THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 149 — Can 2026 Please End? Anakin Memes? California Throuples?

00:00:03 Speaker 1: My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: If the most. 00:00:15 Speaker 1: Important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. 00:00:26 Speaker 3: You got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as. 00:00:28 Speaker 1: Young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life, and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am. 00:00:46 Speaker 2: Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. 00:00:56 Speaker 1: Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show. a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. 00:01:40 Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. Oh gosh, I almost said human events. Today's edition of Thought Crime Thursday. I didn't realize we were going to be playing the Nirvana... Anakin meme to start everything off, but I think that's kind of where we are. And for anyone who has no idea what the Anakin meme, the Anakin Skywalker meme is all about, we are set to explain it here on the show. And of course, we'll be going through all things related to the midterms and the historic, historic loss for the Republicans, but perhaps, perhaps a loss that creates some opportunity for at the same time. We're not going to dwell on it all night, but we do have to address it a little bit up front and help me do that. Of course, we're joined by the great Andrew Colvette and Blake Neff. What's up, guys? 00:02:35 Speaker 2: What's up, Pozo? You know, I have you to thank for me even knowing about the Anakin memes. 00:02:40 Speaker 3: You don't know what Anakin Skywalker is? 00:02:43 Speaker 2: No, I just didn't realize the memes were happening, and then you shared them with me, and I was like, oh, I get why these are catchy. I really get it. 00:02:52 Speaker 3: I'm sharing them with everyone. Yeah. 00:02:56 Speaker 2: Go ahead, Blake. Yeah, they're kind of funny. 00:02:58 Speaker 3: I don't know. 00:02:59 Speaker 2: I think they capture something deep. Like a good meme, really, it's kind of like a good meme is like a good joke where it hits at something pretty profoundly true, which is what makes it funnier, which is what makes it more resonant. And what's interesting is people's reaction to it because, you know, they're saying, but Anakin is the bad guy. And it's like, well, no, actually, Anakin... before he went to the dark side, was the good guy. He was getting incredibly frustrated about stuff. Some of it right, some of it wrong. His ultimate decision to vote Democrat was not the right call, but his anger was justified. 00:03:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, no, so there's, and we'll explain that as we go through. And yeah, for people who say that, it's like you totally don't understand what the point of the meme is whatsoever. Yeah. And, you know, but looking into it, like, I do think that one of the big things that here on Thought Crime we certainly have to address, and I threw this tweet up and, Andrew, I was thinking of you when I posted it, is, hey, guys, maybe the price of burritos actually did matter after all. Because I sure remember a whole lot of people telling us and telling you specifically, Andrew, that it didn't matter at all. 00:04:08 Speaker 2: You would have thought that I betrayed the Republic by mentioning Thought Crime. that burritos were too expensive. You know, like people were really mad at me. They like, and all I said, I said, I said, you know, let me, let me share an anecdote. The kids that we talked to just feel like, you know, a burrito shouldn't cost $ 20. Like it would be political malfeasance to not acknowledge the fact that they, there is felt need out there, man, all the comments, they need to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and cook at home and, Just put some more. 00:04:42 Speaker 3: Beans in there. 00:04:43 Speaker 2: Just put some more beans in there. Yeah, that was the funniest thing. Joel Berry, who told me, I guess he quote-tweeted me or whatever, and he said, well, my wife fed the whole family for $ 20. He's got a big family. And I was like, wait, what kind of meat? And I remember I replied back, I was like, what kind of meat did you give your family? And he's like, well, we make the meat stretch with With beans. And I was like, oh, okay. All right. 00:05:08 Speaker 3: That's a great argument. How'd that argument work out? 00:05:10 Speaker 2: I know. 00:05:10 Speaker 3: How'd that argument work out on Tuesday? 00:05:12 Speaker 2: And by the way, it's not that I don't find credence in the fact that young people probably do too much, you know, what is it? DoorDash and things like that. I mean, of course. Like, you can eat cheaply and you should try to and you should try to live within your means. But this is America, man. We dream big. If we want an Instacart. 00:05:30 Speaker 3: But Andrew, what folks like... like that and the neocons and so many people, what they all missed was that we weren't specifically, and you weren't specifically, and the person you talked to specifically, weren't just talking about burritos. You were talking about the cost of food. 00:05:46 Speaker 2: Exactly. It was a totem for a larger issue. Yeah, it was a totem. 00:05:49 Speaker 3: Right. It became the stand-in for so many other things that were going on. And many of the same things, by the way, that we all said in 2024 about Joe Biden and many of the same things that we ran on. And when you brought that up from a right wing perspective, or, uh, I think the next, the week after that is when I, when I went off on Kevin O'Leary for like the, his is like Rolex worship and started, you know, another firestorm. I was just kind of making the broader point that this is driving young number one, driving young people away. Number two, driving young people into the arms in many cases, into the arms of the left and And number three, if we don't do anything about this, just like Charlie warned us, we are going to get a socialist revolution. And boy, oh boy, did we get one on election night. And so, you know, I was thinking about these results and I was going back over some of the stuff that we've talked about here on Thought Crime. And I was like, man, we really did actually address these issues. And in every single instance of it, we were told to shut up. We were told we were wrong. We were told, you know, how dare you say things like that. And then and then boom. there's this, this huge, massive forest fire on Tuesday. 00:07:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, it's interesting though. And you made this observation, uh, the first on our, our election stream. And I think it's, I think there's like, I think it's like 83% accurate actually. Cause when you, when I, when I say what you said, obviously you could disagree with it and poke holes in it, but directionally, there's something profound I think about it. And you said America first didn't It wasn't a rebuke of America first. It was actually a reinforcement of it. It was an affirmation of it. And we see this on a conservative side too because, Blake, you know the stats better than I do, but it's like the bills and the propositions that passed. 00:07:43 Speaker 4: A lot of those passed. They're not on our best topics. There's some voter ID stuff that passed. 00:07:48 Speaker 3: Which is great. 00:07:49 Speaker 2: Immigration exit. Women's sports. That stuff passed. 00:07:51 Speaker 4: But I just think the biggest thing is that if you look at the exit polls, if you look at the exit polls, They ask you, how much do these different issues matter? And if you said immigration mattered a lot, and you can take that either way, like you could say, I care a lot about immigration because I'm pro-amnesty or whatever, but. We overwhelmingly won those people. Overwhelmingly won people who cared a lot about immigration. Even within the narrow subset of Hispanic voters who tilted back to the left, they were more likely to say immigration mattered, but not really in any dominant way at all. 00:08:21 Speaker 2: It's like 50% said it was a major issue. Well, but they still like law and order. You know what I mean? 00:08:26 Speaker 3: And we won on the immigration question. And Blake, so that was actually something that I remember when we were doing the simulcast with Piers and you and him got into it and you defended yourself aptly, but we didn't have all the data in yet, like it was still in process. And I'd love to, you know, have a round two of that to point out. And I saw Elon posted it. I was posting it, this graph that came out that says of all the voters' top issues, you know, Republicans lost on Iran. They lost on cost of living. They lost on public corruption, which I think is kind of a stand in for a number of these things, accountability. But the one top issue that Republicans won on by 15 points, D plus 15, was immigration. Yeah. 00:09:07 Speaker 2: No, and this is why Brandon Gill did so well in Texas. What does he talk about? He talks about immigration. He talks about Americans are sick of getting ripped off by foreigners. In a district that Tallarico carried. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't think– did Tallarico carry his district? It's complicated. That went viral. 00:09:22 Speaker 4: It's a little misleading because it was like the counties, and Gill's district doesn't include Denton, which is a little bluer. 00:09:28 Speaker 2: Right. 00:09:29 Speaker 4: And so he did– clearly outrun Paxton, but not as dramatically as some... Because some people were saying he did it by... Oh, he did it by 30 points or something. 00:09:36 Speaker 2: No, I think he outran it by, like, 11 points or something like that. Something like that, yeah. Yeah, which is still super impressive. 00:09:41 Speaker 5: Huge. 00:09:41 Speaker 3: Huge. 00:09:42 Speaker 2: And it just goes to show, it's like. 00:09:44 Speaker 3: Make him the majority... He make him the GOP leader. Something, yeah. 00:09:47 Speaker 2: Make him the GOP leader. 00:09:48 Speaker 3: Just do it. 00:09:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, like, let's just get... Like, this is an endorsement. You should be senator. 00:09:52 Speaker 4: This election was an endorsement of basically do good things and don't do stupid things. And I think if we just don't do stupid things, we're actually... in a great spot it would be much worse if this was like if you had the bush level wipeout the bush wipeout in 2006 and 2008 was really bad in part because it was a total repudiation of the policies that george w bush was doing because bush really 100 percent He owned the Iraq war to an insane degree, like ran, you know, basically kind of ran on it in 2004 and it went south and it was, it was awful. And he was like running and he was trying to privatize social security. Would have been a good idea if he had, by the way, but nevertheless, hugely unpopular, wasn't trusted. And on top of that, like his economic management, he basically. 00:10:38 Speaker 2: Led to the great recession. 00:10:39 Speaker 4: He basically triggered the great recession because he was encouraging all the behaviors that led to a reckless lending of He had this whole, we'll win the Hispanic vote by lower mortgage standards so that more of them own homes. And all those mortgages went south and blew up in our face. So it was like a total repudiation of everything he did. And he was also doing amnesty type stuff. 00:10:58 Speaker 2: All of that, that was bad. Got destroyed. 00:11:00 Speaker 4: And it took us a decade to recover from it. Here, we have the opportunity, if we recognize now, we got blown up because people said, you ran on this in 2024 and you did not do it. 00:11:10 Speaker 2: And I am angry. 00:11:11 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:11:12 Speaker 2: And you got Mark Thiessen out here, by the way. Still, this is crazy. Mark Thiessen, he has a new op-ed. I didn't have the team pull this because I don't think they knew I was going to go here. But it says, this is what he says. If J.D. Vance cannot bring himself to say that Trump made the right decision to disarm Iran, he has no business seeking the GOP nomination to succeed him. If Vance can't endorse Trump's national security policy, Trump should not endorse him. Like, how? How? how is this a real op-ed after what we, and after, did he not read the Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Shane, uh, it was Shane, right? Uh, it was, there was three, three, whatever it was. The point is, did he not read it where they literally chart the whole of the, of this year, starting in February and March, watching the polling slowly get farther and farther apart. And why? They knew it. They knew it was the Iran war. And they knew it because as soon as they brought through the MOU, the MOU had a 70 30. It was a plus 40 polling. It pulled plus 40 and 67 percent of people thought it would lower gas prices. Trump's own numbers got a bump there. J.D. 's numbers got a bump there. So they knew that everything was about Iran. And like the fact that we're still even like having a conversation about this is crazy. I was asked today on Will Kane's show. 00:12:42 Speaker 3: Like peace was weird though. 00:12:45 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:12:45 Speaker 2: There's probably some weird pieces in it, but I was asked today on Will Kane show, what happened with young men? And I was like, well, we lost the credit credibility fight because we pitched them no new wars and like economic, you know, prosperity. And instead we got a war in Iran tariffs and then everything downstream of that higher gas prices. That's where the credibility was, was dropped. But to Blake's point, so all of these, are betrayals of our own policies that are actually really popular. You know what I mean? So it's all self-inflicted, which means if you can build up credibility, if you can tell young men, like, please, we hear you. Like, I'm sorry. What JD did, mea culpa. I told you so. You were right. If you can build that credibility up, our ideas and our policies, I believe, are still winning and are winning over. 00:13:36 Speaker 4: What does pain me and what will be a struggle, and it's why I think we need a strong reaction to this, because we're talking about what we should do now, is that it's a little different from merely a policy error. It's that they feel with the no new wars thing, It's that they feel embarrassed and lied to and like totally misled. 00:13:56 Speaker 2: And it was even worse. 00:13:58 Speaker 4: It was that it came within this angle of, wow, there was that old GOP and they cheerleaded all these wars. But Trump is the guy who finally has the credibility that he's the Republican who's not going to fall for the dumb new wars op. And then he fell for a dumb new wars op. And they're going to think, well, wow, fell for it a second time. Like they're never going to get me a third time. 00:14:17 Speaker 2: It could take. 00:14:19 Speaker 4: I'll be honest, it could take a decade plus before you have someone with the credibility to push against that. 00:14:23 Speaker 2: All right, go ahead, Jack. 00:14:24 Speaker 3: That's a fair point. 00:14:25 Speaker 2: I hope you're not right. 00:14:26 Speaker 3: So there were a few– there certainly were a few weird things about that piece, one of which was that they talked about how they were taking credit for shutting down immigration enforcement, at least visibly, in the beginning and part of the year. And yet we know from the polling, like I just said, immigration enforcement– was the main thing that we won on. And so I just, I don't, I don't really know how to square that with what we see in the polling on that one. And then the second part was, it's like, guys, if you know that this is the main issue, you know, you need to tell somebody or you need to run some ads on it. And they did not do that, that that was not what was done from MAGA Inc. And the ads were certainly didn't speak to any of those things. So, you know, that really Gives a lot of head scratching as to where the money was spent. 00:15:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen, I think if, okay, just to play devil's advocate with the immigration thing, I think what the, and this was true, we were getting clobbered on immigration during Rene Good and Alex Preddy. That effectively was spun off. By the left wing media apparatus and Democrats is like, oh, they're going through the streets, kamikaze missions, killing Americans. They've gone too far. They're reckless cowboys, untrained. You know what's crazy? 00:15:47 Speaker 4: I think that if even if we were getting hammered on that, I was just talking to someone who had the interesting thought. Let's say the administration, maybe maybe all they did is they made them take the masks off or something, but they otherwise just said we're still doing maximum hard immigration enforcement everywhere. That might have been a better outcome for the midterms even if that proved unpopular. 00:16:05 Speaker 2: Is it credibility? Well, not credibility. 00:16:07 Speaker 4: It's because you make the– everyone responds to what everyone is talking about. 00:16:12 Speaker 3: Because you make everyone talk about it. 00:16:13 Speaker 4: You make the election a referendum on the border. 00:16:15 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:16:15 Speaker 4: You make it the referendum on the border and we don't lose that as bad as we lose on affordability. 00:16:19 Speaker 3: That is what I said from day one, that if you– this is the way that you make this front and center, that you make– you fight on the battlefield that you choose. You fight on– don't let them choose the battlefield. You choose the battlefield. So if you want to make the fight about immigration, then you have to be doing things about that visibly to put that front of mind and to make that center focus. And notice I said visible operations. I didn't say all enforcement because I don't agree with people who say that there isn't any enforcement because obviously we've seen that. But when you took away the optics of it, and you could change the optics, you could do a number of things, sure, fine. But the point is when they took away the visibility that removed it from the spectrum of, this is fourth generation, fifth generation warfare, okay? So you have to understand that optics do play a part. It left that front of mind where it was for so many people. And by the way, remember the crazy protesters that were out there? And even though as we know it led to those incidents, which were horrific, we didn't see the crazies out from the left. And that's, again, a reminder of who these people are and who just got voted for. 00:17:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I do think that from a polling standpoint, we probably did lose. It started to become a losing issue just at least for a while. A guy who took a lot of incoming and I actually had a lot of belief in was Secretary Mullen. I actually thought that he's not grassroots in the sense that he understands how the base works. intuitively feels about this stuff, but he's directionally right enough, and he's a hard worker, he brings a lot of energy, and he's going to be good at working with people. And I actually believe the key to getting the numbers up is getting more and more jurisdictions to work with the admin to get more deportations. And the one thing that I will say, though, is we should definitely go harder, and we should cut off the financial systems for the illegals. If you do that, then you will absolutely... and you make a couple really big examples, like high-profile examples of businesses that are running a lot of illegal immigrant labor, you don't have to get them all, but you basically put the fear of God into all of them, you will get self-deportations out the yin-yang. That will accelerate. 00:18:39 Speaker 3: I have been pushing internally from day one to up the number of self-deportations, and there have been times where I hear back, oh... well, we're going to offer them more money to get on the flight. No, that's what I'm talking about. Make it harder for illegals to stay in America. Debank the illegals. Debank the illegals, put tariffs on any of the remittances that are going to these countries, and do everything you can that you can't allow them to get access to housing, to get access to education, all of these different things that allow the illegals to stay in America. And by the way, I love the fact that finally, just a few months ago, because there was this MOU, which is so crazy that there wasn't one already, between ICE and TSA, where now they're picking up people who are visa overstays when they're flying on domestic flights in between the country. They weren't doing that before. They literally were not checking people as they got on an airplane to see if they were an illegal or not. That's how bad So there's so many things that you can do, just little tweaks like this, that make it very hard for illegals to stay in this country. 00:19:44 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:19:46 Speaker 4: It's frustrating because a big part of it, we've always said, I think by far the easiest way to sell immigration enforcement is, yeah, you arrest a few business owners running all illegal chop shops. 00:19:55 Speaker 3: And businesses. 00:19:55 Speaker 4: There are factories like this. There are farm operations. And they'll almost certainly have something terrible. If you are a farm that is relying on illegal migrant labor— That farm sucks. You'll probably have some other horrifying labor violation. So you can frog march that business owner you arrested, and you can also have the profile like, oh, these guys were living in shacks with no AC, and they had to work 12 hours a day. 00:20:19 Speaker 2: It'll be horrible. 00:20:20 Speaker 4: And you make the left defend this, and yeah, you put the fear of God in them. The problem is, is I'm just worried we'll never see it. We know how Donald Trump is. He has a lot of friends in the building community, a lot of friends in the accommodations in. 00:20:32 Speaker 2: Vacations? Hospitality? Hospitality. Yeah, that was the word I was going for. You know what this reminds me of, though, is that Charlie clip when he was at the Roofer convention. And he basically goes around. Oh, my gosh. He goes around and he asks them all. That was pain. That was pain. Yeah, and the guy asked him a question. 00:20:48 Speaker 3: No, but his response was brilliant. His response was absolutely brilliant. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: Well, it was prescient and unfortunately really spot on where he said, Well, then I thought we could do this, at least for a little while. I thought we could actually enforce our immigration laws for a little while, but I guess we don't. 00:21:02 Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like, apparently we don't want to save our country. Yeah, apparently we don't want to save the country. Ultimately, there's a lot of that going on. 00:21:07 Speaker 3: He just told them off, right? He just told them off right to their faces. 00:21:10 Speaker 2: Do Americans have the will to save their country? 00:21:11 Speaker 3: Oh, so you don't want to save the country. 00:21:12 Speaker 2: Oh, okay, got it. 00:21:13 Speaker 4: Republicans love to talk a big game about only a virtuous country will be successful, that we have to own our destiny. And you sometimes have to look around and say, like, okay, are the Americans of today willing to make sacrifices to achieve things? 00:21:27 Speaker 2: Well, exactly. And the roofers at that convention were probably driving really nice cars, have really nice houses, and they were able to charge insurance companies a lot and up their margins by hiring illegals. It's really frustrating. You know, the other thing that's really interesting about this, I will say, and I know, Jack, you're going to have a lot of thoughts on this, is it's been interesting to see DeSantis... kind of come out, and he's sounding a lot of the right notes, you know. But I really, I do think it's going to be interesting because I think there is a temptation in this moment right now to underestimate how much sway President Trump still has with the base, right? You could argue he's been diminished by this election and all this stuff, but there is a big chunk of the conservative movement that is going to be devoted to Trump until he's out of office, and even then, right? So you've got to be very... very strategic about how you levy your criticisms of the admin and some of the decisions that have been made. And so it'll be interesting to watch that play out as it becomes increasingly clear that DeSantis has eyes on 28. I think it's actually probably, arguably, a smarter way to go if you're JD, because he's proven that he can kind of message differently than President Trump, but he kind of still has. 00:22:49 Speaker 2: He has his own messaging, but he's still doing it by saying even President Trump agrees with me. This is what the president said. He's been supportive of the president. So I think going through the admin and having the blessing of Trump is probably the easier route, actually. But I will say it's just one of those fascinating dynamics to watch kind of that that play out. I don't know. 00:23:09 Speaker 3: Well, if he's going to do it like he should at least be honest. And that's what I was saying the other night. when he started saying that, oh, you know, I've always been an Iran war critic, which is just not true. He cheered it on. And, you know, you can find the statements, you can find the clips, you can find all sorts of things. It's just be honest, man. Like, just be honest. Like, just be honest with people. We can find all the clips. We can find all the tweets. 00:23:31 Speaker 2: I think he was critical of MOU too, if I'm not mistaken. But listen. 00:23:36 Speaker 3: He was critical of negotiations. 00:23:38 Speaker 2: Yeah. What's interesting though, what he has going in his favor is, To be fair both ways is that the wave was what? Don't let me overestimate it. It was like 13 to 20 points, right? For Democrats? For Democrats, this wave. They won the generic ballot about 13 points. 13 points, yeah. 13 points, yeah. 00:23:56 Speaker 4: In some places, though, it was like– in some places in Texas, it was 20. In some places, more because, yeah, in Texas, a bigger swing because in places like. 00:24:01 Speaker 3: Florida, less. 00:24:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. And Mississippi was like probably pretty freaking huge. Oh, probably more than that, yeah. 00:24:06 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:24:06 Speaker 2: So the point is like it was between– depending on where you were– 13 to 20 point swing in Florida. He successfully managed to blunt it some, right. It was probably like an eight point swing, seven point swing. I think APL told me that her district was like a seven, seven point swing, but it didn't play. And that was what I was worried about on election night. I was like, well, if Florida is an indicator, like tonight is not going to be terrible, but Florida blunted the way. And he said something that I thought on Laura Ingram show was so like, valid like i was just like that is a valid point and what he said was we we have more credibility here because of the way we've governed and i was like you know what that's going to be your that's going to be your best card to play that florida withstood the wave because you had more credibility because the state's been run well and i it's hard to argue at that point because it is a it is a well-run state with low taxes balanced budgets and things just work so If you've ever skipped the doctor because you couldn't afford it, you need to hear this. Christian Healthcare Ministries is the Christian alternative to health insurance. In under 10 minutes, you can join and start saving hundreds of dollars every month. As a member, you have freedom to get the best care at an affordable price with programs starting at $ 115 a month. I'll say that again, $ 115 a month. Just think of how you can put those savings back into your everyday needs. And in 2027, CHM isn't raising their prices. So you can kick off the new year with stable and affordable assurance. When you switch, you're not just getting more savings and freedom, your contributions help other believers too. Start today by visiting chministries.org slash charlie and use the promo code charlie for a 50% credit towards your first month. That's chministries.org slash charlie and use the promo code charlie. 00:26:06 Speaker 3: Well, true. And demographically, that's that he also reaped the benefit of so many people, so many conservatives fleeing to Florida during COVID. So you had conservatives from the Northeast. 00:26:17 Speaker 4: Reaped that because he had the good state. 00:26:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. 00:26:20 Speaker 2: It's definitely both is true. Both both are true. Right. 00:26:23 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:26:23 Speaker 2: So, I mean, it's. 00:26:25 Speaker 3: The state became the state became much more red. It's it's and that's going to be reflected in hopefully in the next census. You know, we'll see. 00:26:34 Speaker 2: That's that's the key, by the way. 00:26:37 Speaker 3: But yeah, so like my state, like Pennsylvania is going to like Pennsylvania is going to lose like like this. This plays a huge role, I think, in in some of the some of the states, because you've got states like my state of Pennsylvania, New York, others that became less red just by people voting with their feet and then moving south to places like Texas, like the Sun Belt. Now, obviously, this played, you know, this was not blunted in Texas, but that was for a lot of other structural issues. And so you've got these areas now where we're going to be losing electoral votes up north, and the entire Sun Belt is going to be gaining those electoral votes come 2030. That's why holding the White House in 28 is so important, because whoever's the president is going to be in charge of that census going into the 2032 elections. 00:27:27 Speaker 2: Well, Jack, none of this is making leftists any saner. They are spiking the football. They are mocking Hassan Piker saying, we're going to jail you all. And then right before we went on, this clip started going viral. Should we play it or should we describe it? No, I would skip it. I would get too angry. Basically, it's. 00:27:53 Speaker 3: It's pretty bad. 00:27:54 Speaker 2: I don't even want to reply to it. 00:27:56 Speaker 4: I don't want to reply to it because they would just get satisfaction from us being angry. 00:28:00 Speaker 2: Fine. That's my opinion. 00:28:03 Speaker 3: They're saying terrible things about Charlie. 00:28:05 Speaker 2: That's all we should say. Infuriating. 00:28:09 Speaker 3: Well, here's what we could do. 00:28:11 Speaker 2: Here's what we. 00:28:12 Speaker 3: Could do because we promised people 30 minutes ago that we would do this. And where we can tie this in is the question of young men. And this has been the topic of so, and we said it on election night, and we need to bring it up again now, that young men under, so the GOP lost every category under 65 in terms of age groups. And everyone 45 and under, like either, and when people see the swing, right, they say, oh, they swung left, they swung left. It's not just that. It's the participation rate, the turnout rate, for young Republicans, specifically young Republican men, was so low. And it was low because you had Republican Senate candidates and Republican governors coming out, attacking young men, slandering them, saying that they're just a bunch of bums who live on welfare and sit at home and play video games. And young men have been responding through something called the Anakin meme that we just referenced at the start of this. Blake, do you want to explain the Vatican meme, the Anakin meme to everybody? 00:29:21 Speaker 2: Oh, boy. 00:29:22 Speaker 4: I'm not the right guy to explain it because I'm going to make you mad, Jack. I think the Anakin meme is. 00:29:27 Speaker 2: A little dumb. 00:29:29 Speaker 3: We're not going to. No, we're not. 00:29:30 Speaker 2: We'll explain it. 00:29:31 Speaker 4: So the idea is basically, obviously, even if the films weren't very good, the Star Wars prequels are by far the most powerful, memetic, total, like, cultural object in existence. 00:29:42 Speaker 2: You can watch those movies. They're all bad. 00:29:44 Speaker 4: And yet if you're a millennial or younger, everyone knows every line from the film. I think the secret is they're bad, but they're bad movies in the most interesting possible way. It's actually a lot like Donald Trump. It's like if Donald Trump was making a movie. You know how Donald Trump... endlessly spouts out like memorable lines and phrases because he's such a different person. George Lucas is a different person. And so he made this trilogy of films that have bizarre phrasings, you know, do you know the legend of Plagueis the Wise and all of that? 00:30:13 Speaker 2: And so they live on forever. 00:30:15 Speaker 4: And so people have finally realized Anakin Skywalker is implicitly right wing or more to the point, all the old Star Wars movies are turbo boomer. 00:30:23 Speaker 2: What's Luke Skywalker? I think this is the genesis of it. 00:30:25 Speaker 4: It's that Luke Skywalker is the prototypical boomer, a young man who's just handed new opportunities, and he immediately gets to take over an entire organization and saves the galaxy. Zero experience, handed an X-Wing, blows up the Death Star. Anakin, they're like, you have the highest midichlorian count ever. You're the most talented person to ever live. He's born with insane superpowers, and they're like, But, you know, we're actually not allowed to go to Jedi University because we're doing affirmative action for kids who have lower midichlorian counts. And we're not going to let you on the Jedi Council, even though you're our best fighter and our most talented Jedi guy. And we're not going to help you save your wife. Your wife's probably just going to die. And he finally says, screw everything. Ah, and snaps. 00:31:09 Speaker 2: And that is the. 00:31:09 Speaker 4: Origin of all Anakin memes, which are pretty funny. I changed my mind. 00:31:13 Speaker 2: They're funny. Yeah. 00:31:14 Speaker 3: I don't know if we're actually explaining it the best way, though. 00:31:16 Speaker 2: It's like. 00:31:17 Speaker 3: It's basically... So that... Yes, in a longer sense. The shortest way to put it, I think, is that in the way that Anakin is incredibly talented, has all the stats off the charts, and then he goes to the Jedi Council and says, I would like... I've passed all your tests. I have beaten everyone. I've beaten a higher... They say he has a higher, you know, force power than even Yoda himself. And then the Jedi Council says... you are not allowed because of DEI and all these other reasons. And there's a lot of young men saying that this is reflective of the white male experience in America and particularly has resonance with millennials and Gen Z. And a lot of the memes have come up because of this. And specifically, they talk about how one of the things is that Anakin isn't allowed to get married, yet other people on the Jedi Council are allowed to get married. And they say, why? And they say, Well, because he comes from an alien race that has a low fertility count, but you, Anakin, you're not allowed because you have white privilege. 00:32:18 Speaker 2: All right, okay, so we have a clip of Hayden Christensen apparently saying he relates to Anakin. I don't know if this was the inspiration for it. I haven't seen this yet, but stop four. I don't know. 00:32:29 Speaker 5: I mean, in some ways, I feel even more connected to Anakin now than I ever have just because I'm older and, you know, I. 00:32:40 Speaker 5: I can sort of understand his struggles in a deeper way. We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem. 00:32:49 Speaker 4: Agree what's in the best interest of all the people, and then do it. That's exactly what we do. 00:32:55 Speaker 3: The trouble is that people don't always agree. 00:32:58 Speaker 5: Well, then they should be made to. 00:33:00 Speaker 3: By whom? Who's going to make them? I don't know. 00:33:03 Speaker 2: Someone. 00:33:03 Speaker 3: You? Of course not. 00:33:05 Speaker 2: But someone. Someone wise. 00:33:09 Speaker 4: Sounds a lot like a good leadership team. 00:33:13 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:33:15 Speaker 4: If it works. 00:33:21 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. 00:33:21 Speaker 2: I don't know if we need all the Vader hype real. That's the spirit. Okay. So let's go to. 00:33:25 Speaker 3: Some of the memes here. So the idea is more, I think, focused on that the Jedi are this corrupt... soft, weak, old, pathetic Republic that is forcing fake rules on all of society. And that's why society has become so decadent and corrupt because they are decadent and corrupt. And then Anakin comes along and is like, we need to, we need to get rid of all this because everything's falling apart and we're like losing a war. And, and they tell him, no, no, we have to keep following the rules. And it just drives him insane. 00:34:03 Speaker 2: Let's see. Number five. Anakin, get a job at Panda Express. 00:34:09 Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh. 00:34:10 Speaker 2: I love that these become a standard. Oh, this is yours, Anakin. Please. Why don't you just simply get a job at Panda Express, manager? Who was the Panda Express? Was that Rufo? That was Rufo. 00:34:21 Speaker 4: What's funny about it is I know Jack beefs with Rufo about this, but actually Rufo had a pretty good point with it. 00:34:26 Speaker 2: He was just pointing out. 00:34:27 Speaker 4: Guys, the economy is overall pretty solid because Panda Express is offering $ 100, 000 for people to manage a place. 00:34:34 Speaker 2: That's a pretty good sign for the economy. 00:34:36 Speaker 3: How did that work out at the polls this week? 00:34:38 Speaker 4: I don't know that that was litigated at the polls. 00:34:41 Speaker 2: I don't think they ran on Panda Express. 00:34:43 Speaker 3: Again, it's an attitude. It's attitudinal. 00:34:45 Speaker 2: They didn't say, go manage a Panda Express. 00:34:46 Speaker 4: The message of it is, if Panda Express is offering $ 100, 000 for people to manage them, That is a strong sign that there's actually like a shortage of people doing jobs in the economy. 00:35:02 Speaker 2: That's what he was arguing. 00:35:04 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:35:04 Speaker 2: I actually just think it's more funny that all of the, the internet debates, like how apt this, the meme is for them. So it's like, this is a debate. Like people feel what's great about it. 00:35:16 Speaker 4: What's the reason it really works. I don't think it's about, I think that what ultimately comes down to is just the fact that Obi-Wan is like a, is like a, good stand-in for kind of a like boomer con for lack of a better term yeah so like i just love the one like number six you can throw that up it's like anakin they came here legally they will assimilate it's also mine and so on yeah i know all of these but uh who came up with. 00:35:41 Speaker 3: Well and is anakin's face in the response i i think i had one that was also in that form where it was like Where it's like, Anakin, the court has ruled. They are citizens. They're just as American as you and I. 00:35:52 Speaker 4: I mean, it just works great. I mean, it's even like in the actual film, Obi-Wan is like, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy. And it's like, it always feels very impotent because like the Republic sucks and it's filled with like losers and it's not very effective at things. 00:36:11 Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, this one is so rough. 00:36:14 Speaker 4: It's just very easy to inject as Anakin as the supremely talented young white guy that everything in American politics revolves. 00:36:23 Speaker 2: Around beating up on and blaming for everything. 00:36:24 Speaker 3: Wait, we should read this one for the guys listening. So it's Obi-Wan. This is right when he's pleading with Anakin to return to the Republic. And they're about to have their big lightsaber fight in the volcano planet. And he goes, Anakin... I understand the anger you have towards the Sand People for killing your mother, but imagine how bland the food would be on Tatooine without them. 00:36:46 Speaker 2: That's the Piers Morgan one. 00:36:50 Speaker 3: And they do kill his mother. They do kill his mother in the movie. 00:36:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, they do. But the Sand People, I thought that was going to... Yeah, no, no. 00:36:58 Speaker 3: And Andrew, there's a whole thing, and Blake, correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm going off of memory on this, but Isn't there a whole thing where, like, he has a vision of his mother being killed, and he tries to get the Jedi Council to do something about it, and they tell him no? 00:37:11 Speaker 2: No, that's just something other people bring up. 00:37:14 Speaker 4: It's that, oh, I guess at the start, he's worried because his mom is, like, still a slave on Tatooine, and they never bothered to, like, go back and get her. 00:37:22 Speaker 3: Oh, right, but he wanted to save his mom. Like, that was part of the whole thing. 00:37:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, because the Jedi were always trying to strip Anakin of his, like, his... like, fleshly appetites. No, a lot of this is people adding stuff on. No, it's not right. Well, he's not allowed to get married, but... Yeah, don't get married. Don't care about your mom. 00:37:40 Speaker 3: Hold on. 00:37:40 Speaker 2: Don't worry about being on the council. 00:37:42 Speaker 4: Them not being allowed to get married is basically no different from, like, Catholic priests not being allowed to get married. 00:37:46 Speaker 2: That's what they're doing there. But, I don't know. 00:37:49 Speaker 4: I guess what I'm gonna say, because I think this will make it spicier, I will say, guys... Yeah, but there's nothing about that in the originals, though. I will say, in 2017... There were people who loved posting Star Wars memes all the time. They were like, we're winning the culture war with these Star Wars memes. And it was the left. The left, they called themselves the resistance. They were like, we're the resistance. And remember when Carrie Fisher died? Carrie Fisher died, and they're like, we've got to win back the White House for Carrie, who's now our hero. Everyone remembers how important Carrie Fisher was. to America's identity. She definitely wasn't like a coked out, you know, druggie. 00:38:23 Speaker 2: That's so soft. 00:38:24 Speaker 4: And like, what's funny is they did it with Harry Potter too. They remember the libs would call themselves Dumbledore's army, or it was libs in the bureaucracy in DC. They called themselves Dumbledore's army. And we love to joke, you know, read another book. And now it's like, I think all of the memes of this past fall were star Wars memes. And like that Malfoy thing where they would take Draco Malfoy and make him a girl. And I guess that was a right wing thing. 00:38:46 Speaker 3: Well, Blake, that was I mean, like like I was a big part of that in in 2015, 2016, because we did even on my my original angry fan account. We did hashtag boycott Star Wars episode. Was it seven? 00:39:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:39:02 Speaker 3: Episode seven. We did boycott episode seven. And I specifically called it out for being anti-white. And the SPLC then like attacked me for that. Like, oh, how dare you? And I was like, well, they made. The good guys are all this, like, you know, DEI. We didn't have the word for that back then. Coalition. And the bad guys are all white men. Like, it's just very obvious. And then in 2016, I did hashtag dump Star Wars. And I got Rian Johnson, like, who became the invalidator. director of, like, The Last Jedi, which really just almost pretty much destroyed the Star Wars movies as a franchise to the point where nobody even references them anymore. I'm talking about the Disney sequels now, where I said that this guy is going to ruin Star Wars. and pointed out that the writers of Rogue One were, as you say, running around in the wake of the Trump election saying, oh, well, in our film, the Empire represents Donald Trump, and they have this character who's basically supposed to be based on Trump, and they were putting this little resistance flag in their Twitter bios and stuff. It's been a long time coming. What can I say? It's been a long time coming. 00:40:08 Speaker 2: Well, I think the memes are fun. I think it's fun. 00:40:13 Speaker 4: What I'll say, what made it go too far, what made it go too far was there were people who were like, we're going to win the midterms because of Anakin memes. 00:40:20 Speaker 2: And a few of them seem to believe it. Yeah, that's not... Wait, what's this? Run it back with audio. Is he in the ship, Padme? 00:40:31 Speaker 3: I've brought Obi-Wan with me, it's like you've asked. 00:40:34 Speaker 4: But he told me terrible. 00:40:36 Speaker 3: Things, Anakin. What things, exactly? He said you've turned to the dark side? 00:40:43 Speaker 4: And he said he's watched a video of you killing the younglings? 00:40:48 Speaker 2: Obi-Wan is a boomer. 00:40:50 Speaker 4: He must have watched some AI slops on Facebook. 00:40:53 Speaker 2: You know how it is in these days. Forget about it. 00:40:55 Speaker 3: So you didn't turn to the dark side? I was low-key hoping you did, actually. You did turn to the dark side, huh? 00:41:06 Speaker 1: Because. 00:41:07 Speaker 3: Love won't save you. 00:41:09 Speaker 2: Only through power can you be saved. So I get why this is making some people uncomfortable because like, you don't, we don't actually endorse going to the dark side. What I endorse is how this illuminates the real angst and anger of young white men and young men in general that have been villainized in this culture. And, you know, they felt like Trump like was the chosen one. Right? I mean, they did. There was a bit, yeah. You were supposed to be the chosen one. And I think, didn't... You were supposed to make peace with Iran, not bomb them. Yeah, exactly. I think Russ put one. Russ, put it up here. We have the 11 compilation, but it's too big. Oh, here's this one. I got it. This is a great one. Russ sent this one. It's like, Obi-Wan, it goes, you were the chosen one. It was said you would destroy the neocons, not join them, bring balance to the country, not leave it in darkness. And Trump looking back, I hate you. I hate you. And then Boomer Khan, you are my brother, Anakin. I loved you. And there's kind of something like, I don't know, to that a little bit. I think it expresses the rage and the anger that a lot of young guys have, right? Because Trump was like, they really believed he was going to do something different. They believed he was going... To not go to war. And then, you know. 00:42:37 Speaker 3: No, you're not wrong. It's just that's a different... That's reversing the format. Because usually the format is like pro-Anakin and anti-Obi-Wan. Whereas this one's the opposite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:42:46 Speaker 2: Fair enough. 00:42:47 Speaker 3: So it's like the form is opposite. But the line does kind of fit. Again, with their feeling about it. I'm not saying it. What was the one? The Jedi. 00:42:59 Speaker 5: The. 00:43:00 Speaker 3: The compilation. 00:43:01 Speaker 2: I like number 12. 00:43:02 Speaker 4: Anakin, the Tusken Raiders that killed your mom aren't fit to stand trial. Their midichlorian counts are too low. 00:43:09 Speaker 2: The left loves that. I mean, that's another story that happened today. Did you guys see? No. 00:43:14 Speaker 4: Governor Newsom, he commuted every single death sentence in California. 00:43:17 Speaker 3: Oh, I did see this. 00:43:18 Speaker 4: It's California, so they never executed anyone anyway. But even just the principle of it. There are people in California on death row. There was a guy who kidnapped people. and ate them, and he would make them torture each other before he killed them. That's the kind of people that they're giving commutations to. Because he's on his way out. He's only in office for another couple weeks. 00:43:41 Speaker 2: In this office. It's just so lefty to not hold people accountable. 00:43:48 Speaker 3: No, no, I'm just saying this is why he's doing it now. 00:43:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's exactly why he's doing it now. Speaking of Cray Cray California... Now they have throuples are legal in West Hollywood, which if you've ever been to West Hollywood, which not surprise you, uh, stop 14 or clip 14, whatever California city makes history, allowing throuples foursomes to legally register as partners. My question, I haven't read the article. Is this mean they actually get legal, uh, like insurance. 00:44:18 Speaker 4: And if somebody's dying, my guess is since it's only a city and that's almost always state law that governs it, it's probably pretty limited. Uh, but let's see. So it's, In a Los Angeles County city, it. 00:44:30 Speaker 2: Let's. 00:44:32 Speaker 1: See. 00:44:32 Speaker 4: They may officially register with the city, granting them certain rights such as hospital visitation and additional tenant protection. So I guess tenant protections is probably the biggest one. 00:44:41 Speaker 2: Isn't West Hollywood its own municipality? I can't remember. It must be. Yeah, it is. Jack, I was credibly told by the pro-LGBTQ lobby or whatever they were at the time that this was just... Because this was not going to become polyamory. This was not going to slippery slope into anything else, Jack. It was just because two people wanted the right to love each other. 00:45:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, every single social conservative who fought in defense of traditional marriage predicted this. Every single one. When they were up at the time, if you go back to the 2000s and the debates when this was raging... Um, it was, what was the case? Blake was like Lawrence V. Texas, I think was a big one in, in terms of this and a number of them. And people kept predicting, they said, they said, if you open marriage to, and the definition of what marriage is in society up to, you know, up from the objective, traditional classic view of marriage to sort of whatever anyone's truth of a marriage is, because that's, that's what they did. They changed around the definition of a word. and didn't put it up to vote in many of these cases, that what would end up happening is that any sort of thing could be considered a marriage, and it would be enshrined in law, which includes giving health care access, which means that we have, like, if you're in California, you have to pay for this now. Like, think about that. You actually have to pay for the thruple marriage or the, What would 4 be? The quadruple marriage? 00:46:18 Speaker 2: A foursome. I think that's what the headline calls it. A thruple and a foursome. Yeah, this is nuts, okay? This is nuts. Like, left-wing ideology taken to its logical conclusion is like pure pandemonium. Dogs and cats living together, all hell-breaking loose. Literally, that is what their worldview is. 00:46:38 Speaker 3: We just watched that. We just watched Ghostbusters with the kids. It's so good. 00:46:43 Speaker 2: It is so good. By the way, radicalizing film. Radicalizing. Is it? 1984 New York. 00:46:48 Speaker 3: It's a right-wing film. 00:46:50 Speaker 2: Really? It's a right-wing film. 00:46:51 Speaker 3: Wait, hold on. 00:46:52 Speaker 2: Why is that radicalizing? Demographically, in 1984, look at New York. 00:46:56 Speaker 3: Let's go. 00:46:57 Speaker 2: Counterpoint. 00:46:58 Speaker 4: New York in 1984 was a crap hole. 00:47:01 Speaker 2: Counterpoint. In 1984, the demographics of New York City were better than the demographics of Ohio. 00:47:07 Speaker 4: What I would say is you would rather live in New York of today than 1984 New York. In 1984, New York, you'd get mugged walking outside of your office in Times Square. 00:47:17 Speaker 3: Which is why they elected Rudy Giuliani in 1994. Everybody knows the story. 00:47:21 Speaker 2: By the way, the demographics are one thing. The crime was part of a larger societal decay that started in the 1960s. 00:47:32 Speaker 4: New York was one of the worst cases of it. What was the top murder rate in New York? That's not the point that Andrew's making. 00:47:38 Speaker 2: I don't know what the rate. 00:47:39 Speaker 4: I think that New York peaked at about 2000 murders in a year, which is about 10 times what it is these days. 00:47:46 Speaker 3: Um, it's also, and keep in mind that, that it's also a different type of, you know, it's also a dip, like, like a lot of that was out in like outer boroughs. It's different from today where you just have like wanton violence everywhere. 00:47:58 Speaker 4: Well, I, I mean, actually, I don't think so. I think they have wants and violence. In New York in the 1980s, you would be in danger of getting mugged like anywhere in Manhattan. Okay, so 1990 was actually... 1990, 2,245 murders, a rate of 31 per 100,000 residents. 00:48:16 Speaker 3: I'm not saying that it was like some peaceful mecca or anything. A lot of that was because of Dinkins. A lot of that was because of specific mayors. But what Andrew's talking about is just Just the demos of the city. 00:48:28 Speaker 4: I know he is, but I'm saying, when people talk about why demographic change can be bad, they usually mean, among other things, that it can lead to your city or location being more third world. And New York was vastly more third world in the 80s, which is kind of a white pill because it shows that there's a lot of things that. 00:48:47 Speaker 3: Affect this other than just demographics. I looked it up, by the way. 00:48:52 Speaker 4: New York's murder rate in that peak was the same as about South Africa's today. 00:48:56 Speaker 2: Dang. 00:48:57 Speaker 3: There are definitely more third worlders in New York today than there were in 1980. 00:49:00 Speaker 2: But the question is– Including the mayor. That's a good point. The question, though, is I wonder if you dug into the demographics of 1984, like who was doing the murdering. Oh, still was, yeah. It was still like predominantly black. Predominantly black. 00:49:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, like, the government was liberal. I'm not saying that the mayor wasn't a libtard. 00:49:21 Speaker 4: A big thing, because I want to have white pills here, a big thing is Hispanics used to have very high crime rates in America, and they've, like, gone way down. Like, we've gotten pretty good at managing the Hispanic community. Either that or we just, like, don't release stuff. No, no, no, because murders, you have bodies. 00:49:34 Speaker 2: You have bodies. No, that's actually a really good point. Murders is the one thing that, like, It doesn't matter who does it or where. They're going to at least report it because it's a dead person. 00:49:42 Speaker 4: I mean, it's kind of funny to think about how bad New York was because a lot of people love Home Alone 2, Lost in New York. It's a good Christmas movie and it's a lot of good New York Americana. And that film is basically apex of how bad New York was in terms of murder rate. 00:49:56 Speaker 2: And Macaulay Culkin's just hanging out. And he's just hanging out. 00:49:58 Speaker 4: He's wandering through. He's walking through this neighborhood at night. 00:50:01 Speaker 2: No one's shanking him. Yeah. So here's the difference, though. I think in the... 80s it would have still been predominantly like minority murders for sure there was probably like more white murders too but i also think that things were more segregated in the 80s like see manhattan was like way more white than it is now for example um It just, I mean, at least visually on the screen, you know, another radicalizing film. 00:50:27 Speaker 3: No, it's, it's, it's just not true though. Like it was specifically like to those neighborhoods. It was specifically concentrated in those neighborhoods. 00:50:34 Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. 00:50:35 Speaker 3: In, in the eighties and nineties. 00:50:37 Speaker 2: I think you're completely wrong, Jack. I think Manhattan did have Brooklyn. 00:50:42 Speaker 3: Brooklyn was the largest that then the Bronx, then upper Manhattan and Harlem. 00:50:47 Speaker 2: What was the upper Manhattan in the eighties? Like, I have no idea. 00:50:51 Speaker 3: Like Harlem. 00:50:52 Speaker 2: Is that, Oh, so they would... That's its own. 00:50:55 Speaker 4: But, like, have you ever seen Taxi Driver? Like, Taxi Driver? 00:50:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, that's a movie. 00:51:00 Speaker 4: Times Square is a bunch of... Is it nothing but, like, sleazy porn theaters? 00:51:04 Speaker 2: Well, that was what... Rudy Giuliani was really famous for cleaning it up. Yeah, exactly. 00:51:06 Speaker 4: That's the thing, is, like, all these parts of New York that are 110% gentrified now and you associate with being nice were Huge dumps, really trashy, really disgusting, and yeah, a lot of crime. Or like the subway. The subway, we freak out about the odd subway murder here, but the subway was insanely dangerous. 00:51:24 Speaker 2: For long periods. 00:51:25 Speaker 3: Well, that's how you got Bernie Getz. 00:51:27 Speaker 2: I don't know the exact number on those. 00:51:28 Speaker 3: Bernie Getz or Benny Getz? Bernie Getz, right? 00:51:31 Speaker 2: Bernie Getz, yep. 00:51:32 Speaker 3: Bernie Getz, yeah. 00:51:36 Speaker 2: Microplastics are becoming too much of a problem to ignore. They're in 94% of U.S. drinking water, 94%, 90% of our meat and seafood, and the average American inhales, get this, 68,000 microplastic particles each and every single day. 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But I also think that Times Square was a tourist trap, but it was a seedy tourist trap. So 1980, 20 murders on the subway. 1981, 14. 82, 17. 83, 5. They had a nice little dip in 83. 86, 11. 89, 20. So now do the last five years. We'll compare and contrast. But you know another movie that's radicalizing? Jack will appreciate this. The Sandlot. 00:54:21 Speaker 4: The Sandlot's pretty good. What's funny about the Sandlot is that's already a nostalgia pick. Because it was made in the 90s, but it's about a kid growing up in the 50s or 60s. 00:54:29 Speaker 2: No, no, no. 00:54:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, Taylor Marshall got... Our good friend Dr. Taylor Marshall had tweeted about this recently. You know, recently. Maybe a couple of months ago or so. And similar to your burrito tweet, he got into this huge Twitter battle with... like, Matty Iglesias and a bunch of other douchebags, these, like, neolive douchebags, saying that, because he said, like, the Sandlot world doesn't exist anymore. And they were like, what are you talking about? 00:54:57 Speaker 2: The Little League still exists. 00:54:58 Speaker 3: You can still have Little League baseball. 00:55:00 Speaker 2: No, you just let your kids go totally free range in the neighborhood? 00:55:04 Speaker 3: And I was like, you're so wrong. You're so wrong. This is not true at all. Kids do not just go around and hang out. Number one, they certainly don't go around. I was just Just telling my wife about this the other day, that when I was growing up in Norristown, which is in the Philly area, that I could, when I was like seven, eight years old, like I could walk a couple of streets away and go to my nana's house because that's where my nana lived. 00:55:28 Speaker 2: I used to bike everywhere. I used to bike everywhere. 00:55:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we would bike everywhere, like all over. all over town. 00:55:33 Speaker 2: What's so funny about this is like. 00:55:36 Speaker 3: And that does not exist today. It does not exist today. And yet a lot of kids are free range. 00:55:41 Speaker 4: People complain about it, but it's because parents just don't raise their kids to do that. 00:55:44 Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I, I will say I'm in a neighborhood in Phoenix, uh, that I do see a lot of like, but they're a little older than I was, but they, they're still out. 00:55:52 Speaker 4: I mean, a lot of the decline, some of the decline is just that there's fewer, there's, well, there's fewer kids, but a lot, yeah, a lot of it is also just parents choose to be fearful, even though there's very little to be scared of. As an example, People will often cite concerns about safety for why their kids shouldn't trick-or-treat. Your kids have zero danger trick-or-treating. 00:56:08 Speaker 2: Check this out. So, we talked about perception is reality sometimes. Deaths on the subway in the last five years, 37 murders. So, 2021, 8. 00:56:15 Speaker 3: 2022, 10. 00:56:15 Speaker 5: 2023, 5. 00:56:15 Speaker 3: 2024, 10. 00:56:16 Speaker 2: 2025, 4. Down 60%. So, but they're still, like, that's not, like, crazy different than... Yeah. Now, I just looked up... I actually did get, thankfully.... 00:56:31 Speaker 4: Claude found the New York State murder crime repository. You said 1984 was the year Ghostbusters came out? Just in Manhattan, 401 murders. 00:56:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. 00:56:42 Speaker 4: Which New York City-wide is 200 some. 00:56:43 Speaker 2: Were they mostly black or Puerto Rican? 00:56:45 Speaker 3: I don't know. 00:56:46 Speaker 4: I don't have that specifically. But yeah, I mean, that's always been the case. 00:56:48 Speaker 2: It's mostly been that. I bet that would. So it's like, what I'm saying is it's like two things can be true at the same time. Like New York was on the whole more violent, but it might have been more segregated to. 00:56:59 Speaker 4: Like Crazy enough, Manhattan had the highest murder rate of any borough in New York, higher than the Bronx. 00:57:07 Speaker 3: So I'll speak about this. And I'll speak out on this because what I was going to say at the end of that was the town where I'm from, R-S-M-P-A, where I just said those streets where I used to walk down and my mom would let us go out, ride bikes, go rollerblading, whatever, go to my Nana's house, say, go to Nana's house, see you later. And we would just walk down, my brother and I, I mean, the amount of crime and murder and insane violence with Mexican trafficking gangs getting into shootouts in parts of our town now, it is an absolute hellhole. And I would use stronger language if this was otherwise. 00:57:44 Speaker 2: In some ways, Manhattan is like the wrong example because– Manhattan is so densely populated and there's so many people walking around all the time. I was just there for that news nation thing. And I was actually really curious how it was going to feel on the streets. And it actually feels like New York. I mean, it's New York is so established in the, the, the rhythms of life are so established that it's kind of hard to break certain things about it. And just all the street traffic kind of makes it a little bit like a different situation. Um, Nevertheless, they didn't have throuples and for some reason, partners legally acknowledged in 1984. So that should be. 00:58:23 Speaker 4: And Zuzu's Petals pointed out, thank you for the donation, Zuzu. She points out, the people who fight for this most aggressively now, it's like a weird Silicon Valley subculture thing to be in favor of polyamory. 00:58:34 Speaker 2: That reminds me of Andy Ngo, our conversation with Andy. Yeah, exactly. 00:58:39 Speaker 4: That world, those rationalists, a lot of them are into that. 00:58:41 Speaker 2: What do they call them? Neo-rationalists or hyper-rationalists? 00:58:44 Speaker 4: There's different subgroups or whatever. But yeah, a lot of people, this is actually a lot of people in the AI world. So it's going to be a bigger deal. They are polyamorous. They live in these polycules as they call them. And it's actually widespread enough in San Francisco. We now have people complaining like, oh, there's actually serious social pressure. Like people feel their career won't get ahead. Like, oh, if you don't agree to join these freaking polycules or be okay with your, boyfriend or whoever being in them if you expect yeah if you expect like monogamous uh you know monogamous heterosexual relationship with someone you're so behind the times you don't get it but as Zuzu points out that is who's fighting for it now but it also totally paves the way for Muslims. 00:59:28 Speaker 2: Remember, the prophet allows you to have up to four wives, and of course, an unlimited number of sex slaves. Unlike Mormons, they didn't change their theology either. No. 00:59:38 Speaker 4: You can still have multiple wives in fully Sharia-compliant places, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia. It has only ever been westernizing modernizers who have imposed monogamy on Arab societies, which is pretty funny. 00:59:52 Speaker 2: This will happen in Turkey. Remember when you know, we were talking about it. It's like, it's advanced societal tech to have monogamy. Because if you don't, then there will be a shortage of women for enough men, right? So you'll have all these single men that go around just like causing problems, waging war, you know. In fact, those cultures, once they westernized their conception of marriage and their laws around marriage, did they advance? Yes, they did. 01:00:22 Speaker 4: And actually, a very good measure of like what Muslim countries have like hope for them is the ones that actually ban polygamy. So Turkey actually banned polygamy. Kemal Ataturk, a great MVP of history, banned it under his modernizing reform. 01:00:35 Speaker 3: Should have been hung. Should have been hung after World War I. 01:00:38 Speaker 2: You should have hung Kemal? Well, too bad. Kemal's a great Turk. Yes, absolutely. Well, should have been. 01:00:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, for Turkey, sure. But for the rest of the world, not so much. 01:00:45 Speaker 4: Maybe, but he was a good man for Turkey. Tunisia, it's like also one of the most moderate Muslim countries. 01:00:49 Speaker 3: Terrible guy. 01:00:50 Speaker 4: And then Central Asia, like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. Kosovo and Albania are good friends in Southeast Europe. They also have highly modern westernized marriage regimes. But polygamy, legal in Saudi Arabia. 01:01:05 Speaker 2: Legal in Iraq. Did you know that? 01:01:07 Speaker 4: We didn't get rid of polygamy in Iraq, it turns out. 01:01:08 Speaker 3: Interesting. 01:01:09 Speaker 2: Well, kind of the. 01:01:11 Speaker 3: Same way that we didn't get rid of bachabazi in Afghanistan. 01:01:15 Speaker 2: Very true. Very true. What's bachabazi? I'll be the ignorant one. Oh, that's the boy molesting. 01:01:19 Speaker 3: Blake, take it away. 01:01:21 Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah. 01:01:22 Speaker 4: Well, what's funny about that, that's not Islamic. 01:01:25 Speaker 2: That is not Islamic. 01:01:26 Speaker 4: That's like the parallel society of traditional Afghan practices. Did you know the Taliban basically started as a sort of QAnon-esque movement to kill pedophiles? 01:01:36 Speaker 3: Correct. 01:01:37 Speaker 4: Not even making that up, that there was a lot of, they'd have these warlords, and they would take beautiful young boys to be molested by these various warlords, and this was highly unpopular with ordinary Afghans. 01:01:48 Speaker 3: Like, I want to be clear, that's their phrasing, not your phrasing? 01:01:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever. 01:01:54 Speaker 4: But anyway, and then yeah, like the very first person the Taliban killed, they took a warlord who was doing that, and they hung him from the gun of a tank. 01:02:04 Speaker 2: And then they did a lot of other stuff. They were a little... They're a little cuckoo. 01:02:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, they were super anti-pedophile. And so when the U.S. came in, a lot of the warlords that the U.S. backed and the Bush administration backed were actually those former warlords who were pro-Bachibazi. And when these sorts of things were happening on bases with the U.S. allies at the time, the Northern Alliance and others, that so many soldiers got PTSD because they were told to look the other way. Yeah. And they were told to Go out of the room if that's happening, and this is just part of their culture, and you've got to suck it up. 01:02:37 Speaker 2: So how did that culture develop in parallel with hardcore Islam? Was it like traditional, pre-Muslim Afghan cultures just existed? 01:02:49 Speaker 4: Well, a big thing is that really hardcore Islam is kind of a revivalist movement, and you might associate it, you could compare it to Great Awakening type stuff. 01:02:59 Speaker 2: Sure, sure, sure, yeah. The hardcore stuff. 01:03:01 Speaker 4: Obviously these places are all Muslim, it pervades everything, and there's varying levels of intensity to it. And if you're the Taliban, if you're Al-Qaeda, if you're any of these Salafist movements, that's what we call it, Salafism, is it is, like, a reaction to the West intruding on these places. It's a reaction to them getting colonized, to them feeling they're falling behind. 01:03:22 Speaker 2: How does that turn into, like, boy molesting? Well, actually, that's just kind of. 01:03:26 Speaker 4: There's a lot of molesting that goes on in traditional societies, unfortunately. 01:03:29 Speaker 2: So what would be... Okay, this is a fun full-circle moment. Okay, so we've got this. So now we just got absolutely blue-nuked on Tuesday. And you've got throuples... You've got no death penalty. What's the cheap housing headline so I know what it is? Throw up 16. Do we have it? 01:03:53 Speaker 3: Oh, wait. 01:03:53 Speaker 2: Breaking California have approved. Californians have approved a new home buying assistance program that will let people purchase newly built homes with just 3% down instead of the standard 20% per. I mean, okay. It feels like we're really not learning our lessons because that's part of how we got the housing bubble. But anyway, so I don't know how that plays in, but the point is, you're going to get crazier and crazier things. Woke 2 is going to be nuts. It's also going to be violent. So if you have these reactions, these reactionaries react to the pervasive modernization, the secularization of their cultures and these crazy... What's our Anakin going to do in this? What can we expect What can we expect the reaction to be? Because we have these offshoots. You've got the Fuentes and the Tucker and the MTG. They're all saying the accelerationists want to burn everything down to prove a lesson. They believe that we're on the side of war, even though we're not. But we supported Trump, therefore we're only guilty. Are they going to come back? 01:05:04 Speaker 4: The reaction's just got to be the wager on the strong, as it were, which is just... There's so many people who are just not going to make it through all of the pressures and ordeals that are happening right now. 01:05:16 Speaker 2: So many people are going to cook their brains with AI. 01:05:19 Speaker 4: Even though they voted against data centers, the same people who are voting against data centers also are addicted to AI. They're addicted to not going outside. There's going to be a massive drop in the number of grass touchers in American life. There's going to be a lot of people who are Sitting inside and they're doing nothing but watch short form video, nothing but watching streamers stream about stuff. Very detached from reality. The winners of the future are going to the people who actually still go outside and do things because the power that comes from being willing to do that will be so much greater because so many other people are checked out. 01:05:52 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:05:52 Speaker 2: Future belongs to those who show up for it. And I think that's the way. Jack, I'm curious your thoughts on this actually. So I just mentioned the whole third-party movement. I think– what was it? Weinstein. Brett Weinstein came out. He's got this whole plan to co-opt the Libertarian Party. Did you see that? Did you see that? 01:06:12 Speaker 3: Well, I saw that they're doing a separate party. I didn't think that they were doing. 01:06:15 Speaker 2: A Libertarian party. I think they're co-opting. They called it a friendly takeover of the Libertarian Party because it's on. 01:06:20 Speaker 3: All– Oh, maybe I missed the latest one. I thought they were doing a separate party. 01:06:24 Speaker 2: No, I think they're going to try and rename it. They're branding it the America First Party, but it's like American Libertarian or something like that. Anyways, but they're just kind of renaming, rebranding, but they're using the apparatus of the Libertarian Party. Anyways, the point is how sticky. Okay, so we talked about how young men, they swung way back after swinging way this way in 2024. They feel betrayed, all this stuff. How sticky is this third party thing going to be in your mind? Like how much how many how many how much legs does this thing have? 01:07:02 Speaker 3: So, I mean, third parties, again, are notorious in Ross Perot in certain elections like like 1992, of course, the in the election for Bill, which resulted in Bill Clinton's victory. 01:07:19 Speaker 2: Well, that's what we're all worried about, right? 01:07:21 Speaker 3: Swings, you know, swings the election by, you know, by preventing any candidate from reaching a majority of the popular vote, but is able to knock off so many of Republican votes in the states that Bill Clinton ends up winning with only about 42% of the vote. And you're already seeing this, by the way, in a number of states that were super close, like Mississippi, and of course, like the fake Dan Sullivan up in Alaska. where they have been preventing those Republican vote Republican votes from from achieving the majority. And by the way, I do think that Alaska election really needs to be investigated, because if you're going to see somebody who only won by 700 votes and you've got a guy there with the exact same name as the other candidate who had thousands of votes, that would have more than I think tripled the or excuse me, throupled. the margin of victory, then you have a serious problem there. 01:08:15 Speaker 2: Wait, have they run the ranked choice on that yet? This is something I have to keep... Because there is a possibility if they run the ranked choice on that, people... He might end up getting those secondary votes, right? 01:08:28 Speaker 3: It's a Tyler question. But he might, yes. 01:08:32 Speaker 2: So I'm going to. 01:08:33 Speaker 3: But either way, we're already seeing the impact. We're already seeing the impact. So the point being is... This is something that could be very detrimental. It would be very, very detrimental in a general election to Republicans, and there's no question about it. And it's something that needs to be taken seriously, just absolutely needs to be taken seriously. 01:08:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. And because there's– I don't think there's any parallel movement on the left that would be the analog for it, right? 01:08:58 Speaker 3: There's nothing– is the DSA has gone the same way as what MAGA did originally with the Republican Party no what they've. 01:09:06 Speaker 4: Gone into Yeah, I mean, there have been occasionally Democratic socialists explicitly run at the local level, but it's so much more productive because of how the U.S. political system works. Our laws directly favor the Republican and Democratic parties, and so it's much easier to get on the ballot, much easier to officially do things through the legal parties, through the major parties, I should say. And because we have open primary systems... Anyone can run under those big party labels. If you want to achieve serious change in this country, it is vastly more doable and pragmatic to do it through the major parties. 01:09:46 Speaker 2: Try to win primaries. But if you're not trying to reform, if you're trying to blow up, you start a third party. 01:09:52 Speaker 4: The only reason to start a third party in the United States, for all practical purposes, is to help the... opposite party of whatever party you're closest to win elections. So if you are starting a right-wing coded third party, your goal is to help the left win elections explicitly. 01:10:11 Speaker 2: That's what's interesting to me. So if I'm looking at Brett Weinstein or if Tucker ends up doing it, are they really... I'm trying to get into the psychology. Do they really feel like the Republican party is so beyond salvaging that they, that, I mean, there's probably a good way to look at it. Like here's the, here's, here's the generous take and, and the more cynical take the generous take is that like, this is the only way to make the Republican party more pure. I guess the cynical take is it's a retribution. 01:10:46 Speaker 4: The actual, the actual effect. Usually when people are doing this for that motive, it's that they're very driven by specific personal grievances, uh, And I don't think they look to the bigger situation. 01:10:59 Speaker 2: What was Ross Perot's official motive for doing that? 01:11:01 Speaker 4: Well, Ross Perot did it because he was literally running as a– he was actually running as a viable third-party candidate. He was running in the middle, notably. I don't think he was doing it to subvert either party. But he definitely drew way more from George. 01:11:13 Speaker 2: He drew more from Bush. And I feel like that's typically the tendency. Yeah. 01:11:17 Speaker 4: And also just he was doing it earlier. 01:11:20 Speaker 2: Jack, how appealing do you think it's going to be, though, for young men if this thing gains steam? 01:11:27 Speaker 3: You know, I think it'll have different impacts in different states. But again, it's going to be something that certainly pull looking at the tea leaves of this party in the 2026 midterms. It's certainly going to be something that's appealing to a lot of young men. It's going to be appealing to young men who have this, as we just defined, this Anakin meme streak who are saying we're done with the traditional parties and we want a party that that speaks directly to us. We want younger candidates. We want someone who's directly speaking to our issues. And again, you know, I've been saying it here on this program. We've been saying it a number of times that the way Republican candidates treated young men in 2026 was atrocious. It was absolutely atrocious. 01:12:11 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:12:11 Speaker 3: Talking down to them, telling to make a burrito with some more beans, telling them that, that there are a bunch of losers and bums who sit on the couch and take down welfare. when we actually ran through this, young white men in America are the least likely group in the entire country to be on government assistance or public assistance of any sort. And the way that they were talked to is extremely disrespectful. 01:12:35 Speaker 2: Legitimately, I think there should be a concern here. The question is, okay. 01:12:41 Speaker 4: So if you want an example, I think Ross Perot, because he's recent and got a lot of the vote, he takes up a lot of headspace. If you want a pretty good example of another alternative, Did you know that there was a pretty significant third party. 01:12:54 Speaker 2: Run in 1980? 01:12:56 Speaker 4: That's the year Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter and he defeats him in a landslide. And yeah, let me get the guy's name. I think his name was Anderson. 01:13:03 Speaker 2: Was he left? 01:13:04 Speaker 4: So he was a because Reagan was like a different, more conservative Republican. 01:13:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:13:08 Speaker 2: John B. 01:13:09 Speaker 4: Anderson ran as an independent, but he was a Republican who was running as an independent. And he basically represented like Reagan's too conservative or out there or wild. I'm going to run as this. third party protest vote he got six and a half percent of the vote and still landslide and reagan still destroyed carter it was he got 50.7 carter got 41 john anderson got 6.6 and so. 01:13:30 Speaker 2: That's wild so he loses 6.6 i mean we don't know if all of maybe there was a bunch of carter votes that were like screw carter. 01:13:37 Speaker 4: Because yeah i mean america was just more capable because it was It was a whiter country, and white voters are more swinging. 01:13:44 Speaker 2: Politically, there was not as much difference between the parties. It's just interesting. 01:13:51 Speaker 4: Three-party elections just have weird dynamics to them, and it's never quite as simple as like, oh, this guy is closer to that party, and so he automatically will hurt them more. 01:14:02 Speaker 2: Another example I like to point. 01:14:04 Speaker 4: To, in 2010, Marco Rubio runs for Senate, but he was not originally the guy that was supposed to, do you remember Charlie Crist, who's now a Democrat? He was the governor of Florida, popular governor. They draft him to run for Senate to win that Florida Senate seat. But then it's 2010. It's the Tea Party. Marco Rubio starts as his long shot. He gains ground on him, gains ground. It's clear he's going to win the nomination. So Crist says, eh, screw this. And he switches and he becomes an independent and runs for Senate as an independent. So you have the guy who was going to be the Republican nominee until an upstart was going against him running as an independent, and you also had a Democrat in the race, and now you have Marco Rubio, rationally you have to think the Democrats are going to win, because presumably he was going to get 48% of the vote, and now the Republicans are splitting it. Here's the final result. Marco Rubio, 49%. Charlie Crist, 29%. The Democrat, 20%. 01:14:58 Speaker 3: Wow. 01:14:59 Speaker 2: What explains that? There's just weird dynamics to three-party races. 01:15:05 Speaker 3: Because Republicans were sick of Charlie Crist, because I believe that was the Tea Party year. And Republicans viewed Charlie Crist at 2010, yeah. So Republicans viewed Charlie Crist as being part of this. 01:15:16 Speaker 2: Like, out of touch. But, Jack, let me explain what I would have expected to happen. So he just tells me that scenario, and he doesn't tell me the numbers, and he goes, guess where that would have ended. I would have said probably most likely Rubio gets 40, Crist gets 15, and the Democrat gets, you know. Wins, probably. Yeah, 44. Like, you know what I mean? And wins because they split the vote. That would have made way more sense to me. Yeah. This doesn't make any sense. Yeah, exactly. 01:15:48 Speaker 3: Like, it also it also I mean, it matters who you nominate. 01:15:52 Speaker 4: Right. 01:15:53 Speaker 3: Charlie Crist has lost in Florida, I think, as a member of each party at this point, including independent Republican, independent and Democrat. It's an incredible trifecta. Hats off to you, Charlie Crist, for that. But at the same point, though, you know, each each race is specific. Each candidate is specific, so it depends on who you nominate. It depends on who you run. 01:16:15 Speaker 2: Here, I'll throw this at you, Jack. Thomas Massey versus J.D. Vance versus AOC. What happens? 01:16:26 Speaker 3: I mean, you know, look, if you put my prognosticator hat on, if I were to sit here and tell you exactly what happens, because we have a lot of football between now and 2020. 01:16:33 Speaker 2: I mean, so much, so much. 01:16:35 Speaker 3: And I think that anybody making one of those statements right now is it's it's going to be it's going to be wild. But, yeah, in a scenario like that. And I'm assuming you're saying if Massey runs as an independent. 01:16:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, as an independent or the Libertarian Party or whatever. Yeah. 01:16:49 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:16:50 Speaker 3: Right. You have to you know, you have to say, does he you know, who does he draw more from? Right. He's going to draw from both sides. 01:16:56 Speaker 2: Yeah. I would, I mean, I would suspect he would draw more from the Republicans. I think that's the whole thing. And there's always something weird about this. 01:17:04 Speaker 4: Like think about the way, think about Tulsi Gabbard and how she was, if anything, she positioned herself as on the far left of the democratic party. And yet, Because they saw her as like a saboteur, she ends up way more popular with people on the right. And eventually she just kind of becomes much more. 01:17:21 Speaker 2: On the right as a result. 01:17:22 Speaker 3: Because she spoke out about radical Islam, by the way. Yeah. 01:17:25 Speaker 4: And these things happen within weird organic environments. So like people have mentioned Tucker. Like in our head, we think, oh, a Tucker independent run is implicitly on the right. And yet on what issue is actually Tucker on the right? 01:17:38 Speaker 2: On immigration. Is he? 01:17:40 Speaker 4: Yeah, he's... Because he's argued that, for example, that going really hard on immigration enforcement was bad and evil. 01:17:45 Speaker 2: He's very pro-white. Is he? Yeah, he's very. 01:17:48 Speaker 4: Because he said, actually, the Pakistani cab driver in London is not the problem with London. 01:17:53 Speaker 2: Right. I mean, Tucker is. 01:17:55 Speaker 3: But he's done lots of pro-white episodes and things like that. 01:17:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, he's... I would say, overall, I would interpret, and maybe I'm wrong, because I haven't watched all of his stuff. I interpret him as pro-white, anti-mass immigration... He's very friendly with Islam. That's true. So I don't know where that falls, actually. 01:18:16 Speaker 4: Like he said, Al-Sayed is an America first candidate, and Al-Sayed wants to abolish ICE and have amnesty. 01:18:23 Speaker 3: So a lot of this, by the way, what you guys are talking about is a lot of this is predicated also on the popularity of the state of Israel and the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. President Trump, of course, famously came out right before the election, and I think it was the day, the morning of, and said that he was going to, and we talked about it on Tuesday, to cut foreign aid to Israel. And he announced it as a deal with Bibi, which apparently seems to be going through still. And it wasn't just... an election thing. And that the question is, so if you have two candidates that are both running, one is independent, one is a Democrat that are super anti-Israel. Then you are going– you would split that vote. 01:19:05 Speaker 2: Then you would just split that vote. Yeah, that's true. 01:19:06 Speaker 3: And also what's interesting– And it would dilute its impact across the electorate. I'm not saying that anyone should like– again, so if you take– what I'm trying to say is if you take one of those single issues and you split it multiple ways, it's very hard to see what impact it's going to have. 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Your premium membership also gives you access to Angel's growing library of movies and shows, including Sound of Freedom, The Last Rodeo, Young Washington, Solo Mio, and plenty more. So join the premium Angel Guild by visiting angel.com slash LO, claim your two tickets, and make plans to see Drummer Boy in theaters November 6th. Again, it's a movie you are going to want to experience on the big screen. Well, it's interesting, too, because, like, we can... get rid of the names and just have avatars here, but if you, in theory, had a socially conservative but economically liberal candidate or something like that, that would be very interesting to what happened with the Muslim vote. Because what's interesting is right now the Muslims just go left. With Trump-Kamala, when they were blaming Biden and Kamala for the Gaza stuff, they actually split their vote between Trump and Kamala a little bit. This, I mean, Abdul El-Sayed got, like, 90% of the vote. 01:21:20 Speaker 4: But it's also, like, because people talked about that in terms of, like, socially conservative, economically populous, but, like, it's how left do you want to go? 01:21:26 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:21:26 Speaker 4: Because, like, again, just because people have speculated on Tucker running, Tucker's, like, suggested we should have, like, a debt abolition in the country, like, wipe out everyone's credit card bills. He's, like, said that the Maduro regime in Venezuela was, like, actually a good model. 01:21:41 Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and listen... It's just I don't know how that would be interpreted by the voters. 01:21:47 Speaker 4: I also want I wonder how I guess the reason I said that the reason I said that all that and also these things they evolve in on themselves. And so if what, for example, if something if one of the if Massey or Tucker starts running and what separates him from a normal GOP candidate is stuff that they're more to the left of that candidate on. They tend to kind of get more left over time. 01:22:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, could you– this is what's so fascinating about the example you gave from Florida. So you've got a Democrat versus a former Republican and a Republican. You'd think the two Republicans would split the vote evenly, 25-25 against 50, and the Democrat runs away with it. But what ended up happening is Marco wins– Chris gets way less and the Democrat gets less. 01:22:30 Speaker 4: And you end up with effectively the Republican people getting like 75 percent of the vote between them. 01:22:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, which is crazy. So I'm curious if you did run third party, how much of a chance would they have to actually siphon off some of the Democrats? Like how much of that would happen? 01:22:44 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:22:44 Speaker 2: And it depends on the platform. 01:22:47 Speaker 3: A lot of this also depends on the mood of the country. Right. The Tea Party wave in 2010 in that election that we're talking about was a huge backlash to Obama. It was a backlash to Obamacare. It was there. By the way, there was a huge upset, of course, when Marco won on the Tea Party line there running in in that in that primary. The same way it was, by the way, for Ted Cruz, who I believe also won his Senate seat in 2010. Yeah. In the Tea Party wave that was started because of the backlash to Obama and started because of the Tea Party pop, which was, of course, the first. instances of populism that led to the MAGA movement. And so, you know, it's hard to say when these things are going to happen or not. And again, it also goes, it speaks to not just candidate quality, but candidate credibility, that if you're running on something, like if you're running as anti-war, then people are going to go and look at your past statements and say, hey, were you always anti-war? Does your record actually reflect the things that you are saying now? if you've been in public life before. And so there's going to be a lot of that that happens. So yeah, in a sense, do the names matter? No, but timing matters. The specific candidate matters. There's so many different things that matter in these cases. 01:23:59 Speaker 2: And the platform matters too. I'm curious because as a conservative, if you have sort of, I don't know what you want to call them, like former Republicans or offshoot Republicans running a third party, you just assume that's going to... So if you're a young man, And you've got either a DeSantis or J.D. being the figurehead on the right. And J.D. saying, hey, I was against the war. You know, my job was to back the president's policies. And that was my job. And I'm a patriot. So I did my job. But, you know, I I shared your skepticism and I fought for peace and I did what I could. Would that be enough credibility to bring those kids back? I mean, that's an open question, especially if you're running up against a Thomas Massie that I think has credibility on the anti-war message, certainly. Because pragmatically and strategically— I. 01:24:56 Speaker 3: Think that Gen Z is ripe for a third party. I really do. I think that Gen Z voters are sick of the establishment. I think anti-establishmentism is something that really— you know, that really appeals to them. 01:25:10 Speaker 2: But strategically, it makes no sense. Because then you're... You would see. 01:25:13 Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I think that... I don't think you'd win a majority, but I think you could get double digits, which then, in turn, would have impact on the election. 01:25:23 Speaker 2: Well, if you're right, then, it needs to be taken extremely seriously. 01:25:26 Speaker 4: I'm skeptical of it. I'm skeptical of it on a few points. For one, it actually takes, like, a lot of work to build up a third party, and. 01:25:36 Speaker 3: There are a lot of practical. 01:25:37 Speaker 2: I think with Gen Z is they're not. 01:25:39 Speaker 3: Bobby Kennedy found this out in 2024 that there's a lot of practical issues. 01:25:43 Speaker 4: There's a lot of practical issues. And especially, I'll be frank, especially on the right. We do our very best at like Turning Point, for example, to mobilize those people. But the left takes more naturally to that. Like they're very good at that decentralized, get everything done to get to like have that activist apparatus there. I wonder how a right-coded third party would work for Gen Z. 01:26:06 Speaker 2: I think they've seen a much. 01:26:07 Speaker 4: I think, certainly on the left, they've already deduced, because there was talk of, oh, let's have an actual Democratic Socialist Party. Some people are registered Democratic Socialists. But they very quickly realized, by far, the best way to get our agenda is to just go and win Democrat primaries. 01:26:21 Speaker 3: And by the way, and for the record, I'm not saying that it's not beatable in any way, because the way you neutralize that is... That you you instead of instead of running against them, the way the Republicans decided to try this time around is that you actually listen to your voting base. You listen to these blocks that made the 2024 coalition in the first place. And you say, what was it that we did wrong? Maybe we shouldn't have demonized young male voters. Maybe we shouldn't have turned them into the avatar of everything that's wrong with society and gone in with, by the way, the same thing the Democrats and the 501 or the the Fortune 500 and so many other people did and actually take young voters. concerns and Gen Z concerns seriously rather than scapegoating them throughout the election. 01:27:06 Speaker 2: I mean, hold on. 01:27:07 Speaker 3: I don't think you're going to neutralize a lot of this. 01:27:09 Speaker 4: I don't think they like you got mad about an ad in Arkansas, which we won those races anyway. 01:27:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:27:15 Speaker 4: Like, I don't know that they scapegoat. I think they failed them. I think they I think they did the war in Iran and that was brutally unpopular. They were literally scapegoated by that ad. And actually, OK, name name three other examples. 01:27:25 Speaker 3: Why name two really big ones? 01:27:27 Speaker 2: Epstein was a big thing for young people. 01:27:30 Speaker 4: But Epstein's not scapegoating young people. 01:27:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. That was mishandled. 01:27:33 Speaker 4: And even then, it's like, what would you do there? Who are you going to throw in jail? I think the Epstein thing is terrible in that it was mishandled in terms of the rhetoric they used. And you can't really undo that. And you can't really fix it in any other way. Who are you going to throw? Ultimately, we've always said we would love to, if you have evidence that someone... abused, molested, harmed in any way, a specific person did that to any other specific person, I think everyone would be happy to have that person go on trial. But instead, it's always been that vague thing of just like, they're protecting them. Who's protecting who? 01:28:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, okay, regardless of what's there, but we're talking about examples where young men, I thought we were talking about examples where young men felt betrayed. Oh, yeah, yeah. But you were being more specific about young men being scapegoated or something? Yeah, I guess... I mean, it was like the burrito gate, and then... You heard it over and over. 01:28:29 Speaker 3: Over and over. 01:28:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, I got it smashed in my face, I'll tell you. But then it was like... I guess the Arkansas ad. You got a burrito smashed in your face. I just don't, I think they were let down. 01:28:38 Speaker 3: They literally made a caricature of young white men playing video games and like eating cheese doodles. 01:28:45 Speaker 2: Okay, yes, that's the same thing. 01:28:46 Speaker 4: That's one ad, that's one ad in the ads, not even that flippin' bad. 01:28:50 Speaker 2: I'm sympathetic to Blake's point here, but I'm sympathetic. 01:28:52 Speaker 4: To- You were just mad it wasn't a black woman in the ads, so what? 01:28:56 Speaker 2: No, no. What they should have done. 01:28:58 Speaker 3: Is just cast... No, I'm not. Oh, okay. Like, now who's the libtard? 01:29:00 Speaker 2: No, no. You're just refused. No, you are the libtard, Jack. You're mad? Oh, wow. 01:29:04 Speaker 4: They put a person in an ad who looks like me, and I'm upset. I'm mad that they demonized. 01:29:08 Speaker 3: Voters, and those voters didn't show up for us? Like, that's how you attract people. That's how you attract people in an election. 01:29:16 Speaker 4: No one in these polls is saying, I voted against the right because they scapegoated young men. 01:29:21 Speaker 2: They're saying because they didn't deliver for me. 01:29:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, because they didn't show up. 01:29:23 Speaker 2: Stuff is unaffordable. 01:29:24 Speaker 3: That. 01:29:24 Speaker 2: They did a war that I thought they weren't going to do. 01:29:27 Speaker 4: In some cases, because they protected the Epstein class. 01:29:30 Speaker 3: Literally the whole point of the Anakin meme. Literally the entire point of the meme. 01:29:33 Speaker 4: Okay, and guess what? The Anakin meme didn't really matter that much. The Anakin meme is a viral thing on X that went viral for a few weeks. 01:29:40 Speaker 2: You know what's interesting, though? That's what I found so fascinating about DeSantis coming out. So he goes straight on Laura Ingraham. He goes, They I would have been in favor of nuking the filibuster if I had any faith that they were going to do something big and bold. And as soon as he said that, I was like, dude, that's that's the biggest problem. That is totally right, because they didn't they didn't get rid of H-1Bs. They didn't do immigration. They didn't get the SAVE Act done. So it was like a. a confluence of multiple problems, but I do think that, yeah, ultimately it was like the electorate swinging wildly back and forth because they're waiting for somebody to do something. Getting it back to that third party thing. 01:30:18 Speaker 4: One thing I think that's really interesting that happened is as far as people feeling betrayed, there was a lot of people just aggressively lying about what the administration did. And this is something that's very frustrating that came out of, for example, Tucker world. Tucker would say, that they have stopped deporting people, stopped deporting illegals, and he said that legal immigration is higher than ever. Those are two things he said over the summer. And I was like, we're both false. In fact, legal immigration has crashed. And so it was routine to hear. We would talk to those students, and they would be like, they've done nothing about H-1Bs. Literally false. They're trying to impose a $ 100, 000 fee for H-1Bs. The number of people getting approved dropped. The judge shut that down, right? Even then, they're trying to do it, and it gummed up the entire process because you're not filing applications. Even stuff that's been struck down by courts has massively slowed down legal immigration to this country because it introduced uncertainty. And it's kind of just... There is definitely a real... Messaging issue. 01:31:16 Speaker 2: So the question is, can we win back the trust without a third party? And the answer has to be yes if we're going to win. 01:31:22 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:31:24 Speaker 2: The answer has to be yes. 01:31:25 Speaker 1: 100%. 01:31:25 Speaker 2: And that means, Jack, the things that you're expressing, whether there's three instances or one or two are factually, they're important. Young men do feel alienated, they do feel villainized, and they want somebody to fight for them. So I agree with that. 01:31:44 Speaker 3: You could certainly add, by the way, Vivek Ramaswamy's tweet, which we talked about. 01:31:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. That was the Saved by the Bell tweet. Which one? 01:31:52 Speaker 3: Okay. But that wasn't specifically Gen Z. That was just like all Americans. 01:31:56 Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, it was bad. Yeah, it was bad. It happened before the inauguration. I remember when that tweet went out, and I remember Charlie's reaction to it. He was very worried about that tweet. It was not great. It's not great. 01:32:10 Speaker 4: It's a tick that a lot of people fall into, but I don't think the selection was decided by, like, young Americans lazy. 01:32:18 Speaker 2: I don't think Gen Z was qualified. 01:32:19 Speaker 3: He called young Americans lazy. 01:32:21 Speaker 2: Okay. 01:32:21 Speaker 3: He said young Americans spend too much time watching Saved by the Bell and... Not watching Saved by the Bell. Doing sleepovers and playing video games, then studying, and they should be glorifying Screech. 01:32:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. 01:32:34 Speaker 3: And not Zack Morris. 01:32:35 Speaker 2: I have to admit, I think Burrito Gate might have been the... The best example of that, Jack. No, it's just even... It did start that debate. 01:32:43 Speaker 4: But it's like even Burrito Gate is not like... Even Burrito Gate was not like vilifying young people. 01:32:48 Speaker 2: It was like... It was trying to remind people like. 01:32:50 Speaker 3: It was pretty bad. 01:32:51 Speaker 4: We are supposed to be conservatives. We are supposed to believe in virtue. Like, you know who actually would say totally Burrito Gate type stuff? Charlie all the time. It takes skill to finesse it, but Charlie would say, there's a lot of tough stuff. 01:33:02 Speaker 2: Guess what? 01:33:02 Speaker 4: You should also be able to overcome it because you are a young man. The culture is hostile to you. You think America doesn't have opportunity? America has tons of opportunity. He would tell you that. There's a lot of stuff about how you word things, but to just basically get angry when people say, hey guys, America has problems, but also has a lot of opportunities and you should be able to take advantage of them. It's a subtle thing. Did you ever watch Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross? 01:33:28 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:33:29 Speaker 4: You know the opening the always be closing thing. There's two ways you can always react to that. And there's two ways people do react to that because he's saying always be closing. You know, hey, I closed in all these deals. I drove here in a BMW and, you know, you suck. You're not making any sales. There's two ways a person can respond to that. They can go, oh, well, Alec Baldwin is being really mean to them. And that sounds like a horrible place to work. And that would suck so bad. 01:33:53 Speaker 2: Or you can be like, yeah, you're right. Let's go out there. 01:33:56 Speaker 4: Let's sell real estate. I want to have a BMW. I want to have a watch. I'm an awesome salesman. I want to win that contest. There's two types of people who can react to that. And it is entirely a doable thing to cultivate that. And I think the subtlety is a lot of people like in Burrito Gate, it's when they react to basically go, I'm so smart and I did it so correctly. And like, here's why I was smarter than you. There's a lot of smugness that goes into it. And you always have to leave out the smugness. And that is where Charlie was good, that he was never smug about it. But it's absolutely viable to challenge people and say, there are difficult things, but there are actually, there's tremendous amounts of opportunity out here. There's tremendous ways that we can make this country better. And they're not derailed by the fact that a burrito is expensive. 01:34:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think. I think that's fair. Jack, we're at 90 minutes now. It's time to say goodbye. 01:34:46 Speaker 3: I'd like to respond if that's all possible. 01:34:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, final word to you. 01:34:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, because Charlie didn't just say suck it up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. He actually spent a lot of time laying out specific policies That the government could do and the party could run on. Talking about– yes, it was one of his last big pushes. Talking about housing, talking about the severe debt crisis that so many millennials and Gen Z have. He talked about a lot of very specific policies related to these things. So no, he didn't just say pull yourself up by your bootstraps. He literally laid out a series of policies that the Republicans could run on, and we didn't. And we just didn't listen. 01:35:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, well– Yeah, I think that's I think that's true, too. I think what we don't want to be is a is a movement of complainers and victims. We want to be victors. But we also have to be honest about the fact there are certain structural things that need to be fixed to make things just even on par with, you know, boomers, Gen X, millennials. So and so I think both things can be true. This was fascinating. I had a great time. 01:35:51 Speaker 3: Don't demonize people when you're trying to win their votes. Yeah, just, you know, I'm crazy. 01:35:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's, I think there's that validity on both sides. Sorry if you want to. 01:36:00 Speaker 4: No, no, it's just like, this was like, I don't, I don't like reducing it to victimization because the problem was an actual political failure to deliver. 01:36:08 Speaker 2: Yes, I agree with that. 01:36:09 Speaker 4: Nobody, nobody was telling us I'm not voting for you because I saw an ad that I just liked. 01:36:13 Speaker 3: It's a persuasion fail. 01:36:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:36:15 Speaker 3: It's talking about money was spent on an ad. 01:36:20 Speaker 2: I get it. 01:36:20 Speaker 4: You don't like that ad. No one brought up that ad other than you guys complaining. 01:36:24 Speaker 2: About it on X. So hold on. Really? 01:36:26 Speaker 3: Nobody brought that up? 01:36:27 Speaker 2: No. No, it was a big viral thing. It was a viral thing on X. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:36:32 Speaker 3: No, it wasn't. It was all over the media. It was literally all over the media. Sarah got asked about it multiple times. 01:36:38 Speaker 2: This is why this is– both things are really actually very true, and I'm not just trying to be a peacekeeper here. I'm saying when you have part of the movement– because remember, right now, we ran into this in the Senate with 53 senators, right? We couldn't get all of the cats herded in the same direction. Like if, if you don't get, if you don't win a basic argument on this, that there's not ultimately going to be the political will to achieve real change legislatively. And that, and I think that's ultimately why we ran, ran into a buzzsaw with the Senate. Cause you have different people singing off different song sheets, different political eras and different political leanings. Cause you know, it's just, it's just the way it is. We got to wrap it up for our studio, folks. This was awesome. Jack, take us home. 01:37:24 Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, as always, go out there and commit more thought crime. 01:37:31 Speaker 4: For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.