The Midterms Breakdown + Russell Brand Found Guilty - Off the Fence

Hello everybody and welcome to this week's Off the Fence with me, Constantin Kiss in my trigonometry co-host, Francis Foster, Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall show and of course, Tom Slater from Spike, German. Welcome back. What a week of news has been. We've only got two massive stories but they are so massive that's why we're only doing two and that is of course the midterms and the very recent conviction of Russell Brand. Let us start I think with the midterms and let me just give a summary of what's happened and we can we can get stuck into the discussion. The Democrats won both houses of Congress, the House and the Senate. They flipped in the Senate seven Republican seats including Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maine without losing any of their own giving them a 54 to 44 majority with Alaska and Mississippi still counting. Kansas elected its first Democratic Senator since 1932 almost 100 years and Texas elected a Democrat statewide for the first time since 1994. In the House, Dems have won at least 251 seats flipping around 40 and building their biggest majority since 2008 and about two dozen races are still to call. Now, Trump's approval rating with those who voted with 38% which is the lowest of any president in the midterm. The economy was voters' top issue but also 9/10 of voters called government corruption a major factor and most said the Iran war was a mistake as well. These are counts as of this morning as I mentioned the few seats are still being counted and the recriminations within the Republicans have already begun. There's obviously questions about what this will mean going forward for the last two years of Trump's presidency and a lot more to discuss. So, Francis, oh I should say one final thing is actually while this is a bridge to show me, Francis and Tom are in the US right now so we're actually on the grand and have been talking to people. Francis, what have you made of it? We've always had a few conversations about it with people spoken to people off camera, read a lot about it. What's been your takeaway? Well, my take has basically been that Trump voters voted for in particular one or two, let's say three things. Number one was closing the border which Trump did and they're very happy with the way that the border was closed. Number two, it's the economy, stupid, the very famous line and Trump voters feel that the economy hasn't been tackled properly. The cost of living keeps spiraling, inflation keeps going up, the gap between rich and poor is ever widening and this is not what they voted for when it came to a Trump presidency. They thought a Trump presidency would actually be tackling these issues more effectively and also they feel incredibly, incredibly frustrated with the war in Iran. The phrase that everybody uses no more forever wars and they feel that the rising prices that they feel both at the gas station and at the supermarket they feel that the war in Iran is largely to blame for that. So at the moment when you talk to ordinary Americans particularly those who voted for Trump who were not normally Trump voters or Republican voters there is a sense of frustration and there is a sense that this presidency hasn't been what they actually voted for and you can see right now what's actually happened. I think the story of so far, I think there's two major stories so far of the midterms. Number one is the flipping of Texas which is just a huge huge huge story and number two the rise of John Ossoff the Georgian Senator because you and I KK we watched his speech, we watched him deliver, we watched what he was talking about and I have to say it was a barnstorming speech, it's a great orator. He looks like somebody who could actually really galvanize the center and center right possibly if this trend continues to vote Democrat so it's really interesting to see what the next two years are going to be. Well just on that before the guys jump in the Kalshi odds for the next Democratic nominee he absolutely shot up in that as you can see so he is now at 26% he was actually I believe a little bit higher than that at one point and on the Republican side you know I talked about the recriminations one of the things that is happening is one of the Republicans who's actually been willing to talk publicly about corruption the need to make sure that there's no stop trading by politicians etc is Ron DeSantis who's gone from basically zero to yes he's behind JD Vance and Marco Rubio but he is absolutely shot up as a result because as I mentioned in my introduction even if you talk to right wing voters and even right wing commentators the corruption within the Trump administration the fact that Susie Wilde's daughters are making millions allegedly from lobbying and all sorts of other things that you know people will bring up that was a big issue including for Trump's on voters as well and so the fact that Ron DeSantis is doing so well is an indicator of the fact that the entire administration is now losing support with their own base I think that's right and also it's so clear why this happened I mean we can look at the exit polls the question of I'm gonna try not to knock over me on laptop here we've all seen those exit polls we see that the cost of living was the primary concern we see how many people are concerned about corruption and also the sense that the Iran war certainly underpins the price at the pump people have realized that the sort of grand folly of this and that it's now having huge domestic political consequences for Trump but there's also a broader sense in which he has forgotten who put him in the White House in the first place those kind of forgotten men and women of fly over country of the Rust Bell who took a chance of him in 2016 and the fact that what made his movement so potent originally was it fused their kind of economic concerns deindustrialization the fact that their the bread and butter issues weren't being attended to even by the parties that would like to think of themselves as looking after the working class either democrats but also there was this immigration dimension the fact that their concerns about the influx of people at the southern border and elsewhere was just been totally dismissed and also the cultural question the fact that they were being condescended to that there was this new liberal left delete who had some pretty kooky views and didn't have much time for the more traditional values of people across America that would all sort of start to break down you had to Trump going into this election having effectively ceded the economic ground to the democrats not that they've got any answers to what is ailing americans but by didn't have probably speaking opposing the Iran war and being able to highlight just how difficult things are getting out there that ground was given to them and then in the meantime you've not only got the corruption which is clearly filtered through but also just the absurdity of you know Trump continuing to cycle through swatches about you know what the curtains are going to look like in the presidential ballroom meanwhile people are really struggling out there and a sense that even though this is by no means a vindication of the democrats in their curious ideologies all the open borders greenism all the nonsense they've been marinating themselves in over the past few years it's so obvious to me that the failures of the Trump administration basically handed states which historically have been deep red to the democrats in the way that could so easily have been avoided if he had just focused on that domestic agenda rather than getting himself into all of these entanglements I don't think we would be here and what's fascinating is it's infuriated sections of all of the key aspects that you would need to piece that coalition together the maggot base has broken down over the issue of Iran as well as some other issues as well the kind of floating voter is now being repelled because of the cost of living concerns and even the pre-Trump Republican base deep red states places like Kansas what have you which I think the last time they had a democrat Wizard of Oz was still in the cinemas shows you just how lethal all of those mistakes and blunders the Iran more to the four have been for. I would say that your guys analysis is considerably more nuanced than what we're hearing not just from Podcastistan who I had a quick look and it seems to be a lot of chat about the Zionists in Iran and I also listen this morning to the BBC for their analysis I couldn't quite believe it but they they framed it as completely catastrophic is sort of historically catastrophic and which is neither true which I'll explain why and certainly not impartial as the BBC are supposed to be at one point the commentator forget her name said wouldn't be amazing if he gets impeached as a consequence but before I get to what happens next I think it's interesting I've been trying to work out exactly why what happened what happened what happened the vice president have you guys seen his tweet he he's talks about, it's for blames four things. He says it's, he he he he wants to listen to the people to his voters and they want an end to the war, a focus on cost of living and inflation to put America first and change the relationship with Israel. Now that actually, he's got, he claims that sort of the best pollsters on the on the job, but that actually contradicts the best exit poll I found. So NBC News have done an exit poll of 79,000 voters and this is very interesting and there's a couple of things I want to highlight here. Now this only polls people who actually voted so those who abstained would not be included in this. But for a start, those who voted Republican last time and voted Democrat this time, I switched their vote. It's very, very small. It's as we're talking about 6% of the Republican, Democrat voters this time who were Republican last time. And likewise, 7% of them who normally think of themselves as a Republican vote to Democrat this time. So people who actually changed the vote, there's not a huge amount. It's pretty, it's pretty small and it's not nothing, but it's, it's pretty small. What I think is maybe a lot of people abstaining because they can't bring themselves to vote for the Democrats. And the other big thing which I'd like to bring up is, do you know, can you bring up the asset I had? Okay, so this is from that exact poll that I am referring to. Now you'll see, it lists which of these is the most important issue facing the economy based on Republican voters and Democrat voters in this election. And you'll see that the most important thing is the economy at 39% and that's pretty much split, 52, 56, between the party. So pretty even split. And what is not there is foreign policy, which is 4%. Now, of course, you'll be thinking, well, foreign policy, the Iran War, affects the price of gasoline. And then the same polling shows that people actually really care about the price of gasoline. But I think that goes in the face of a lot of the common tree that we're hearing which is sort of blaming Israel and Iran. It's more specific, it's about the economy. And there's also right at the bottom, the second big issue is the state of democracy which Constantine referred to. And I think within that comes the idea of corruption. And what's interesting about the corruption thing, obviously there you can see the Democrats care a lot about corruption. And you already mentioned what some of those issues will be. But it would include sort of the Trump coin. And what does he call it? He calls it world liberty financial. I think it will include the Katari jet that he got, the pardons, the clemency, the family business deals. I also think though, for Republicans who think that way, who voted Republican, they'll think of corruption about, they'll remember the quality leering center in Minneapolis. And for them, corruption means something different. And it will be that they see the Democrats as corrupts. But it's nevertheless an important issue for voters. So for me, I found this to be a very interesting exit poll and trying to understand what people really wanted. And before I sort of go further, I wonder if anyone had any opinions of what I've just said before I sort of launch into other details. Well, you mentioned it there. I mean, the interesting thing is how do you divorce foreign policy from the economy? And this is part of the big debate here in America, especially on the right, because there are people who say, well, look, look at the polling, the Winston's just presenting, foreign policy is not a big issue for voters. And in fact, they would argue the reason that prices have gone up as much as they did is Trump's terrorist policy, which was why it was actually quietly but widely unpopular on the right with his own supporters and many people in the commentary. And the problem with that argument is prices for everything have gone up across the world. So if it was about Trump's terrorist policy, that wouldn't be driving the rising prices of everything in the UK, France, Germany, all over Europe, etc. The other thing probably worth mentioning is how little credit Trump has got for his immigration policies. And in fact, one of the key demographics that he massively slid back with was his panics. And a lot of people attribute that to the fact that while closing the border was kind of popular with everybody, the ice raids, the way that they were done, some of the visuals, some of the mistakes that were made, they really were something that angered the Hispanic community in particular, but actually angered many people across the board. And so people who were very, very supportive of the idea of closing borders, nonetheless found themselves in opposition to immigration policy overall because of what they perceived as being the excesses of it. And not to sidetrack the conversation entirely, but it's, I think there's some relevance here for the debates that we have in the UK and elsewhere about, you know, this very popular, I certainly on the fringes of the right, very popular idea of, you know, what we need is mass deportations. I think one of the big takeaways from all of this is actually that when the public, even some of whom are prepared to accept or even support the idea of, you know, we've got a big problem with illegal immigration, we've got to deal with it. When they are confronted with the visual imagery and the narrative stories of what happens to people who are deported and how they're deported and seeing all of that happen, actually that's when the robber meets the road and you see that it's one thing to say that you care about this issue and it's a totally different thing to actually carry out and have a sustained policy on that that people will continue to support. So there's a mix of things, but I think in my view, the idea that you can divorce domestic economics from foreign policy in this instance is just very hard to say. Now I agree with you, Winston. J.D. Vance did a very long tweet which was essentially, we've got four problems in America. The first is Israel, the second is Israel, the third is Israel and the fourth also happens to be Israel. And it's now very clear, there's been this big question over J.D. Vance and his association with Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson has been very, very active in undermining Trump both before the election, there's no evidence to support this, but he claimed that Trump was about to nuke Iran because BB wants him to. And now, here only yesterday, he did a tweet with the words "The Great Patrol" showing all the times that Trump promised something and then didn't do it. I think it's becoming very, very clear to a lot of people that the reason J.D. Vance refused to distance himself from Tucker Carlson is that Tucker Carlson is the mouthpiece of J.D. Vance. He says all the things that J.D. Vance doesn't want to be pinned as saying. And he is clearly the wing of the Republican party that is persuaded that the big problem America faces is a relationship with Israel. There are other people who are making different sorts of arguments and that is now the source of the infighting within the party. I also think one of the issues that we haven't discussed is the issue of AI and data centers. When Constantine and I were in Austin when we were filming some interviews, we were watching YouTube and because we weren't signed into a YouTube channel, we were essentially getting bombarded with political acts. And it was so interesting because the Democrat side, James Tallerico, that was one of the things that he referenced. He was talking about data centers. He was talking about the impact that it was going to have on communities. If you talk to people, the average person on the street and you talk to them about AI, there is a real fear. There is a fear that what, you know, the data centers, the impact it's going to have on the water, on electricity prices. But there's also a real fear as to what this technology is going to do to the job market. And we can already see the impact is actually having on the job market, particularly entry-level white college jobs. So there's a real, real angst around this. And in fact, it's just going back to Jon Ossoff. When Jon Ossoff delivered that barnstorming speech, when they announced his victory, he referenced AI and he referenced, or, you know, detect the data centers. This is a massive issue. And one of the things I think that we're not talking about is Trump's association with the data centers. And maybe his base were also thinking, and the people who decided to swing over were thinking, well, this is the presidency. of the tech, oligarch, the tech overlord, and he's not as interested in the little guy as he purports to be. And if you take something like the race in Texas as well, the way in which there was this attempt to kind of shift it back on to much more comfortable ground for the Republican. So, Talleriko being branded, Tallerfrico because of the fact that, as with all Democrats, there's no end of absurd quotes that he's issued over the years, you know, there are six genders. God is non-binary. The American flag is a complicated symbol. All of this was thrown at him. And it just looked like changing the subject because those more fundamental issues of the economy where everything is going, feel like they're getting away from the Republicans. And to, I suppose, shift the conversation slightly. I think, if we're talking about the Democrats, the Democratic side of this and the new figures that have emerged through this, obviously on top of Jon Osoft and James Talleriko have already mentioned Abdelaz Saird in Michigan is clearly worth a mention. Him triumpling in the sentence has raised there is a really significant development, not least, because I think you can most gently describe it. He's got a very clear history of Islamist apologism. It's quite clear that various members of his family from Egypt were involved in the Muslim Brotherhood, including his own mother. At least that's according to his half-sister. He came to be estranged from her, but nevertheless, that's there. After the Itoller harmony was assassinated earlier this year, there was this leaked internal call that El-Side was having with his campaign staff saying that he was going to keep entirely quiet about it because there are a lot of people in Dearborn who will be sad today. Dearborn, of course, being America's first and only as I understand it, Arab majority city. And it was the city. A couple of people on Triggin' Overture who said about it as well. Exactly. And a rare point of unity between Francis and Dearborn, Michigan there. And those were the voters who put him over the top in the primary. It was very close primary and those places Dearborn, also ham-traumatic places like that, were the difference for him. Earlier this year, there was an attack on a synagogue in Michigan by Lebanese, national, and his response was to say that hurt people, hurt people. So there is this sense in which maybe Talleriko's a little bit reminder of the slightly more cartoonish wokedom and identity politics of the Democrats previously. In the form of El-Side, I think we see the new bays that the Democratic Party is in work on a cultural politics is concerned, which is that they have maintained a lot of the woke stuff. That's just a given. But bolted onto it now is this sort of islamo leftist jihadi chic almost that leads to the very least forms, takes the form of making excuses for what's herding a blind eye to islamistic extremism. And that's something which is we're more accustomed to it in Europe, I think is a grim and brave new world for Americans to be entering into. Yeah, I think there's a sort of irony here which is that Trump has brought my nemmigration or south border crossings down to zero. He has the fentanyl crisis is like massively down, which is completely linked to that problem. And he's deported between 10 and 15% of Biden's illegals of which I think there's 10 to 15 million. Now that actually is pretty low. I'll be thinking about how many Biden brought into the country. But it's still a lot of people that he's managed to deport. And yet, at this election, you have this Abdel El Sayed, the son of Egyptian students, and he's linked to Muslim brotherhood. He seems like an islamist. He doesn't seem like a particularly nice chap. There's a viral video of him this week with a Scottish sky news journal. I don't know if you saw this. And he's holding the shoulders of the journalist. Or almost. I mean, you just don't, you don't touch, John. I've never seen that before where someone touched it. But anyway, will this to say that Trump actually seems to be doing pretty well on some measures on sorting out the immigration issue? And yet, the result has been nine more Somalis, like Ilhan Omar, elected to the Senate or Congress. And you kind of like have a mismatch there, which as constant, I think is right, is lessons to be learned about what that means in Britain and the sort of the politics of immigration. There's one detail I will bring up, though, constant in which is that actually of Republican voters, they largely in this same NBC exit poll agree with the the idea that U.S. made the right decision in taking military action against Iran. So again, that doesn't include people who didn't vote until I'm not including this, but voters that there's still people still some of MAGA do think it was the right decision to make. So that all to say is to me is that I'll make one more point here actually is that inflation is actually, it's absolutely the case that food and gas prices are up, but inflation is at a better position as far as if I've got my facts right here than it was certainly under Biden, or at least the rate inflation is not nearly as bad as it was under Biden. So it might be worth getting your AI guys, who are they called, Venice AI, to check where the current inflation rate is and how that compares to Biden, but we can. But Winston, you've got to remember that inflation is a cumulative thing, so if you've had a terrible period of inflation under the previous presidency, and then on top of that, you continue to have inflation under the current presidency, people don't go, "Oh, you know, my prices went up by, I did just for the sake of I'm going to 20% on the Joe Biden, and now they've only gone up by another 10% under President Trump." That still feels like, well, it doesn't feel like your prices have still gone up by 30%, right? No, it's much less than that, but yeah. And of course it is, these are numbers. So I would say these are calculations. Go ahead. If I can just finish the point, which is that, although I absolutely, it's clear that the cost of living is the issue, and I agree that people write to feel like that's the problem. It's clearly a problem. It's a massive problem. At the same time, there are wins here that I feel like it might have been that Trump did a bad job of selling what he was doing to the American public. So I would say that as a failure of Trump, in the things he has achieved, he has not done a good job at all of selling it to the American public, but I still think that these failures are legitimate. That's the point I wanted to make. That's very interesting. And the one thing I would add on your point about the Iran war, there is no doubt that a portion of the American right in particular, and there'll be some people on the left, by the way, as well, who feel that the slogan is Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, and which I think we probably all agree with. But at the same time, there is the feeling that while the decision to go to war is theoretically the correct one, actually the way it was prosecuted was terrible. This is something we just had recorded an interview of a Sam Harris yesterday. And I sort of said to Sam, isn't it ironic that Trump, whom you hate, has been undone by a policy which you actually support? And that's kind of what happened there. But Sam's rather point was it's the right war, it just wasn't done right. And there is a lot of that. There's also, by the way, I think coming back to the conversation about BB Netanyaku who's tricked America or his trick Trump into this, it's interesting because to me, what I see in that attempt to say that is a complete lack of understanding of A, how the world works because it works exactly the other way around, BB does whatever Trump tells him to effectively. But more than that, it's a way, I think it's a way for the MAGA diehard to cope with the reality that Trump did something that they didn't support. And they have to find a way to explain why that happened. And they can't admit that actually it was Trump's impetuous and perhaps impulsive nature, which at this point at the edge that he's at, you have to wonder why that is. Now, he's always been an impulsive person. But we know that impulsivity you know can increase with, you know, in some people as they get older. And I think that is a kind of cope that is also going on. People don't want to recognize that Trump went into Venezuela. He was not a thing that he'd prepared for for 10 years of strategic planning. And the thing with the Iran war, and we know this from everybody we've spoken to within the administration, it was an impulsive decision based on the idea that we're on a role here. And a lot of people who will say, I support dealing with Iran, will nonetheless say the way that Trump did it was wrong and bad. The preparation wasn't enough. The investment wasn't enough. How come we didn't have enough interceptors? How come this? How come our bases weren't hardened against the inevitable retaliation? How come we didn't anticipate or didn't at least prepare for the closure of the straw homeowners, etc. So yes, there are a lot of people in America who think Iran needed to be dealt with and it's nuclear threat is a problem that doesn't necessarily mean that they support the way that Trump did it. And to your point about immigration, just finally, I mean, it is fascinating to me because those undeniably closing the border is a massive, massive win. And everybody who really cared about that issue, which was a lot of Americans, will know that that's what happened. And for that to be an issue only 4% of the public care about, it's almost like, oh, you know, you've solved that problem. What have you done for me lately? And I think there was a lot of that going on. And look, you know, to a lot of people, to a lot of people, the immigration thing is important, but partly theoretical. It's a thing that happens on TV screens and to which they object, but their local era may not be directly being affected. They nonetheless think it's wrong. But when you wake up every morning and you're thinking about how to feed your kids that week and how to make sure that you can afford to go to, to actually go physically to where you need to go, et cetera, those are things that are on people's minds and they're pressing on a daily basis in the way that even something as frustrating and angering as masses of illegal immigrants coming into your country, it's still more immediate and more visceral than that, especially once you've fixed the immigration problem. It's a weird irony. I'll just correct. Can I correct one detail on immigration? Sorry, I said 10 to 15% of illegal supporters, actually 5 to 10%, actually lower. Sorry. Yeah, not so. Because of everything going on in the news and the concerns both Francis and I have about the direction of economic travel, we've been buying quite a bit of gold. Our gold dealer is the pure gold company. Whether you're looking to diversify your investment's protective savings or just gain the security of owning a real physical asset, we highly recommend the pure gold company. So if you're in the UK and you want to protect your savings with physical gold, scan the QR code on the screen right now, click the link in the description or go to purehifengold.co/otf to get your free copy of their guide to buying gold. And remember, do your own research. The price of gold can go up as well as dam and past performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance. Now, aside again is purehifengold.co/otf. So on the Iran War, it was always obvious that this was going to be hung around Trump's net. The question was, was it going to be a medal or an albatross, and that's proven to be an albatross? And we can, we'll have arguments for decades to come as to whether or not it could have been prosecuted differently. That will rage on, but the fact of the matter is it's going up to this point. And I think we've talked, we spoke a lot about the kind of MAGA base, the really active people, the really engaged people, the people who are going to be following JD Vance's tweets and Tucker Carlson's post-match analysis with a fine tooth comb. We've also got to think about the voters, broadly speaking. And this is the thing about Trump. He has always been incredibly polarising figure. There were a lot of people who voted for him often times with their hands holding their nose. And what were the arguments they would always make? They'd be like, yeah, he's a bit crazy sometimes or recessed things that I don't agree with, but isn't the economy doing? And he hasn't got us into any new wars and he's getting on top of immigration. That would often be what you would hear. It's worth remembering that a lot of voters who backed him will have voted for Democrats previously will have been in dependence or will have been a more kind of classical style Republican who wouldn't have liked a lot of what he was doing. But nevertheless, on those three issues, you would hear people say, on balance, it's been good. Probably the Iran War is, it knocks out the economic argument and then it knocks out the no-new wars argument. So what are you left with? So all of these things are interconnected. It's pretty clear the public have made those connections as well. And I feel like going forward, the one thing that the Republicans would really screw up by doing is focusing too much on what is the argument, what is the narrative forming amongst the most kind of active aspects of their base, when if they're going to get back towards having a viable presidential run in two years time, if they're going to get back towards actually taking political power again, then they're going to have to look at actually what just Americans writ large are thinking. And they're not obsessing over Israel to be perfectly frank. They can see how foreign policy is impacted upon domestic policy, obviously. But some of the arguments that are being waged on the kind of online right at the moment, I think are pretty divorced from where most people are. Shall we move on to talking about the future here? Because this is another dimension of this we actually have in the dress, but it's very important because if you are one of those voters who voted against the Republicans, let's say, on the basis that the cost of living is too high, etc., etc. The fact of the matter is, I don't think we see any evidence that the Democrats have policies that are actually going to address this. And so that vote of frustration is perfectly understandable whether it delivers any results is an interesting thing is one thing I would put on the table for our discussion. The other thing is one of the big challenges and I remember talking about this with Coleman Hughes on his podcast is if the Democrats and get both the House and the Senate, if you remember in the past they've been able to impeach Trump and they were never able to remove him because it takes a vote in the Senate to actually do that. Well now they control both houses and the question is, is Trump going to spend the next two years in all sorts of investigations in impeachment, here, etc. Not least because even his supporters, many of them now readily admit that he has given a lot of ammunition to people who want to prosecute him, members of his family, members of his administration on the basis of corruption and all sorts of other nefarious activity. And the reality, as I suspect, is once the Democrats start digging, there is going to be no shortage of information that supports the idea that Trump or his people have committed all sorts of offenses while in office. And so that you will potentially have simultaneously Democrats controlling both houses of Congress without necessarily addressing the concerns that people voted on the basis of and also spending a lot of time trying to basically get Trump out of office or paralyze his presidency. So you may have not only a lame duck presidency but a sort of lame duck has been chased hunted down endlessly by hunters whose only focus is the lame duck and not the economy and not the reality of people's life. Well, what's going to happen at the federal level is because he still has his veto, and this isn't an addressing your impeachment. This is just a dressing general legislation. The Democrats are going to keep putting forward proposals, which they know are going to get vetoed by Trump, but for them, it's just their way of signaling what they're about. So come the next presidential, they can be like, this is my, this is my legislative record. But at the state level, you've already, which is funny thing that happened was that the AI companies value just massive plummet because at the state level, they're going to start working against the AI companies. Now, I know Francis said people, you know, average person on the sheet really cares about data centers, but this same poll, this NBC poll, suggests it's really largely a Democrat. It's largely a talking, an issue for those on the left, less so those on the right. Winston, may I throw, may I throw some facts in on this because I actually, while we were talking, looked this up. So I looked this up with Venice AI and I said, is up because my understanding was opposition to data centers actually by lateral issue. And the answer is mostly yes. Majorities of both parties oppose new data centers in the area, though Democrats oppose them more strongly. A Gallup poll in March found that 71% of Americans opposed data centers in a local area, including 75% of Democrats, 74% of independents and 63% of Republicans. The intensity gap, yes, the Democrat, 56% of Democrats strongly oppose them, about 39% of Republicans. So there is a discrepancy, but the fact of the matter is a significant chunk of Americans do not want data centers in particular in their backyard, sorry, once in Carol. No, no, I think that's that that kind of aligned with the NBC data. I would also just make the case. I said this at the beginning of why I thought the BBC were wrong to say this is historic catastrophe for Trump and the Republicans is that in 1994, Clinton lost 54 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate, which is more on both counts than Trump has lost here and then went on to win the presidential in 1996. And there's been similar other scenarios where you can have big change and actually the voters can be more capricious than one realises, one sort of assumes it's kind of tribal. And I think people are prepared to move around with their vote and it doesn't mean that they can't come back so long as they diagnose what went wrong a bit better, I think. And there's just one other detail that [BLANK_AUDIO] I found interesting with regards to why the votes might have gone well, they're gone. And the Wall Street Journal did a review of how much people have moved around the country in the last two years. And you have had a lot of people moving from the north to the south. And so that might partially explain some of the change. And for example, Hispanics in the south is increased from 22% up from 13% in that period. And if the Hispanics are not happy about what they've seen about the deportations, they, I think, he's lost them there. And so it's interesting how the demographics move in. Sorry, but you're right to, we should talk about what this means for next. And on, on that question, it's interesting that if you look at the coalition that they put together last time around, so we've spoken a bit about the T-no to the T-no, many in particular, moving away from the Republicans in a big way. But it's also like suburbanites, it's also young men. There was one Fox News poll, which looked at men under 30. So in 2024, Trump was at one, the Republicans at one and a month and by plus 15 points. By 2026, the Democrats at one and a month and by plus 33, that's a swing of 48 in space of two years. But I think that's a really fascinating insight into just how quickly this is all unraveled. Because it's not to say that the Republicans are done for generations now, it's not to say that this is a hole that they can never climb themselves out of. I think what it's clear is that the Trump project has unraveled the extent to which Trump was a vehicle for the discontent, not just as a sort of forgotten working class, although in large part that was clear, but also various other constituencies who felt that America was on the wrong track, that it had been trapped in sort of globalist ideology, woke up parties and needed just a complete shakeup, I think now that is drawn to a close. And that whatever, even though obviously he was not going to despite his protestations, he was not going to run for the presidency again. There's a sense that there needs to be a rethink, there needs to be a re-calibration and there needs to be more kind of a different offer or a different form that's put forward in order to bring those people back together. I also agree that the 2024 coalition of the tech bros, who by the way probably, apart from Peter Teal, probably still like what Trump is up to because of his acts in AI. But the Mahar group, the swing voters, the people were about woke, that coalition probably does seem to have broken down. But the idea that Trump, this is over, over for Trump, well, he can still make decisions when it comes to foreign policy, and that's probably what the next two years are going to be about. He can still act in that domain. And I think in a way, he doesn't have, I mean, not sure what he had to lose, but he, what is he bound by now? He doesn't, does he, do you think he cares about who wins the next presidential election? I would hope so, but he might not, he might be like, well, I don't really care what happens next. I'm just going to do what I think's best for my legacy and for me. And so you might just see him maybe sort of free, now he doesn't have to worry about any midterms. He doesn't have to worry about the next election. He might feel liberated in a weird sort of way. I mean, is that a crazy thing to suggest? No. No, you know, when you went like, oh, I don't care what you sort of, what anyone thinks and I was just about my legacy, I'm like, yeah, that's probably how he's always been in, in one sense. But one of the things that I think that we, nobody really addresses when it comes to politics or certainly not as much as we should is we can talk about policies, we can talk about stats, we can talk about data, but it's kind of like a band. You need a great frontman. And who is that frontman going to be? Because a great frontman can unite a political party, think about, for instance, Tony Blair. David Labor drove them on and they became the political force of a generation. And he was a singular political talent. The same with Trump, by the way, disagree, agree, it doesn't matter. He was a political force of nature. And one of the things that the Republicans are going to have to tackle now is who is going to lead them post Trump. Because that is going to be a very, very difficult, it's going to be incredibly difficult to follow somebody who has that sheer force of personality. And I'm looking over at the Democrats and look at one speech in the week as a long time in politics. But I was impressed with Ossof. I really was. A lot of the times you look at the Democrats, they seem to be kind of like outside who seems as to be deeply unpleasant, all the Democratic Socialist of America or frankly a bunch of fruit cakes. But this guy actually seemed to be one of the few people at the moment who's capable of grabbing the center. And look, the week is a long time, other people are going to emerge. But it's about for me, the person at the front, the person who can unify a party. So looking at the Democrats might have that, possibly, who is going to be that for the Republicans. Well, with the Democrats, they also have James Talleriko, who interestingly went on Rogan actually came across very well. A lot of people felt went on diarrhea. Ossof, he did podcasts where it's not necessarily natural alignment between their audience and him. But he went in there and tried to persuade there are other people within the Democrats. So I think falling in love with Jon Ossof off of the back of one speech and look, prediction markets, I agree with you, Francis. Kouchy certainly seems to show that Jon Ossof is the frontrunner by a long way. But I think we've got to keep in mind this, this two years to go. And during those two years, a lot can change. What's interesting on the Republican side of this is, as I mentioned, if you actually travel around the United States, one of the things you see is the difference between the Santis and perhaps other people within the Republican Party is Florida is actually incredibly well run. And so it's less about what he says and the bombastic nature of his presentation, which is not, I don't think, doesn't come naturally to him. It's just an incredibly well run state. And that, perhaps, can stand him in good stead, although he saw a clip of the Santis talking about the last time when he ran against Trump in the primaries. And he said, I have this vote to come up to me. I think he said in Iowa, somewhere higher, maybe, at the primaries. And he said to me, I think you are going to be the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. You are able to be that figure for our nation. And if Trump wasn't on the ballot, I'd love for you. And so anyone who's run against a figure like Trump so far has faced our reality, which is he just inspires a love and adulation from a certain section of America that can't be beaten with anything, including being someone who's run the state incredibly well. But it's very clear from his response to this election, the fact that obviously his term as governor of Florida is over, that he is going to be one of the people challenging for the presidency two years from now. And then, of course, you have JD Vines and Marco Rubia. And the interesting thing to me, this is kind of going into the weeds, but I've always thought this was interesting. It was very clear from the outset that JD Vines was against the run war. And I don't think it's remotely an accident that Trump made him America's chief negotiator in resolving that conflict, because to me, that is kind of a way of saying, well, you don't want to be involved in this, but you will be tied to this. And so JD Vines has to simultaneously continue to signal to the portion of his electorate that he thinks is there and growing, which is the more isolationist wing of American politics. But at the same time, he may well have find that the Albatross of this conflict, however it's settled, is actually hanging not only around Trump's neck, but also around his own. And Marco Rubia, then he's got his own issues. He'll be fascinating to see how all of this plays out over the next couple of years. Gentlemen, shall we move on to the other story of this week, which was a bombshell announcement in the UK that Russell Brand has been found guilty of both rape and sexual assault at Tom Takeaway? Yes. So he was found guilty at Suffolk Crown Court, one count of rape, three counts of sexual assault, some of these cases going back many decades, and it really draws to a close what has been a saga that's been going on over the past three years, in terms of what the public have known about. But in terms of anyone who might have been in and around Russell Brand, in and around the comedy industry, in and around the entertainment industry in Britain, a lot of these allegations or at least the very bad smell around brand was a pretty open secret. So in about 2023, there was this big investigation by both the Times newspaper and the dispatches documentary. It's worth pointing out that these now guilty verdicts do not relate to any of the stories that were in that specifically, this is actually people who have come forward since 2023 who have lost these complaints and ultimately culminated in this conviction, but that was certainly something that set the ball rolling, led more people to come forward, led more people to reckon that they might actually get justice at this point. I think everyone will have noticed that there has been a striking reaction online, which I think broadly speaking falls into two camps, one of which is people asking, as they asked after Jimmy Savo, as they asked after various prolific sex offenders are exposed in the entertainment industry as to why this person was essentially allowed to operate for so long. Russell Brand, of course, before he sort of glow up on the crank right was the darling of the Guardian newspaper he guest-edited the New Statesman in 2013. He made huge waves in the 2015 election, where he first said he didn't want people to vote, then he back-set, millaband, et cetera, et cetera. So there's been that aspect to the backlash, and then there's also been this response from, dare I say, the sort of newer fans of Russell Brand since he became kind of Maggar adjacent, since he became more on the sort of conspiratorial, cranky fringe of politics, always been quite cranky to be fair, but more on the right shall we say, who are just like flatly refusing to believe that these convictions are sound, often, I dare say about wanting to get into the details too much without looking properly at the evidence, which I think was pretty clear, and no wonder the jury reached the verdicts that they did. But yet a huge, huge story, he's a waiting sentence thing that'll happen next week, he's been reminded in custody, and we wait to see what happens next, but as is ever the case, particularly when you're dealing with someone as culturally significant as Russell Brand, it's also instantly become a factor in the cultural where people falling into broadly speaking, one of those two tribes. One of the interesting things with Brand is people always go, well, how did he get away with it, and why did people continue to work with him? In show business, all aspects of show business, most people don't make that much money. They don't generate that much money, they don't generate that much money for their agencies. It's essentially just a pyramid with the people at the very top, probably the 1% 0.5, generating the vast majority of the revenue. If you look at podcast, it's pretty much the same, it's all, it's pretty much all aspects of show business and media. And what Brand was exceptionally talented at was generating revenue, was galvanising a fan base, he was somebody who was incredibly talented, he was very, very charming, he was very, he was somebody who people felt that they liked and they knew, and he got chance after chance, after chance, because he was good at what he did, he was very good at bringing listeners, for instance, to Radio 2, the BBC Radio 2. And when you have the BBC, which always has to justify, essentially, because it is a publicly funded service, it has to justify, you know, the service that it puts on and the fact that it spends public money, they are always going to be looking for that talent that can do that. Unfortunately, for the BBC and for lots of outlets now, there are going to be very serious questions put to them as to actually, how much they knew, about this particular individual, how much they knew of his behaviour, what actually happened on their premises, and also how do we move on from this, and you're looking at the BBC right now, and you're thinking to, and they're probably thinking to themselves, and other people are thinking as well, how many scandals can this organisation withstand? Well, to your point about, you know, how much they knew, the fact of the matter is that the fact that Russell Brand was a sexual predator, was extremely well known on the British comedy circuit, and we know, I think, from some of the evidence in court, that his activities were known to the people around them, and of course they would have been because of the way that he behaved. And so the fact of the matter is that there are lots and lots of people for the reasons that Francis articulated, who turned the blind eye, and maybe we will discover, even facilitate, that his behaviour. And, yeah, Tom, to your point about, you know, the split between the narratives here, it's been quite amazing because I tweeted yesterday what I just said, which is it was extremely well known, and people who don't understand British libel laws in America go, why didn't you say something before? Well, it's because in Britain, if you make an accusation of serious nature against somebody, they will sue you for libel, which by the way Russell Brand did, and silence people, including one of these victims to the point where, to this day, she's legally not allowed to say anything to anybody about her claims. If you make an accusation against somebody, you then, if they sue, you then have to go to court and prove in court the allegation that you made is correct. Now, if you're someone who knows this because a friend of yours, you know, I have a friend, for example, who was a victim of his, and that's how I know, but it's something very widely known, like on my Facebook, I still have a lot of comedians that I'm friend, well, friends on Facebook, they're not huge fans of my evolution since we knew each other, but nonetheless, and you know, I see lots of women going like, of course we all knew, and in fact, female comedians in the UK have a WhatsApp group in which they share things of this nature to one fellow female comedians of potential risks and potential predators. So this was something that was an open secret, and that put a lot of people in a big dilemma as they sorry. It was never dilemma for us. Russell Brand invited me on his show many times. I never wanted to have anything to do with him because it was clear to me that all of this would inevitably happen, and also it was just the wrong thing to do to associate myself with somebody about whom I knew this kind of thing, but a lot of people were not in that position where they knew somebody who'd been affected or whatever, and so, and then the other thing on top of this is you had COVID, which just totally broke everybody's brain, made everybody extra conspiratorial, extra suspicious, and one thing I will say is I do think there is some truth, to the argument that people have made, which is if Brand had remained on the right side of the political tracks, if he continued to do those beautiful pictures that have come out in the last day of him, having his arm roundo and jones, doing conversations with Ed Miliband, being this sort of communist, adjacent, lovely, if that had continued, there's a possibility that he actually would have been allowed to get away with this for longer. I do think it's true that him being in such a focus when it comes to these allegations is partly about the fact that he changed his political allegiances and became troublesome to the establishment, but the fact that that is true does not mean that he was not guilty of the things of which he's now been found guilty, and people need to be able to delineate those two things. Well, I'm going to take a position that I guess in this context controversial and likely going to be unpopular, and I invite you guys to push back against me if you think I'm misguided, but looking at this case, I am actually a bit, I have a sense that there's a problem with the British judicial system and the British justice system, and I'll make my case. I have never met Russell Brandt, I am not saying he is, he, by the way, still refutes the allegations that he says it was always consensual. All the evidence in the case was testimony, there was not video evidence, there was not forensic evidence IDNA, and so it seems to me it comes down to largely a he said she said, with a, again, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but the jury were asked if they'd read the Times exposé in late summer, 23, or watch the Channel 4 exposé, and they hadn't, but they would still have known about Brandt, and I don't know how you could have missed this story. And so you've got a situation with this guy with allegations from 20 odd years ago, which are testimony, and even the testimony, it's like, I think one of the, the victims said she had initially said, didn't think there was much of a story when she was approached by either Times or Channel 4, when she said, now, I'm not saying that, uh, that Brandt is innocent, I don't know, the courts obviously found him guilty. As you'll know that his, uh, lawyer on the way out said to the Times journalist, you fucked it, and the reason, I think, if I'm trying to understand why he said that is because that, they, the Channel 4, or the Times, they put that out in the public before putting it to the police, which, once it's in the police, you can't put it out, you can't do it because you have contempt of court, right? So you can't then do the thing. So they did it before, and then it went to, to the police. So that's just in the wrong order. And what frustrates me, and this is why I'm actually frustrated, is because we have had it in our country since the Second World War, the most horrific series of group, charge sexual exploitation, known euphemistically as the grooming gang scandal, and there are plenty of examples where young girls who went with forensic evidence. There was one girl in 2013, I think it was no earlier, 2008, she went to the police, gave her underwear in which had the DNA of the victim, they arrested two men, and then the CPS decided not to press charges. Who was ahead of the CPS at that time? Who was the chief public prosecutor? It was Kirstama, so we're in a country where, as it's shown with Russia Band, if the establishment want to put people away for these sort of crimes, they have shown that they can. But when the narrative is wrong, when the victim is inconvenient for the establishment narrative, they haven't done. And so for me, I'm just, it's another sense, again, I'm not saying that brand is innocent. I'm saying that here we have the establishes showing that if they want to act, they will. But the frustration is those on the other side, when it happens on the other side, not only are these victims, is there no justice for these victims, but we elect to be prime minister, the person who throws it out. So for me, there's a sense that, like, it's a sense of something is not quite right. And I just add that Hugh Edwards at the BBC, who had indecent images of children on his phone, he got a suspended sentence, a brand, there's a way this goes, this happens, where he's going to spend the rest of his adult life in behind bars. There's actually a scenario. Now, it might be the case that this is justice working, and maybe he was, you know, the man they found to be good for good reason, and this is justice being served. I'm saying, I don't, I don't know, but this is not as clear a case. But why are you saying you don't know? I don't understand. Why are you saying you don't know when he's just been found guilty? Because if you look at the, look, I read some of the transcripts, it's like horrifying. I'm saying, I'm not in any way, excusing it. But if you look at what evidence it was, it was not forensic or video. So it's, it's within saying things. Fine. Do you think Jimmy Savile was a pedophile? I do, I do think that never found guilty. So never found guilty. There's no evidence. Not forensic evidence. Okay. And it is also worth saying that if we were talking about, with the example of the grooming gangs as well, and you're right to bring out Winston, because the lack of concern about the industrial scale rape of the most vulnerable girls in society, the complete memory hauling of that, ignoring that is, it makes it so hard to stomach when you suddenly have to believe the victim crowd pop up in relation to this case. You're absolutely right about that. Difficult to use is that if we were going to go down this line of like, we are going to question the soundness of a conviction unless there's kind of video or DNA evidence or what have you, then that would imply that it would be illegitimate or unsound to say pursue historic grooming gang cases as well. And there's many cases like this which do not really come down to the fact that there are clear cut witnesses, really do not come down to the fact that there's CCTV that can be accessed. That doesn't mean that someone can't be convicted, of course. And also if we're looking at this case in particular, woman five as she's referred to in a lot of the reporting who, the complaint of rape against branders or one that he's been found guilty of, there is, in terms of the witness testimony, there is quite a lot of it. I think there were eight individuals who said that she told them about this encounter immediately after it had happened. Back in 2009, there was also a nurse at a sexual health clinic who says that she came in because she was concerned that she had contracted some sort of venereal disease from brand because unbeknownst to her, he had taken the condom off as well during the rape that is now being found guilty of and that she had told her what had happened at the time as well. So in terms of even though this is testimony, this is still evidence under our system, of course, and I suppose there's a fair bit more of it than some people, not saying you went sort of been letting on, you know, even though the, as you say, there's nothing as definitive as CCTV or DNA, what have you bit. If we are to hold by the standard that we're questioning those convictions, unless we have the smoking gun, is it worth, and even going after historic grooming gang cases would therefore be questionable and illegitimate? I just want to reiterate, I am not doubting that he was a philandra. I am not doubting that he was a dastard. He even said he was. I, it, it, look, it doesn't sound, it doesn't sound good, but I'm saying that there's, some things that happened in this case that for jurisprudence sake are like a bit weird and I'm also saying that there's, I'm frustrated to see if this has just has been served great, but I'm frustrated when we have such horrific failures in our justice system to see that when they bloody want to, they can actually, they can actually serve justice. And that, that's my, that's my take. I, I, seeing the, what I did see the transcripts, it's, it's not pretty stuff. I'm not, I, just to reiterate, I'm not, I don't feel like I'm in a position. I'm certainly not in a position, I'm certainly not rather defending it. I'm sort of making a different point. All right, well, on that happy note, that is it for off the fence this week. And we will see you back here next week. Take care and see you soon. Guys, let us take a minute to recommend another podcast. Did you know the average podcast listener has six shows in rotation. So you're most likely not just listening to Trigger, wait, so we know you're cheating on us. This is a discreet. It's okay. The Jordan Harbinger show is a perfect complement to Trigonometry. Really? Absolutely. Just like Trigonometry, Jordan hosts weekly mind broadening conversations with some of the most fascinating people in the world. But a key difference that I'm a big fan of is the Jordan is focused on pulling actionable growth orientate and advice from his guests. I'm looking at his episode list now. There's an episode here where Jordan talks to a hostage negotiator from the FBI who lays out his techniques on how to get people to do what you want them to do by making them like and trust you. Sounds just like me, except, you know, I'm more SAS. You can't go wrong with adding the Jordan Harbinger show to your podcast rotation. Search for the Jordan Harbinger show that's H-A-R-B-I-N-G-E-R on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.