Corporate Press BOYCOTTS White House After Trump BANS CNN, MSNOW, Politico w/ George Santos, Fat Nick, & Neil McCabe

Well, hello, hello, everybody. It is I, George Santos, filling in for Tim Poole today, who is busy or busy-ish, or I don't know, but it's always great to be here with you guys and antagonize the crap out of the chat. Hey, chat. Yep. Next two hours, me. Well, I just wanted to say, you know, lots of stuff going around today, and it has been a wild, interesting news day. We're going to have fun today because, I mean, from trunk meeting with Mandami in New York City at Gracie Mansion and suggesting potentially he can be a great mayor to the White House correspondents all now up in arms on Poole duty. Who even knows who Poole is unless it's Tim Poole? And then on top of that, there's like this major freaking revolt over what's his name, Macklemore and Ed Sheeran. I mean, guys, what is going on? The world's on fire, but here we are debating who opens for Ed Sheeran and which stadiums and which bosses. But on top of all of that, NATO is getting apprehensive with Russia. Russia is playing a very dangerous game of territorial edging. I can't do that with a straight face. But today's going to be a great show. We have a packed show. It's going to be phenomenal. And I just want to push it out there to all these guys that are here with me, and then we'll get right to it. So good evening. And, Neil, how are you? Phenomenal. I'm getting better every day, George. Tell us who you are for the audience who don't know who you are. Tell us what you do. I'm Neil W. McCabe. I'm a national political reporter. I basically do White House hits for Steve Bannon's War Room. But also I write a groundbreaking column for the. The South Shore Press, which is based in Suffolk County, Long Island. Very nice. And I've been with Breitbart and OAN and Human Events, and I've had quite the black market journalism career, George. You're part of the problem, I see. Well, thanks for being here. All right, Nick, tell us who you are. So I go by Fat Nick. Oh. Physician. Okay. Ten years. Not chubby? Voluptuous? I like it. Voluptuous is nice. I mean, you kind of look the same without a shirt on. I don't know about that. I might look a little better. I didn't know it was that kind of party. Oh, shut up. What do you do? So I make music. I own a record label. And then about ten months ago, I started a podcast, and I just juggle all that. That's a lot of juggling. Yeah. It's like getting up is a juggle and jiggle. Multi-talented, huh? Many, many skills. You didn't get it. Hey, Tate, what's up? What's up? Yeah, I'm just hoping we all keep our shirts on this episode because it seems like tensions are rising. I'm kind of looking forward to you taking yours off. Who knows? It might get wacky and wild as the show carries on. So? You'll keep your shirt on. I'll keep mine. Don't worry. Hello, everybody. My name is Phil. I sing for the heavy metal band All That Remains. What's going on, Carter? What's up, everyone? I'm Carter Banks, and we have a stacked house tonight, and I'm pumped to get to it. Welcome back, George, as the guest host. Let's get into the stuff. Carter, you're the best. And by the way, Carter is wearing a very, very cool pimp jacket that's hanging off his chair. I might steal it. Got a little hot, so I had to take it off. Might steal it. Might get indicted for it. It's total worth it. No breaking new territory. I hate you. I swear to God. Old habits. Oh, old habits die. Anyway, all right, let's get to this, because, Neil, you're the perfect guy to have this conversation with, because major TV networks are declining White House pool duties in solidarity with CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. Now, President Trump has, in a very bold. Old fashion and in a very Trumpian fashion, decided it was time to call out the garbage from these outlets and say, you know what, you can't sit with us. So he's legitimately taken to drive everybody in the chat crazy. He's Regina Georging the crap out of these people. He's excluding them from the White House press pool. Now, you're a press pool reporter. This entire thing is blowing up out of proportion. Now, people don't want to do their jobs anymore because of solidarity. And enter Fox News. What's your take on that? I was surprised. That Fox joined the boycott. Obviously, I'm speaking for myself, and I'm not speaking for any of my various employers or whatever. But Fox News was supposed to be sort of the conservative answer to the mainstream media, and they have joined the boycott because, of course, CNN, MSNOW, Politico have been bounced. Some of their gear, I can tell you, some of their gear is still at the White House. But, you know, they're not around. They're doing their hits from outside by the Renwick Gallery or by Pete's Coffee. And so what's happened is that ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox have decided that they won't participate in the pool. And what the pool is is you can't have 100 cameras at an event, right? There's space limited. It's an old building. As much as people think it's grand, it's a small house. So you basically have a rotation. Where, say, CBS has the duty, and they will shoot video for everything, and they will mic everything, and then everyone has access to it. And it's a great system, and it was working up until today. And, you know, the White House will figure it out. Does this affect reporting in general? I mean, I don't see how this affects reporting. You don't want to pull – so here's the deal. I think what the legacy media might be missing here, right? They're fighting a First Amendment battle, which I think goes without saying is noble. I support President Trump, but I also support the First Amendment as much as I hate sometimes when it's used against me. Yeah, but the idea that this is about the First Amendment is just – that's a farce. Yeah, I don't think it's about the First Amendment. I think that this is – A lot of people are making that assertion. Well, of course they're going to make that assertion. Because it's the press. Because it's a form of silencing the press. But it's functional, right? They can go ahead and they can say, oh, all good Americans believe in the Constitution. I mean, the First Amendment is vital to our liberty and blah, blah, blah. Nobody's preventing them. Nobody's preventing them from reporting a thing. The only thing is they're not allowed to go into the White House. They can still report on what the president says. They can still report whatever they want. There's absolutely no limit to what they're allowed to report or what they can or can't say. There's none of that. It's just you're not allowed access to the president. And these people have had access to the president for as long as they've been organizations, and they feel like they're entitled to it. And so it's not about the First Amendment at all. That's a BS line to get people behind them as in to – well, to basically – But you don't feel it's kind of unjust as a face of America, right? Trump's a face of America. You think it's kind of unjust that he can come in and be like CNN can't come in? Yeah, no. He can't sit with us. He's the president. 100 percent. He cares. It's not unjust at all. It's not unjust. Not at all. This is prerogative. They have no right that no matter what news organization it is, they have no right to be inside the White House. The president will release press releases. The president will talk to the press. Everyone knows Donald Trump. He can't stop talking to the press. He's going to be putting stuff out on Truth Social. Every investigative journalist out there can do all the digging they want. They can talk to all the people in Washington they want. They just don't get access to the White House. And it's perfectly fine. I mean, if I'm honest with you, it's kind of gay, but whatever. No offense. I'm not offended. Well, you looked at me, so that's why I said it. I thought it was funny. I don't know if that's an insult anymore. Oh, shut up. Be quiet. It's tit for tat. It's typical. It's BS stuff. I don't know what that Trump does, but it's in no way, you know, some assault on the First Amendment. It's an assault on their ego, and they're using the First Amendment argument because it's functional, not because they actually believe that it's an assault on the First Amendment. You know what? Honestly, here's what I'm going to say on this, because you're spot on. I kind of agree. It's all gay and retarded anyway. But the point of it all here is what's going to end up happening is these smaller, rogue, non-legacy media outlets, and correct me if I'm wrong, stopping them from now consolidating all of a sudden and cutting out the legacy media. And all of a sudden, you'll have poll reporters from RAV, OAN, Newsmax, Newsweek, like all these like more like alternative media groups and saying like, you know what? You can't sit with us. We had to eat your slop for like the longest. Now here's our slop if you're interested. And that's a great shift of power that can happen, which I kind of not mad at. But the funny thing is, is you're right. The First Amendment gives you the right to report. Doesn't give you the right to be in the White House, which I agree doesn't give you. Yeah, it doesn't. It gives you the right to report and free media without persecution. And, you know, but I'm going to say this. There's a lot of BS that is being reported by. I hate political, first of all, like quite literally hate them as an organization because they just can't tell a story accurately to save their failing publications life. Like they just can't do it. It's just so bad. And they're owned by the Germans now. Oh, whatever. Well, yeah. That's not a problem for us. Meddling in our democracy. We've clearly proven in the past that we don't have an issue with the Germans. There's two things going on here. There's two debates, really, is one. Can he do this? The answer is yes. I mean, again, the First Amendment argument is ridiculous. It's his house, as you pointed out. The real debate is like, is this the right decision, especially right now? And I think that's a bit more interesting of a debate. I mean, MS now, that should have been banned day one. They're a rag. Politico, to your point, there's some really. Suspicious pieces they've put out, certainly in the second Trump term. But like CNN, I think, I don't know. I feel like maybe I'm going to get, you know, I'll probably get rinsed for this. But I think CNN's been decent in the second Trump term. Give me an example of a decent story they've put out. Well, relative to the first term or the first term they'd bring on. these hysterical you had jim acosta being crazy like completely crazy jim acosta's a nut job i think he's an unstable man on male menopause or whatever yeah exactly uh but like broadly speaking i think the legacy media has behaved a little bit better in the second term at least in the white house i think the pentagon ban made a lot more sense because they were just like fishing for information from disgruntled pentagon reporters yeah and that was a national security threat where again you're seeing these like salacious stories come out specifically in axios and you never really see them denied from the trump administration they're just simply upset that it got out and they're wondering who it was that oh it's planted by someone at the white house usually if it's an axio yeah yeah usually it's planted axios doesn't get scoops they get fed it's score narratives yeah they get stenographers yeah they're stenographers and it's score settling and that sort of thing um where we were stenographers is a good way to put it yeah and then politico is kind of a mixed bag but yeah i miss now i'm totally in favor of any but yeah like cnn i don't know from my perspective i'm just like i think this antagonizes them where it's like at least there was some sort of working relationship occurring where i'm like now they're gonna have a chip on their shoulder the reporting's getting a lot uglier and as we know um president trump cared a lot more about these outlets in the first term now that he's kind of in his bubble on truth social he doesn't care as much and i'm like i don't even know if he's gonna be able to combat a lot of these narratives now coming out of cnn because you know they reported a bogus story and they're not going to be able to combat a lot of these narratives now coming out of cnn in 2018 he's on twitter immediately explaining the situation calling them retarded or whatever uh in the second term he's not going to see that stuff so you're going to have depend on like you know his you know guys on twitter that are like going to bat for him to like dispel a lot of the stuff it's i just i think it's like broadly a bad idea i don't know if this was really i don't know if this has been a problem per se and trump 2.0 has been just ridiculous reporting from cnn like it wasn't the first term i think you could maybe say in the first term it was a serious impediment to the trump administration i think trump deals with things on a very personal level and it's not ideology right when reagan was president everything had to be plugged into like the ideology or what did what did goldwater say 20 years ago or milton friedman or something with the with president trump he was i think you know he was very good to the white house correspondents association there was the there was the crazy shooting and he said we're going to try to do it tonight it didn't work he said they restocked they raised the prices for him to speak at their dinner and on a i would think that he expected that if he was so good to them they would at least be decent to him and instead well that's a quid pro quo is that what you're suggesting yeah but i think that's how he operates because as a builder in in new york with hands i i don't think that's i don't think that's the issue here the issue is is president trump's administration can literally cure cancer and cnn will find a way to report on that negatively uh i'm gonna bring you back to do you remember vaccine skepticism do you remember where that started well it's i don't remember where it started well operation warp speed came out during the and i'm not making the guys no i'm not making the case here i'm just telling you how they're biased and how they're contradictory operation warp speed was you know as president trump likes to say a great accomplishment for him which i think we can all agree like as as far as efficiency and speed don't really like the results of what came out of operation warp speed which is now we're seeing the result of it but um cnn initially reported it as irresponsible um premature that people shouldn't take this kamala harris certainly went out there at the time and says i'm not taking anything that's coming out of this administration to then take that body of work a few months later when biden and and uh i was gonna say obama technically when uh when obama had his third term in office with uh kamala harris they wouldn't started talking favorably about the vaccine and how amazing everything was so it's very frustrating to be there every single day and you know i think president trump wakes up and does his puts his best foot forward every day and tries to do the best and then comes in political and is a they're a bunch of miserable the thing is if you look at the political editor editorial board at this point it's just a bunch of miserable over like like middle-aged people who really have nothing better to do with their lives other than to freaking antagonize the life of the president united states well it's also a lobbying it's also a lobbying organization what was the last part you said they're miserable they're a bunch of overweight miserable i mean i'm overweight so i can say it they're a bunch of overweight miserable middle-aged people who have nothing better to do than antagonize the president well i mean they'll take his accomplishments and turn them into negatives but they're they're antagonizing the president because trump represents a a a sea change of what is acceptable in washington what is acceptable well i don't know i don't know what's accessible what is acceptable the point is he's showing that the the establishment and he has shown i mean i forget who it was um one of the guys on morning joe this is back in the first one like his when trump was running he's like donald trump is a big middle finger to the establishment and he really is um he's always been that way even today joe scarborough said that no it wasn't scarborough it was one of the guys uh willie geist it was on it was on joe scarborough's show i thought he said that no he's not the one who quoted i i remember when sam stein at huffington post said we're never even gonna he's not serious we're not even gonna cover him anymore but the the the way that the the media and the way that the the uh establishment has treated donald trump he's always looking for some way to basically get back at him and i like i agree with tate this is probably counterproductive you're saying timing wise yeah i'm well just yeah in general you know like if trump if the the media had you know kind of tried to butter trump up in trump one then he would have laid down shown his belly and they'd have been best friends right he's just looking for someone that's going to kiss his butt that's the way that he that's the way he operates pucker up political i think no i think he's more obsessed with um and i'm not using this pejorative i don't really blame him i mean this is the world he comes from but i think he is very concerned with his perception among them i mean that's obvious he's concerned with his perception on the media because it's like on one hand okay we're making this play here we're booting cnn and msnbc and all them from from the press pool but he still gives these one-on-one interviews to legacy media all the time i mean he just sat down with mbc news like two months ago for like two hours and they released the full unedited uh interview i mean i saw when he did with axios like two weeks ago again i mean that's a slightly different flavor there but again if he was if he had constantly rewarding you know smaller media outlets all the time and then this play happens that's one thing but it's like okay i think he's again just demonstrating he's mad at their reporting but he still will give them the interviews when he feels like it's safe and that's what's frustrating i mean it was good to see he gave gb news like two hours um like two weeks ago but that's like an outlier it's either fox gb news and those are the only two outlets on the right that will ever get any like one-on-one time with trump like if he's sitting down with you know and i'm not saying tim cast but if he's sitting down with like distinctly conservative outlets giving them two hours of their time like he did during the campaign like he did during the campaign and then he makes this play i'm like this is consistent this tracks this makes sense otherwise it to me and to a lot of people it comes off as like okay well approval rating has ever been lower so the last thing they want right now is bad press coming from the white house i mean that ultimately seems like what's what's going on here oh i'm gonna say this to you in in a very um gentlemanly like way i don't give a flying uh what what people think about perception you know why trump's numbers were always bad according to legacy media he could he had no shot in hell to win re-election and where is he right now so to your point i just don't i don't i stopped listening to polls and and approval readings a long time ago because i get pulled all the time in in pennsylvania i just answer everything opposite of what they're asking me just to throw them off and a lot of people i mean and this is my point this is why i'm saying trump shouldn't really care as much anymore he should just be giving that time lending that credibility giving these smaller outlets the cachet so then going forward this can be huge for him because vance or whoever comes next will probably do this but when you're sitting down for two hours with cbs news it's like god bless you you need a you need a trophy for the economy the mainstream media right especially cnn is constantly banging the pots and pans about how horrible the economy is when by every measurement the economy is good the the labor market is good for who well it's for a lot of it's like unemployment's what i'm asking you a serious question for who is the economy the problem is i think that the i'm sorry i just want to say that sorry there are problems that one triggers me a little bit my bad i'm saying okay sure there's problems caused by the 60 of americans right now are not doing well yeah well that's true every single time it's like every year you can say that you're not doing well you're not doing well you're not doing well there are people suffering. What I'm saying is that on the main, the U.S. economy is strong and growing, and the malls are coming back, the office buildings are coming back. It's like people aren't getting, they're calling it a high, no hire, no fire, but the labor market is solid, and we were told the labor market would get destroyed. We were told the tariffs would cause all sorts of crazy inflation. The economy is not going off the cliff the way they keep selling it, and it's like if you listen to these guys, you'd swear we were in a depression, and we're actually not. The problem that you didn't address is because of the inflation in 2022, 2023 people that are are below the median income right they're making they're making in the lower end of average income their dollar doesn't go far enough because it hasn't gone back wage well it's not that it's going to go back but wages you know inflation comes up and then wages get rate you know wages get go up to meet the cost and wages haven't risen and so there's a lot of people especially young people that are feeling that right now young people have a real chip on their shoulder right now because they had a they had a uh basically they they believed that the that donald trump was going to do something about the epstein files and they don't think that anything was done they have a problem with the war in iran they have a problem paying for gas and their dollar doesn't go as far as as it used to or it it did five years ago obviously young people they don't know how far it went you know if you're if you're 20 years old you don't have a real sense of what the dollar was worth in in 2018 right but they know that they can't pay their bills they know that they can't afford to find a house they can't afford a down payment they can't have more kids well they don't have any kids and so young people are getting really really really screwed right now and whether or not the economy is actually doing well the stock market is doing well but for the young people that's bad because they don't have any they don't own any property they don't own anything so as the value of things goes up and you fill the manufacturing and the mining all that stuff is coming back online it's like it it's not going to happen right away but it's like the idea you know we're building new factories we're opening new mines i think and and people are moving their factories to the united states it's just we're not hearing that story we're being told almost the opposite i don't disagree with you at all like i understand you're saying that you're not what you're saying but if you're 22 23 24 right you don't have anything and you can barely pay for rent you got three they thought everything would change on january 20th well the i i i agree with that yes and and so you're you're saying to young people right someone that's someone that's 22 years old right five years is like you know 25 almost 25 of their life so if you're like give it five years and things are going to be way better for you they're not they're not hearing that that's not gonna that they're not gonna hear that at all so what they're gonna say is if i'm gonna go out and vote i'm gonna go out and vote for the other guys even though that's the worst idea imaginable right so you've got young people that are really really really online and you've got young people that are really really really feeling the crunch right now so trying to convince people you have people who want the democrats to be in power and then you also have a lot of people who want to send a message they're going to vote for the democrats even if they even understand that the democratic program is going to kill them there's they but they want it they just want to express that hurt and that regret and that frustration and the only way they know how is to throw the bums out and so the point that i'm making again we're in complete agreement about that but to this particular point donald trump kicking out the media doesn't help him get the message that he wants to get out out doesn't hurt him either i mean they're so obnoxious i just there's enough quite frankly ms now is so bad that that nbc had to kick that wing of the company off because it's still truth challenge young people care or they just look at me talking about truth hell has frozen over young people care or are they gonna say look it he's kicking him out because they're not giving him good coverage because he did all these bad things people are gonna fill in the blank exactly they're gonna say this happened and this happened because he doesn't want to talk about the things that i'm concerned with whether or not he does want to talk about those things isn't relevant people are going to people are going to see that they kicked you know they kicked out the the mainstream media and they're going to say well they were going to press him on the things that i care about even if they weren't going to well people fill in the blanks themselves i want to piggyback off you really quick he's about the economy i'm 32 my fan base music is predominantly like let's call it 18 to 26 right they're the new generation it's problematic to a certain extent so no no no fan no groupies i know 100 all of our needs i'm celibate so that's my fan base and like we can see across i'm on my label i have 70 different artists right and we can see across the board ticket sales plummeting merch sales plummeting because the t-shirt back like two years ago was 30 and now you gotta sell that for 60 and people don't have money there's no more money their tours are being canceled well tour they're getting canceled because there's no money kids can't afford it you gotta know that's i'm sorry i'm gonna say this phil just went on tour but but there's a difference between doing five very successful thousand cap venues you just had a very successful tour it was really good tour yeah and people showed up yeah we keep our we keep our ticket prices tickets are still selling right uh-huh but not across the board how they used to so now if 20 acts went on the road during the fall instead of all 20 acts getting sold out you might see a quarter of them selling out and to be honest with you george i'm really really glad that we went on the on tour in may as opposed to trying to go now diesel the cost that it is oh oh no forget it look look you overhead and you would do the gayest war on earth is costing you a lot of money costing us a fortune in in everything um i know you know this for you print a t-shirt a blank would cost you two dollars another blank cost you seven eight dollars and i have friends can't pay their bills their rent's going up every day they can't own a home because when i was a kid that home would be what 200 000 now it's 800 000 and like you said kids don't want to wait five ten years people want results now and yeah it sounds insane to want results right now but then you go back and like you said well who are you going to vote for right obviously the leftists have lost their mind because of the way we're being treated now is pronouns and being progressive and that that's our ideology but then if you look on the right you know i i voted for trump two times i i was a trumper i lost my faith in him i generally am not a trumper anymore um i did vote for him and you're not a trumper anymore i can't why i just i think in miami i think when you like him but just because i don't like him doesn't mean i started with the left like in no shape we're a form like blue hair barista get away from me freak like i don't want to be but if you're comparing him again they make you think of him as like if he had a real candidate against him like newsom right if you had if you're you're just saying okay i'm upset with trump but if you were had to choose between trump and some dem a real democrat but i wish i didn't i wish i didn't have to choose between that and you're also forgetting the other option which is just stay home well that's what's going to happen actually well that's what we're seeing in the midterms because i mean to your point it's like the macro economic numbers coming in from bls are solid right like unemployed the jobs everything checks out and then you're like oh my god i'm not going to vote for him i'm not going to vote for him out problem is inflation is running red hot but what was in that bls the last bls like no one's paying attention to is the year over year hourly wages is down from last year and like that is the number that answers why people are so demoralized right now coming in the midterm so it's like yes gas is high but also the little piece of the puzzle people are missing is they feel like their dollar they can't stretch their dollar as far as they used to especially with inflation still growing if those hour over hour earnings are going down actually relative to last year that people are going to get really pissed off and it's like i mean honestly if you look i mean this is like getting like bloomberg stuff here but like there's a lot of concern that the market's like overheating now that like we're re-accelerating going to q3 and now people are terrified like now the fed's like in a box right now where they can the consumers consumer spending is still sky high while hourly wages are down while inflation is high businesses are like accumulate we expanded the trade deficit and it's not to the fault of like the tariffs failing but it's just because these businesses are acquiring so many goods right this time private capital that can't get an exit well not just that no there's just like what was it two trillion dollars financial times reported for dry powder of capital uninvested capital right now that they'd rather be eaten up by negative am than actually risk it in a volatile economy which hurts us and that's that's a direct response to why you're seeing wages stagnant um yeah well yeah but then yeah additionally it's just seeing the these businesses actually like firing back up again while wages aren't growing while we're still in this no fire no higher kind of mexican standoff it's like it's a pretty precarious situation but i think that number explains why americans are seemingly fresh even though it's like yeah again you look on the macro the economy's good um this is why americans are frustrated because they're not feeling the benefit right now and i think yeah well look and republicans republicans need some ammo going on the stump and these gas prices aren't helping importations not just like not even go stop mass importations are great i get it but i'm saying don't go after the poultry farm people just go ever go to silicon valley take care of the h1bs go to both of the places go to all the places how about that dude do you want to do a real big cleanup in the united states set up checkpoint in bifurcating newark new jersey miami florida new york city and the problem you'll pick up like a quarter million people and like literally an operation the problem with what you're talking about is because they're the people in silicon valley have visas they're here they're technically here illegally so we can't go after them you can go after the merits of how they obtain them but that's that that's more complicated than the dude i i'm from the tri-state area you know what i'm telling you is true if you just set up checkpoints across the tri-state area you'll it's a court easy quarter million people flushing meadows you can drag that like flushing meadows park like go there on a sunday in the tailgates all you're gonna hear is bachata cumbia and a lot of people cooking out of their trunks you know and i'm sorry to say this it sounds horrible they're potentially not doing anything wrong but they've they've they've done something wrong which is stay here legally but look the whole debate is around tv right who's going to report on this if cnn and and uh political and ms now is not there but wait there's a salvation trump tv is coming soon to a app near you it couldn't be done uh and they said it could be done so i think trump is potentially president trump's carving out space for his own network that could very well be i mean it's funny because i think you could we could buy name like five or six outlets that maybe fit this billing already uh but ouch yeah uh it's fine i mean i love trump but um and i'll be tuning into trump tv um and i'd like to get a spot that'd be quite nice to appear on there but um yeah i mean you know this is like going back to the earlier issue that was like the imperative to communicate these economic victories so to speak isn't on cnn it isn't even on msnbc what you have to do is you have to like supply ammo for these republicans that are on the stump right now and again when people are driving to your rally and they fill their truck up for 80 bucks it's like that just completely nukes any speech the republicans had ready to go this is why you see a lot of these republicans in competitive races like michigan like in texas and they're kind of having to like look for other attack vectors on these or they're attacking the president no well i'm saying if gas is really high it doesn't give the republicans much ammo to work with i'm saying the republicans now oh yeah yeah well yeah you have like yeah you had uh i think it was what rogers just came out and he's saying like end this war that tells you first of all the internal polls are screaming and then second of all it tells you every single constituent's going up to him and saying the same things from a personal level from a human level he's going to like trying to basically make a decision here and see what's best for his voters um either way that indicates that he's ran out of ammo on the stump and now he's having to sort of look elsewhere people are going to trump tv a solution to that that's great trump tv's i mean i mean it i'm not being i'm not i'm sorry to put on glasses the lights are really strong in here uh the the the the ammo you're talking about is is is kind of like moot because it's not like those outlets are gonna give him anything so that's what i'm saying it needs to be the imperatives on the communicate that the problem is like the biggest trump victories right now have low salience with the american people so it's like immigration is moving in the right direction uh he's like you know really gone after the dei affirmative action etc he's like basically patched up the asylum system the problem is like a stop is a problem it's not codified well here's a problem i'm getting out just real quick though it's like the problem is it's like low salience for american voters where it's like hard to explain to them they like the basics of it but they're gonna fall asleep this is buying us a lot more real estate long term but again if you're like in a dog fight with el saeed he's talking about socialism that's not going to help you that's like you're making he's making an economic debate as misguided as he is that is providing an answer as again as misguided as it is it is providing an answer to these concerns these voters have coming in they don't want to hear about immigration they should they should want to hear about immigration because it's the most pressing issue but they don't necessarily and you just kind of have to play ball i mean at least that's that's what i'm seeing yeah well let's see if there's gonna be a ball left nick you were trying to say something i'm sorry we we kind of railroaded you there it was about the the economy thing yeah you think it's great or bad no the economy is shit i don't think it's no i think it's shit i don't think it's shit it's not great a lot of people are waking up but please tell me how you feel like a lot a lot of people waking up now like stuff's expensive i'm i'm lucky and i'm happy is it expensive for you though no like listen but i i'm not i can't speak like a quote-unquote normal person because i'm lucky you're not normal i'm just lucky i know his situation is yeah he's not like a regular guy i'm lucky i make more money than the average and i'm happy and i'm blessed and i'm i'll never take that for granted but you know i have an elitist amongst us but if i put myself in like normal people's shoes which i don't want to say normal you're not it's like brother like it doesn't work like my friends a lot of my friends are struggling yeah i mean like they can't come on but you're so lucky why don't you help out your friend well i do but if i help out man can you leave me alone no hell no yeah i wasn't i'm enjoying this okay i gave my friend jobs they can work on the podcast they work on the road look at you you're like the next tim pool you let the board manager selling merch but it just doesn't work right like the world is going in some weird direction right where it's i think in my opinion on the left everyone's a socialist now that's their new a socialist is kind it's more like marxist but then on the right like i feel like people have literally not all them but some of them have forgotten to put the american people first like let's take care of our so our young men our young women to your point what kind of policy is it that you would like to see and and and keep in mind the president isn't the king yeah there's something about the president all hail king trump no no the the point that i'm making is policies are are legislation written by congress so it's something that has to be able to get through congress yeah i don't think there's anyone above the president you don't think there's no conspiracy theorists like me and you one-on-one you don't think there's anyone above any president known to mankind no well okay please god i don't know no i'm sorry in america okay you're talking a human being oh my god please holy let me guess no no i i got it i got it the rothschilds oh you say it you smile when i said the name i'm not saying the raw child but i do think there's more than meets the raw child yeah they're raw so who okay so you're you're the one that's that's making or bringing up the point who or what do you think is above the president i do think and and and i'm not gonna sit here and be like it's the jews it's the muslims i'm asking i'm asking you so you're you're saying that there is is are you are you alluding to a person or an organization i think it's an organization or a group of people right illuminati not the illuminati but am i do i think there's people above him yeah am i gonna make he am i gonna sit here and be like the rothschilds or something like that no i'm not gonna say that point fingers but do i think there's a greater elites above people a hundred percent above the so i if you're saying that there are my organizations that can apply pressure to the president then yes i think that that that's true so and but that they're not organizations that are like i mean you'll get you know people in in business they'll say look this is really bad for our business this is bad for this sector of the economy they can apply pressure that way but when it comes to the actual decision making i still think the president is the one that will make the decision now that doesn't mean that people can't try and sway him it doesn't mean that we're gonna like you know you know the rotary club or whatever you know the the chairman of the fed whoever you're talking whoever like many different people will try to convince the president that a certain policy is a good thing but at the end of the day i think the president actually makes the decision are you saying that the president doesn't make the decision no he obviously makes decisions a hundred percent but i do think there's some swing whether it's a foreign lobbyist or just people in his ear or something does he make decisions sure but do i think he has people in his ear a hundred percent so so then i think we're actually in agreement because there's in the president is a political actor and political actors always have people trying to sway their opinion trying to influence the the decisions that are made so if this is the way that you're if i'm if i'm i'm articulating what you're saying correctly then yes we're in agreement but when you say people above the president it implies someone tells the president this is what you're gonna do and then the president does it because someone else told i will say i think for certain actions sure i'm not saying everything i'm gonna think everything trump has done or obama's done or bush has done has been from an elite that's insane but do i do i think there are elites did somebody put the touch on him to take military action against iran see i think that's a big rabbit hole well no but what's your like give us a yes that's why i asked my thing is this don't go down the rabbit hole give us the elevator bitch do it i think that we we have a lot of stuff to talk about us the american people need and america needed to go to war with iran we didn't need to go to war with iran i don't think you think so phil i don't think we need to go to war with iran no you don't you only care about phil's opinion no but he's kind of scary so he might jump across the table phil the nicest guy here i was against the iran war before we went in i was seeing it on the show multiple times i was like yeah we actually argued about that yeah i do you think we should have been there george i don't think we should i don't think we should should have been there we should have ended it um a long time ago i don't understand how this went from this is this is my take uh as somebody who's served in congress uh regardless of the time this was a big issue for me because of where i represented if you understood the demographics iran's a big issue in that district because i have the second largest persian community of iranian people and i don't think we have exiles essentially jews who were kicked out of iran or they would die right so um i always thought that there was a something to be dealt with in iran but i never wanted war so hey blowing up their nukes and their facilities and maybe they're fucking whoever the guy with the towel up his head is to go ahead have fun you know but this is now becoming uh dragged out like i'm not going to say iraq or afghanistan drag out but no this is this is this is kind of i'm over it comparing compare you can't compare them and do you see this ending soon uh i i hope so there's there's there's talk of of people in iran starting to attack irgc members starting to attack the police it's and i'm not saying this is likely i'm not saying that i think this is is going to happen like very soon but it's possible that the iranian people actually do start fighting their government and the government loses control uh at least to the extent where they won't be able to fight their people and the rest of you know the rest of the middle east the problem is like the because we get this reporting like every three months that like such and such group has exchanged fire with the iranians etc those people they're typically ethnic minorities so this last one was the blukes they've been going at it with the iranians since the stone age so i mean like a lot of this reporting that like there is this eminent uprising tends to be false additionally iran from the outs i mean i for posterity was fully against from the outset i was even concerned with the strikes last summer um the understanding was okay well look we go in here these people are are prime for revolution so we can go here and you know take out the trash so to speak um because i mean certainly the iranian regime is quite detestable uh then these people will rise up we've created space and they can rise up and whatever and then it turned out to be the complete opposite where it ended up kind of being a rallying the government ended up becoming something for these people to rally around where we've seen for the last six months including this last weekend you know we've seen a lot of people who have been doing this for the last six months and we've seen a lot of people who have been doing this for the last six months massive demonstrations on the street of streets of tehran of iranian people of persian people specifically supporting you know supporting the regime um and i think there's kind of this this this point where it's like if you were if you are in the camp of like serious concern the iranian regime needs to go that's your north star or even that's like an imperative for you there's an argument to be made it might have been better off just like letting the revolutions run their course prior to this intervention where this intervention has kind of created the same dynamic that happened in world war ii with germany where the german people were also primed to start sort of uh attacking and trying to overthrow the regime and then the western the allies sort of bombing them and they ended up rallying around the third reich and then it made it even harder to break the break that up so um yeah i just think it was not just a mistake from like a political perspective because trump had promised no new wars but additionally it was kind of a mistake just from a geopolitical perspective and even a military perspective because the trajectory from then actually looks more promising what we currently are where from my perspective again as an amateur geopolitical commentator very amateur uh i see this stretching out potentially even in 2027 because the houthis have demonstrated they can lay some serious blows on the saudis and that ropes the saudis into the war what's the population size what's the size of the houthis at this point it's estimated to be what like two three thousand deep at best top i've seen is ten thousand like well well active though like on the ground they're saying three thousand is they swap out they do yeah they do shifts right as they call it if they can shut off if they can shut off that the spigot if they can close the southern uh entrance to the red sea right there was a there was a container ship that went aground for like five days like four or five years ago it backed up 400 ships affected trade all over the world and it's like if you were to shut off the red sea for like instead of five days yeah maybe like a month that would be pretty significant and so they can you know they can they can do harm and it's like they haven't been the saudis have been bombing them for 10 years yeah well i mean we saw was last year when the uh when the houthis were the mandab we bombed them yeah we bombed them and uh the houthis were blocking up the red sea again for like a week and they were saying they were basically trying to twist the israelis arm they were saying you need to stop bombing gaza and then we'll stop bombing these cargo ships and europe and east asia cried uncle they were like we're gonna have an oil shock like relax just give them what they want ceasefire came about the houthis stopped firing which is kind of funny that they actually followed through on their word um but here we are again at this very i think this is like an inflection point right now is the us is in a really tough spot i don't know if you saw the reporting today i think french 24 was the one that reported it was the united states told the saudis we're not backing you up so they're getting like wrecked by the the houthis right now and we've told the saudis we're not backing you up because we don't want to piss off the houthis because if they shut that straight down we're kind of teetering on the edge of an oil shock right now that will instigate like a devastating effect for the for the global economy and the trump administration is like we don't want to deal with that right now so saudis we don't want to deal with that right now so saudis we don't want a depression right before the midterms and you're telling the and the saudis are like what but the saudis kind of get it this is what's interesting and this is what's not being talked about is tomorrow the the americans are having a sit-down meeting with all of the gulf state leaders i am really curious to hear what what's going to come out of that meeting because it's not going to be a discussion about strategy or military it's going to be a discussion of what happens after this war is over because these gulf states are furious and again the fact that we can't even back up the saudis again i'm okay with that because i don't want the houthis shutting down the straight just demonstrates it's a very like volatile unstable region things can disrupt the entire global economy can fall to its knees like quite quickly at the hands of basically like tuscan what was the war my problem is what was the war for if you're telling me to stop this war from having a nuclear weapons program all right we'll take out pickaxe mountain yeah take it out if you're it's just pick i'm i'm told it's regime change i'm told we're going to go after their oil we don't know how about this can we just accept military can we accept the fact that we don't know we don't know we don't know one no no we don't know we don't know the white house hasn't um been overly clear well the white house actually has been clear but then the department of war uh hasn't been and it just becomes convoluted congress hasn't really stepped in like a third of our navy while the world is on fire and and we can talk about this war but i'm not going to spend the next two hours talking about iran girls i'm gonna i agree i mean it's pretty exhausting well here's something that's not as quite shocking and revolting and brilliant all at the same time trump meets with mandami today at gracie mansion uh the gracie mansion for those of you who are not from new york is the residence this mansion on the upper east side um with sprawling views and famously known for bill de blasio building a fence twice as high as city ordinance allows to protect him for privacy trump went to visit mandami now interesting thing is is the headline from the new york post reads very interesting trump tells socialist mandami he could be a great mayor for new york city after gracie mansion love fest we spoke about marxists earlier socialists i mean this is the face of absolute all evil in in those two categories combined and take you you said it this is this could be either really really good or just really really bad um because this is president trump this is what he is really good or just really bad um because this is president trump this is the face of absolute all evil in in those two categories combined and take you you said it this is the face of absolute all evil in and the way he works the media this should be a awful day news day today and tomorrow for mandami because he's getting praise from trump well i mean maybe i mean tate's probably got more insight in this but as far as i can tell trump's a new yorker he loves new york and he wants what's good for new york so he wants to do what he can to influence mom donnie now whether or not mom donnie's in is influenceable the same way that trump is i don't know yeah oh they're both pragmatic i'll say this well there's yeah i mean there's two schools of thought there's two schools of thought here is one is trump trying to sandbag mandani by glazing him and then the new yorkers revolt that is one school of thought with you know both of these schools there's no concrete evidence what trump's thinking here uh i guess there's three schools of thought the second school of thought is trump's being trump and then the third school of thought is yes trump loves new york and mem donnie and this is another one where it's like i'm not trying to be a contrarian here uh but he's taken a surprisingly pragmatic rhetorical approach recently like he had this q a or whatever today he was talking he was almost like giving uh props to like right-wingers he was saying you know right-wingers are really focused on like order and these sorts of things and that's something that we could probably emulate in new york city what i think is going on is mem donnie understands that he's like new york is their status as the financial capital the united states is being threatened right now actively and is being acted out upon by the fact that so many major houses are moving out of new york city and he's having meetings with a lot of these guys and what do you need me to communicate what do you need me to say to keep you in lower manhattan texting the shit out of new yorkers how about that yeah well tax corporate tax the second homes the second homes the commuter tax because that's the dirty suggestion toll tax yeah well and the dirty secret is they're more than willing to eat the like little micro you know tip for taxes um what they're freaked out about is the pietier just a massively regressive george cluny complaining about that and robert de niro highlights of 2020 26 for me highlights yeah well this is a little much well you voted for it you financed it you endorsed it and now you you know it's like oh no i was sleeping with the with the cheetahs oh no the cheetahs ate my face in july of 25 he met with 150 ceos of all the top companies in new york and then he weaponized one of their they loved yeah yeah but then he weaponized i went to boden i went to school with your kids or your grandkids i speak well i dress well i smile at the at the end of every sentence he's a very pleasant guy and he presents well yeah he doesn't present scary he's he is and i do not mean this as a compliment he's the face of anarchy in my opinion so i i think there's there's something to be said about that and i again i'm not saying this as a compliment i'm saying this is like just an objective he is what a millennial statesman looks like um for lack of better word uh and and i think that's quite soothing for a lot of these guys additionally yes i think what he's doing is he's going to your jamie diamonds etc and he's saying you know i'm not saying this is a compliment i'm not saying this is a compliment i'm not saying what do you need for me so i can keep up this aggressively left-wing social messaging while having covered like to pay the bill so i'll have a two-track yeah so he's saying look he wants a license to talk out of both sides of his mouth that's exactly what he's here jp morgan we're not gonna f with you here but i have bad jp morgan i have to tax you uh it's like okay keep the lamborghini out the window uh and i'll leave you alone that's basically what's going on here yeah look um i personally am i'm skeptical of this guy as a New Yorker, I can tell you. I don't know a single person in New York, But my group of friends, including some who voted for him, who are now seeing him as like this menace to society, he's making New York more unaffordable with some of the things he's doing because he's catering to the bottom half of New York in lieu of the top half. Instead of creating a happy medium where everybody benefits. But who he is catering to is your activist engine room. So he's catering to, I mean, for like a bit, like basically these like recent arrivals from the third world who provide the votes for him. And then he's appealing to the yucky class, these young urban creatives who are the intellectual and again, the activist engine room for him. As long as he keeps them satiated and he keeps your Jamie Diamonds from moving to Florida or whatever, mission accomplished. He can say whatever he wants about, you know, any social policy or geopolitical thing like that. That doesn't matter. And there's not really this. I don't think the Democrats really care about him very much. You know, some people are like, oh, well, you know, look at such and such activists or such and such politicians in the 90s said something critical of Mamdani. They don't care because he's he's he's DOA because he's can't run for president. So they don't have to worry about like snuffing. He does learn from his mistakes like he didn't cancel school for the snow. Right. He came back and made that right. I think that he was surprised when they went after him for laughing at 9-11 when they were reading off the names and he's smoking and joking with AOC. And I think that that sort of stung his machine. They weren't ready to handle it. And we'll see if he learns from that. Yeah, I think I think at his. Core, he is like the he is the outcome of this. I think he's like adjacent to Ezra Klein. It's kind of funny to say. I think he's like adjacent to Ezra Klein insofar as he likes to lend like the pragmatism from him. But he's clearly also like this, like Nelson Mandela, Marxist. I'll always land left, but he'll talk. Yeah, but but he likes to he likes to explore. He likes to he likes to think that he's this like pragmatist. Again, he likes to make sure Ezra Klein. Doesn't think he's a communist. And I think that's like the North Star for a lot of these like millennial yucky types where they do like to thumb through Politico and feel like that they are. They belong to this world, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at. You know what they do do well. And listen, I don't like Mondami, but you know what I think the Democrats do well right now is they open up their arms to this new age, you know, Democratic running. So do we. No, I don't think the Republicans do. And I've seen it. We started we started the big tent movement. Check this out. They open. I think Hassan Piker is a nutcase, right? Like, I think he's loony. The left let Hassan Piker in. Right. They let. Now they're trying to run him out. Right. AOC and Mondami. You get a little too. What's the word? You get a little too crazy or a little too controversial on the right. And I don't feel like they accept you in. Yeah, because listen, the left has always been driven by the farthest of the left. Right. So the people like Hassan. Piker's like your mom. Don, he's basically the socialists, right? The DSA types, even the communists, they're the ones that have driven what the left, you know, says and does for the past 20 years. The right excludes people because the furthest right you end up with, you get, you know, you Nazis basically and, and, and ideal identity politics, which the right has always tried to avoid because. The right excludes people because the furthest right you end up with, you get, you know, you Nazis basically and, and ideal identity politics, which the right has always tried to avoid because. Any association with Nazis is a doomed politics, 100% but you, you know, there's a little like, you know, right now I think some Republicans are mad at Tucker, I'm a fan of him right but some people like I don't want him he's too much, I mean, even Fuentes right and does he go crazy a little bit 100% he goes off the rector skills or but I do think you know I if the Republicans open up their arms a little bit, oh, hey, let's actually listen to the youth of today, and not just have a quote unquote boomer mentality. A little farther, like you during the campaign. And then it stopped I thought I thought what he when he went alternative media, media, great run and the podcast talking about a Trump and 24 he's talking about he's talking about like eight and then it stopped. Yeah, I would have paid money to him sit where fat nigga that's that's fine, but you still like so we there are people that that are taught like make allusions to fascism and I make a distinction. Right. That all Nazis are fascist but not all fascist or Nazis, but the American public is not going to accept fascism. Like they're not. Well, yeah, you anyone that alludes to that kind of authoritarianism on the right, they're automatically kicked out. What Phil's getting at is like since World War Two, we've lived in a liberal society liberals have basically, you know, dictated terms for the last, you know, 70 years. And so they. They've set up all the taboos. They have ensured what the taboos are, where the lines are, et cetera. All of them are on the right. So it's like you can't go past certain lines on the right. That becomes a taboo and you're excised from politics. The left doesn't have that because and this is like the most I mean, you could probably find this take on PragerU, honestly, but it's like, why isn't communism, you know, perceived with the same level of taboo as Nazism, where it's like the death toll of communism far higher. Again, not a radical take here. You hear you can hear this on The Daily Wire even. But to my point, that is why like Republicans are slightly less accommodating because you have a lot of these guys who are baby boomers and they like they remember what the world was like after World War Two and they are like they're freaked out. And so any perceived any perceived going off the rails or going off of the plantation, so to speak, they're going to like retract close ranks. That's just like a natural mechanism. The left doesn't have that. The left doesn't have any taboos. And to your point earlier, you said talking about the youth like the youth doesn't vote. Boomers are still in. But hear me out. Boomers are still in control. Gen X, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are significantly smaller than the boomers. So until the boomers really start dying off, the boomers are still in control of what the Overton window is. And how much time do you have on that? What, 20 years? I mean, the first year where they've hit their average mortality. And also in 1946. The average life. All right. So we're like under 10 years. And before that, the problem is Gen Z does not vote out to what you would expect them to do. So even though they have a smaller population than the boomers and then additionally, zoomers don't vote at a very high rate. And that's not just because they're young. That's like unique to their generation. They uniquely voted a low rate. I agree. Right. But what did we see on Trump's when when he just won? Right. Gen Z popped out for him. And I think I do a lot with Charlie's email. Yeah, I think I do a mail. But it was also I have to do it. It was also a significant amount of Hispanics and a significant amount of blacks that voted for. Yeah, but I think I do with, you know, Charlie Kirk being such a predominantly big speaker. I do think I do with him being like the milk boys and Aiden Ross and all these like younger people generation like Fishback Fishback. I'm a Fishback fan. He lost. A lot of Floridians like him. All my people in Florida love Fishback. Right. Generally do. I think he cares about Florida first and Florida people. I don't like Byron. I think he's an AI bot. My opinion. I'm sorry. What? An AI bot. OK. All right. This is so off topic. No, no, no. Time out. Name one good James Fishback policy. And again, not debating you. Just generally curious. One thing I like is I don't like that. You know, a lot of policy. I don't think a lot of Floridians can afford homes right now. And a lot of New Yorkers come and out of staters come. And he wants to put a fine on them. We saved your state from bankruptcy. What bankruptcy? COVID during COVID Florida was like best state ever. But I even. Because we spent money down there. I love New York. Listen. That policy is probably unconstitutional. And if it goes on top of that. Also, out of staters should get a discount because we subsidize Florida's property. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, fair. But whether or not whether or not without snowbirds, Florida. I mean, sorry, Phil, I'm so sorry to cut you off. This is this is and this is not directed at you. It's directed at every single idiot that wants to nuke. If every snowbird or migraine migrant from New York, from Boston, from. From the left Florida. Guys would be in such economic. The animals. None of that brings the big. We do bring the biggest money down there. None of that matters. Of course it matters. No, it doesn't. Like kick us out. Let me finish. Kick you guys out. No. Listen, next to me. You're more than welcome to. None of that matter. None of that matters because the policy would go to the Supreme Court and it would be nine to zero. No, there was someone who would go to the Supreme Court. I disagree. Court would say nine. It was a great. No. That's not going to happen. Sotomayor. And Jackson would find a way to gavel in favor. Like another one. Byron said he wanted to ban H1B visas. He can't do that. No, no, no. He can. No, no. That could work. He can. And Fishback said, listen, he can't do that. But what I could do is if you bring in cheap workers. Instead of them, quote unquote, taking the American people's jobs, we're going to put a tax on the business people to pay extra for bringing them in and losing jobs to the Floridians. Look, that's also highly. Unconstitutional, by the way. That's a lot of things. So. So. So. Yeah. So James Fishback, I don't know him and I'm way off topic, but I'm just going to indulge you on this because you brought him up and I love hearing different perspectives. I know. Byron Donald's fairly well. Okay. I would dare call him a friend. I think he's very smart man. Like many Americans, myself included. He's had a rocky life. Yeah. You know, he's ups and downs, some really low lows and some high highs. And I think he's a great guy. Yeah. I think he's a great guy. of in hate like racism and hate but byron what was what was what was positive calling byron donald byron like just give me one example of positivity that comes from that i'm not just rhetorical racist rhetoric is racism right because i don't think james fishback is racist i do think james fishback has some pretty racist stuff when he was running i mean yeah but has has trump said some racist stuff sure has a lot of people said some stuff like that yeah 100 what has trump we're gonna pick and choose we gotta what was trump so that was right when he said all mexicans were the r word rapist yeah they're not all i know some great mexicans somebody's anyway but everyone says some stuff like that you got me no no i i'm like i understand what you're trying to say we can't pick and choose like you know people say crazy stuff all the time take away the grain of salt i don't think you said that though he never said that i'm gonna find it after this you have your phone on you don't want to be the guy in the middle of the god damn hell yeah be receipts bro defend your position we'll keep talking in the meantime i will come back to this because this is not even part of the topic but like look i just i think we've given enough air to somebody who's literally irrelevant like james fishback right now so uh i'm gonna stop right there uh phil we were talking earlier uh before the show and you know what you you you kind of like made me really self-aware of how disconnected i've kind of been from what's going on in the world oh yeah i was caught in the la bubble for almost a week i'm like doing hollywood red carpets and nonsense because by the way uh shameless plug thursday at 9 00 p.m eastern i hope you all tune out to fox to watch this fat boy here in the jungle in malaysia for special forces season five uh that's what i was caught up all week in la for like doing red carpets and promos and stuff like that and then phil i sit here and phil's like george what do you think about uh putin provoking nato and inching closer in uh i'm sorry what was it again not estonia yeah he's massive troops not messed up oh sorry estonia estonia there you go it's a former uh soviet yeah yeah uh so he's massing troops on on the estonian border he's he's calling it uh you know exercises which is exactly what he did before he went into ukraine um and it looks like he's trying to poke holes in in nato's uh article five um look he doesn't he's not gonna try in invading and taking over an entire country what his goal looks like it's it is is to try to get the united states essentially because the united states is the actual if you take some incursion into estonia estonia can say article five come help me yeah and and if i mean look the whole world is going to say we don't want the united states and russia getting into uh you know kinetic conflict over estonia because estonia is a small country and we don't want a nuclear war for one small country which is a legitimate concern and basically the whole world would be like don't do that so what russia wants is to poke holes into article five they want they want to see you know estonia say look hey we're invoking article five and you know if russia does anything there's going to be plane loads of diplomats going to estonia from the united states saying don't invoke article five no matter what you do but even if they don't invoke article five then it emboldens russia because say russia goes in and takes you know 10 square miles of estonia right and they say this is russian territory now there's no people in there just woods right but if the united states if estonia says well fine then they'll take another 10 and they'll keep pushing and the goal isn't to actually get into a conflict with the u.s the goal is to break is to show the world that we're in a conflict with the united states and they're not going to hold in nato so that way the whole of the world looks and says well we can't rely on the united states anymore okay the united states is not going to defend us the way that they the way that we believe they should like a lot of people that nato is pretty has pretty fragile right now anyway it's all he has to do it's a fraught yeah i mean i have a question for you nato has a glass jaw what you just described essentially was uh remember when biden in ukraine he's like if there's a small incursion maybe we won't do it but if it's a big incursion we might do so this is kind of that same mentality do you think president trump's gonna fall under that same trap like well let's see how big of an incursion i think zero tolerance article five is there for a reason but it brings me to another problem that's war article five is war do we want to go to war with russia we definitely don't want to go to war so how do we stop it because well the thing is russia there was a just today there was a uh a drone they don't know where it came from but it was outside of a i think it's called an awax uh radar station in poland poking at you know an actual nato country this kind of stuff is what russia is going to what russia is well known for everyone that has paid attention to the ukraine war remembers the little green men they were definitely russians they were definitely sent there by putin but that was the start of the ukraine of the the issues in ukraine this is what russia is going to do no one wants to see the u.s and russia get into a full exchange nato and russia or the u.s and russia and this is just my opinion i've been saying it for a while i think the u.s should pull sort of pulled out of nato a while ago not because the u.s shouldn't support western europe and countries that that have been long-time allies but the article five that demands that the united states come to the defense of countries like former soviet republics that is a terrible idea it's a terrible idea to make the united states say we have to it's a pred it's the entire predicate of why nato was formed right yeah but to stop the ssr from reforming but they should well they should no not those deterrents not deter not not to deter the u.s for ussr are from reforming like those those countries should never been let into nato at all in my opinion well but have individual defense agreements with them i understand what you're saying but but i thought the u.s should have been let into nato at all in my opinion well but i have individual defense agreements with them i understand what you're saying but but i thought the u.s should have been let into nato at all in my opinion well but i have the entire you know preface of all let's do nato because we're gonna go ahead and protect you know it was it was because it was in response to the warsaw pact so like all of those countries used to be either soviet or under soviet influence and then at the end of the cold war a boatload of other countries joined nato because they were looking to go towards western style it's a fancy club that they wanted okay so here's a question so so belarus right now is on the news with trump so we have we have this article that comes out um at the washington post about trump having to do a deal with uh belarus on fertilizer because of canadian tensions and apparently canada uh canada corners a market on this fertilizer i get probably botching it but potash yeah there you go probably one of the stuff that we probably don't even want what we don't want in our food but um how does that square away with the argument here this is belarus a pretty antagonistic russian proxy who's in the mix of all the former ssr like nations bordering with the majority a bunch of them and here we are having bilateral conversations the u.s getting fertilizer from a country is not it's not just a country right it's a major proxy of russia which by the way chances are this stuff is gonna the money that's gonna generate from this is gonna probably go right into the kremlin i mean look let's not talk about money that's going to the kremlin when all of europe has been buying fuel from russia for the entire you know you know what no argument there you know no argument what's the point of sanctions and partnerships and allies if they break our own sanctions well i mean i i agree then we should the shit out of europe but well i mean maybe i don't care but um but the the potash stuff like if you're purchasing fertilizer that's that's in my opinion it's fine um but belarus has been a client state of russia for a long time uh what's the name lankovich something like that i forget something like that but look he's gonna do what putin says that that's neither here nor there i think that that's a tertiary topic when it comes to what's going on with nato and stuff um but the the concern is you know i mean i don't think they're gonna do i don't think russia's gonna do anything to finland but you know look the baltic states uh latvia estonia and i forget the third one lithuania like you've got kaliningrad right on the other side of those so this is how this all kicked off was the latvians came out and they said hey we keep eyes on kaliningrad it's right there and the russians just flipped a bunch of brigades into divisions so you know it's funny when the war first kicked off um i took the position i was wrong just about everything uh regarding this war um to be fair most people had this shared the same opinions i did which was first of all we thought russia was going to steamroll ukraine that didn't it's the opposite at a very expensive cost to us is the reason we did it well yeah but additionally i think uh we also demonstrated the russian military this isn't the russian military of the 90s even of course not or um additionally i would roll my eyes when people are like well russia has uh eyes on you know the rest of europe or at least like reform some semblance of the ussr and i'd say that's ridiculous no it's not i mean again are they looking to go invade lithuania tomorrow no but again they're to phil's point i think it's good terminology to use is again poking and prodding at nato and seeing how serious they are what's interesting is like the secretary general i think it was last week um he came out and he's like because you know we set this new five percent benchmarks you need to be spending five percent of your gdp on defense and a defense adjacent spending uh previously was two percent this is why spain ended up in the news because the spanish were just being spain um But the rut, he came out and he was like, hey, Canada and like pretty much 90 percent of Europe is on track. They're like maxing out defense contributions like they are going to meet this threshold. Like we still want to play ball here. So the Atlanticists went from like being on the ropes here to now like actually NATO might be an asset if the terms are on American terms where, again, Europe has to rearm. There's no question about that. But from a realist perspective, the United States is saying, actually, this might be too. Our benefit if NATO is still in one piece, Europe rearms. And I think the Denmark thing, the Greenland situation is a great demonstration of that without NATO. I'm not sure how we get our mitts on Denmark, but communicating to Denmark, communicating to the rest of Europe like, hey, if you play ball with us, we'll play ball with you. They're happy to give the U.S. full reign over Greenland because they're like, sweet, we don't have to pay for anything now. But here's a question for you, OK? Giuseppe Cavodragone, you know, who Giuseppe Cavodragone? Who is from NATO, came out saying NATO is ready to respond to a potential Russian escalation on Europe's eastern flank. The alliance top general came out and said that. And Saturday, I'm growing warnings of a possible stage attack by Moscow. Now, the question is, people are even considering that there might be false flags. And as reported by Politico, of all people, they think that there could be a false flag attack just to, you know, bait NATO. NATO into action. So now we need to worry about bad actors trying to do a false flag. And by the way, who in the region could potentially benefit the most? And I know people hate it when I go down this path, but who could potential the most from a false flag attack right now that would trigger the full force of NATO and the U.S.? Ukrainians. Yeah, well, what's stopping the dirty actors? Because now we've established that there are dirty actors in Ukraine. Right. And Zelensky, who, in my opinion, has long overstayed his welcome as president. He's denying his people a free and fair election to seek new leadership just because of – well, not just, but because of the war. I think this is concerning. My fear that I think my fear and every American's fear is, is that there might be a false flag by Volodymyr Zelensky or the Ukrainians or some fanatics out there who really want to see the bludgeoned, full-on war apparatus of NATO to, quote, take out Russia, do something stupid to provoke it. And that's my fear. I agree. One, I don't want to see that at all. I don't want to see us go to another war. And secondarily, definitely not going to go to the map for Zelensky for obvious reasons. But there also needs to be a point made here, which is like, well, if the Russians are in a situation – if they have instigated a situation in which a simple attack of some sort, a terrorist attack that could be credibly attributed to the Russians, is enough to instigate a full-blown war between the United States and Russia, I'm sorry, that's like on Russia because Russia has put themselves in this situation. I don't think Russia wants this. I think Russia right now is happy to saber-wag. This has been the case with like all of BRICS nations, by the way. They're all like saber-wagging. Except for China is probably the only people that can back it up. So it's like, again, I agree. I wouldn't put it past the Ukrainians. I think there's some evidence they've dabbled in the sort previously. But also like there needs to be some blame assigned to the Russians as well. It's like, well, if you're the one like, you know, playing with the dog here and the dog comes out and bites you, like it is what it is. Exactly. Like you said, they flipped, you know, brigades, the divisions. Yes, like actively. They've got like six or so thousand troops on the Estonia border. Well, and additionally, in the Baltic states, people miss this because, I mean, obviously I don't expect people to be clued in on the Baltics. Latvia specifically, but also Estonia, the eastern parts of their country are Russian. Russian speakers, Russian ethnically. So how many billions do we spend to keep Russians out of Russia? It's not about. It's not about keeping Russians out of Russia, though. I mean, look, the fact of the matter is, the fact of the matter is the die was cast when the United States or when NATO allowed these countries into NATO. Yeah, like we're in the situation now. Yeah. Start of the boss fight. Exactly. Like it was a terrible, terrible idea to let former Soviet states into NATO. It's the same reason why Ukraine was never allowed in NATO. Yeah. Because it's a terrible idea. It was because there are people inside Russia. Who felt that Yeltsin was rolling over. Yes. With NATO. Yeah. And they just, you know, and I'm not saying Putin's a Soviet. I don't think he's Soviet at all. I think he's I think he's a pure Russian, maybe imperialist Russian. Right. He operates like a czar. He doesn't operate like a Soviet guy. But having said that, you know, the Russians have pride and they don't want to get rolled and they let the Americans in and then with Yeltsin and then they just. They just took everything. Well, I think Putin is very much the product of baby boomers in Russia where they're in a similar situation to a lot. You know, you can look at the British. Raised by the World War Two generation. Exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, like look at the British, for example, they're they have tremendous insecurity because they went from top dog to like basically no offense. I love Britain deeply, but really not a factor on the global stage that much anymore. Yeah, I do actually. Really? Yeah. It's such a wasp. So true. So, yeah. I could lay out my credentials there. But the Russians. Yeah. The Russians are in a similar situation where they've just watched, you know, before their very eyes. I guess in short, they feel disrespected by the West. Right. And with boomers in Russia, they still carry a lot of that pride. Younger generations. It's tough to get like a read on these people. But what seems to be the case is that younger Russians are much more keen on globalizing, you know, looking, making overtures towards the West. They engage in Western media, et cetera. But, yeah, I don't. People like categorize Putin. It's like, he was KGB. It's like, it's a little more than that. Because, like, for example, a central plank of like being a Soviet was like state atheism. And Putin makes these like huge overtures towards the Russian Orthodox Church. He rebuilt the cathedrals. He treated the Tsar's family as martyrs. He exhumed the bodies and had them, gave them like this religious burial. I believe they were canonized. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, and I. It's old school. And I think that's why the left. Yeah. Yeah. The left in this country hates Putin. Well, yeah. And I think at its core. Because it's frankly, Putin does a lot of things. If Putin, you know, they say about Putin interfering in our elections. I wish Putin would take over our midterms. Oh. Well, I think Putin like certainly has some like. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think Putin certainly has some like reactionary aesthetics. But if you look at like the way that he conducts affairs in Russia, the way he conducts affairs globally, this is not reflective of like a friend of Western right wingers. I mean, he amplifies like most disgusting third world babble I've ever seen in my entire life. Like he he does hate Europe. He views he genuinely hates everybody. Yeah, he hates everybody. But like he has a bone to pick with. And we all hate him. The West. So like, you know, people try to like make this this. And I'm not saying it's what you're saying. This is some other people make this case is like that Russia is a super base trad country. And it's like not at all. Everyone there is AIDS. They have like a million abortions every day. I have been to Russia numerous times in my life. And there's photographs. There's graphic evidence of it. It is not a based trad country. It is a shithole. Yeah. I mean, so much so I I'm like the perpetual stupid American tourist. I like taking the subway. I want to explore. I want I want to see what the locals enjoy the bread. You don't want to see what the locals. And how about that? Because I've seen what the tourists see. You know, go to Bolshoi. Watch some good opera, ballet, whatever. Go to the Red Square. Go to the gum mall, which is legit the most expensive mall in the world. You walk around, you know, the. World Trade Center, you see the Seven Sisters on the Moscow River and all of that jazz. If you go color outside of those lines, it's abject poverty because 2018, I'm in a train in Russia. I'm like, I phone up the wazoo and there are teenagers with discaments. You even remember what a disc a man is? It's a imagine a miniature CD player like this big, like, well, the CD version of the Walkman, right? Literally with their Kobe. You had phones on and that was how they were. And I didn't just see one person doing that. I saw a bunch of people doing that. So I was like, wow, they are so set back in time victims of oppressive. So we're talking about outside of Moscow, we're talking outside of the coloring outside the lines of tourists and what they want you to say. Putin's old school. I mean, he's like, you got to consolidate power in Moscow. All you all you got to do is satiate the elites. You don't really worry about the peasants. What was your experience in Moscow since you've been there? So I've been there four times. I've been there. I've been there a lot more than that. And each time I went, it was for shows. I was performing nice. You and I would like Moscow, St. Petersburg or whatever it's called in St. Petersburg is another city. Yeah, yeah. Different cities in Russia. Yeah, that's where the bedrock of ballet and performing arts are. And I could agree that the smaller cities in Russia do suck dick 100 percent. But Moscow was beautiful. Moscow is gorgeous. Where did you stay when you were in Moscow? Just out of curiosity. To be honest, if I told her, I'd be lying. I always say somewhere in the city. I always stayed in the same hotel by the World Trade Center, which was the Crown Plaza. It's on the Moscow River. So you have a view from your hotel to the Radisson on the other side of Moscow River, which is one of the Seven Sister Buildings, which is one of the most insane architect architectures. Like, I mean, I like old world, so it's goth and renaissance revival meets, you know, imperialistic castle era. And there's like these seven freaking amazing buildings in Moscow. So, like, I've experienced Moscow from a local perspective and from a business perspective. I enjoy it, right? I enjoy it so much. Robert Mueller hardcore. questions for me back in 2017 like why have you been to Moscow so many times well I like I work yeah I'm not quite a Russophile but I love Russian culture I love food culture opera ballet they're just very talented but they so like our politics sucks yeah I'm not making like an attack again I think a little I love the Russian people I'm just simply making the case these like reactionaries online who like you know get all their news from Twitter or whatever like this idea that just simply because Russia's like it's these people that like became Orientalists like three years ago and they've like missed the last like 50 years of like the tension between the West and Russia it's like they have this false impression I guess because they're like naturally contrarian that Russia again is like some sort of like based haven well unfortunately for me for me when it comes to these things is all the people who saw Stalin and Gorbachev fight through their lives it's when people you were there for the fall of Stalin and then you saw the rise of Gorbachev come on it wasn't as bad as people said and then Jesus walked amongst us Stalin was not a bad guy but he didn't drink tequila he was awful it made him angry oh you're you're crazy the I hate the people who are so anti-Russian yeah so it's and like they're so it's almost like the Atlanta I was growing up all the people who are against smoking just made me so I I almost decided to be a smoker just smoking is awesome yeah real and they're so obnoxious and it's like I'm so tired of hearing it and so I find myself saying this guy can't be that bad yeah he can well as all these people I hate well I think him I think the middle ground here is we can acknowledge two things are true at once here which is a uh Russia is not a friend of like western like white Christians broadly but also acknowledge that yes these Atlanticists have the wrong read it's not the 1950s anymore and like we to Phil's point earlier I don't want to put words in your mouth but like we were the ones that instigated that we started the fight we were the ones that instigated that we started the fight we were the ones that instigated that we started the fight we were the ones that instigated that we started the fight boss battle when we said no we're not going to move east and then we like literally allowed like the you know the entire eastern block into NATO I wouldn't say it's I wouldn't say we I would say NATO well I think Bill Clinton yeah Bill Clinton Clinton Clinton that's Clinton's like special that's the Clinton special I think that's the day Monica Lewinsky was visiting and he got distracted yeah do that like Clinton came at the apex of like the Atlanticist consensus like in foreign policy intel world and so like him Blair like it all just we're gonna one super superpower world yeah and it's like aren't we glad we're past Clinton and Tony Blair being in power well we're past them in power but we're still dealing with the ramifications we're entangling it yeah which is like this is one of them it's like how do we approach like what do we do with NATO that's like a real question these people are having to weigh again four years ago I would have been very much gung-ho like I just abolish that these people are useless but again we start to see you're pro-NATO now well I just I have a very I have a very real I'm NATO curious I just have this like very real like I think I am pro-NATO with Trump in office because I think that he has a much more real understanding of NATO not as an ideological project but like as a real geopolitical asset and again in the hands of Biden where again they just view it purely through ideological terms yeah they're gonna like utilize it to like go after the Russians and we saw this by the way like Kamala was in Berlin like three what three four weeks before the invasion was like yeah we're gonna like totally go and like nuke Moscow if they do and I'm paraphrasing yeah that's nuts yeah uh but with Trump in office and again I mean I know his geopolitical record right now is a bit shaky um I do trust that again the State Department when in regards to Russia has a bit more realistic understanding of how we ought to handle that you know what uh I concur I think Marco Rubio has a good grasp on on this stuff that's it's like a real I know people don't like it but I think he was one of the best appointments Trump did in his cabin oh yeah just because he gets it this is this is an important bureaucrat huh he's your model bureaucrat he is he gets it he gets it and I will say this look uh I think we're living in dangerous times on this stuff and people are just mad and angry and they they're looking for reasons to support one side or the other and and and fantasize and glorify Russia there's nothing to glorify about Russia you know I'm gonna say this look did you guys see Laura Loomer going to Ukraine and then all of a sudden coming back a newborn Ukrainianist uh I mean I'm not criticizing her but I thought it was wild because she she has had probably one of the hardest takes on Ukraine for the duration of this and then on Zelensky and all that but I guess she saw something there that changed her mind great for her but but she then claimed everything was Russian propaganda ah she it's like that that's the kind of stuff that then you say again I'm not knocking her maybe she saw something I didn't see I'll knock her uh it's no I don't I don't want to knock her it's not fair you know like for me to knock her uh and and again you don't want to knock Loomer until you at least have a good grounds of what you're talking about because then she'll knock you oh that's true I don't want to get hashtag Loomer no I I'm gonna wake up to you being loomer tomorrow if I get over it's over it's over they find out about Miami 2023 it's over oh that's funny um no I mean wait what happened Miami that's for Loomer to find out yeah that's when I get hashtag Loomer come out at the trial exactly I got a good lawyer um yeah I mean I I find like the the and again I maybe this seems I I don't think I'm being hypocritical or going back my word here I also do find the pro-Ukrainian atlantis is like completely illegal and it almost makes me just like convulsed and want to just be like oh glory to the right and the and the people like Keir Starmer or even Andy Burnham it's like Boris or Macron it's just like I'm supposed to be side by shoulder shoulder with these guys Boris Johnson is like Russia's our biggest threat as he's like bringing two million Pakistanis in it's like okay we're kind of see right through that listen we need a better class of haters here you can hate them both it's perfectly fine you can hate the Atlantis ists and you can hate Putin like Putin is not a like you're saying Putin is not a friend to the West there is nothing that he wants more than to see the United States be knocked down a peg he believes that Russia will fill that void that the United States leaves he wants to do whatever he can to slime the U.S and make the U.S look weak on the world stage and that's the whole point of this this going after NATO because going after NATO is going after the U.S right like the United States is without a question the backbone of NATO without the United States NATO is not significantly impressive right like they're not um like they their radios don't even work the other the other NATO countries try to work with us their radios don't work they don't have any fuel their trucks are horrible it's like they aren't even ready for prime time so this is this is Putin trying to make the rest of the world believe that the United States is one unreliable is a paper tiger doesn't have the ability to defend them so that way they think that it's a better deal to align with Russia now I I don't think especially considering the the terrible uh results they've had in Ukraine I mean Russia can't even defeat small Russia you know like everybody thought the Ukraine was going to get absolutely rolled and they haven't now grant granted a lot of that is because of a massive influx of money and weapons from from uh from the United States and from other countries but people still believe that Russia was going to take Ukraine basically in in you know the weekend that that Putin initially predicted that didn't turn out that way and the rest of the world looks at Russia and they're like look Russia's not the big dog we thought the only thing that Russia has that's actually intimidating is nuclear weapons like really because be ignored absolutely not if it wasn't for the nuclear weapons he wouldn't be doing this and if he did the United States would dog walk Russia they no one would call them fair enough um but you know it's it's I don't even know how Ukraine's gonna end because you know zolinski and his party suspended elections under martial law and they renew they regularly renew the martial law so even like the school committees right in the mayor's years there's no there have been no elections in Ukraine since 22 and everyone knows as soon as there's an election people are gonna throw out zolinski and his party and so it's like the guy has a political incentive to keep the war going but does the but the thing is if they threw zolinski out would the new administration have a different uh posture towards Russia I mean people don't want to live on they don't want to be part of Russia zolinski ran that's not entirely let's just say it's majority true but there's a small fact sorry there's a small faction as was heavily reported on when the Russians invaded the Donbass region that gleefully they speak Russian they they identify as Russian I've met some Ukrainians that when they say oh I'm Ukrainian I'm like oh I'm sorry about tonight oh no we love it I love Russia I'm like wait what huh zlinski's first language is Russia yeah I can't learn Ukrainian so he's like in his 30s the linsky ran in 2019 as the pro-Russian candidate promising that he would negotiate with the Russians promising that he would negotiate to handle all the all the prisoner issues all of the war issues and he said the incumbent I forget his name now but uh the the incumbent who was backed by the U.S State Department right he was the one who wanted to carry on the war and expand the war against the Russians zolinski ran as Russian peace candidate, and then they put the touch on him once he won. oh they touched him all right i don't know if it's from the time that he was doing all those performances and skirts on stages or belly dancing but you know the piano i don't you know what like zielinski can go f himself honestly i'm so over him like he's like so freaking overwhelming you know what he remind you he's george washington do you know what he reminds me of all honestly like the worst sugar baby you can get in miami and then get very clingy and always wants more cash and you don't even benefit a whole lot out of it too it's like uh it's it's so it's so annoying but look in more important global news uh like a crisis has stricken nike once again now nike's subsidiary company uh converse apologizes and pulls ad that critics say is invoked racist imagery uh and some bringing that association to the clue cooks clan like what the hell what it's a great boston con uh company converse yeah well it doesn't seem like it's doing great anymore uh maybe make converse great again and uh exit from nike because on the tap the brakes on the kkk stuff well look if you look at it and see it it is absolute garbage what they're saying uh and it's it's all over a hood that they say resembled uh kkk hood and the whole thing is addressed it was i'm sorry it was addressed but the light made it look like a yeah and there's a hood and and it resembled it whatever people are up in arms look you have the picture can you show i don't have a picture i've been looking for any i'm gonna see if it's right and the way oh there it is no no no that's not it sorry that's not it no my bad no i was a little on the nose i can't find a picture of it i try i was trying to to see if i could have it but oh i think i have it right here hold on sometimes these images are just it's the light from the star and but the way the person is holding the sneakers it looks like someone who's been hanged and dangling i i hold on a second i'm maybe that's an inkblot do you have the uh i see you have the slack are you in the slack uh i don't think i am i just put it into the slack kellen or i mean uh carter can grab it there's a link in the slack that can bring it up all right it's carter banks please help me out here i don't think i am i don't think i am i because i will harder save the day banks you're gonna use your lifeline i'm gonna use a lifeline because i'm uh i'm boomering out here i think i'm too close to you neil but yeah i mean so it's all of our needs there you go it's literally the converse star there's a light shining the converse star and the way that the light is cast onto the model's skirt yeah yeah there it goes makes it look yeah i see it yeah it's it's silly and and this kind of stuff is ridiculous the just the fact that people are still allowing these these you know these this ridiculous outrage folks tropes yeah to to well this is the whole thing right here that that that that shadow right but here's here's what happens right um nike's 18 year run on the s&p is officially over yeah but this was 19 nike was off before this well it was off but it's shit like this phil that doesn't help a company like nike nike has made one bad decision after another in in the last couple of years if you pay attention to it well if you i mean this is kind of like it's all about wokeness and cancel culture good luck cancel yourselves out of the s&p 500 by the way best investment i've in my entire life till this day if you put just a little bit of money in there it's it's kind of safe and it's gold oh yeah nike's gone nike's gonna go under after stuff after leaving yes i think there's like two things explaining this i mean because one i i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know if i buy that it's like purely because if you looked at like after the colin kaepernick row they actually like saw an increase in sales like like nike actually saw an increase in sales etc um and again this is like i'm not happy about it it just is what it is secondarily there's just like way more competition in the market now i mean it makes sense that nike would see their market share get eaten at i mean everyone i know that works in finance is like on clouds now um you're just seeing like a lot more companies enter the sportswear world um and they're just eating away at nike's market share like i don't i don't think it's like oh they went down and it went to adidas i think it's just spreading out you're seeing a lot of players enter the game and i think that explains why nike you know it's like i'm sure ford like had 100 market share until eight years after and some other car manufacturers enter the game well nike was just first that's all it was like it was going to happen yeah and they're also getting hit with tariffs because they moved everything overseas to china i mean to to george's to george's point though like the the whole you know at least at least five probably like seven eight years of terrible marketing this is is it turned people off you would see you know obese women in nike ads you'd see people that you know the whole the body positivity movement was all over their their their marketing and stuff and that's not what people want to see nope i've talked about this kind of stuff a lot um the people want to imagine themselves in the product that they see marketed to them that's why you put down the product that they see marketed to them that's why you put down the product that beautiful attractive good-looking people in advertisements because if you motivate them with uh just do it well yeah you can do it too amazing slow yeah you can do it too but no instead you put it on like what's that lizzo well yeah there was i don't know if it was actually lizzo no no i'm just saying like yeah there was a type ass guy it was a uh an obese a very overly large human being a large uh black woman in you know time square yeah in in a you know a nike in booty shorts get up and and you know and it just doesn't make people aspire to wear nike look i'm fat right obviously no the obvious so shut up neil i'm fat right so think about it this way i'm not going to go by anything that's on a fat person it doesn't inspire me do you look at fat models like uh i don't like that i don't either i need i'm fat phobic i really need to work on this this is bad i'm fat phobic deposition i hate pedophiles dude i get the well here's the difference uh uh hating fat people is just you know easier and i'm not going to go by anything that's on a fat person i'm not going to go by anything it's not like but there's different types of fat people there are people who are fat they're aware they're fat and they don't want to be fat they can pull it off well no i don't know about pulling it off can you pull it off i percent no you can't no 100 no fat person can pull me no there's any read i think andy reed pulls it off he's kind of our keeper physique the last person that could pull off being fat was john candy everybody else john candy could pull off being fat we're all just fat no there's you're fat yes i'm fat nick you're fat it sucks i'm fate no i'm face of the fat people i disagree i mean look here's the deal it went so bad for nike uh killian mbappe is done i mean 20 year journey one of the most prestigious soccer players in the world one of the most household names of soccer he's like yeah i'm done it was time for a change i mean you can't stoop lower than that and again it goes to show go woke go broke i can't believe we're still talking about this it's 2026 well killian mbappe is super woke so i mean i don't know i don't even know if it's like but it's even too woke for him like moving away from nike nike's just failing i think i think nike is just facing like a market reality it's just there's more competition now in the game like i mean i would love to attribute this to a culture war victory it's just like the only time we've ever pulled it off was bud light like when you like look nothing can save bud light but we could sit here and name 30 but that's not even america anymore we're boycotting them and it's like well it's nike belgium brazilian no he has the market to play with like everything that we cornered the market for like generations and they they're losing all of it this there's just more players this but this particular you know this particular ad really is an attempt to bring back that cancel culture stuff you know it had gone it had been tamped down somewhat right like the idea that you could uh you know make a stink online and get a reaction from a company they're just kneeling to the mob and everyone knows that it will never be good enough i don't know if we're going to talk about it but the same thing with the ed sheer uh ed sheeran stuff right oh that's right max i hope he gets the help he needs well look the fact the fact of the matter is ed sheeran's still going to sell a boatload of tickets but there's going to be people outside that are going to be trying to you know have protests they're going to make a big stink because the the idea of cancel culture hasn't gone anywhere the idea like the the whole woke is dead and it is not dead it was never dead it is still just it is still just dead and it's still just as as present in society it's just that people don't react the same way right and you're not going to get the same kind of reaction to the the issue in in palestine or in israel with with americans that you did with black lives matter black lives matter was the perfect issue in the united states the perfect thing for for activists to get behind because americans particularly back then nobody wanted to be thought of as a part of the world everybody wanted to be thought of as racist everybody was like we're kind of beyond this what so i'll burn down my own house when you threw out the accusation of racist people were like me racist what are you talking about what how could i possibly be perceived as racist i voted for obama blah blah blah blah all the things that made people insecure you don't have that same kind of prescient issue when it comes to palestine but you watch the way that the the woke has worked it went from you know it was black They attempted to do it with climate change. that fell apart the palestine thing is going to fall apart too eventually because most americans like it doesn't affect their daily lives the closest thing that could affect the daily lives out of all that stuff was the black lives matter stuff and once people kind of realized that it was basically a scam that all the big players in the black lives matter uh organizations were all just you know throwing money in their own pockets buying tons of houses and and basically just scamming everybody right like then people were like all right i'm over it it's not gonna have the same effect but it doesn't mean that they're not gonna try the left is built on an entire worldview based around oppressor and oppressed right now it's the oppressor is is israel and the oppressed are palestinians and americans are the oppressor because they're supporting israel that's the dynamic and when it was when it's in the context of global warming it's capitalists that are destroying the the the world right the world is oppressed and the global south is oppressed and the capitalists are doing it and when it was black lives matter it was you know white people or the police more specifically oppressing black people in america these things are not real if you look at the numbers when it comes to when it comes to police brutality and police police killing unarmed black people the average person in america was like oh it's not real it's not real it's not real it's not it's gotta be hundreds of thousands of alive but real people absolutely like your normal people no look but hold on hold on hold on they're not like let me do the police sir the point that i'm making is the the average person was thinking that hundreds to thousands of black men were killed by the police every year and then when they find out that it's about an average of like 12 or 13 or 14 they're like what because it's all a con it's it's a con when it comes to global warming it's a con and it's a con when it comes to free palestine it's all a con it's an it's a way to get people to say look this terrible thing is happening and i'm complicit so i gotta do something to make sure that that that we fix this problem and this stuff right here they're trying to go back to the black lives matter playbook look they're racist they're racist they didn't mean it they didn't mean it at all there was no intent behind it maybe someone should have looked at it and said you know that kind of looks like and maybe they shouldn't put it up but it certainly wasn't the damn shadow we're secret kkk members you know it's 2026 it's ridiculous i think it's a bit different than the ed sheeran thing like listen i think cancer culture and wokenism is the biggest psyop most can one of the most cancerous things ever happened i couldn't agree more like cancer culture and me too movement everything no no no no i'm out no i'm just putting it all together no you can't that's the problem cancel culture is one thing me too me too is bad stuff yeah 100 okay all right i just wanted to establish that me too when it's when it actually has evidence me too got weaponized yeah okay let's say me too got weaponized yeah well i agree with that because you know sexual misconduct is a horrible thing of course it is but you know you can grab something run with it and weaponize it yeah and then everything's weaponizable cancer culture wokenism i think it's cancers right yeah but i don't think the ed sheeran thing is about that i think it's about you know should macklemore have gone and done that speech no you're at a concert to listen to music play your show say i love you thank you for supporting and leave would you do the same thing i would never make it did you politicize your acts no do you feel no i can i say something to you guys like dolly parton did it best i have a feeling she was very always honest about her politics with us we were just too naive to see right through it um she did it suddenly but she never talked politics you know what you guys in the entertainment industry musicians specifically i always thought you guys have the perfect platform to unite us through art like music commonality every human being is going to have is we all like music one way or another if we can bond over your music phil or your music nick and put everything else aside why would you bring a divisive political uh uh rhetoric to your performance yeah it it defeats the purpose of what music does like music unites it's love whatever all the feel-good shit that you see out there that people talk about and i can use all the buzzwords here but it really comes down to like the feel-good moments right and i i think ed sheeran great musician now i'm pissed at him he got into this big tiff over mackle macklemore is that how you say it i i no clue who this dude is sorry he held out as long as he could no no it's not that and now he's sitting down and crying in philadelphia mid-concert i've done that in philadelphia philadelphia i mean i just pulling into the pulling into penn station philadelphia makes me cry so i i agree actually but my point here is he kind of did all this and now he's doing the same thing yeah it's like what's the whole listen the reason why i don't respect is stand on what you believe in right or wrong stand on it right but i also think even though macklemore was wrong for making this whole speech on it you can't be pulled out of a show for your freedom of speech whether i like it or not like if you make a speech about how much you hate fat people and whatever i'm not gonna pull you out i have a take because now it's kind of like why does my freedom of speech end where your feelings begin because the reason is macklemore was supporting ed sheeran when i go out on tour the band if i'm headlining then i have the full right to say whatever i want 100 when i'm supporting someone and this was this is the way that my band operates all the time when the headliner says get on stage you get on stage when the headliner says you're done i don't care if you got another song you get off it's their stage it's their tour your support we're supporting we are there as their guest so to get on stage and make a political statement and hijack it's just a bad thing to do as a support act now this isn't about freedom of speech because macklemore can go out and do his own shows he can bring in a boatload of people he's a big artist he's got millions of millions of listeners on spotify he can go out and do his own shows and he can say whatever he wants but because he's out supporting someone else you don't go out there and make a statement that is controversial whether or not people support it now there is a certain amount of you under you have to understand who's going on tour with you if you're going out on tour and you're a headliner and you bring rage against the machine you better expect that they're going to say things that are political because that's rage against the machine's whole brand right everything about rage against the machine is political so if you go out there and you bring them on tour and then you get mad because they make a political statement you're the dummy but if you bring someone like macklemore you're the dummy you're the dummy you're the dummy macklemore who's not whose music isn't politically motivated right it's been politically motivated since like 2022 so it's not new but also but the point the point but the point that i'm making is he's not a he may have had songs that are that have some politics in them i have some songs that are that have have political basis behind them but you wouldn't really know it if you listen to the songs and or read the lyrics you might if you know a little bit about about the politics but it's not overtly political and macklemore is definitely not overtly political he's a pop artist so if you're going to britain for macklemore to go out there and make a political statement that is something that he at the very least should have cleared with ed shireen ed sheeran or however you pronounce his name um before he did that i think you're 100 everything you said is correct right but the problem is is when ed sheeran put out that statement he was like it's not me who cares it's the owners of the stadiums it's the owners of the venues so he pushed the buck he pushed the buck upwards so it was it was them who probably came around like hey ed like your opener said this we don't like this so you have to kick him out and i've seen that happen with other acts not on this high of a level but now the the venue owners right the people who own the stadiums are saying your opener can't play because he said this he died out bob craft but is that not you know an infringement on your freedom of speech like no no you're hired you're you're hired for pay you do whatever your client wants you to say no no if i hire you this is where it's kind of like if you're a teacher and you go to a class and you're like oh i'm going to you can't just say whatever you want well teach a curriculum you're you're you're in public education you know no no no no no you you follow the curriculum right because that's what you were hired to do you were hired to be an opening act you do a fucking opening act period full stop yeah if you don't like that then you go and say i actually don't want to be your opening act you know what i want to do i'm going to go hell on my own tour and i'm going to say all the political stuff i said i have experiences with pink floyd please correct me which which is the side of pink floyd that went when they broke up roger waters yeah i went to watch the movie i went to watch the roger waters at ubs or read in 2022 unaware of his politics by the way completely unaware grew up in a pink floyd household two groupies of parents for pink floyd hey teacher leave them kids alone like i was like so excited to go watch this dude i i got i i forced myself to get to that song specifically uh another brick on the wall and then i was forced to physically leave i mean his show is political is another statement his first lines when he got on stage i'm like whoa what does that even mean and dude it was just awful it's like half the stadium left i agree with what you said right you're there to perform but let's say he was headlining right would he have still got kicked out we would the stadium of course not because he's headlining it's a show he can do whatever he wants because you don't you well no this is that craft because i thought craft is he's the one who booked it and he's doing the book he's very supportive of israel a hundred percent and it's his stadium and he told sharing he's like still a contract if he was if he was the one if macklemore was the one uh headlining and did it it's contract You can't walk away from contracts that easy. Or am I wrong, Phil? Can you? Kraft has lawyers and he would say, hey, I didn't. I hired you when I booked this tour. I didn't know. You didn't tell me that you were going to do this. And plus, Kraft's the one who lined up all the other stadiums because it's all his friends who own the stadiums. But it's whether you like something or not. You want the money, don't you? Well, that's what they're doing. Shut up and take the money or walk away and do their own thing. It's whether you like it or not. It's freedom of speech, right? Because I bet you, listen, I don't agree with BLM either. I think it's a scam. I bet you it was a BLM thing. No one would have said anything. He would have still been able to perform. It was about Agent Hay who would have still been able to perform. But because he spoke out about that subject when I didn't choose a side, I generally don't care. It's like, okay, well, now it's an issue. And I think that's messed up, right? Like, it's America. You should be able to say what you want to say. He wasn't saying go harm somebody. He wasn't saying, you know, F them. He was saying what he thinks is happening there and his position on it. And he shouldn't have got kicked out of a tour. Now, could they have been after Hay? That was sick. But, you know, from now on, don't say that and just continue with your music. But we appreciate it. Yeah. But getting kicked off of a tour because of your personal beliefs. Now open up Pandora's box. No, I actually agree with the point you made there, which was, again, a lot of these people are expecting conservatives to go to the mat for, like, this pro-Israel cause. But Robert Kraft, again, no problem if it's, you know, Beyonce getting up doing this, like, WOTEP BLM stuff. HOTEP BLM stuff, rather. Again, name it. Name your leftist cause. No problem. But suddenly this issue, all of a sudden, it's like, OK, we're tossing them off the tour or whatever. I'm like, hang on a minute. What I just said before, BLM, it's sort of, like, directly an attack on the American people. And I mean, like, the real American people. Israel, low salience for the American people. You can make a geopolitical argument for Israel. That's one thing. What I'm saying is actual assault on the American people as we understand it. Again, low salience. Fairly irrelevant. So, yeah, that's why I'm like, I'm not going to go rally the troops to go defend Bob. And Ed Sheeran here, when it's like, hey, you guys have no problem letting these guys get up and just perform, quite frankly, stuff that's quite, let them on stage to have messaging that's quite frankly dangerous for the American people. And crickets. So it's like, I don't know, man. I agree. Like, I'm not going to get super worked up over this when the amount of stuff that they let fly on stage all the time, that's just completely deranged and just damaging to the American people. And no problem. Give them millions of dollars, whatever. So it's like, no, I'm not going to bat for this cause. It's just like, let's see. Again, if one thing, if it was in a long track of Robert Kraft tossing Beyonce and Jay-Z and you name it offstage. I get what you're saying. So equal application of the rhetoric. But this is the same single out because of Palestine. If this is the wedge, I'm like, why? Like, this is very derivative. There's a lot of people in New England who think that the reason why he fell out with Belichick is because he invited Belichick to take a trip to Israel. Really? And the guy, um, what's his name? The guy who replaced, uh, Belichick. Oh, I forget. Jared something. Anyway. Yeah. Anyway, but he, he went on the trip, right. And he would wear his Israel pin and he'd say, uh, and he'd give interviews saying, I really appreciated going to Israel with Mr. Kraft. All right. Well, look, this is all crazy, but there's three more topics. I just want to rapid fire them real quick. Gay UFO somewhere over Tehran. Is that what? I saw that it was like gamer at UFO. Yeah. Like the, the psychedelic UFO over Tehran. True or false. What do you think about that? That looks like, are you a, are they sending gay UFOs down? That's just like really bad. It's gay. Fine. Everybody. Yeah, there you go. It's gay. If I, even the aliens is out, the earth is doing mine. Virus has gone cosmic. We're in trouble. Oh my God. The aliens arriving, by the way, the problem we have with the former Congressman is that he actually knows, but he can't, I can't talk about considering all of the, the, the history of, of anal probes. Maybe, you know, they invented gay because we, we know we, cause we know the aliens do anal probes. So imagine the aliens rock up and they're UFOs and we're like, oh no. And then all of a sudden a gay fried flag flashes up. We're like, oh, we got to run. I thought it was me, the women and children. It might be me. I got to get out of here. It's a great question. Gay UFOs in Tehran here, a girl alien. Would you bang it? No, that's a good question. A girl alien right here. Would you bang it? That's a very good note to hang on. I mean, I'm spoken for, so no, but I would do it in a heartbeat. Uh, okay. Well, what if you're, oh my God, I was going to say something. What if when you go in and you come out and you're decapitated, like it's like a predator. Yeah, careful. It could be like a, a, a carnivorous orifice. Yeah, I'm spoken for, so no, but from a, this is a philosophical question. Here. I think this is a drone, by the way. Actually, uh, octarian. Octarian. Anyone get the, uh, alien? No. No, nevermind. No, sorry. All right. Well, look, we, we go for, we're going to cover one more topic, one, one more topic. Uh, and that's because super chance you got to do super. Well, yeah. So we'll go quick. So our YouTube is still one of my besties is in hot waters. I call bullshit. I call that. This is all a campaign and coordinated attack. Lauren Bobert did not sleep with her three staffers and skip me. So I would definitely say false, false for me. What do you think? I think that somebody, yeah, I think somebody put some disgruntled staffers up to it. Obviously. Uh, they're going to know that the staffers denied it. They all denied it. They said it's all fake. Well, who put in their complaint? Some guy called muck raker, some lunatic from Colorado who's obsessed with her. Well there you go. And you know why? Like that AOC line, they're just mad at me cause I won't date you and there it goes. But you know, here we go. You got to take on this. I'm not. No, good. Good man. Good man. Do you have a take on this? I defer to Matt Gaetz. Well Matt Gaetz said he wants the unedited footage of this. I'm just mad that they left me out of this. Like I'm, I'm annoyed. Nick, do you have any takes on this? I don't have no idea about she's hiring. You want to go work? I will say this about when I, when I was in the part in office, she was very, very passionate about getting executive clemency full self. Now it looks like I'm doing a quick pro quo. Great. Very passionate. Yeah. She's very passionate. She missed, she missed me. I'm pretty some passionate. She missed me. Well look, um, Carter, do you have a thought on this before we get super chats? Oh man. I just can't stop thinking about super chats when I look at Lauren Boebert right here. So let's go to super chat. All right. Let's go. Super chats. All right. Fox news is not conservative. They are 2005 liberal Democrats right now and have been for 10 years. Uh, methods 671. I, I, I don't know. I don't think so. I think there, I've worked a lot with news Corp and I I've gotten to see like the inside of the belly of the beast. They're pretty conservative crew. I think the problem is, is that the shareholders think differently from the actual organization. And unfortunately when you have to be beholden to shareholders, that is where the problems arise. So keep your company private like Elon Musk and I think that that goes away. Yeah. Uh, Ryan's on the board. Well, that does not helpful. Daniels Dickinson says. The economy is definitely bad. Stonk market equals, uh, economy. I don't even know what that means. Anyone? I don't know. He's saying that since the stock market is roaring, these economists are pointing to that. Got it. Okay. Yeah. I've, I've heard that Phil, these young people don't understand anything and are emotional and hate as Hades, uh, it is Haiti. Sorry. It takes time and people need to learn that Biden admin screwed our dollar value. Same old man. Yeah. I mean, look, you can be right and you can have, you can have the right analysis and still not get anyone to vote for you, right? Like you can be like, Hey, this is, this is what's going on. But if people feel a certain way, they're not going to vote for you. People vote for kitchen table issues, all the stuff that we talk about, unless it's talking about the economy, gas prices, it's all cool to talk about. And if people are feeling good, then those things will matter. If people feel like the grocery bills are too much, their gas is too much. That's what they're going to vote on. So I agree with you, but it doesn't matter. Oh, same old man. It's politics, not speech and debate. Oh, how about this? Same old man goes and says, make me King of the U S I'll give one gun of any type and, and hand a crate of crate of ammo and a crate of ammo. They have, they just have to sign up for the draft. No more forcing men. What the hell? Also. To vote in any election, you have to sign for the draft. Yeah. I mean, it's what a convoluted statement, but like, so we all signed up for the draft. Yeah. I mean, look, I'll, I like the idea of giving me a lot of service. That's what it's called. Yeah. But look, I like the idea of you giving me whatever kind of gun I want. Um, I like a volunteer army because then you don't get schmucks that don't want to be there. You don't get people that are likely to run away, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, last point, uh, we need far fewer voters. We need way fewer people voting. Uh, okay. I'm going to end the super chats with this one. We might get in trouble. But Hassan literally said America's deserve nine 11, the fallen five Oh one straight. Uh, Hassan, that guy running for Senate. No, he's helping. I'll do. I'll say it. Hassan. Piker is a piece of work. Uh, he's a, he's an anchor baby that was born in Jersey, then flew, but his parents flew him back to Turkey to, to raise him. Yep. You know who else is an anchor baby? Abby Phillips. Do you know who else is an anchor baby? The owner of KFC. I can't wait to see him back in Lebanon. I'll tell you how I feel. Anyway, guys, this is a great, great episode. Please stay tuned. We're going to go to the after show. But in the meantime, Neil, thanks for joining us. Tell us where we can find you. Go ahead. Well, you can find my groundbreaking columns at the South Shore Press. You can follow me on all the socials at Reporter McCabe. And you can watch my hits on Bannon's War Room. No, you're not going to shill for another podcast. Get out of here. No, I'm not allowing it. It's a TV show. It's a podcast. It's just on Rav. Go ahead, Nick. Thanks. You can catch me on Real Fat Dick on Instagram and the Nicky Gordo Show on Rumble and Instagram. What are your handles? The Nicky Gordo Show. Oh, the Nicky Gordo Show. Got it. Cool. Yeah, you can follow me on X on Instagram. You can watch Rav if you want. I don't think they have the same time slot. I don't care. We're not promoting another podcast here. From 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., you better be right here. And then you can watch whatever else you want in the free time. But X on Instagram, Real Tate Brown can be a follow. I am PhilTheRemains on Twix. You can check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash philtheremains. If you want to check out all that remains of the band, you can check us out on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer. Don't forget the left lane is for crime. Carter. I'm Carter Banks. You can follow me at CarterBanks on X, at CarterBanksOfficial on Instagram. And also, I do read books occasionally about communism on my YouTube channel at CarterBanks. If you want to check that out. But also, definitely stick around for the after show because we've got that coming up. Maybe we can talk about how everyone thinks about Hassan Piker or what everyone thinks about Hassan Piker. Well, Carter, you might be the most blessed man with a name. Carter Banks, what a great artistic name. I want to say, it's just incredibly good. Like two last names. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Anyway, George Santos here. It was great being with you guys one more time. Philly in for Tim. Make sure to follow. Follow me on all socials at George Santos and tune in on Special Forces on Fox starting this Thursday, the 24th at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. And you're going to see me do crazy things like jumping out of a helicopter. And I can't wait to show you guys that. And stay tuned. I'll be right back to you guys with the after show. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.