold everything into critical race theory?
[00:16:51]  And somehow the Middle East became part of, you know, I see it differently.
[00:16:58]  And I love this conversation because I think people, those of us who went to college, give a lot more credit to college courses for how the world works than I do.
[00:17:07]  This is not about critical race theory on college campus.
[00:17:10]  This is about Iran.
[00:17:11]  Iran and Qatar have come up with a disinformation campaign that they are running through TikTok and Instagram that is massive.
[00:17:19]  If you are a young person, you open up your phone and all you see is dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy, Dead Gaza Baby, Dead Gaza Baby.
[00:17:30]  That's basically where all these.
[00:17:34]  So that's not DEI.
[00:17:38]  That is a geopolitical adversary that is deliberately trying to divide the West against itself.
[00:17:44]  Now, understandably, that provoked a lot of outrage because it was clearly a pretty crass thing to say.
[00:17:50]  And the sort of laughter seemed very inappropriate to what he said.
[00:17:54]  He then apologized on X saying, I made a comment on real time of Bill Maher about the war in Gaza that was insensitive and hurtful.
[00:18:01]  I apologize.
[00:18:01]  The suffering of the people of Gaza, especially the children, is not a punchline.
[00:18:05]  I'm sorry it came over that way.
[00:18:06]  What's happening to children in Gaza is heartbreaking.
[00:18:09]  And he goes on to, again, reiterate his apology.
[00:18:12]  It's a very sincere apology.
[00:18:14]  But I think the point I would make, Jordan, about that was these are real images that you see.
[00:18:19]  I mean, it's not part of a disinformation campaign coming from anyone.
[00:18:24]  You know, I see it all day long on my social media.
[00:18:27]  And the reality about this war and why I think Israel has become more and more unpopular, this government in the way it's prosecuted the war, is that for the first time, a younger generation in particular are able to follow this in real time with real images of babies getting killed on an hourly basis in Gaza.
[00:18:48]  That is a fact.
[00:18:50]  And I think the social media pressure has played a massive part, I think, in potentially bringing Netanyahu to heel here.
[00:19:03]  I guess it's a fact.
[00:19:04]  I mean, but here's the thing.

=== Trusting Real Images Online (03:10) ===

[00:19:05]  I don't believe a single thing I see on TikTok anymore.
[00:19:09]  I can barely use TikTok now because it's mostly AI.
[00:19:13]  I'm not saying it's not happening.
[00:19:15]  All I'm saying is to look at social media and believe anything you see anymore is almost like insane.
[00:19:22]  I think that like 80 to 90% of my feed is not real.
[00:19:26]  Really?
[00:19:27]  So, and again, yeah, yes.
[00:19:30]  And it's not just with Gaza.
[00:19:32]  I'm talking everything.
[00:19:34]  It's just like everything that you see with lions jumping up and trying to catch their babies in the air that are being taken by hawks.
[00:19:41]  I mean, it's non-stop.
[00:19:43]  So it's very, very difficult right now to look at social media, look at these feeds and really know that anything you're seeing is actually real.
[00:19:52]  And I'm not saying it's not real.
[00:19:53]  All I'm saying is that I do not, it's really sad.
[00:19:57]  I used to go on TikTok.
[00:19:58]  I used to go on Instagram.
[00:19:59]  Instagram is not as bad, by the way, but I used to go on TikTok and try to get some news.
[00:20:03]  And now I find it impossible to find anything meaningful there because I'm always questioning, is what I'm seeing real?
[00:20:11]  Is what I'm seeing propaganda?
[00:20:12]  And it's probably just AI.
[00:20:15]  So again, I don't put any stock in anything I see on social media.
[00:20:20]  That's where I stand on it.
[00:20:21]  You know, Victor, I mean, that is a disturbing reality.
[00:20:25]  I'll come to the Van Jones thing in a moment, but I've noticed the same trend that more and more stuff I'm seeing is clearly AI.
[00:20:33]  AI is getting more and more exponentially powerful minute by minute.
[00:20:37]  You know, I was with a surgeon in LA playing golf recently who said that he'd had three weeks away from his workplace to go off and do something.
[00:20:45]  And when he came back, the rate of progress of AI in his area was off the charts in three weeks.
[00:20:54]  And we were talking about what that means for medicine and health.
[00:20:57]  And obviously, it could mean incredibly exciting things.
[00:21:00]  But in other areas, it can also be very dangerous.
[00:21:03]  You know, what do you feel about the AI part of all this?
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=== TikTok Purchase and Free Speech (09:31) ===

[00:22:15]  Well, let me just say one more thing as well.
[00:22:18]  So you combine that with also the fact that the algorithm is showing you more and more of what they think you want to see.
[00:22:24]  So people who are, you know, pro-Gaza are getting fed that like in spades.
[00:22:29]  People who are pro-Israel are seeing their own feet.
[00:22:32]  So you're taking AI, then combining it with that they want to keep you seeing what they think you want to see.
[00:22:38]  So everyone ends up in their own echo chamber.
[00:22:40]  We end up getting more divided.
[00:22:42]  You know, everything seems more exaggerated.
[00:22:44]  And again, if one baby's killed, it's one baby too many in my book.
[00:22:48]  Okay.
[00:22:49]  But again, I don't even know what to say anymore because, you know, what do you believe at this point?
[00:22:54]  And I really think there needs to be something on TikTok and Instagram anywhere.
[00:22:59]  It has to be, you know, really disclosed.
[00:23:02]  Is this real or is this being generated with AI?
[00:23:05]  I think it's a really important point.
[00:23:07]  Victor, what do you think of this?
[00:23:09]  Yeah, well, I agree.
[00:23:11]  But Van Jones, I wouldn't take too seriously.
[00:23:14]  Right before he said that, Piers, he said that the news about the Middle East in general and Israel in particular was because they were Jews.
[00:23:24]  He said, no Jews, no news.
[00:23:26]  And that was what his argument in that context was, that the Middle East gets too much attention.
[00:23:31]  And he was referencing the genocide in Nigeria by Bochum Haram, the black militant Islamicist, for killing Christian blacks.
[00:23:40]  And he said, this should be our concentration, but we're no Jews, no news, is what he said.
[00:23:47]  He didn't apologize for that either.
[00:23:48]  But the Middle East, of course, is the nexus of three religions, three continents.
[00:23:53]  It has a history.
[00:23:54]  It's global.
[00:23:54]  It's got 40% of the world's oil.
[00:23:56]  So obviously people are fixated on the Middle East that transcends Israel.
[00:24:02]  But again, he was talking about in a larger context that he felt that there were other areas of the world, especially areas involving black Africans that were being neglected.
[00:24:13]  That's true.
[00:24:14]  And we should concentrate more on the Nigerian genocide.
[00:24:17]  But one of the reasons we don't, and I don't know if he mentioned this, is that the people killing the Nigerian Christians are, of course, radical Islamicists.
[00:24:26]  And that is part of, as Bill Maher said, part of the DA architecture, DEI, I mean.
[00:24:32]  And they're immune from the, if there was a group of Christians killing Muslims in Nigeria, we would have a lot more attention to it.
[00:24:42]  And that's just the way it is in Europe now, especially in Europe and to a degree in the United States.
[00:24:48]  Yeah, I mean, Omar Bada, what did you think of what Van Jones said?
[00:24:53]  Look, I mean, obviously, we know for a fact that the killing of children in Gaza is absolutely real.
[00:24:59]  It's again documented by Western doctors, including American Jewish doctors who go and see and say that there is a systematic targeting of Palestinian children with sniper bullets from the Israeli military.
[00:25:08]  So that is a fact.
[00:25:09]  And you look at what human rights organizations report on entire families being wiped out.
[00:25:14]  Now, of course, if Van Jones had said what he said about Jewish children in the aftermath of a massacre of Jewish children, we know he would not be working at CNN anymore.
[00:25:22]  But right now, because as long as you're dehumanizing Palestinians, then a passing apology on Twitter ends up doing the trick and people just move on.
[00:25:30]  But one thing that I think is really important here is that the person who should be called out is Bill Maher himself, who constantly praises right-wingers and Republicans about having being open to sharing ideas and open debate.
[00:25:42]  His entire brand is open debate and conversation.
[00:25:45]  And you'll notice, Piers, in two years of this genocide of Gaza, Bill Maher has not had a single Palestinian or Palestinian American guest on his show.
[00:25:53]  He has not had a single person to challenge the Israeli narrative on this.
[00:25:57]  He is constraining the limits of that debate in a way that is completely off-brand for him, for somebody who always brags about being open to conversations.
[00:26:04]  And if you look at even the past beyond that, anytime he's had a guest who's challenged his incredible bias on the question of Israel and Palestine in particular, those guests never appear on Bill Maher's show again.
[00:26:16]  So frankly, if you're going to claim to be a free speech warrior and you're going to say that you're open for discussion and debate on no matter what the topic is, put your money where your mouth is and have a Palestinian or a Palestinian American guest on your show to educate you about this genocide denial that he's engaged in.
[00:26:31]  He has yet to do that.
[00:26:32]  And one last point, Piers, on TikTok.
[00:26:35]  You have right now, Israelis see that TikTok is a problem for them because there's an unfiltered feed of this genocide.
[00:26:43]  And that's why Benjamin Netanyahu himself said it was incredibly important for this purchase of TikTok to Larry Allison, the founder of Oracle, being really important to push a pro-Israel perspective.
[00:26:54]  They're letting us know that this purchase is about shifting the algorithms within TikTok to tamp down what the public sees about what Israel is doing in Gaza and to push a pro-Israel narrative.
[00:27:05]  And anybody who's in favor of free speech and open access to information should be extremely concerned about the fact that the Israeli prime minister is talking openly about the fact that this purchase of TikTok is about shifting the discourse in favor of Israel and denying its atrocities.
[00:27:20]  Jolanda Jones, I mean, I do think this whole issue of AI and tech and social media is getting ever bigger because of its influence over so many impressionable young minds.
[00:27:30]  There's no doubt the algorithms from these companies deliberately target people in a certain way, and they do it for financial reasons.
[00:27:38]  Should federal governments generally be doing a lot more to try and bring these companies to heal in a way that regulates this kind of thing?
[00:27:48]  Well, yes, Piers, I agree with you that AI has taken over.
[00:27:53]  I believe that AI needs to be regulated, but I think that more and more people are going to rely on AI because mainstream media basically censors people.
[00:28:02]  And then whoever buys TikTok or whatever social media company, they're going to lead it in the way that they go, which is why I believe that people, and not just young people, I think older people are in search of the truth and it's just hard to find it.
[00:28:16]  I mean, right now, again, you can't, you see the AI where the lion's jumping up or something because somebody took the cub and that may or may not be AI.
[00:28:26]  There's not even a way to be able to figure out what the truth is.
[00:28:31]  That is what is so crazy.
[00:28:33]  And I think Van Jones was wrong with what he did.
[00:28:36]  He took something very serious and he made it the butt of a joke.
[00:28:41]  Peace in the Middle East should be very, very, very important to people.
[00:28:46]  We need to figure it out.
[00:28:48]  And going back to what you asked me before about whether Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, whether the Nobel Peace Prize is more than just about peace.
[00:28:56]  I mean, actually, if there's peace in the Middle East, some kind of way Donald Trump can claim credit for it, which I don't know that that's going to happen, then I think we need to consider other things as well.
[00:29:06]  But AI right now is out of control in every arena.
[00:29:10]  But I don't know, like even when I went on my social media this morning and I'm and it says, do you want to check something that says AI generated?
[00:29:18]  If I check that it's AI, then it'll say it's AI.
[00:29:22]  If I don't check that it's AI, even if it is AI, then no one's going to know that it's AI.
[00:29:27]  So I think it's just very hard to do that.
[00:29:30]  But just because something rolls across my social media feed and it may not be pleasant to see like people dying doesn't mean it's AI.
[00:29:39]  And I just think it's very difficult to discern what's the truth and what's a lie.
[00:29:43]  But I absolutely believe that AI and smartphones have changed the way the world looks at things, even like with police brutality.
[00:29:51]  People never believed it existed until someone had a phone and they caught it.
[00:29:55]  And so I think it's absolutely a problem.
[00:29:57]  I think governments need to regulate it.
[00:30:01]  But I don't even know because of the exponential growth and how rapidly AI is moving forward.
[00:30:10]  When we figure out a way to regulate it one way, it's going to be eons down the road.
[00:30:15]  As you said, you were golfing with a surgeon.
[00:30:17]  He said he was gone for three weeks.
[00:30:19]  And in three weeks, it changed that much.
[00:30:21]  So I think that we will always be chasing a way to regulate AI.
[00:30:25]  And that in and of itself is the danger of AI.
[00:30:29]  Yeah.
[00:30:29]  And, you know, Joe, it may be.
[00:30:31]  Well, Joe, I was going to say, you know, it may be the AI genie gets so far out of the bottle that we can't put it back in.
[00:30:39]  Well, yeah, Pierce, that's the bigger point.
[00:30:41]  And I mean, AI and when it comes to disinformation and propaganda, but AI when it comes to the economies, our economies in the West, our government, Western governments in Europe, I think have no clue right now.
[00:30:59]  And there are not big enough conversations going on within each government and among all of our governments on how AI is rapidly changing the economy.
[00:31:11]  I mean, we could be in a situation in three to four to five years where we have millions and millions and millions of productive people who no longer have work.
[00:31:22]  And what does a free capitalist economy do with that?
[00:31:26]  We're not having these conversations.
[00:31:28]  We're focused on AI and propaganda, which is an important one as well.
[00:31:33]  But the impact on our economy, politicians on both sides really right now have no clue right now, the impact that's coming our way.
[00:31:43]  Jordan, let's just pivot to some other issues.

=== Tariffs Threaten Jobs and Inflation (14:49) ===

[00:31:46]  Notably, what's the state of the US economy right now?
[00:31:50]  You know about this stuff better than most people.
[00:31:53]  Where is the reality of where the US economy is?
[00:31:55]  I remember when Trump launched his Liberation Day, his global tariff war, a lot of people predicting complete Armageddon.
[00:32:03]  U.S. economy would be destroyed within six months.
[00:32:05]  Well, we're six months further on.
[00:32:07]  Stock markets are record highs.
[00:32:11]  The economy seems to be in pretty good shape in the United States.
[00:32:15]  Other people say the real impact of all this tariff stuff is still to come.
[00:32:19]  How do you see things?
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[00:33:22]  No, I think the economy is in good shape and I don't think tariffs are going to make that much of an impact at all.
[00:33:26]  I think what really causes inflation is printing money.
[00:33:30]  And this is not, you know, tariffs don't print money.
[00:33:33]  So money is not being printed the way it was.
[00:33:35]  And I think more importantly, I think the big, there's two major problems with the U.S. economy.
[00:33:41]  And, you know, one is the fiscal deficit 37 trillion, which is just a looming nightmare that's going to have to be addressed at one point or another.
[00:33:51]  You know, Elon Musk got nowhere.
[00:33:53]  It's a complicated problem, but it has to be addressed.
[00:33:55]  And the second thing I think, which is really important, is home affordability.
[00:34:00]  So like because, you know, they printed so much money over the last, you know, 15, 20 years, right?
[00:34:06]  What happens is hard assets like real estate go flying up in value, especially with all the printing during COVID, right?
[00:34:13]  So you have all these young people now.
[00:34:15]  It's, it's, you know, how do they buy their first home?
[00:34:17]  And that's a really big problem because, you know, home ownership is a, is a fundamental, you know, core principle of the so-called American dream.
[00:34:25]  And it's also the way that people used to build wealth.
[00:34:27]  And right now, for most people, unless you have a wealthy parent or something, or you're having extraordinarily high income from the start, you have kids that are graduating from college riddled with student debt, have to pay off.
[00:34:41]  Home ownership is out of reach.
[00:34:43]  People aren't getting married as quickly.
[00:34:45]  They're not having babies as quickly.
[00:34:47]  So I think you have fundamental problems.
[00:34:50]  I think the economy itself is fine right now, but these are looming issues that need to be addressed.
[00:34:56]  Joe, you're shaking your head.
[00:34:58]  Why?
[00:34:59]  Well, I just think this, Pierce, I think this topic is really straightforward.
[00:35:04]  When you just look at the data, Donald Trump inherited the strongest, by far, post-COVID economy of any industrialized nation in the world, not even close.
[00:35:16]  And right now, inflation is up, things cost more, and job growth is stalling.
[00:35:22]  Why?
[00:35:23]  Because of his tariffs and the instability.
[00:35:26]  The average small business owner in America right now, head is spinning because they don't know what's happening.
[00:35:34]  So I think he was handed a really strong economy.
[00:35:37]  And I think he single-handedly, because this is on him, he's messed it up.
[00:35:42]  Victor, what do you think?
[00:35:44]  Well, we know the jobs report was inaccurate, the last jobs report that showed a substantial gain in job growth.
[00:35:51]  That was inaccurate.
[00:35:53]  We know that Joe Biden, I don't know how you can say had the strongest economy.
[00:35:58]  2022-23, we had 9.1% inflation and never, it went down to 2.5, but cumulatively in staple goods, food, insurance, et cetera, people, when he left office, prices and those key areas were about 25% higher than when he started.
[00:36:16]  And wage growth never got close to approximating that.
[00:36:20]  The big thing to watch is we're in kind of a readjustment.
[00:36:25]  He says that we have $10 to $15 trillion in foreign investment.
[00:36:29]  If that were to be true, and there are ratios that for every billion dollars in foreign investment, depending on the area in which it's invested, you get job growth.
[00:36:39]  But we don't know to what degree the Saudis or the Japanese or the South Koreans or the Europeans are going to follow through on that.
[00:36:46]  It's easy to promise that, but we'll have to see if that comes in before the midterms.
[00:36:50]  The second thing is we've never seen this push for fuel.
[00:36:56]  And there's new federal leases.
[00:36:58]  There's green lighting on natural gas.
[00:37:01]  You talk to people, economists, a lot of them are worried that Trump has promised liquid natural gas to the Japanese, to the South Koreans, to the Europeans, and we may not even be able to supply that.
[00:37:14]  We thought we had a surplus, but there's going to be an enormous growth in energy.
[00:37:20]  And I don't know when that will kick in, but that will help.
[00:37:23]  And of course, deregulation and encouragement.
[00:37:25]  Part of it is just telling people there is uncertainty, but a lot of the uncertainty is readjusting and saying to people, I'm not going to regulate you.
[00:37:34]  You bring in the Silicon Valley people.
[00:37:36]  It's kind of like the World War II War Production Board.
[00:37:38]  You say, you know what?
[00:37:40]  I'm not going to over-regulate you.
[00:37:42]  I'm not going to pick winners and losers, but I do want you to, you know, do things in the interest of the United States.
[00:37:48]  Invest in the United States, bring jobs here.
[00:37:50]  Do not outsource, do not offshore.
[00:37:52]  So we're in a transition, but we don't really know the ultimate effect, but it could be very good in a year from now.
[00:37:59]  Come on.
[00:38:00]  There's something.
[00:38:01]  Yeah, just on this note, when we talk about job numbers, it's really important to note the fact that when the Labor Statistics Department put out a jobs report saying that the projection that Trump had about how many jobs we're going to gain had not materialized, Trump fired the head of that office.
[00:38:18]  So Trump is waging a war on truth.
[00:38:21]  It doesn't matter what the reality is going to be.
[00:38:23]  Trump is dedicated to the idea of shifting public perceptions in favor of pretending that he's the greatest thing that ever happened to this country, regardless of what the facts may show.
[00:38:33]  And his entire tariffs policy, when you're looking at how much chaos and whatever, I think there's a very fundamental logic underneath that so-called chaos, which is Trump's entire way that he functions in the world is that all these tariffs are being put in place on countries and then being promised to be taken down in exchange for these countries, doing favors for Trump's tech bros, his friends, his billionaires.
[00:38:57]  It's all about cutting deals that benefit Trump and Trump's closest circles, not American workers.
[00:39:02]  And that even gets to a more absurd level if you look at the tariffs that were placed on Brazil, where it was about whether Brazil is going to prosecute Bolsonaro, Trump's friend, former president.
[00:39:13]  And those were the basis on which tariffs were being put.
[00:39:15]  This is not how tariffs are supposed to work.
[00:39:17]  Tariffs are supposed to be in place to help American workers in the American economy.
[00:39:21]  And Trump, like he always does, this is about him and about his friends and about bullying other countries into getting what he wants done.
[00:39:28]  Pierce, Pierce, Pierce.
[00:39:29]  Pierce, one other, Pierce, one other just really quick, important point.
[00:39:34]  Trump's entire tariff regime, in my mind, is unconstitutional.
[00:39:39]  And we may have a whole nother discussion on that, but the Supreme Court could, it'll get to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court could rule next year that all of these tariffs are unconstitutional.
[00:39:52]  They've got to stop.
[00:39:54]  And who knows why are they unconstitutional?
[00:39:57]  Why are they unconstitutional?
[00:39:58]  Even if the Supreme Court does that, the damage is done.
[00:40:02]  And as I sit and I listen about how well the economy is doing or not doing, you can talk above people's heads all you want to.
[00:40:09]  The people on the ground, the people that I know are struggling.
[00:40:12]  Times are worse than they've ever been.
[00:40:14]  People can't afford eggs.
[00:40:16]  People can't afford gas.
[00:40:18]  People can't afford a place to live.
[00:40:20]  People can't afford daycare.
[00:40:22]  People's schools are underfunded.
[00:40:24]  So people are talking about how great the economy is.
[00:40:26]  It is not great.
[00:40:28]  And it has a lot to do with the tariffs.
[00:40:30]  But I think that most people aren't paying attention to what the GDP is.
[00:40:35]  Most people aren't paying attention to Trump's fake news.
[00:40:39]  And I don't believe a word that's coming out of any government, federal government agency's mouths about anything.
[00:40:45]  When we looked at the HUD website, the federal government, Trump literally had the radical left on there.
[00:40:53]  So everything, everything that he puts up is AI.
[00:40:56]  Everything that he puts up is fake.
[00:40:58]  And I'm telling you.
[00:40:59]  Well, there is such a thing as the radical left.
[00:41:03]  I mean, they exist.
[00:41:05]  It shouldn't be on a government website.
[00:41:07]  Okay, it shouldn't.
[00:41:07]  Trump should not be playing monopoly.
[00:41:10]  Trump should not be playing monopoly with real people's lives.
[00:41:13]  And that is exactly what he's doing.
[00:41:15]  And I will say this again.
[00:41:17]  The people on the ground who can't find work, who if they are working, they're not being paid a living wage.
[00:41:25]  People literally cannot afford groceries.
[00:41:28]  I'm literally out at food insecurity, food giveaways to people who literally every other week, every two weeks, are coming for fruits and vegetables and protein because they can't afford it.
[00:41:42]  People are starving to death in this country because the economy sucks.
[00:41:47]  So when people are telling us that the economy is great, it's like they're peeing on us and telling us it's raining.
[00:41:52]  It's just not right.
[00:41:54]  It's not right.
[00:41:57]  That's Donald Trump's way.
[00:41:58]  You're blaming that on Donald Trump?
[00:42:00]  Oh, people are having food.
[00:42:03]  Donald Trump is literally judging how well the economy is by how his tech friends are, how his billionaire friends are.
[00:42:11]  Yeah, Donald Trump is destroying this country.
[00:42:13]  And he's destroying.
[00:42:17]  That is exactly what he does.
[00:42:19]  When Donald Trump left office, the inflation rate was 1.8 in 2021.
[00:42:25]  Exactly.
[00:42:26]  And people were warning Democrats, Larry Summers in particular, do not do this build back better inflation.
[00:42:34]  You're going to print $7 trillion at a time we have supply chain disruptions and the people have been pent up for two years and they have repressed demand and they're going to go out and buy things they can't get because they're not available and we're going to have a spectacular inflation and lo and behold, 12 months later, it was 9.1%.
[00:42:55]  And that's what happened.
[00:42:57]  And you can't expect in 10 months somebody's going to address something that went on for four years.
[00:43:04]  The reason that there are eggs and meat and insurance, you cannot afford it was because cumulatively over four years, those prices in those particular areas went up 25%.
[00:43:16]  Here in California, you cannot buy home insurance anywhere above 1,500 feet that you can afford.
[00:43:23]  That didn't come from Donald Trump.
[00:43:25]  We pay $570 a gallon for gas.
[00:43:28]  That didn't come from Donald Trump.
[00:43:30]  So don't blame everything on him.
[00:43:31]  Try living in a state like this.
[00:43:33]  Exactly.
[00:43:34]  See why 300,000 people.
[00:43:37]  300,000 people are leaving the state every year for that reason.
[00:43:42]  Yes, well, they cannot afford housing here.
[00:43:45]  They can't afford gas.
[00:43:46]  They can't afford food.
[00:43:48]  They can't afford insurance.
[00:43:49]  And that was all spiked in the last four years.
[00:43:52]  Can I expensive since Trump was in office?
[00:43:59]  Everything.
[00:44:01]  The coplation rate was 2.4.
[00:44:04]  2.4.
[00:44:05]  There are things that we can't always account precise blame for.
[00:44:09]  When you look at the fact that at the end of the Trump era, we've had COVID was pretty disruptive to the economy.
[00:44:15]  During Biden, we've had global inflation.
[00:44:17]  That was not necessarily Biden's individual fault.
[00:44:20]  In fact, Biden kept it lower in the U.S. than in many other countries around the world.
[00:44:24]  Those are factors that we can't account for.
[00:44:26]  But what we can account for is the fact that Donald Trump is cutting assistance, food assistance, to Americans who need it.
[00:44:33]  He's cutting health care access to Americans who need it, kicking off millions of Americans off of Medicare and Medicaid.
[00:44:39]  And he is increasing the military budget, pushing it to over a trillion dollars.
[00:44:43]  So we're seeing those priorities and we're seeing these massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, the billionaire class getting massive tax cuts.
[00:44:50]  That is obviously an agenda that does not serve the American people.
[00:44:53]  And that's the point.
[00:44:54]  So it's not about disputing and trying to debate and figure out exactly who's to blame for minor shifts in the economy.
[00:45:00]  The priorities of a government are present in the budgets that they present.
[00:45:04]  And the Trump budget is clearly at the expense of working Americans and in favor of billionaires.
[00:45:08]  And just one last point on insurance prices in places like California.
[00:45:13]  The reason why nobody can afford home insurance anymore is because climate change is devastating the coasts.
[00:45:19]  And these insurance companies can't tell the fact that climate change is making the likelihood that these houses are going to be submerged at some point going up.
[00:45:28]  And so people don't want to insure these houses anymore.
[00:45:30]  So that is a complete fan race.
[00:45:33]  Climate change is going to swallow up the California insurance companies are getting out.
[00:45:42]  Climate change.
[00:45:45]  California is people.
[00:45:47]  They will not insure you because California has not allowed traditional fire protection and preventive practices that they used for 100 years.
[00:45:56]  They do not allow to glean the forests.
[00:45:58]  LA burned because they would not allow people to clean the hillsides because there was a reservoir that could have saved that was completely empty because the mayor was in Ghana, because the deputy mayor was under house arrest for throwing it, phoning in a bomb threat, because the head of Los Angeles water and power was an utter incompetent, and because there was about 10 or 15 percent of the hydrants weren't even working, that could have been completely preventable.
[00:46:26]  The paradise fire was preventable.
[00:46:28]  The Aspen fire, which is about 50 miles from me and came within about 200 yards of my house there, was preventable.

=== The Democratic Party's Failure (16:38) ===

[00:46:36]  Everybody agrees on that.
[00:46:37]  You don't know what you're talking about.
[00:46:39]  If you allow people to go in and clean the forest and clean it up, and then you allow people to go back to traditional thinning of the forest, it would have worked.
[00:46:49]  But they don't do that.
[00:46:50]  Are you a climate change denier?
[00:46:51]  I think that's a relevant question here.
[00:46:53]  No, I'm not.
[00:46:55]  But I'm not sure that what are you, a climate change exaggerator or fanaticist?
[00:47:00]  Exaggerated and literally the fate of the planet denied.
[00:47:06]  We have records in California for about 100 years.
[00:47:10]  Say that again.
[00:47:12]  We don't have records in Cal we don't have records that are accurate in California for much more than 100 years.
[00:47:19]  We don't know the degree to which We don't know that we've never seen before.
[00:47:25]  No, I'm sorry.
[00:47:27]  You don't even have to be a deep climate scientist to understand the fact that there is a consensus on this in the world scientific community.
[00:47:33]  It's the reason the world is coming together to deal with this.
[00:47:35]  They're saying you can't prioritize consensus on anything.
[00:47:38]  You need consensus.
[00:47:41]  It is climate change.
[00:47:41]  Is real.
[00:47:42]  We've heard worldwide.
[00:47:44]  All right, let me let me let me bring things back to this because Jolanda wanted to get this in before we get into a lengthy climate change debate.
[00:47:53]  And it's you were actually at the event in Houston, Texas, where Carmela Harris is on her book tour, and she said this about Trump and his mandate.
[00:48:03]  It was the tightest, closest presidential election in the 21st century.
[00:48:17]  It is not a meander now.
[00:48:21]  I'm sorry, Jolanda, but Carmela Harris is completely and utterly delusional.
[00:48:27]  I disrespectfully disagree.
[00:48:29]  Why?
[00:48:30]  Just to remind you.
[00:48:31]  Attention podcast, people.
[00:48:32]  I'm Harry Cole, and I'm invited to something properly different.
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[00:49:20]  The fight back starts here.
[00:49:21]  And yes, bring the popcorn.
[00:49:24]  Mind everybody, Donald Trump won back the White House.
[00:49:28]  He won the popular vote and the Electoral College.
[00:49:32]  The Republicans won control of the Senate and the House.
[00:49:36]  It was a clean sweep.
[00:49:37]  Everything.
[00:49:38]  It doesn't make sense.
[00:49:38]  Everything moves to Donald Trump, the Republicans.
[00:49:40]  And yet there is the biggest loser in modern times, running around like she was cheated, like she was on the verge of this amazing victory when, in fact, she got absolutely pulverized.
[00:49:52]  She lost every swing state.
[00:49:54]  She literally did not say she was cheated.
[00:49:57]  Those words came out of your mouth, not hers.
[00:49:59]  I was there.
[00:50:00]  And it was a very close election.
[00:50:02]  And you know what?
[00:50:03]  Whether you win by one point, by one vote, or whether you win by 100,000 vote, the win is a win.
[00:50:09]  And there was not a mandate.
[00:50:10]  There is not a mandate, which is exactly why we're fighting.
[00:50:13]  But if you say it was no mandate, you're saying you're saying, okay, but hang on, Jolanda, Jolanda.
[00:50:20]  Jolanda, hang on.
[00:50:23]  What else could Donald Trump have won before you concede he has a mandate to be president?
[00:50:30]  So, first of all, no, a mandate to shove stuff down Americans' throat like he's doing, that was not done.
[00:50:36]  He was elected president of the United States.
[00:50:39]  I don't disagree with that, unfortunately.
[00:50:41]  That's the mandate.
[00:50:42]  But it's not a mandate.
[00:50:43]  And guess what?
[00:50:44]  The beautiful thing about it.
[00:50:45]  Hang on.
[00:50:46]  So hang on, hang on.
[00:50:47]  Hang on.
[00:50:47]  What is a mandate then to you?
[00:50:50]  To me, a mandate is when you win by a lot.
[00:50:54]  By a lot.
[00:50:54]  There's a whole bunch of votes separating you.
[00:50:56]  There were not.
[00:50:57]  But that's not what a mandate is in a democratic society.
[00:51:01]  But Jolanda.
[00:51:02]  Jolanda, that is.
[00:51:03]  Jolanda, that is fake news.
[00:51:05]  A mandate, a mandate in politics is whether you win or lose an election.
[00:51:12]  And Donald Trump won in fact.
[00:51:14]  He won by every metric he could possibly have won.
[00:51:18]  He won every swing state.
[00:51:20]  He won the popular and electoral college vote.
[00:51:23]  He won the House.
[00:51:24]  He won the Senate.
[00:51:25]  He won the White House.
[00:51:26]  There was nothing left to win.
[00:51:28]  It was literally the widest mandate imaginable.
[00:51:31]  And what I will say to you is there was a lot of voter suppression, including here in Texas.
[00:51:37]  So she was cheated then.
[00:51:38]  You think she was cheated?
[00:51:40]  The Russians interfered in the election.
[00:51:42]  So it was a rigged election.
[00:51:44]  She didn't say I said it.
[00:51:46]  So Jalanda, was it a rigged election?
[00:51:48]  I will continue to fight with everything I have to do.
[00:51:52]  Jalanda, Jalanda, you started by saying that at no stage did Kamala say she was cheated.
[00:51:58]  Now you're suggesting she was cheated.
[00:52:00]  No, I said she didn't say that.
[00:52:02]  I'm telling you what I saw.
[00:52:03]  Was she cheated or not?
[00:52:05]  Here's what I'm saying to you.
[00:52:07]  What I saw in Texas with my own eyes is shorter voting hours for people who would ordinarily have voted for Kamala, taking away voting on days when people didn't have to go to work.
[00:52:18]  So she was cheating.
[00:52:20]  Would have been people who voted for Kamala.
[00:52:22]  So was she cheating?
[00:52:23]  It was active voter suppression.
[00:52:25]  Was she cheated then?
[00:52:27]  Which is exactly why he knows that next year that if we go by what he says, there will be a man who's turned out to rick up him.
[00:52:37]  Jalanda, so therefore you're saying she was cheated.
[00:52:40]  What I'm saying is there were efforts made by the Republicans to suppress votes that were not.
[00:52:45]  I heard you.
[00:52:46]  I heard you, but just to clarify, but just to be clear, what you're saying is it was a rigged election then.
[00:52:56]  What I'm saying is they voter suppressed.
[00:52:59]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:53:00]  So was it a rigged election?
[00:53:03]  I said that voter suppression.
[00:53:07]  But if there was genuine...
[00:53:08]  Okay, but if you're not going to be able to do that.
[00:53:11]  Jalanda.
[00:53:13]  Jolanda, if there was voter suppression, it was a rigged election.
[00:53:17]  Is that what you're saying?
[00:53:18]  There was voter suppression.
[00:53:19]  You can make that leap if you want to.
[00:53:21]  No, no, you're making the leap.
[00:53:22]  I'm not.
[00:53:23]  No, you are making the leap.
[00:53:24]  I said exactly what I meant to say, and I'm not going to have you try to beat me down to say what you want me to say.
[00:53:30]  I'm not trying to beat you down.
[00:53:32]  I'm simply trying to get you to clarify what you're saying.
[00:53:36]  I have verified what I've said, and there were tactics used to suppress the vote of people who ordinarily would have voted for Kamala and other Democrats.
[00:53:45]  All right, Joe Walsh.
[00:53:46]  No, no, Pierce.
[00:53:47]  Again, just all due respect to Yolanda.
[00:53:50]  She's wonderful.
[00:53:51]  She didn't run for president last year.
[00:53:53]  Some perspective.
[00:53:54]  We've only had one candidate for president in this nation's history who said an election was rigged, who refused to accept the loss and who refused to concede.
[00:54:05]  Kamala Harris said Donald Trump won fair and square.
[00:54:08]  She conceded.
[00:54:09]  She showed up at his inauguration.
[00:54:11]  Stop.
[00:54:12]  Okay, but what about her claim, Kamala, is that it was the closest election this century, implying that somehow she narrowly missed out on power.
[00:54:20]  She didn't.
[00:54:22]  No, it was, I could be wrong on this.
[00:54:24]  I think Trump's popular vote victory was the fifth smallest since 1900.
[00:54:30]  So it wasn't.
[00:54:32]  She didn't even win the popular vote in 2016.
[00:54:35]  So yes, Pierce, she's exaggerating, or if you want to say lying, that it was the closest.
[00:54:41]  But Donald Trump, Donald Trump has said it was the biggest win in U.S. history.
[00:54:47]  Well, then it comes down to how you interpret the word mandate.
[00:54:50]  To me, it is hard to imagine.
[00:54:53]  Honestly, it's hard to imagine a wider ranging mandate than that you win by every possible metric that you could possibly win by.
[00:55:03]  That's a mandate.
[00:55:05]  Well, I agree with you on this.
[00:55:07]  Any winning president has a mandate.
[00:55:09]  I don't care if they win big or small.
[00:55:11]  They won.
[00:55:11]  They get to try to do what they want to do.
[00:55:14]  Okay, Jordan.
[00:55:15]  I mean, look, to me, I find it kind of embarrassing to watch Carmela Harris going out there trying to imply that she only just narrowly lost when nobody else really sees it that way.
[00:55:28]  And it's, to me, indicative of the hole they've got themselves into, the Democrats.
[00:55:32]  There are record low numbers in the polling of approval with Americans, record low.
[00:55:38]  And I don't see anybody coming through yet where I think that could be the person who revives the Democratic Party.
[00:55:45]  Do you?
[00:55:47]  Well, I think the problem with the Democratic Party is they don't let their candidates actually be chosen by the people.
[00:55:56]  They get hand-picked by a few people.
[00:55:59]  I mean, tell me the last time that was actually done was Obama.
[00:56:03]  You know, Hillary was, you know, Ushing him with Day suppressed Bernie, right?
[00:56:07]  She had the superdelegates, right?
[00:56:09]  After that, you know, Biden was picked to run against Trump.
[00:56:12]  Then you had Kamala who was picked to run against Trump.
[00:56:16]  I mean, think about it.
[00:56:17]  So like, if they would just go after them, maybe let the people of America and the Democratic Party choose the candidate they think is best, they'd probably do a hell of a lot better in the election.
[00:56:27]  That's my opinion.
[00:56:29]  Yeah, Victor, this questioning of a mandate, I mean, it's kind of preposterous, isn't it?
[00:56:35]  Yeah, it is.
[00:56:36]  He's the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush did in 2004.
[00:56:46]  And he won 93% of the counties.
[00:56:49]  More importantly, he really, you can say whatever you want about him, but he did recalibrate the Republican Party.
[00:56:57]  And whether you like it or not, if you look at the constituencies of the Democratic Party, it's the very wealthy and the very poor.
[00:57:04]  And the middle class voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.
[00:57:07]  He was the first Republican to get 55% of the Hispanic male vote, almost 50-50 on the Hispanic.
[00:57:15]  He won 23% of black males on the 18 to 40 vote.
[00:57:21]  He came in Michigan, it was dead even.
[00:57:24]  He usually would lose, Republicans lost that usually by 10 to 12 votes.
[00:57:28]  So there was a fundamental change, and it was a substitution of class interest for race.
[00:57:35]  And he really tried to say to people, if you're a black truck driver, if you're a Hispanic electrician, if you're a white sheetwalker, you have more in common class-wise as middle-class people than you do with your superficial identity.
[00:57:50]  That was the message.
[00:57:51]  And no Republican had been able to do that.
[00:57:53]  They had tried, and people said if he closes the border and we have legal only immigration, he's going to lose a Hispanic vote for a generation.
[00:58:02]  And lo and behold, he won more Hispanic votes than any Republican in history.
[00:58:06]  So there's something going on there that people don't want to talk about.
[00:58:10]  But he had a populist appeal that transcended tribalism, that people did not identify with their particular superficial appearance for this election.
[00:58:20]  But they thought, and we'll see whether it happens or not, that he was going to be better for the middle class than the alternative.
[00:58:27]  And that was simple as that.
[00:58:28]  They saw the Democratic Party and his elitist party that had all of these utopian bromides that were very expensive and driving up the cost of living and regulating the economy.
[00:58:39]  And they were boutique issues, whether it was a transgendered issue or open borders and 2 million people coming across on audited or climate change where you were going to ban in California internal combustion engines.
[00:58:53]  The middle class said, we do not want that.
[00:58:56]  That is the luxury of people who are very wealthy.
[00:58:59]  And that's the truth.
[00:59:00]  And that's why he won.
[00:59:01]  Yeah.
[00:59:02]  You know, coincidentally, I have a new book out called Woke is Dead, published in the UK October 24th, published in America November 4th.
[00:59:09]  And the reason I mention that, Omar, other than to give a shameless plug to my own book, is I talk about how common sense triumphs in an age of total madness.
[00:59:18]  You know, for many people in America, it came down to holding their nose, not particularly liking Donald Trump, especially, and liking the fact he wasn't afraid to say what a woman is, for example.
[00:59:30]  It looked to me like the Democratic Party just lost their minds in not being able to just say what basic things are anymore.
[00:59:39]  That is a key component to why he won in the end.
[00:59:42]  I've watched you have this disagreement with many guests, and I'm here to repeat it to say, which I don't think that this was a significant portion.
[00:59:48]  I think the awokeness part was a little bit exaggerated.
[00:59:51]  I frankly think that the Democrats threw the election in two ways.
[00:59:55]  One, they completely fumbled the genocide in Gaza.
[00:59:58]  They should have had clear opposition to it so that the progressive base turned out for them and they didn't.
[01:00:02]  They insisted on humanizing Palestinians on the one hand, but insisting that they're going to continue funding the slaughter on the other, which I don't think was this needle-threading thing that Kamala thought that it was.
[01:00:12]  But the other thing is that, you know, to the extent of agreeing with the previous guest a tiny bit, of saying that Kamala represents sort of the vapid consultant class in Washington, D.C. that speaks without saying anything.
[01:00:26]  They speak in a way that is meant to appeal to everyone.
[01:00:28]  The campaign slogan was joy at a time in which we've had serious crises internationally and inside the country.
[01:00:35]  It's just a way that is disconnected from what the American people actually want and need.
[01:00:39]  And from my perspective, had they stuck with the message of somebody like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or AOC, people who are talking about the things that matter to Americans and ways to fundamentally improve the way that people in this country are living to fight for better access to health care, better education.
[01:00:55]  If we fought for these things, I think the Democrats would have actually won in this election.
[01:00:59]  And I do think that Kamala Harris is part of the problem.
[01:01:01]  And saying that is not at all to deny the fact that Republicans engage in voter suppression.
[01:01:07]  We're seeing it in Texas with a gerrymandering where Trump is openly saying the maps in Texas should be redrawn so that fewer Democrats can get elected to Congress.
[01:01:16]  And this way, Republicans can manufacture a majority that lasts forever.
[01:01:21]  These are voter suppression tactics that are very, very serious that we should take seriously.
[01:01:25]  But that is not to let Kamala Harris off the hook for the policies that she pursued and the fact that she presented a very vapid Democratic establishment line that does not really sit well with the American public.
[01:01:35]  Yeah, you know, Joe.
[01:01:37]  As a person, I think that the reason that we're losing Democrat, and I'm a Democrat, let me be clear.
[01:01:42]  First of all, we're not fighting.
[01:01:44]  Okay, say what you want to say about Donald Trump.
[01:01:47]  And he is an evil man who is anti-everything that I am and the people that I represent, but at least he fights for it.
[01:01:53]  And all people want is for people to fight for what they believe is important.
[01:01:57]  And the Democrats aren't doing that.
[01:01:59]  I also agree that there is a consultant class where the consultants and the powers that be pick a person and then they try to get everyone to support that person.
[01:02:09]  And again, that's the whole thing when you're telling a person who cannot afford gas or eggs or whatever it is that everything is great, everything is fine.
[01:02:19]  And then they're like, no, you're not talking To me, you don't have anything in common with me.
[01:02:23]  You don't know what I'm going through.
[01:02:24]  Therefore, I'm not motivated to go vote for you because you're literally not talking to the issues that are important to me and the survival of my family.
[01:02:31]  That is where I believe my party has failed.
[01:02:34]  And I think my party needs to stop listening to consultants who are so far removed from the people who are struggling.
[01:02:41]  And they need to start listening to the people who are struggling.
[01:02:44]  And the problem with politics, again, as a person who's elected, is most of us, and I have people tell me this all the time: Philanda, you are not poor anymore.
[01:02:52]  You can stop making decisions like you did when you were poor.
[01:02:55]  And I always tell them, I hope I never forget what it was like to be evicted or what it was like to have our house burned down because we didn't have electricity or what it was like to be on free and reduced lunch.
[01:03:07]  Because there are people right here, right now, despite the fact that I don't have those issues anymore, that still have those issues.

=== Listening to Struggling People (01:58) ===

[01:03:14]  And that is what the Democratic Party needs to do.
[01:03:18]  They need to stop being elite.
[01:03:19]  I'm just telling you.
[01:03:20]  No, no, I hope you have to.
[01:03:21]  No, no, that's a very passionate.
[01:03:24]  Let the people pick people.
[01:03:25]  We need to fight.
[01:03:27]  Okay, I want to give Joe the last word because we've been waiting patiently.
[01:03:29]  I mean, Joe, it seems to me that it's interesting that the most sort of charismatic newcomer on the Democratic bloc is Mandani in New York.
[01:03:37]  And yet he is way to the progressive left.
[01:03:40]  And I just instinctively do not believe anybody on the progressive left can ever win a general election.
[01:03:46]  So you've got the kind of standard bearer there in New York for potentially the future, but it may be a failed future in a general election.
[01:03:54]  Maybe, Pierce, but to Yolanda's point, the average Democratic voter out there wants a fighter.
[01:03:59]  I mean, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago, you just said Donald Trump and the MAGA right, you'll never elect somebody like that.
[01:04:05]  All you got to do is look at the issue of immigration.
[01:04:08]  Trump has demagogued the issue and lied about the issue, but Democrats ignored the issue of immigration.
[01:04:14]  Trump's numbers right now on immigration and among Latinos are way down because what Trump is doing right now with ICE on our streets, the American people oppose.
[01:04:26]  But that issue got Trump elected, Pierce, because Democrats ignored the issue of immigration.
[01:04:32]  Yeah, I think that's right.
[01:04:34]  I've got to leave it there.
[01:04:35]  Really interesting panel.
[01:04:35]  Thank you all very much.
[01:04:36]  Probably one of the more civilized panels we've had in a long time.
[01:04:39]  So for that alone, thank you, all of you, for bringing some civility back to One Census.
[01:04:44]  I appreciate it.
[01:04:45]  Thank you very much.
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