"Like An Authoritarian!” Trump Demolishes East Wing + Kamala Running Again? | With Brian Tyler Cohen
The East Wing of the White House was an historic monument and its destruction in the President’s renovations has created some ire, not to mention some questioning over how long Trump expects to stay there. However, the new White House ballroom is being funded by private donations, not taxpayers, and it’s a fact that presidents have long complained about the lack of space for big state occasions. Meanwhile, whatever Trump’s plans, Republicans are probably rubbing their hands in glee that Kamala Harris has hinted that she’d like to run again… Joining Piers Morgan to discuss all this and more in the world of American politics is Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, host of BET News Marc Lamont Hill, host of No Lie Brian Tyler Cohen and Senior Editor at Human Events, Jack Posobiec. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Birch Gold: Visit https://birchgold.com/piers to get your free info kit on gold. Oxford Natural: To watch their full stories, scan the QR code on your screen or visit https://oxfordnatural.com/piers/ to get 70% off your first order when you use code PIERS. Superpower: No more guessing your health. Visit https://Superpower.com today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Fixing Obamacare Priorities00:09:44
You really think he'd go through this if he was planning to leave in 36 months?
Trump is going to be president of 28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that.
I would love to do it.
I have my best numbers ever.
It's very terrible.
I have my best numbers.
These actions, Trump's statements, then combine with him doing major reconstruction on a rental, that does make some people anxious.
Trump's second term thus far has been good enough that I would cheer if we could have Caesar Augustus Donald Dis Trump.
His mentality is that he has carte blanche to stay in power, to usurp power, to hold it to himself whenever he wants.
If there's one thing Americans can't get enough of, it's more Kamala Harris.
We need more Kamala Harris on TV, more Kamala Harris rallies.
She should replace Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime performer.
I would love her to do every single bit of that.
Like most people, I've never thought very deeply about the East Wing of the White House.
I saw it as a fairly functional space with offices and reception rooms constructed some 150 years after the People's Mansion itself.
But having watched the news over the last few days, it's now clear I made a big mistake.
The East Wing of the White House is an historic monument, a sacred structure, part of the very fabric of what it means to be an American.
He's found time to demolish the East Wing of the White House so that he can build a ballroom where he can be celebrated as if he was a king.
Literally, Trump is tearing down government by and for the people to replace it with an authoritarian state by and for the powerful.
And here he's just symbolizing that.
So this is how the man is treating the legacy, the physical legacy of the presidency of the United States.
Donald Trump is literally destroying the people's house.
The new White House ballroom is being funded by private donations, not taxpayers.
And it's a fact that presidents have long complained about the lack of space for big state occasions.
Sure, the bulldozers and the building site don't look great, but honestly, what exactly is wrong with the finished product?
Some people don't particularly like the bawdy gold interior, but future presidents can be free to decorate and reconfigure it as they see fit because that's what they do.
And a certain former vice president has been making clear that she might like a go at it herself.
In terms then of what is next for you, you write very powerfully about the differences that many women have made to your life.
When are they going to see a woman in charge in the White House?
In their lifetime, for sure.
Could it be you?
Possibly.
In my experience, interviewing politicians, when someone says, I'm not done, it means they are thinking seriously about running.
But when you look at the bookies odds, they put you as an outsider.
I've never listened to polls.
If I listened to polls, I would have not run from my first office or my second office.
And I certainly wouldn't be sitting here in this interview.
Well, if Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee in 2028, I can say with absolute confidence that she will be the most popular choice by a country mile among Republicans.
Would join me to discuss all this and more is Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles Show on Daily Wire, Mark Lamont Hill, the host of Bet News, Brian Tyler-Cohen, host of No Lie, and Jack Pesobic, the host of Human Events.
So welcome to all of you.
Michael Knowles, I've been to the White House.
It's a lovely building, amazing building, a bit like our number 10 Downing Street or Buckingham Palace.
I've never paid much attention to the East Wing, but I have over the years heard grumblings that the White House generally doesn't have enough mass entertainment space, i.e. a big ballroom.
So I'm trying to work myself into a lava of rage about this, and I'm coming up slightly short.
Why is it winding so many people up that Trump is basically creating a space which was probably lacking?
Well, I'm really glad to see it, actually, Piers, because we've finally identified one historic American structure that the left does not want to tear down.
Of course, if it were a statue of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Christopher Columbus or an historic church in Washington, D.C., then they would want to rip it to the ground or burn it.
But because it is a relatively recent addition to the White House that has been used for various purposes over the years, now they're all up in a rage.
But I can promise them, it's don't worry that what is going to replace it is going to be bigger.
It's going to be much, much more functional than what effectively had become a First Lady's professional quarter since the Carter administration.
It's going to be really useful, really beautiful, really patriotic.
So I'm sure they'll want to tear it down then.
Brian, Tyler Cohen.
Do you care?
And if so, why?
I care because this puts on full display where Trump's priorities are.
If you look at where he actually puts his energy, his focus, his resources, it's on a $350 million ballroom.
It's on buying a couple of Gulfstream jets for Christy Noam to the tune of $172 million.
It's on hosting these crypto dinners where Trump has doubled his net worth.
It's on gold plating his oval office.
It's on making sure that he can get himself a Qatari jet that'll be retrofitted to the tune of a billion dollars paid for by American taxpayers.
This is where his priorities are.
And all the while, we've got American farmers who are getting screwed right now.
We've got Americans more broadly, 17 million of whom are going to lose access to Medicaid.
We've got 24 million Americans who are going to see their ACA premiums double, triple, or quadruple.
We've got inflation rising.
We've got no manufacturing renaissance that was promised.
We've got jobs completely flat.
We've got wages flat.
And all the while, Trump is only focused on surrounding himself with gold and opulence and wealth.
And so it puts on full display what his priorities are in office.
I mean, he has got the hostages released in Gaza.
So when you say it's his priority, why can a president of the United States not have multiple things that he's doing at the same time?
The ballroom, I'm sure, is not to him a massive priority compared to trying to find peace around the world.
But surely he can do two things at once, Johnny?
Caroline Levitt came out just days ago and said that the ballroom is his priority.
And again, the fact is that Donald Trump did not run solely on releasing the hostages.
He had plenty of promises that he didn't come.
Where are the Epstein files?
Those weren't released.
Right, what you just said is a total lie.
I'll let you get away with some of the other exaggerations, but what you just said about Caroline Levitt is a total lie.
The question was, is Trump looking at restoring or renovating any other aspects of the White House?
And her response was, no, the ballroom is his priority.
Not his priority is the reason.
I'm going to ask you this, Michael.
His priority is the government that the Democrats shut down.
Do you know why the government is shut down?
Do you know why the Democrats?
I think Jefferson and Chuck Schumer shut it down because Obamacare doesn't work and they want to give health care to illegals.
That's why.
First of all, that's a complete lie.
There is not a dime of federal funding that goes toward undocumented immigrants.
First of all.
Second of all, if the Democrats relent on this issue, that means healthcare premiums for those 24 million Americans who rely on ACA coverage are going to double, triple, or quadruple.
So are you in favor of that?
I agree that Obamacare has not worked out very well, and I wish the Democrats had done a better job when they passed it.
So answer the question that I asked.
The Democrats are on the wrong side of virtually every issue in the country, other than health care, which they're barely holding on to, and environmental.
But healthcare is a lot of people.
Healthcare is not a problem.
No one cares about the ballroom.
They're going to shut down right now.
So I'm going to reiterate the question I asked you before.
Do you think that Democrats should relent on holding this one issue forward, which is that if they don't do anything on ACA subsidies, that healthcare costs are going to double, triple, or quadruple?
Do you agree that we should allow those costs to double, triple, or quadruple, and that Democrats should just allow the Republicans to do what they're trying to do, which is eliminate those subsidies?
The ACA is not a Republican law, my friend.
And so I'm not sure if it's a good question.
Why can't you answer the question like that?
It's a really simple thing.
I'm telling you.
I'm answering.
I think it would be really good to fix Obamacare.
We should do that.
We shouldn't hold the government hospital.
You've had nine years.
Nine years we have been waiting for some change.
We've been promised a new healthcare plan by Republicans.
You guys passed it.
Concepts of a plan.
That's it.
We've got concepts of a plan.
Brian, Brian.
Brian, from the government.
If I may jump in.
Brian.
Well, hang on, Brian.
If I may jump in, you've just spent the last five minutes talking about something other than the ballroom, having initially argued that this was Trump's priority.
So I'm a little bit confused.
If the ballroom's his priority, why are you moving the narrative so quickly to something else he's been doing?
What's the other thing he's been doing?
I've been saying that what the Republicans are trying to do is not add those ACA subsidies, which would keep healthcare costs in the future.
No, I got it.
But you're talking about a totally different issue.
I know, but you're talking about a totally different issue, which is the government shutdown.
I made the point that Trump has also managed to get the hostages released in Gaza, that he's also forging, trying to forge a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
A president of the United States has a number of important things going on at any given time.
The idea that the construction of a ballroom on the east wing of the White House is his top priority, I think, is very disingenuous.
Now, does he think it needs a space for a new ballroom?
Then, yeah, look, let me bring in Jack on this one.
Jack, like I say, I've only been to the East Wing actually once, but it did strike me there is not a big ballroom space.
So if there needs to be one, why not have one?
The Third Term Debate00:12:49
Yeah, and I think that clearly, you know, he's doing it in tripical Trump fashion, right?
Where I don't think people realized quite how extensive this was going to be.
And I think that's why so many people, when they first saw the images that came out, that really, you know, really took them aback.
But at the same, it can be jarring.
But at the same time, when you look at the White House itself, it is relatively small compared to the world leader residences around the world or compared to any European capital, for example.
And so it makes sense that the White House would have the ability to do this.
You can't have world leaders on these state vigil visits, whether it be Republican or Democrat, coming in and they're walking around on the south lawn and in these tents and on the grass.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
Why not have a nice ballroom?
And by the way, while we're at it, I'd love, and I do love the fact that it was trending this weekend, that one of the names that was suggested for this is the Charles J. Kirk ballroom.
Let me get straight to the point.
Gold is up by around 40% this year.
That's not speculation.
That's reality.
And if some of your savings aren't diversified into gold, you're missing the boat.
Here's the facts.
Inflation is still too high.
The US dollar is still too weak.
And the government's debt is insurmountable.
That's why central banks are flocking to gold and driving prices to record highs.
It's not too late to get involved.
Birch Gold Group will help you convert an existing IRA or a 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in gold.
You don't pay a dime out of pocket.
Just text Piers, P-I-E-R-S, to 989-898 and claim your free info kit.
There's no obligation.
There's useful information.
The best indicator of the future is the past.
And gold has been a safe haven for millennia.
What other investment can say that?
Text Piers to 989-898 to claim your free info kit on gold.
That's Piers to 989-898.
Protect your future with Birch Gold.
Yeah, I mean, look, let me bring in Mark Lamont Hill here.
I just think it's one of those things where if you look at the history of presidents and what they've done to the White House as an edifice.
1829, Andrew Jackson added the North Portico.
1902, Theodore Roosevelt adds the West Wing.
1909, William Taft expands the West Wing and adds the first Oval Office.
1913, Woodrow Wilson adds the Rose Garden.
1942, FDR adds the East Wing to the House to house additional war staff and a bomb shelter.
1948, Truman oversees the total construction, reconstruction of the White House.
And 1970, Nixon adds the briefing room for journalists.
There is a long and illustrious history of presidents from all sides doing stuff to the White House building.
Putting stuff up, taking stuff down.
What's the big deal?
All right.
Those are interesting dates and observations.
And I think they are part of a bigger issue.
Let me start by saying this is not my priority issue.
There are a lot of things in the world to be outraged about right now.
And this wouldn't make my top 20.
I do understand, though, that some people see this as a signpost of a deeper problem.
At a moment where there is a government shutdown, at a moment where there is not true peace, certainly not lasting peace in Gaza, at a moment where people are fighting for everything from health care to reparations to people battling about redistricting.
For this to become not Trump's priority, but certainly the thing that is being trumpeted, it can appear to people as a distraction.
You mentioned Nixon in 1970.
Nixon in 1970 is opening up space for journalists, right?
You mentioned a bomb shelter in 19, would you say 19, it was during World War II.
It was either, I remember 43 or something, maybe 1940 or something, 42.
That's in the middle of World War II.
That makes sense.
1913, it was done.
That's the year before World War I starts.
So again, imagine if two years later someone was doing something purely for entertainment purposes.
It could look bad.
And at a moment where it is being...
It's for statement.
Again, I'm not arguing the point.
I'm saying it's more about the optics for me.
At a moment where Trump is being accused of being kind of aware of the money.
Hold on, Mark.
Mark, here's what I'd say.
But Mark, here's what I'd say to that.
The reason it's become such a big deal is because of the, in my opinion, massively over-the-top hysterical reaction to it from Democrats.
It's not that big a deal, really.
It's not costing the American people anything.
And if another president who comes in from the Democratic Party doesn't like it, they can do their own thing.
The president has the power and authority to do what he's done.
He thinks he needs a bigger space to welcome foreign dignitaries and world leaders.
It's not really entertainment.
That's part of the functioning process of the White House acknowledging and receiving the most important people in the world.
I mean, I just can't, I'm trying to get angry about this and I'm failing.
I don't think you need to get angry about this.
By the way, the word entertainment space has been used repeatedly by the White House.
That's why people are saying entertainment.
I get that he's not hosting like Lola Palooza, but there's still an idea here that this is not a major priority in terms of politics.
Again, it's not the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning or stops me from sleeping at night.
But I do think it's interesting at a moment where people are seeing Trump seize more and more power and he's seeming more and more like an authoritarian figure.
And there are people who are saying that this requires a federal oversight committee and that this isn't the unilateral decision that should be made.
And it costs $100 million more than he said, even though he's the great builder in chief.
I think there are reasons why this, you're almost giving fodder to your political opponents, which creates this hullabaloo that I don't think we need.
Okay.
Let me just come back, Michael, to something Scott Galloway said, which may be a much more significant part of this whole debate, which is he believes it's a sign of something else.
Let's take a look.
What this means is the following: is that he is normalizing federal troops in cities.
He's creating doubt around the election process, and he has no intention of leaving.
Because I won't, if I'm running a place, I won't put in a new refrigerator, much less tear down an entire wing.
So, let's be honest, folks.
You really think he'd go through this if he was planning to leave in 36 months?
Yeah, it's his new Mar-a-Lago.
He's building Mar-a-Lago.
Yeah.
Now, Michael, Donald Trump was up on Air Force One overnight.
Well, hang on.
Yeah, I'm coming to this.
Michael, on Air Force One, Trump was asked about these persistent rumors that he may run again.
Let's take a look.
I would love to do it.
I have my best numbers ever.
It's very terrible.
I have my best numbers.
You read it.
Am I not ruling it out?
You'll have to tell me.
All I can tell you is that we have a great group of people, which they don't.
They have Jasmine Crockett, a low IQ person.
They have AOC's low IQ.
Now, Michael, my personal view is that Trump is on a massive troll about this, which is winding up the left pretty successfully.
I don't actually think he has any intention to run again.
However, I don't know for sure.
Would you see that if he did actually try and run again?
Or there's even this kind of weird conspiracy theory that he may let JD Vance run and act as his vice president.
Then Vance just surrenders authority to his vice president, who's Donald Trump.
Knowing Donald Trump, the idea he would do anything that involves the word vice is unthinkable, and he's already ruled that out as a mad idea.
But would you think that if he was to try and run again, that to me would be a step too far?
That's way more significant and serious, I would say, than an argument about a ballroom.
Trump's second term thus far has been good enough that I would cheer if we could have Caesar Augustus Donald as Trump.
But it's not going to happen because it's prohibited by the 22nd Amendment.
Even the idea of his becoming vice president, it wouldn't work.
The 22nd Amendment prohibits that.
Now, it's worth pointing out, no less a conservative than Ronald Reagan campaigned at the end of his second term and after he left office before Alzheimer's disease to overturn the 22nd Amendment.
So there is a long-standing American tradition that there is a term limit and it's at the ballot box.
And the only one who ever abused that was the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt who became the American monarch.
But all of that is kind of beside the point because we have a data point here.
These Democrats who are wailing about Trump never leaving office because he wants to make some improvements to the White House at private expense, they seem to have forgotten that we already tested this in 2020 after Democrats had changed all the election rules, in some cases unconstitutionally.
Even amid all of that, Donald Trump left office.
And then people missed him so much that they invited him back.
So maybe in the meantime, once he leaves and JD Vance is president, maybe we can finally fulfill Reagan's dream, get rid of the 22nd Amendment, and then we can get Trump to a non-consecutive third term.
Brian, I want to play a clip from Steve Bannon.
Obviously, being breakfast.
Can I answer that?
Can I just say that?
Let me play the clip from Bannon.
Hang on a second.
I'll play the clip from Bannon.
It's on the same theme.
Then you can respond.
Let's take a look.
You need a third term in order to see that job through you.
Well, he's going to get a third term.
So Trump 28.
Trump is going to be president of 28.
And people just ought to get accommodated with that.
So what about the 22nd Amendment?
There's many different alternatives.
At the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is.
But there's a plan, and President Trump will be the president in 28.
Brian, your response.
So, first of all, Michael, if the way that you're going to disprove the notion that Trump is going to try and seek a third term is by pointing to how he reacted in the aftermath of his loss in 2020, I don't think that inspires much confidence.
I'm not sure if you're a full-blown, it was a whole ass insurrection.
The whole January 6th.
Oh, wow.
So, hold on.
There was a big insurrection and a coup d'état.
So, Brian, let me just ask you, did Trump leave office or not?
Yeah, dude, because he wasn't successful at trying to do what he was trying to do.
He was indicted for blocking the certification of Congress.
Like, there is this whole revisionist history where people say because he wasn't successful at trying the coup that he was trying, that somehow he didn't try it.
His mentality is that he has carte blanche to stay in power, to usurp power, to hold it to himself whenever he wants.
And pointing to 2020 doesn't prove your point.
It expressly disproves your point.
It literally proves the point because he left office, which you just admitted.
Not willing to do it.
This time, super insurrection.
The worst in American history.
Okay, I'll wait for this.
So, if somebody wants to tries to place a wave.
If somebody tries to do that, we're going to have an honest conversation about this.
That's a little more difficult to do.
Would you place that?
I mean, I think the truth is, I think we can all say Donald Trump indisputably left office.
I think we can all say Donald Trump left office kicking and screaming.
He did every legislation.
I'm trying to advance the conversation so we don't just have a dogfight the whole time.
I'm saying, yeah, there was a fight.
Yes, there was resistance.
Some of it was legal.
Some of it was extra-legal.
Some of it was flat out illegal.
Some of it was non-violent.
Some of it was violent.
Some of it wasn't directly from Trump.
Some of it was from his support.
We get that.
But the point here is that Trump did not want to leave office and did everything he could to not leave office and still doesn't really believe, or at least doesn't state publicly that he lost the election.
And so based on that logic, it's not unreasonable to think that Donald Trump would resist again.
And if he resisted knowing that he doesn't have a second term in his back pocket like he did the first time, it's entirely plausible that he goes even harder this time.
It's entirely plausible.
All the conspiracy theories are possible.
And when people who have supported him for years, if not decades, say, look, he ain't going nowhere, that also doesn't inspire confidence.
I think that's a good question.
Would you place any money on the notion that Trump is going to be in office for the first time?
Just allow me to finish the thought, and then I promise I won't interrupt you.
And so when you see that, that rhetoric, these actions, Trump's statements then combined with him doing major reconstruction on a rental, as my man said, that does make some people anxious.
Do I think Trump is going to stay in a third term?
No, because I think that the armed forces, I think in particular branches of government, aren't going to allow that to happen because they'll be listening to the new commander in chief who will be the elected president.
I actually think Trump won't stay a third time, but I do think it won't be without a fight.
I think that's plausible.
Democratic Party Uncertainty00:10:32
Today's show is sponsored by Oxford Natural, makers of the Optimum Day and Optimum Night All Natural Supplements.
Thousands of Brits and Americans are already taking them with incredible results.
Optimum Day boosts your energy and supports weight loss throughout the day.
Optimum night helps you relax and get deep, refreshing sleep.
They have countless success stories, including from some very familiar faces.
England ledger Michael Owen, who lost 40 pounds.
AFTV's Robbie, who lost more than £100.
To watch their full stories and many more, scan the QR code on your screen or visit oxfordnatural.com slash peers.
And here's the best part.
Use the code peers and get 70% off your first order.
You're 70% off with the code PEERS.
Well, Jack, I want to play you a clip, if I may, which is Carmela Harris is definitely hinting she may run again, which might be even better news for Republicans than Donald Trump running again.
This is what she told Laura Koonsberg from the BBC yesterday.
In terms then of what is next for you, you write very powerfully about the differences that many women have made to your life.
When are they going to see a woman in charge in the White House?
In their lifetime, for sure.
Could it be you?
Possibly.
In my experience, interviewing politicians, when someone says, I'm not done, it means they are thinking seriously about running.
But when you look at the bookies odds, they put you as an outsider.
I've never listened to polls.
If I listened to polls, I would have not run from my first office or my second office.
And I certainly wouldn't be sitting here in this interview.
She also told Charlemagne the God, I'm not done.
I've lived my entire life of service.
It's in my bones.
So there have been two interviews at the weekend over the last few days where she's clearly intimated, Jack, that she may have another go at this.
I mean, I watched the interview she did in its entirety with Laura Kunzberg.
I thought she just came over as so utterly deluded.
Clearly thinks this was a very narrow defeat that under normal circumstances, if Biden had stood down a bit earlier, she'd have walked it.
When in fact, the reality is Donald Trump won everything.
He won the White House, the Electoral College, the popular vote.
He won the whole of Congress.
He won every swing state.
I mean, it was the biggest shellacking of modern times in terms of the breadth of the victory.
Why would she even think of running again?
Oh, no, Piers, I couldn't disagree more.
I mean, America is a divided country.
This panel's divided in many ways.
But if there's one thing Americans can't get enough of, it's more Kamala Harris.
We need more Kamala Harris on TV, more Kamala Harris rallies, more of those incredible concerts, which I attended, many of them, many of the rallies that I went to, just so high energy.
We need as much Kamala Harris as America.
Actually, she should replace Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime performer.
She should just get up there with Megan Thee Stallion, maybe with Bad Bunny, come on out as a guest.
I would love her to do every single bit of that.
Well, Brian and Mark have been stony-faced throughout that little statement.
So Brian, let me ask you, this cannot be helpful, surely, to the Democratic Party.
I mean, what I'm seeing with the Democratic Party right now, you've got Kamala Harris on this kind of whiny defeat tour, hinting she wants another go at this, which I think would be a disaster.
But you also have the progressive, quite hard left of the party beginning to dominate now in Democratic politics.
And again, if you're the Republicans, you're probably rubbing your hands with glee that AOC may be the candidate.
I mean, what is your view of the way, first of all, what Kamala Harris is doing on maneuvers, but also the way the battle to be the voice and the heart, if you like, and the soul of a Democratic Party is looking like, heading towards another election?
I think in general, look, if Kamala Harris wants to throw her hat in the ring again, like a full primary is not something that's going to hurt anybody.
I think having as many voices as we possibly can is just going to be...
I mean, the criticism against Democrats as we headed into the 2024 election was that it was not a democratic process.
And so inherently, for anybody to say, oh, Kamala Harris can't run, I think is feeding into that same idea.
If she wants to run, if she wants to be part of what I promise will be an extraordinarily large primary field, then more power to her.
I think more voices is always welcome.
It may be the case that she gets only a few percentage points and it becomes very clear that she's not going to be the nominee.
So be it.
I think that lending ourselves to that democratic process is only going to help more and more.
Now, in terms of The broader Democratic Party right now, look, I think it's, I think, to your point, there is a bit of uncertainty as to who the new face of the Democratic Party is going to be, as to who the leadership of the Democratic Party is going to be.
We don't have that answer right now.
And I know that's not really like a satisfactory answer, but we just don't have that answer.
And in large part, that's why the party had felt runnerless for so long.
And so, you know, I think that we're going to get that answer relatively soon.
But I think that we can see as we head toward the 2026 midterm cycle that really, in large part, these midterm elections are going to be a referendum on the unpopularity of Republicans.
We've seen Democrats overperform 12, 14, 16 points from where they were in 2024.
So we'll be able to kind of benefit from that as we head toward midterms, but we're going to need some standard bear as we head toward 28.
Michael Knowles, it seems to me the problem the Democratic Party has, I'll come to you, Mark, in a moment, but Michael, in the New York mayoral race, Mandani is clearly a very charismatic guy.
He's galvanized people in New York.
There's no question of that.
And there's no doubt that the party nationally is looking at him and thinking, wow, okay, is this the way to go?
But my gut feeling is that what the Democratic Party is desperately crying out for is another kind of Bill Clinton figure, Barack Obama figure, leftist center, but not too far less, pragmatic, a common sense candidate with bags of charisma, someone who can come and really like drag the party out of the poll gutter.
It's currently languishing.
Least popular Democratic party ever right now in recorded history in terms of the poll numbers.
And I looked at the rally yesterday where you had AOC and Bernie Sanders and Dani and all this kind of stuff.
And I'm like, wow, I just, this can't work, can it?
Mamdani is very impressive for New York, and I hope that the Democrats take the lesson that they need to replicate him nationally.
I hope they nominate him for president in 2028, because the demographic of New York is not the demographic of the rest of the country.
So Momdani, for instance, relies on the foreign-born New Yorker population.
Without the foreign-born population, he loses.
It's not even particularly close.
So I hope that they try to make all of America look like New York.
For the rest of them, I think you're right, Piers, that the Democrats are trying to have a Bill Clinton new Democrat-like figure.
That was Gavin Newsom's initial instinct.
So he tried to make friends with Charlie Kirk.
He tried to make friends with Steve Bannon.
And then the base just wouldn't let him.
So then he had his press office tweeting out all sorts of unhinged, radically left-wing things, vaguely threatening.
They don't know what to do.
They're schizophrenic.
I don't think that Kamala is serious about running.
I think Kamala had some ghostwritten book and she answered the question about how she's not done in politics.
I think this is Sarah Palin 2012 all over again.
It's going to be will she, won't she? to try to get some speaker fees, but it's not really going to work.
And then who are you left with?
I think AOC is legitimately a pretty impressive candidate, probably can't win nationally, but she is where the Democrat Party is going.
Otherwise, who you got?
Momdani?
Okay, nominate him.
I'm in.
Where do I donate?
Yeah, I mean, Mark Lamont-Hill, I think this is a real crisis of identity for the Democratic Party.
And it looks to me like they haven't really learned much from the last election, which is that if you get hijacked by the progressive left of the party with all the woke stuff that was enveloping the party, that you could, you know, you can run into a populist Republican candidate who just takes you to the woodshed, right?
And I just feel like they haven't learned from this.
Surely the party has to move back to a more electable center ground, doesn't it?
Like most of you, I've been through the ringer with health scares affecting loved ones, and I've had the wake-up call about a system which is reactive, not preventative.
Simple checkups can miss the big picture.
Things like hormones, inflammations, and nutrients.
Today's sponsor, Superpower, digs deeper, decoding your biology to spot issues early so we can live longer and better.
One lab test scans for thousands of diseases and more than 100 biomarkers for heart, liver, thyroid, metabolism, and vitamins.
No more guessing about low energy or brain fog.
You'll get a personalized action plan in their app, plus a dedicated medical team guiding you.
These are athlete-level insights for just $199, half of what others charge for less.
Head to superpower.com to learn more, avoid health crises, and lock in the special price of $199 while it lasts.
After you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them.
So be sure to mention PiersMorgan uncensored and support our show.
Your biology decoded, your health blueprint activated.
Go to superpower.com.
You know, it's so fascinating.
I was with you right until about 70% of that sentence.
It was going to be one of those monumental achievements in human history that you and I agreed.
I think you're right that the Democratic Party has not learned its lesson.
I think the Democratic Party over and over again continues to fail to lose its lesson because it doesn't seem to be able to find its backbone and it doesn't seem to want to engage or respond to the policies and the outcomes that voters want.
I mean, the reason Mamdani is popular is because he's speaking to people's needs.
I mean, people want lower taxes.
People want public transportation that's free.
People want access to housing and health care.
People want to be safe on the streets.
And we can have disagreements about certain pieces of Mandani's politics.
That's fine.
Everyone can have those agreements or disagreements.
Mandani's Progressive Vision00:02:38
I tend to agree with him.
But ultimately, he's speaking to the voters' needs.
What the Democrats keep doing, particularly on national elections, is say, hey, we're going to try to out Republican the Republicans.
Kamala Harris went on the national stage and she's bringing on Republicans with her.
She's not moving beyond Biden or Trump's position on Israel-Palestine, which became a huge wedge issue for her when she was running.
When we talk about immigration, when we talk about offshore drilling, when we talk, I mean, I could name five issues of fracking, more specifically.
We could name multiple things that she just wasn't sufficiently distinguishable from the Republican alternative.
And that's what didn't make voters excited to come out and vote for her, along with all the other stuff.
I absolutely think that they need to learn their lesson.
The Republicans learned the lesson over a decade ago.
Remember when the Republicans kept getting shellacked and Bobby Jindal did the autopsy of the Republican Party?
And the thing the Republicans start to learn is they need to speak to their voters.
They need to speak to the base of their voters.
They need to stop backing down.
That's what I'd like to see from Democrats.
And as far as the Kamala Harris choice, I disagree wholeheartedly.
I know some people pretty close to her.
I haven't spoken to her directly, but I think she's absolutely considering running.
And my fear is not that she'll get nominated.
I actually don't think she'll win the nomination.
But my fear is that the person who does won't be that different.
If Gavin Newsom runs, he's more popular.
He's more charming to some people.
He's more handsome to some people.
But he's the same candidate in different rap.
And we need a progressive, a real progressive.
If I can add too, Pierce, Brian, you had mentioned the progressive left and all the woke stuff.
Think about who the candidates are that have been relentlessly focused, to Mark's point, on issues that impact regular voters.
Bernie Sanders, the farthest left politician that we have in America, also the most popular politician that we have in America, also the one who is so focused, not on woke issues, but on issues that impact regular Americans, on economic issues.
AOC is the same way Mamdani ran this whole campaign focused on the rent and focused on free buses and making sure that people can afford to eat.
So there's this weird conflation where just because someone is progressive, that you just assume that there are these just bastions of wokeness.
But in fact, the most progressive candidates, the people who identify as democratic socialists, those are the ones who are focused on issues that actually impact real Americans, largely economic issues.
And in fact, it is the Republicans in office who are more focused on identity politics.
Yeah, but Brian.
Trans Rights in Sports00:10:04
Okay, but if you asked AOC, for example, what is a woman?
We all know she'd struggle to answer, right?
This is the problem, right?
She would be very, very wary of articulating that a woman is an adult female, right?
Because I think AOC would have no problem.
I think people love creation.
She would struggle.
Correct.
Okay, how about what she said?
The only struggle would be arriving at a common point of definition between her and transphobic people who refuse to accept trans people as people and trans women as women and trans men as people are.
Yeah, but this is where you're talking about.
This is where...
Mark, this is where you're so wrong, and I'll explain why.
You know, Carmela Harris, if you remember in the last election, in the run-ups of Election Day, the most successful ad in modern American political history, the New York Times said afterwards, was the 30-second ad about Carmela Harris and the trans issues, ending with Carmela's for they, them, Donald Trump is view.
They reckon it moved the needle by three points.
And yet at the same time, many on the Democratic side were saying this woke stuff, nobody cares, it's irrelevant, it doesn't cut through, it's all just right-wing hysteria.
And I was sitting there in the middle going, no, no, it does cut through.
It does cut through.
If you're like a mom with kids in sport, in women's sport in middle America, you absolutely care about this.
And you want to have a candidate that can quite clearly tell you what a woman is.
Now, again, I come back to this because to me, it became a litmus test of where the left thinks.
If you can't articulate what a woman is without, as you say, you know, I'm not, look, look at me.
I'm not remotely transphobic.
I think trans people exist.
They have a right to exist.
They have a right to fairness, equality, safety, like you and me.
I want the same rights for them everybody else gets.
However, not at the expense of eroding women's rights.
And that's why the definition of a woman is so crucially important, because it stops the unfairness and inequality and safety issues that come from when you allow trans women to say we're women and they start trampling on women's rights.
That's why it's so important.
Okay.
I heard your statement.
You articulated quite masterfully.
I'm going to ask you if you allow me to respond without interruption.
I'll take 20 seconds.
There's a difference between saying we disagree on what defines a woman and saying that people who have a more expansive definition are struggling to define what a woman is.
We're not struggling to define it.
You just don't agree with us.
Trans women are women.
Cis women are women.
They're all women.
There are different experiences.
There are different stories.
There are different contexts.
And we have to be, I think, honest about that in applying public policy.
But there's no struggle here.
If there's any struggle, it's been getting voters to remain focused on the issues that actually matter.
I didn't have an issue that Kamala Harris prioritized or paid great attention to trans women's rights.
The problem was she allowed the right wing to co-opt the narrative and make it seem like that's all she cared about, that she didn't care about workers' rights, that she didn't care about reparations, that she didn't care about living wages, that she didn't care about Palestinians and Gaza, that she didn't care about Haiti, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So no, that's not an issue.
And finally, to take this one issue around women's sports, which is relatively small in terms of its impact on everyday people, and make it seem as if trans people who make up an infinitesimal part of the American public are somehow running through your cities and just doing triple axles and dunks and swimming past all your little girls and ruining their sports dreams is a dishonest narrative.
I happen, I probably agree with you to a large degree about needing to have a conversation about trans women in sports.
I'm open to having that conversation.
What I'm not open to doing is making it seem as if trans people are destroying the world or they're destroying women's rights or they're undermining women's rights.
There's a lot of people undermining women's rights right now, and it ain't trans people.
And allowing the right to convince us that that was the big issue in the election is why the Democrats lost.
And I don't blame the Republicans for that.
I blame the Democrats for not foregrounding the issues that mattered in addition to this other issue that also matters.
But Mark, I think you just made pure assistance.
Can a woman have a penis?
Hang on, Michael, I come to you.
Michael, I will come to you.
But just quickly, can a woman have a penis, Mark?
Yes or no?
These types, a trans woman may have a penis.
A cis woman would not have a penis.
These are silly gotcha games that are just used to get clips on the internet.
I understand your point.
No, no, no.
You're saying that's a very simple idea.
No, no, it's simple biology.
A woman can't have a penis.
Full stop.
You and I agree on the biology.
The point here is that gender identities are different than sexual sex identities.
In other words, gender identity is not a biological construct.
So yes, women birth babies.
Men have penises.
We all agree on that if we're talking about male and female, actually.
Males have penises, women have vaginas.
We agree with that.
We can all agree on that.
When we talk about gender, it's not purely about what you're assigned biologically at birth.
And so to conflate the two things is to either be ignorant to the actual issue or to be disingenuous.
I don't think that you're a person who's anyone who has a vagina.
Is that a man?
Say that one more.
Say that again.
I didn't hear the question.
Oh, so just following that on the inverse also true then?
So does anyone who has a vagina must be a man then, right?
No, that's not the inverse.
That's not at all the inverse.
The point here is that biologically, there's male and female.
That's a much better question that would follow more logically than the thing you initially asked.
Biologically, if you have a vagina, if you're born with a vagina, you are a female.
Biologically, if you are born, if you're born with a penis, you are a male.
Yes, that's not in dispute.
What's in dispute is, are our biological, are our identities at birth, are our biological identities the whole story?
And in a trans conversation, we're saying, no, that's not the whole story.
Yes, yes, I was assigned male at birth.
Everybody on this panel, ironically, was assigned male at birth.
That's not in dispute.
What's in dispute is, does that tell the whole thing?
This whole language, Mark, Mark, Mark, this whole language is so ridiculous.
I wasn't assigned male at birth.
I was born, I was born a male, right?
And this is the problem.
And when you talk about trans women's sports...
Right, based on the menu.
The reason it's so important.
The reason it's so important is there is a Mark.
I interviewed...
No, let me just finish my point.
I interviewed a woman called Betty Yee last week, who is literally a candidate to be governor of California, where I currently am.
I have a home here in LA.
And she genuinely wants the next Olympics in Los Angeles to be gender neutral.
That's what she's endorsing, a gender-neutral Olympics.
Because she's been so traduced into going along with a lot of what you've just been saying, which trans women are women, therefore it shouldn't matter.
You can merge the two sexes.
You can have gender neutral Olympics.
And here's what happens when you do that.
If you're at a gender-neutral Olympics, women wouldn't win any medals.
End.
You literally destroy women's sport irrevocably.
Done.
Gone.
So once you assume that we separate the sexes at the Olympics...
Well, I don't think it's funny this.
I think it's so important.
It's fundamental.
No, I don't think it's funny either.
What I think is...
Mark, Mark, let me finish.
Let me finish.
Let me finish.
We separated the sex.
We're going to select the Olympics for a reason.
Please finish.
But there's a seven-second delay.
I'm not an athlete.
There's just a seven-second delay.
I'm telling that to the audience.
I recognize.
Go ahead.
I recognize that.
You're not interrupting me.
There is a very slight delay.
I agree.
Let me just ask you, though, why do we separate the sexes at the Olympics?
Okay.
So I'm going to answer your question, but I'd like to respond to the first part of what you say, which I didn't get to respond to, because again, you're making a straw man here.
I'm not arguing for mixing the sexes at the Olympics.
I agree with you that we start to divide sports by sex around middle school because there are some biological physical differences between people born male and people born female that make it non-competitive for female, those assigned female or those who are identified as females at that point.
So no, I don't, I understand why we divide people in track or basketball or wrestling.
I'm not arguing for not doing that.
I'm saying that two things can be true at once, as I said initially.
We can have a conversation about trans people in sports, but that doesn't mean that I have to no longer identify trans men as men or trans women as women.
We can say trans women are women and have conversations about sports that are different.
And you're conflating those two.
And every time I dispute your point about gender versus sex, you make a straw man arguing about women competing in like the triathlon, which I'm not making.
All right, let me bring in Michael.
You've been waiting very patiently here.
But it seems to me, Michael, the left get themselves into torturous knots about this issue.
They also fundamentally don't understand how it sounds to people listening to this stuff because it sounds, honestly, it sounds slightly insane.
Because what Mark has just done is articulated perfectly that we separate the sexes in the Olympics because men have a physical advantage, but at the same time, he wants trans women to be actually acknowledged as actual women.
Therefore, the argument should be they should be entitled to all the same rights as a woman.
In other words, she'd better compete against women.
This is the problem with it.
Michael.
Yeah, I think that Mark has just proven the broader political point.
Because to what Mark said, he said, two things can be true at once.
And that's true, but two opposing things cannot be true at once.
That violates the law of non-contradiction, which we've known since at least Aristotle.
So it cannot be the case.
Mark's definition is that a woman is a person who identifies as a woman.
But that's obviously a circular definition and therefore completely insistent.
America Is Not Christian00:16:10
Or he'll say, hold on, let me just finish.
Or he'll say that.
No, but that's not my position.
I just want to be clear.
That's not my position you're thinking is my position.
A woman can be biologically a woman, but for legal purposes, a man or something like that.
And it's totally incoherent, and it obviously is not persuasive to voters.
So getting back to the broader point that Piers opened up with, all he said was, look, if you asked AOC what a woman is, she would tie herself into knots answering.
I think this panel, and Mark in particular, has just demonstrated that.
And to your point, Brian, yes, I agree that Bernie is generally a non-woke leftist.
And he's been very good actually on certain issues like immigration because he's for reducing immigration to help workers' rights.
However, I think Momdani and AOC are manifestly woke.
And I think you've just proven the point right here.
If they cannot answer, as Katanji Jackson, Supreme Court Justice, could not answer, what a woman is, that's a good rule of thumb.
They've gone woke.
And it has really hurt them with voters.
It hurt them on common sense issues in 2024.
And the more schizophrenia they demonstrate on issues like that, the worse they're going to do in 28.
I think that's a good idea.
Well, you can read more about this in my...
Hang on, wait one second.
You can read more about this in my new book, Woke is Dead, which is more an aspiration that Woke is Dead, but this is one of the reasons why the ideology behind it is so inherently flawed.
Michael, I want to stay with you just to change topics and then come to the others, but there's been an interesting feud erupting in the cyberspace between Matt Walsh and Mehdi Hassan.
Well, let Mehdi explain what he thinks it's about.
Attention podcast, people.
I'm Harry Cole, and I'm invited to something properly different.
Something urgent, something real.
It's called Harry Cole Saves the West.
If you're tired of limp commentary and afraid to offend punditry, then this is the show for you.
We're taking sledgehammers to sacred cows and battling the malign forces tearing apart the US and UK.
From open borders to cultural collapse to economic chaos to the threats to national security, the values and freedoms of the West are under siege like never before.
This is the show where American grit meets British backbone.
We all defend faith, family, freedom, and the future of the West with bold, unapologetic truth-telling.
So if you're ready to push back, ready to stand tall, ready to laugh at the madness, then hit subscribe.
Harry Cole Saves the West right now.
Available wherever you get your podcasts.
The fight back starts here.
And yes, bring the popcorn.
Now, what's really bothering him about me is that I said in a recent visit to Dearborn, I think that if you can play church bells, you can pray the call to prayer.
Isn't it okay for Muslim Americans to broadcast a call to prayer?
I mean, let me add right now, within reason, of course, and in accordance with all local sound and noise ordinances.
But Matt went nuts and said, Christianity built this country.
Islam did not at all in even the slightest way.
That's why we can have our church bells.
To which I responded, one in three of the slaves who built this country were Muslims.
They were here long before the Walsh family arrived.
You'd know that if you'd studied history, but I know MAGA has an issue with studying.
To which Matt responded with a 13-minute video in which he got really mad, but was unable to rebut the two central points that I made.
Well, let's see a little bit of Matt Walsh's response to Mehdi.
You're as American as anyone else.
Really, Mehdi?
Really, Mr. Hassan?
You're as American as anyone?
You're a Muslim who was born in the UK, came to this country less than 10 years ago in your mid-30s to work for Al Jazeera.
Okay, is there anyone who seriously thinks that Mehdi Hassan is American at all, much less as American as anyone else?
So Michael, an interesting point here.
Obviously, America remains a Christian-dominated country.
So the sound of, you know, church bells ringing to encourage people to come to a Christian place of worship would be very familiar up and down the country.
Is there anything intrinsically wrong with a call to prayer for the many millions of Muslims that live in America?
Well, of course.
And this is no disrespect to Muslims, but the call to prayer, like all religion really, is a public kind of thing.
It changes communities.
It sets standards and norms and communities.
And so the question then becomes, what kind of communities do we have?
What kind of communities are really American?
And the fact is, we're a Christian country.
I know that Mehdi Hassan was accusing Walsh's family of showing up late, but mine was here about as early as it could be on the Mayflower, and those were zealous Christian pilgrims.
They called themselves pilgrims.
And so it's a Christian country.
Muslims basically did not exist in America until the latter part of the 20th century after the major immigration reform in Hart Seller.
Mehdi makes a good point that a lot of the slaves who arrived here were Muslim because they were enslaved by Muslim slavers in Africa, but they almost all converted to Christianity.
Our only real experience in America of Islam early on was the First Barbary War when more Muslim slavers kept stealing our sailors.
And ultimately, we resolved that issue, but it took a little while into the early 19th century.
So on the historical point, does anybody seriously want to keep a straight face and say America is just as much a Muslim country as a Christian country?
Of course not.
We've been very welcoming to Muslims.
And in many ways, Muslims are more grounded than secular leftists.
But give me a break.
It's totally preposterous.
And there's nothing wrong with the people wanting to keep their religious traditions and the character of their country that's been around for 400 years.
All right, Brian, I did a bit of research because I wasn't even sure at the moment if it is permitted, right?
So under freedom of religion, a call to prayer isn't banned from the U.S. Constitution.
However, local councils can decide on the use of loudspeakers to broadcast it, including prohibiting it during unsociable and decimal level.
In 2023, Minneapolis became the first major U.S. city to allow the announcement or ad hand to be heard of the speakers five times a day year round.
And in New York City, city guidelines announced in 2023 by Mayor Eric Adams clarified that mosques do not need a special permit to amplify the call to prayer on Fridays and sundown during the holy month of Ramadan.
So it seems like there is a reasonable amount of flexibility already for the call to prayer.
But I guess it's really about the principle.
Michael arguing there that because America is so largely a Christian country, is it right that a minority, i.e. of Muslims, say five to six million Muslims, I think it is in the population of America, maybe slightly more now, should they have a right to the call to prayer to be amplified or not?
If you're asking me if Muslims should have the right to practice their religion, I think that that question is beyond easy to answer right there in the first place.
No, no, that wasn't the question.
It's right there.
It's a question.
That wasn't the question.
No, it's about whether they should be allowed to be a religion.
No, no, specifically.
No, no, specifically, whether they should be allowed to amplify the call to prayer in towns, cities, whatever, as they do.
Obviously, when you go to the Middle East, you hear it very loudly, quite deafening sometimes through a city.
I've been to the Middle East a lot this year.
So it's whether that should be permitted or not.
I think that if it's in accordance with local laws and there's a practicing people that want to practice their religion, then that's what America is.
This idea, I mean, what Michael just explained was maybe the most anti-un-American thing that I've ever heard.
This claim that we are a Christian country.
I mean, Michael, we are expressly not a Christian country.
In fact, we have a whole separation of church and state.
Do you have anything to do with the sound?
You don't have the Constitution.
Yes, yes, I do.
I have currency.
What's it say on there?
What does it say in God's trust?
Does it say in Allah is our trust?
Does it say in Shihan?
God is our trust.
Michael, I'm not going to enter into a whole theocratic debate with you, but God can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people.
It's a democratic.
It's answering the silly point that you just made.
We're Christian.
She wouldn't.
Our founders said so.
The men who built the country said so.
This is in our national anthem.
And it's on our mind.
Having In God We Trust on our dollar bill does not mean that we are a Christian nation.
We have the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion in this country.
And the notion that because Christians view themselves as some persecuted minority or some persecuted majority in this country does not just mean automatically that this is a Christian country.
I know that that's a big, that's a big question.
But Brian, is Christmas a federal holiday?
Yes.
It is.
Is Easter a federal holiday?
Yes.
You're not going to be.
We're not a Christian country.
Okay.
I just wanted to change.
Well, I have a question.
We're not a Christian.
You're not making a point.
Let me jump in.
You're making a difference.
Let me jump in.
Let me jump in.
I've just checked while I've been listening to you guys.
There are just under 5 million people identifying as Muslim in the United States of America out of a population of 340 million or so.
There are 235 million people in the United States who identify as Christian, making up 69% of the population.
I mean, that is, whatever way you look at it, Brian, that makes America a predominantly Christian country.
I mean, there's no disputing the numbers.
Pointing out which religious group has a majority in a country does not make that country a Christian nation, especially at the expense of some other religion.
So you can point to the fact that we have would you call any Middle Eastern countries Muslim countries?
Because they have other religions in those countries.
So are they Muslim?
Are they Muslim countries?
It depends what the country is.
Can I jump in here and what their constitution says?
I mean, our constitution expressly says that we are.
Exactly.
And that's the point.
Can I just jump in as a Muslim man, as a professor, and as a Muslim man, as a scholar of Middle Eastern studies, I think I have something to contribute here.
I think you're ticking a lot of boxes here, Mark, to jump in, yes.
Look, I have to sometimes.
So there's a few things here.
One, the definition of a religious country is being floated about here in ways that I think are unclear.
If we're talking about a religious state, the United States is not a religious state.
It's not a Christian nation in that way, right?
Is it founded largely on Christian values?
Is the culture leaning toward Christianity, hence why we have federal holidays like Christmas off and Easter off, but we don't necessarily have off for it?
Although now we have off Faid as well, right?
But it just depends.
But in that way, yes, this is a Christian country.
But the principle of this country is that there's religious tolerance and that there's a religious plurality.
There are about close to five million Muslims and many who don't identify for various reasons.
And there are about 7 million Jews.
When we practice Jewish holidays or observe Jewish holidays, we don't tell people, you know, silence your voice, silence your prayer call, silence this because it's a Christian country.
And we shouldn't.
We want to honor and respect the beautiful religion of Judaism and the beautiful religion of Islam and the beautiful religion of Christianity.
We have to do all of those things at once.
You said that historically Muslims didn't enter this country until the latter part of the 20th century.
That's just factually untrue.
And I think to ignore the fact, not relative to the number of enslaved Africans who were brought here.
And that was Mehedi's point of view.
It was not to be distorted.
They were forced to convert to Christianity.
There weren't that many Jews.
That's like me saying there weren't many Jews during the Inquisition, right?
If you're forced to hide, if you're forced to convert, I'm not using that as, that's not a feather in your cap.
The point is that you're not...
But not drifting away.
But we're drifting away.
Enslaved countries.
We're drifting away from the people.
Enslaved Africans built this country, and many were Muslim.
And many even after the era of slavery still held on to the United States.
That is true.
And Michael did.
And many of them.
Let me just jump in.
And many of them practiced secretly and silently.
And even at the beginning of the 20th century, with the Moore Science Temple, with the Ahmadiyya movement.
And look at the founding five years.
Time out.
We bring some facts in here.
Time out.
You're interrupting the point of the majority of the people.
Thank you.
We're moving away from the actual question.
It's not about whether Muslims have a right to practice their religion or even a historical lesson about how many may have been slaves that helped found Americas.
That's not the debate we're having.
We're having the debate that given there are under 5 million Muslims in the United States, should they be permitted to have a call to prayer of the kind that you would hear all over the Middle East?
You're a professor of Middle Eastern studies.
You just declared that.
Do you think that would be a sensible move to enable the call to prayer to be heard across America?
Yes or no?
Okay.
Well, it's not a yes or no question.
Some things aren't yes or no.
And by the way, the diversions came from me responding to the misinformation that had been distributed.
I didn't randomly go into a historical analysis of Muslims in America.
Responding to the misinformation.
All right.
But to your direct, but to your direct question, there should be a call for prayer because we're in a nation that has religious tolerance.
And the call for prayer is a necessary part of the practice of Islam.
It's not just that Muslims want to call to prayer.
The Adhan is actually part of the process of prayer.
But the debate here or the request here wasn't for it to be declared loudly across America as you just described it.
That was never the debate.
If there are four Muslims in Wichita, I'm just saying hypothetically, no one's saying, well, Wichita has to have the Adan played five times a day.
That's not the call.
If there are Muslim communities and there are massages, there are mosques there.
Yes, they should be able to do the call to prayer.
It was never supposed to be blasted across the city.
It was supposed to be blasted or played within a reasonable earshot.
That's all it is.
That's not what it's like in Saudi.
But to give you a perfect example, as someone who spent the last 15 years or so studying in Israel and in Palestine, I can tell you that when you walk through Jerusalem and you hear the call to prayer, it's within an earshot.
It doesn't disrupt the people five blocks away or even two blocks away.
And that's certainly an ecumenical country.
And it identifies as a Jewish state, but still Muslims are able to practice their religion and have the Adan played in that context.
That's all people are asking for.
All right, interesting.
John Pasobe, what's your view of this?
Well, I think that what Mark is saying, it makes sense.
And at the same time, I do think that cities and towns can vote on whatever noise ordinance they'd like.
And I think the bigger question here, though, really does come down to the fact that these massive immigration of Middle Easterners, massive immigration of Muslims have come into the United States predominantly since the events of 9-11, predominantly since the advent of the turn of the century, the 21st century.
And that's why you're seeing things like this, seeing questions like this come up because America has gone down this road from open borders and mass immigration towards a new country where the demographics have massively shifted in this country since 2000.
And that's why we're getting all of these questions that used to sort of be quote-unquote settled science in America.
Now suddenly we're having to deal with the fact that we've got millions and millions of people here that don't share our culture, that don't share our history, that have no connection to our founding whatsoever.
And they're Muslims shooting up south of the border?
How is the border crisis connect to the question of the Adan?
I'm trying to understand.
No, I'm saying open borders in terms of mass immigration.
From where?
Where's the mass immigration coming from?
There's mass immigration from the Middle East.
There's mass immigration from South Asia.
There's mass immigration from Latin America.
There's tons of mass immigration all over this country.
How do you think the guy's going to be?
I think in the last five years, there's been a lot of people who are going to be able to go look.
This guy is winning the party.
I've been winning the general election in New York because of mass immigration.
This has become his leading edge in terms of the proportionality of votes that he's winning are from foreign-born New Yorkers.
So you've got a guy who's going to be the mayor of our biggest city because of mass immigration.
Rising Political Violence00:04:49
A guy who, by the way, like yourself, is Muslim and is someone who was born outside of the country.
He's an immigrant himself, I think, 2018.
So there's no way you can say that mass immigration from these areas hasn't changed the character of America.
I was disputing the idea that the border crisis was connected because the border crisis wasn't bringing large numbers of Muslims.
That's the part that I was disputing.
As far as the mid-migration, if you remember, but when people say the border crisis, you know they're not talking about refugees from Syria coming in.
But to the extent that we are refugees from Syria and Turkey and Afghanistan and Somalia.
How many Syrian refugees have come in the last five years?
How many Syrian refugees have come in last year?
Too many.
Ballpaw.
Too many.
How many?
No, that's a fancy way of saying I don't know, and I just threw out something.
I could pull it up right now if you really wanted to have a conversation about this.
But places like Dearborn, Michigan.
Places like Minneapolis are now having these policies because of mass immigration.
That's just a numbers argument.
Because they have black and brown people there, and those things don't actually change the character of America if we're saying that the character of America is different.
Minneapolis hasn't been changed in 1990 because of mass Somalian immigration.
Is that really what you're saying right now?
I'm saying the character of America has not been changed.
If you bring in cities with large numbers of Somalians, if you bring in large numbers of Somalia, if you bring in large numbers, say, for example, of Somalians to Minnesota, and those Somalians are Muslims, then yeah, you'll see more Muslim culture and more Muslim practices happening in Minneapolis.
But that's not antithetical to the character of America.
That's the point I'm making.
Of course it is.
I think we can all agree probably.
Embracing tolerance.
I think we can all agree that when it comes to numbers, the fact that a reported 10 million people came into the United States illegally under the Biden administration was not a good thing for America and certainly not a good thing for the Democratic Party that lost control of their border.
Well, Mark, you can laugh, but actually, I think it was one of the fundamental reasons.
Donald Trump.
You know damn well I'm not going to agree to that.
That's why I'm laughing.
Fierce, you know, I'm laughing because you know damn well I'm not going to agree.
I'm like saying, oh, and I think we can all agree that, you know what I mean, like soccer sucks.
Like, you know, I'm not going to agree to that.
You know I wasn't.
You said that.
No, you should agree to that.
That's my point.
You should agree.
You should just assume that.
How could you assume that Mark would want to enforce basic immigration laws?
How could you assume?
That's crazy.
Let me ask Michael, before we let everyone go, because it's been a fascinating debate.
Thank you all very much.
But tomorrow, you're appearing, Michael, before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution at the invitation of subcommittee chairman Eric Schmidt for a hearing entitled Politically Violent Attacks, a Threat to Our Constitutional Order.
And you said this recent uptick in left-wing violence is the culmination of years, really decades, of consistent assaults on their opponents, a free marketplace of ideas simply cannot exist when ideological bandits keep shooting up the marketplace.
I'm grateful to Senator Schmidt for convening this important hearing and looking forward to holding to account the left-wing ideologues undermining our public square.
So it's going to be very interesting when you give your evidence.
But I guess the obvious response will be, and I can say this on behalf, I'm sure, of Brian and Mark, will be this is not just a left-wing issue, political violence or ideological violence.
There are many, many examples in the last decades of right-wing violence against the left wage from an ideological political viewpoint.
Why do you believe this is becoming a much more prevalent issue for the left and not the right?
It's certainly not just a left-wing issue.
You know, the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.
It's a fallen world, of course.
But even The Atlantic, as liberal a magazine as it gets, has recently admitted, based on a new study, that left-wing terror is predominant, has exceeded right-wing terror.
And then when you go back through some of the previous studies and data sets that suggest that right-wing terror in previous years has been more prevalent than left-wing, what you find is that the way they arrive at those numbers is by not counting the left-wing terror.
So we'll be presenting that tomorrow before the Senate committee.
I'm really grateful, obviously, for the opportunity to do that.
All of this comes without question in the wake of Charlie's murder.
And that has led, as a silver lining, I suppose, to a national conversation on political violence.
But this has reached a fever pitch.
And when you have left-wingers much more likely than right-wingers, according to recent surveys, to justify political violence, it's become a real existential threat.
And so I'll look forward to seeing what, if anything, the Democrat senators have to say to the facts tomorrow.
Very interesting.
I'm looking forward to watching that.
Charlie Murder Fallout00:01:28
Thank you.
Yeah, you know what, Mark?
One of the most sickening things I've seen in recent times, actually, not just the murder of Charlie Kirk for his views, given how he used to literally go into college campuses to have debate, but the way that it was gleefully celebrated by people on the left, I thought was repulsive.
Absolutely repulsive.
And I would call that out if I saw people on the right celebrating the cold-blooded murder of a left-wing political pundit.
There are some things that should just be way beyond anything other than basic humanity, and that is one of them.
You do not go celebrate the murder of a young man for his views.
You just don't.
I agree.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I don't think anyone should celebrate murder, political assassinations, etc.
I think that it's, for me, it's a moral non-starter.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, let's end on a rare point of total agreement between me and Mark Lamont Hill.
A moment in history, a moment to savor.
Thank you all very much, guys.
That was a great debate.
Appreciate it.
Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent.
The only boss around here is me.
You enjoy our show.
We ask for only one simple thing: hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain.
And we'll do it all for free.
independent on censor media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it Without you.