ICE and Iran: Make America go to war again?

Hello, everybody, and welcome back.

Sorry, these guys were making fun of my intro before I started.

So, I'm going to start again.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

I'm Tim Fullerton, and I'm with four jokers who I don't, you know, we're going to try to get through this one today.

We're already falling apart.

It's good that we're laughing now because we're going to be talking about some very, very serious topics today.

One will obviously be

the potenting uh or pending catastrophe in Iran

and what that looks like uh in the mega world because they're starting to split a little bit.

But I think at first we want to talk about some breaking news that happened here in New York City yesterday, where uh, New York City comptroller and mayoric mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who actually used to be my city council member as well, was detained by ICE.

You've probably all seen the video by now as he was accompanying an immigrant to a hearing and asked for basically, I think, some proof of why they were detaining this individual, and they decided to detain him as well.

So

let's start with

this sort of troubling trend of Democrats seeming to be arrested by the Trump administration.

I think we're up to five elected officials at this point somewhere that have at least been detained, if not arrested and charged.

What do we think, guys?

Is this a good move on Democrats' part?

Is this performative?

What do we think?

Who wants to go first?

I think it's ready.

I'm ready to just do the abolish ICE thing.

Yeah.

I'm not prone to like a boycott everything and ban everything because like you just create a mess usually.

But

when I started thinking of it in the context of the attacks that all of these Trump administration and Trump departments didn't prevent over the past several months while they were chasing farm workers and construction workers and daycare workers and arresting judges in Wisconsin and dragging Senator Padilla to the ground in California.

That's when it was like, okay, and I had to start unpacking.

Like, why is ICE here?

What is the Department of Homeland Security protecting us from, if not

masked armed white men with fucking assault rifles?

Like, let's just be real about this.

Like, this is the homeland, right?

And it's not the people people in the home depot, you know, Home Depot parking lot attacking me right now or, or threatening rallies, threatening protests.

So

I tend to be pretty moderate on these things, but man, on this one, I've just got my hair on fire.

No, I'm with you.

I mean, like, it's one of those things, too, where like,

that, that's the last thing.

That's it.

That's my whole opinion.

Melt the ice.

I look at it as like when I zoom out and look at it, I go, okay, well, this is just Trump using the system wrong again.

Like, ice has its place in my mind, and it should be very specific of violent criminal immigrant offenders.

That's all they should be focused on.

And if that was the sole purpose of the department, I think the entire country would go, cool, sounds great.

But when you give them masks and say, hey, these are anonymous men who are just going to fucking disappear people, it kind of just, you're using the system wrong.

Like it's, you know, Tim and I were having a discussion a couple of weeks ago about this topic.

And like, you asked a question that I think is a really important question here.

It's like, what problem is this solving?

Right.

And like, if there was a clear answer, I'd be all about it.

I'd be like, sure, I just go ahead and clear out the criminals.

I think nobody's going to fight that.

But outside of that, I don't know what the fuck you're doing.

What's the purpose of what they're doing?

And there's not a good answer for it in my mind.

So, a friend of mine, who I met over TikTok, she goes by Note Brigade.

She

is a, I believe, a doctoral student

who is studying the far right.

And the way that she approaches studying the far right is a little

unconventional in

what people typically think of as like sociology of the study of

people.

Because these people are inherently dangerous.

Their ideas are objectively dangerous.

It is not like studying a certain ethnicity or a certain minority group.

It is studying people who may want to cause harm to or kill the researcher.

And she posted a video that I

found extremely compelling where she was crying, where she was talking about how disturbed that she was over, you know, ICE arresting a mayoral candidate and the comptroller in New York, because

with her knowledge of the far right and specifically of these militia movements, what she saw was indistinguishable from what was the conspiracy to kidnap Gretchen Witner.

Like people who are dressed in relatively plain clothes, who are not using badges, who have no name tapes, who just got that kind of like vet bro tactical look and guns.

And they're coming in and just saying, we're going to arrest you without a warrant, without identifying ourselves, and without a badge.

That is profoundly dangerous.

And I, I hope that ICE agents have it in their mind that some people are not going to respond favorably to that.

I mean,

I carry a

I have a license for a concealed carry permit.

If a bunch of men jumped out of a van, I will tell you that I would not respond very well to a bunch of masked men with guns trying to grab me.

And

it would not go well for anybody.

I'm not saying that I would survive, but the costs would be tremendous.

and that is going to happen right well and this is why uh police departments around the country are for stronger gun laws and they do they absolutely despise open carry in their states because generally what happens in a mass shooter event and and i worked at every town for gun safety this is why i'm talking like i've said this before but they they um uh they hate good guys with guns in in these things because then they don't know who to target and it takes longer a potentially friendly fire, and it's bad.

And it's the same thing with ICE.

And I'm sorry, I don't think there should be any law enforcement in the United States that is allowed to grab you without identifying themselves and showing proof that they are law enforcement.

That seems like that should be a bare minimum.

Now, I, like I said, I know Brad Lander a little bit.

He was my city council member before he ran for comptroller and now running for mayor.

He is a good guy.

I would actually say he is probably

a better guy

than a politician.

And what he was doing yesterday was something he had done in the past.

So this is not performative.

He is an attorney and he was accompanying an immigrant and he asked a question.

And just the sheer audacity of an elected, citywide elected official to ask

a masked, unnamed, unidentified person what they were doing, it got him thrown to the ground.

And I think that, you know,

I give him a lot of credit for putting his body in harm's way.

It's wild to say that about law enforcement in this country.

And I'd say the same for Alex Padilla.

And frankly, like, it is not ideal, but I think more Democratic politicians need to do this because I think this is how you get people to pay attention to what ICE is doing and caring.

Because let's be honest, a lot of Americans do not care what ICE does to people who don't look like them.

But if they start tackling people who look like them, they're going to have a serious problem with this.

I totally agree.

And unsurprisingly, but even when I look at like there's accusations like, yes, politicians can be performative, liberals can be performative, everybody can be performative, but

they are literally elected.

This is their job.

They are elected to represent people.

So if you're going in and you've got a job and you're getting paid, what is it, $175,000 a year or something, and you live in DC and you're relatively protected, relatively insulated, not only is it your job to represent the people who voted you into office, who may have much more,

they may be much more vulnerable.

They may have much more emotion around it.

They may have stronger feelings.

You are also in a protected status.

Like Alex Badilla is not going to be deported to El Salvador.

And if he is,

there will be an actual movement that will,

I'm trying to be very careful here, but things would happen if an elected leader were deported.

So not only are they protected and not only are they doing their job, but like to some degree, they are feeling this and personally.

And so is it performative?

Well, their job is to perform for their constituents.

So let's just table that because I just don't give a shit.

Yeah.

This is real.

It's a real thing that's happening.

And I 100% agree that it is their responsibility.

The worst thing is holding those fucking paddles.

I will die with nightmare images in my mind of paddles that say this is not normal and Trump lies.

I'm going to show up to your funeral with a paddle that says this is not normal.

But hopefully it will be normal at that point, unless I'm in El Salvador.

But

you look at how far have we come, like just to soft pivot and then we can go back, but how far have we come since Al Green was like scorned for standing on the floor and being like, this is bullshit.

And everyone's like, oh, decorum.

And now we're at least embracing the people who are getting their face shoved into the floor by ICE agents.

And so good for us that we figured out which

reaction to this is the right reaction.

No,

I think one of the things too that always sticks out for me as to why I sort of like a performance in this space is that

I got to zoom out for a second.

Like a lot of the things that we talk about here in this space are, are we kind of coming close to like Nazism?

Like look at how Hitler came to power versus look at what Trump is doing.

And it's like, all right, the one thing that we have in our favor in this case is the fact that we see everything.

Social media lets you see every single thing that happens every single second.

So in 1930, not really the case.

You just read what you see on TV.

You don't have any real actual, you know, understanding what's going on around you and what's in the newspaper and what your friends and neighbors see.

They didn't have mind space.

Exactly.

So the critical difference is what do the American people see and how does it feel to have the American government behaving around you, right?

So if they're seeing a ton of things that do resemble what you heard about in history with Nazi Germany, that will make it much easier for us to not to fall into Nazi Germany.

So I think this is one of those things where, like, I don't care if it's performative, people need to see it so they recognize the actual threat of the moment.

I think that's right.

And I think that if

you see anything happening and you feel safe doing it, take out your phone and video it.

I mean, I think we have to be.

Are you selling that?

So

I just remembered that on the topic of us being able to get videos out there and people seeing what's happening,

TikTok is scheduled to be banned.

Oh, that's right.

The day that this episode is going live.

No, no, no, no, no.

They just extended it.

They did?

90 yesterday.

Another 90 yesterday.

90 days.

I think it was time before.

Well, that's true.

Yeah, I think you're right.

Yeah, yeah.

God, it's fucking stupid.

I know.

It's so dumb.

He just put a zero.

It's 900 days.

What's the difference?

It's just because 9 million.

Why not?

What are we even doing?

It was clearly a national security threat, by the way, that they keep extending the day.

But we could keep it all around forever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The thing about it being performative for me is like, even if it is fucking performative, half the country fell for the biggest performance of all fucking time.

So if what it takes is to see like these people do some shit out of an action movie and they think, oh, maybe the Democrats aren't all spineless, fucking feckless people.

I'm fine with it.

I could give a fuck.

If they're doing it because they need to like, you know, prop their little campaign up a little, fuck it.

I don't care because half the country won't know that.

Yep, that's true.

And the right does it all the time.

Like, why wouldn't it be?

And the right does it all the time.

I was going to say, you know what's you know what's performative is these these American mask skeletor face things and they're all marching around and it's like dude just stop like you're not that guy you don't look cool you nobody wants to be you just last weekend i went and volunteered right before the protest i went and volunteered there's like a go outdoors iowa thing where you teach like underprivileged kids how to do outdoorsy shit.

So I went and taught people how to fish, but there was this fucking dude walking around open, carrying a handgun on his fucking belt, and he's got a like a gator mask pulled down.

And he's like, yeah, if he pulls his mask up and points his gun at me, I can't tell if that's an ice agent or not.

And I had that thought and I was like, that's fucking absurd.

Isn't how they fish?

That's how they fish in Iowa, though, isn't it?

Dynamite,

not guns.

Silly.

Well, but I think Rich's point earlier about

that a politician is performative and that they are representatives.

It is literally their job to ask questions.

And that is what was happening.

So if you want to call that a performance, sure,

but

it is also in the job description.

They are representing people who are scared.

And we're not even talking just about migrant communities or people of color.

Like everybody is now getting scared because now you don't know who's running around in your neighborhood if they're ICE agents.

There were reports yesterday that there were ICE agents in Greenpoint, which is in Brooklyn, which is relatively close to where I record.

And, you know, it's like, okay, now what?

Are those active shooters?

Are they agents?

Like, it is a terrifying thing.

And I think as it gets into people's neighborhoods, they're going to hate it.

Well, and I'm looking at the picture of the people who arrested Brad Lander or cuffed him at least.

There's a dude who, like, he's in jeans and a black shirt with one of those like tactical watches that probably has like lasers and shit in it, you know, the super hardcore guys.

He, he, he, there it is.

He looks like he, like, he could have bought that shirt on Timu.

Yeah.

Another guy, Windbreaker, backward mesh trucker hat with a, what looks like, it looks like one of those medical masks on that, that you, like, he could have picked that up off the street.

Like it's literally a disposable medical mask.

You see that interview with that Walter Masterton put out where like he, he was at some big Republican convention and there's a dickhead walking around in an ice windbreaker.

And Walter was like, are you actually an ice student?

He's like, no, the windbreaker was a, was $24 on amazon would recommend sizing down if you're my size though because it's a little uh a little loose for me i should have bought a size small and i was like are you kidding me you're a garbage human well that's also it's a strange i mean first of all the the fact that you would be bragging about what these guys are doing is absurd right but also like you're putting yourself in potentially in harm's way as well by putting that on i mean it's just a nuts so

don't be surprised if somebody whips you a fucking brick at you like i just walking around bragging about what they're doing what are the like what are the rules of of engagement with this?

Because, like, I really don't know.

I, I, I, I, I'm every time I see ICE agents, I'm like, how is this not illegal?

What they're doing?

Like, there must be some kind of law that forces them to do it.

But I imagine because they're part of national security that they can just do whatever the fuck they want.

But I can tell you what the rules of engagement are.

I want to hear Chris.

Yeah,

I got a couple of questions for Chris on this, actually, but go ahead.

Yeah, so if so, uh,

one of the most frustrating things for me as a former service member, as a veteran, as a former Boy Scout, was the way that the lessons that were taught during my concealed carry permit.

It was an 18-hour class on how to get away with murder.

It did not teach people how to clean or care for weapons, which are essential in actually using them.

Like care for your weapon, especially if you own it and you're wearing it for years, is essential.

You want it to work, you better take care of it.

Yeah.

So we did not learn anything about that.

In order to pass the class, you just needed to hit a paper target that's seven feet away, that is one foot wide and two feet tall, which is the size of a torso.

You have to hit it from seven feet away, I think something like three out of five times or five out of seven times.

You don't have to load the magazine.

You don't have to rack the round.

Nothing.

You just pick up a firearm and it may or may not have a safety on it.

You shoot it.

You may never touch a firearm that looks like that again.

So so that is what we learned in terms of like actually touching this firearm during this concealed carry permit.

The rest of it was off-duty police officers or off-duty sheriff's deputy in my case, teaching a class on how to get away with firing your weapon.

And it all boils down to this: is

would it be justifiable in the eyes of a neutrally observer for you to have feared for your life in that moment?

And would you be able to retreat?

If the answer is yes, you are afraid, and no, you cannot retreat.

That means that you must, if you're pulling it out, you must shoot to kill.

You cannot pull out a firearm and aim it at someone and say, Don't come near me.

I've got a firearm because now you've brandished a weapon and now you're going to jail for a very long time in New York.

So if you pull your weapon, you must kill the other person, according according to the state of New York.

That is literally the way that this off-duty sheriff taught the class.

And it's consistent with the NRA.

It was an NRA-certified course.

It is not just, you know, some random gun shop coming up with its own curriculum.

That is what is taught.

So going back to the example that we started in, like if a bunch of plain clothed people wearing masks jumped out of an unmarked van and they were running towards me, I would have the legal right

to just

open up on them and to end all of them.

And that is

not the way that

ICE ought to be operating because this is going to happen sooner or later.

Since the Bruin decision, which made it much, much easier to get a concealed carry permit in New York, Massachusetts, and other states where it was historically difficult, there have been tens of thousands, if not more, concealed carry permits issued.

There are tons of people in New York carrying firearms, concealed carry, legally

today that

we had never had anything like this in New York.

And ICE agents are going to run into a business owner.

you know, who has a legitimate reason to have a firearm, who is brown, and who they assume is undocumented because he's he's driving a certain kind of truck.

And they are going to lose officers.

Well, even if you have a person who they think is undocumented, this is what we're seeing with everybody who's getting attacked, arrested, and detained, and cuffed, and slammed into the walls and floors.

They're not the people that ICE is even going after.

It's anyone who's in the vicinity who says,

Are you real?

Are you an actual government official?

Or are you masquerading?

Are you a militia member who, who like

out of solidarity, like out of racist solidarity wants to be part of this movement?

Is this person actually a criminal?

Do you know that they are undocumented or are you suspecting that they're undocumented because you're racially profiling them?

And then if all of these things are true, do you actually have a warrant to come into this building or come into this space and take this human being?

Because They're detaining them.

They're putting them on planes and they're trying to get them out of the country same day so that they can avoid any kind of due process and just not have anybody know about it.

Like, we know that that's what they're trying to do.

So, it really is on all of us to legally but clearly use our rights to protect every single human being who's at risk of having their constitutional rights violated.

Yeah, and this is what I talk about all the time: like people who look like me, people with a veteran background, like white straight males with a beard and tattoos, you know, who look like a vet.

Like we need to weaponize our privilege in every legal way possible to slow down the confidence that these ICE agents have in their use of, their inappropriate use of force against citizens and non-citizens.

And the question I had for you, Chris, because it feels like this is one of those calls coming from inside of the house situations.

You've told us in the past, like you signed up.

I remember, I remember vividly, post 9-11,

everyone in the country,

I believe I didn't, but everyone in the country got like just a little bit racist for a while there.

And there was just a sort of general either fear, like a like a passive fear or an active rage toward anyone who might have been, you know, part of the Middle East.

And

you mentioned that back in those days when you were Republican, you joined the military, like you got in there to go and hurt people who hurt us, you know, and let's not be like that is that is a huge motivating factor for a lot of young men we were all young men at some point luke um

throw me under the bus and uh

you used to be marginally younger um but we know how that felt like you you watch the action movies and you kind of you just have this like crazed fearlessness where you're like oh man i could do that i could go and i'm i'm rambo you know um

what percent

Just not scientific, but like what percent of these individuals who are putting on these masks and getting locked and loaded are just actually just excited to go and try to hurt Hispanic people?

I mean, it's not, it's not 0%.

Like some percent of these people wanted, they just want to go hurt brown people, right?

I think this month was the 10-year anniversary of Donald Trump coming down that golden escalator,

the fake golden escalator.

And

talking about how, you know, Mexicans are all rapists.

So for 10 years, young people

have had this kind of rhetoric normalized.

And Rich, I think you put this in the accurate context.

So I grew up watching whether it was

any kind of like daytime action movie.

After the Cold War ended, the enemy was no longer Russian.

They were Middle Eastern terrorists.

100%.

So leading up to 9-11, there was a lot of

entertainment, racist propaganda,

depending on your lens,

that put these people,

put an entire class or multiple classes of people, multiple ethnicities, religions, et cetera, in the crosshairs of the average American young man who idolized the heroes, the American heroes,

in these characters, in these movies.

The people who are joining ICE today

are doing it after 10 years of racist propaganda being normalized.

And I think that the average person who's joining ICE today

has a desire to enforce Donald Trump's policies.

Like the ICE was notorious before

this current administration.

Like ICE has been gaining reputation for, you know, enacting racist policies, for deporting people.

And I think that the average ICE agent is probably

pretty MAGA.

Though with that said, it is a federal job.

It does come with, at least for now, certain benefits like

union membership and

the types of things that are difficult to find in the private sector nowadays.

I'm not saying every ICE agent is racist, but they are people who are, at the very least tolerant of being part of that machine.

Well, and ICE was created, what, in 2003, right?

It was when the Department of Homeland Security was created when, you know, how many, like 80, you know, 80% of the plane hijackers

who were Saudi nationals brought the towers down.

And then we decided to invade Afghanistan,

which, you know, and then

were led, lied into a war into Iraq, which was

Iraq was, which was why I'm doing a bit of a pivot here.

Iraq was actually a big stabilizing force against Iran.

And then when we toppled Saddam

and his regime, it basically made Iraq incredibly weak and basically partitioned into several different provinces, Iran began enriching uranium and starting to become a real power in the Middle East.

A lot due to George W.

Bush's policies.

Great job, guys.

Great job, Hawks and Dick Cheney and all those guys.

You know, when we were going to be greeted as liberators, but they put us in the position that we're in today,

which

Donald Trump is weighing whether or not the United States will join Israel in an aerial assault on Iran.

There are conflicting reports about who he's listening to.

And of course, he's doing what every great leader does, which is tweet out, nobody knows what I'm going to do, which is a great way to

give some calm to people.

But what we're seeing, and interestingly, the reason we're talking about Iran is obviously it's in the news that there might be a war, but there's also an internal war going on between MAGA that kind of exploded yesterday between the anti-war faction, of which Donald Trump said he's anti-war and he said no new wars, and the Hawks, who have always been, we were in the first administration and are still in this administration, pushing him to hit.

So

I'm curious, and I have obviously some thoughts on this too.

Like, are we starting to see the first

cracks

in the MAGA movement?

First, before we talk about Iran, Tim, do you even know how many people live in Iran?

90 million.

That was a good moment.

90 million.

I know more than a United States Senator.

Look at us.

We're all better qualified.

Dr.

Carlson has done so many things I hate him for, but I think the number one is making me agree with him.

Like, I was cheering for him in that interview.

So, what they're referring to is, and why I blew up yesterday, is that Tucker Carlson interviewed the most hated senator of all time, Ted Cruz.

Rafael Cruz from Canada.

And

Tucker is very anti-war and Cruz has gone all the way to just like doing whatever Donald Trump asks him, including making phone calls in favor of his campaign at the end of 2016, which was hilarious.

But he didn't know any basic questions about Iran, but he was all about bombing them.

And it was interesting to watch these two who agree probably on 90%, 95% of issues, like fighting, like acting.

It was almost like one was a Democrat, one was Republican.

Ten was losing his shit on him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're a fixed party.

I mean, I don't think.

Can they both lose is my question.

Well, I think like

the Republican Party, and I hesitate to call it MAGA because it's sort of like MAGA and then like the old school Republicans that vote along with them.

They're like a toxic family.

They're going to go like they're going to fight about this shit, but it's not going to like make people like some people here and there, like little people scatter off.

This is not going to do anything in terms of like destabilizing the strength of Donald Trump's coalition.

Like they're going to, most MAGA folks will just agree with whatever the fuck Trump says and they'll just, and he'll spin a narrative to make what he did make sense and twist the truth and fix the, you know, all the PR shit that he pulls.

I don't think it's going to do anything.

I think like, but at the same time, Trump is in a position right now, in my perspective, he has two loser options.

Whether he decides to join Israel or not, he's going to be looked at like the loser in the situation.

If he doesn't go with them, he kind of looks like a guy who can't negotiate his way out of a paper bag because he just couldn't get on the table.

Right.

And then if he goes with them, He's a guy that is essentially breaking all of his promises and getting us into another potentially forever war, which most average, like the average American doesn't want this war.

Like they don't want to relive Iraq.

It's just not, it's not popular.

So, he has two very unpopular choices to make.

So, I don't, I think the reason he's stalling is like, I don't know which way to go.

They're both shitty.

So, I disagree about MAGA being unsplittable.

I think that this is the one exception.

The reason being is that Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon still play a tremendous role in shaping the worldview of

MAGA and of the Republican Party.

They are,

you you know, Steve Bannon lost to Elon Musk.

Like, Steve Bannon did not want Elon Musk in the party, but Elon Musk came with the billions of dollars and all the gravitas, right?

So Steve Bannon lost that battle.

There's not a way that Steve Bannon is going to lose the battle to the anti-interventionist narrative that he has been pushing for as long as he's been, you know, since he was editor for Breitbart.

The way that Tucker Carlson embarrassed Ted Cruz, that that emasculation really, really, really fucking resonates.

Like we're, we all enjoyed it because we hate Ted Cruz.

Fucking right, I did.

But that emasculation of Ted Cruz emasculated the pro-war movement, pro-war idea.

So I do not think that

Donald Trump will

will engage in Iran.

I mean, you know, he's, as he says, no one knows what he's going to do, right?

But I think that Donald Trump is aware that his top propagandists would not be with him on this.

Now, what I think is most concerning to me is that I know that Heg Seth and those around him in the Department of Defense absolutely do want to go to Iran.

Oh, they definitely do.

And I suspect, I mean, J.D.

Vance has this kind of like neo-reactionary, which is kind of

anti-intervention.

So I don't know exactly how J.D.

Vance would go on this, but

Pete Hegseth pushed out all of the anti-Iran war voices that he was closest to, people that I know and have been fighting against for years.

One of them is Dan Caldwell.

This guy who used to work for Concerned Veterans for America.

We were polar opposite on issues related to veterans, but he has always been, and he was the only one, a guy who I respected, who always taught me and my,

he, he interacted with me and my colleagues very respectfully and continues to more than 10 years later.

He

and his colleagues getting kicked out was the most concerning thing that I've seen related to the Pentagon so far.

profoundly dangerous for our national security and for global stability.

Well, and the other thing that came out this morning in Politico, I don't know if folks saw it, is that Trump has basically pushed Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, off to the edges.

What a surprise.

She put out some video.

She's so qualified, though.

I guess the half-life on his cabinet's a little longer this time around.

Yeah, but I think the point with her is that she is anti-war and she's also very pro-Vladimir Putin, who is very pro-Iran.

So it is concerning to me that he has pushed her off to the side.

The other thing I think what we're witnessing, which is where I've got to agree with both of you, if it's possible, is that I think some of what Tucker and Bannon are doing is also looking past Donald Trump because he's done.

And they are looking to have their candidates in 2026 and in 2028 lead the Democrat, the Republican Party.

And so I think it's not quite necessarily like they're going to go after Trump for whatever.

I think it's the leverage and trying to continue to build their movement post-time.

I think there's also the potential for

Trump to thread the needle on this, right?

Because I think that the issue that a lot of the folks on MAGA that are pissed off about potentially going to war here is they don't want a nation build.

They don't want to get involved in that horrible shit that we tried to do and restructuring governments, killing leaders.

I mean, we saw it a couple of days ago where Trump told Israel do not kill their supreme leader, like don't do that, because that's not the place he wants to go.

If Trump comes out and goes, look, I'll use U.S., you know, the U.S.

military infrastructure to specifically bunker bust nuclear sites, and that's it.

I won't do any nation building.

I won't put boots on the ground.

I think he threads the needle on this one, and I think it makes him look good.

I don't think he'll back off.

I really don't.

I do think he's actually going to press and realize, like, I can thread this needle.

I can look like I'm not a war hawk.

I'm just attacking a dangerous nuclear infrastructure, but I'm not going to go any further than that.

And I think he threads the needle on it.

But it's a risky move for him, though.

I think that Democrats politically just need to be careful with how we walk this one because the whole like, he's going to start World War III, like, don't, nah, don't make that our position

because

he, all he has to do is nothing.

Yeah.

And then he wins because he lets Netanyahu do it.

whatever he wants.

He says, look, I'm the president of peace.

I didn't get us involved in this.

And he also successfully distracts us from all of the actual bad things that are happening domestically that were going very, very, very poorly for him.

Just like we saw with the Musk blow up and then getting into the protests and the National Guard, everything was going poorly with this past weekend.

His birthday party was a flop, but nobody even showed up.

The cake was shitty.

And

lo and behold, three days later, he's, you know, being coy and sort of adorable about where the supreme leader might be hiding.

And he's posting it on social media.

It's like, so we, I think, you know, politically, I agree.

You just were to use the words sort of adorable.

It was, you know, I mean,

the fact that the guy is like, I have to go there because the fact that the dude is posting on social media that he knows where the enemy is, I'm like, you know that, you know, that they have the internet there.

Every time I hear the words writing, every time I hear the words, Donald Trump truthed this, I want to fucking lose my mind.

I think every, I've come to the conclusion that any candidate going forward, it would be a pro in my book if they said, yeah, I don't use any social media.

Like, I won't, will not communicate to you that way.

They just have a flip phone or not even a flip phone, one of those bricks, the Nokia, what is it?

I want to see you on

TV giving actual speeches.

Other than that, I don't want to hear you.

I mean, I think there's a lane for a sane person to use digital tools correctly to reach audiences.

He is not one of those people.

I am going to push back a little bit on him being able to thread the needle because of something he actually truths.

So maybe I'm backing up what Luke says a little bit.

Can you just call it a tweet?

Just call it tweet.

I want you to dead name Twitter.

Every operational team.

I'm not calling that X.

All that shitty right-wing stuff is just going to be.

But truth is just

MAGA Twitter.

So

it's all Twitter.

But he actually tweeted that he was requiring the Ayatollah to have a like to unconditional surrender.

So if he's out there saying unconditional surrender and then he drops a bomb on one place, like that's not really a victory.

If he's telling, if he's like saying, I mean, I know, look, he's slippery and he gets a lot of things.

He says a thousand things.

That's his thing.

I just don't know if Americans are going to be happy with the idea.

We haven't like bombed Iran ever.

Like ever.

And so like,

it just, people are just so tired of war, right?

We had 20 years.

We didn't take care of the veterans that came back.

It was just, we didn't solve anything.

No one has any appetite for this shit.

It's a little different, though, because it is like, it's not like Iraq where it was a guess and there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Like they're openly, you know, enriching uranium for the goal of having a nuclear weapon.

And like, I think zooming out away from the fact that Donald Trump is president, whatever, this is a consequential decision for him, that's a bad thing.

Like, undeniably, Iran having a nuclear weapon is a terrible thing.

They are unquestionably the most likely to use a nuclear weapon outside of maybe North Korea.

And obviously, they would use it on Israel, which is why Israel is doing what they're doing right now.

I don't necessarily agree with the structure in which they're doing all this shit.

But if you just erase all the politics from this, Iran having a nuke is a very bad thing.

If only there was some kind of a deal that would have stopped this.

Right.

So that, but that's the thing.

It's like if you, you know, like in our last episode, I made the whole, you know, you can go all the way back to Trump, you know, ruining that situation.

But Trump bunker-busting the shit out of that program is essentially him doing the negotiating, you know, away from the table.

And that's, I think, the direction that.

It's the negotiating that he wasn't capable of doing.

Correct.

Yeah.

He's, he's covering for himself with bombs.

He's bombing his way out of here.

but to be clear bombing that one facility does not end at the iranian newspaper if anything it's right it does set it back adds fuel to the fire like they're more inclined to do it well we're i think he's trying to bomb them back to the table i think that's really i i really believe that like trump's perspective in the end is going to be i think that i can push them around and i'm going to i'm going to show them if any i'm not an iranian expert i do follow some folks online that are you are not going to bomb them into

i'm not saying he's doing it's going to work i'm I'm saying that's what I think Trump thinks.

Oh, he absolutely thinks he can.

It's the same thing.

He thinks in everything.

They just let you do it.

They just let you do it.

Exactly.

I want to go back to like, can this be a win or a loss for, you know, politically for MAGA?

Like,

it's a win for us that they are having to have this battle because I, and I don't mean in the short term.

I'm not, you know, Iran and Israel.

Frankly, the Middle East has been doing what the Middle East does for the last like 3,000 years.

And we got sucked in for 20 years.

I would prefer we not spend another $8 trillion

believing that the strongest military and the blah, blah, blah.

Like this is a new world.

And you look at what Ukraine is doing to the Soviet Union.

Sorry, to Russia, but really to the former KJP officer, Vladimir Putin.

Regular Americans.

want none of this.

Yeah,

whether, whether he can corral that base 25, 30% of people around to support, like, yes, they'll do whatever he says because they always do whatever he says.

They loved him after January 6th.

But regular Americans, independent swing voters,

they are running away from a war in the Middle East faster than

they've ever run from anything before.

And so,

and this is something that I've done a lot of videos about, we've talked about a little bit, but like all of the classical pillars of the Republican Party are completely obliterated now.

You've got the hawkish military people, you've got the Bible thumpers, and you've got the fiscal conservatives.

Trump has blown up all three of those in different ways.

And so, and those, and they've all, for now, paused their care about their values because they believe in the Trump brand.

But the Trump brand is over.

They just haven't fully grasped that yet.

And here in about six to eight months, we're going to be talking about midterm campaigns and everybody's going to be running without Trump's name on the ballot.

And they're all going to be doing the commercials like, I didn't always agree with Donald Trump.

And they'll just be like Homer Simpson into the political bushes.

And

everybody knows this is about to happen.

And so Trump, I mean, obviously he's going to keep doing what he tries to do to be relevant, but regardless, Vance, he's a protectionist.

Like he wants white people to have white babies in America.

And he wants to put up the walls and have the tech CEOs build, you know, AI domes or whatever over the country so that nobody can ever touch white people in America.

That's the Vance.

Then you've got Hegseth, who's still sort of like this like old-fashioned guy who just wants to bomb everybody.

Like, these are not compatible.

He's got a hold of the whiskey in his hand.

Right.

These, right, right.

He's literally the guy holding the whiskey.

Like, he's the bad guy in every espionage movie, you know, sitting behind the desk, like drunk and just like committing crimes.

So

these are not compatible factions without the Trump brand gluing them all together and winning.

And so as soon as they are forced to win on their own merit, again, they're going to be looking at the wreckage, the policies, the personalities.

It's all in disarray and Trump will be out.

And Trump doesn't give a shit.

He's not going to taint his brand after he's out of office.

He's not going to pitch his legacy to J.D.

Vance.

He's already made that clear.

So this macro level, this is a huge win.

We just need to

hold accountability where it belongs and minimize the damage in the process.

I'm going to disagree with you on that.

I do agree that the three factions are losing that you've described, but you've

and you mentioned them, but you didn't mention them as a faction, the techno-fascists.

Like the techno-fascists are winning.

If we go to war, the techno-fascists win.

Like, that is, that if, if we don't go to war, they're still winning.

And they can still use all of their

data they've stolen.

All of the social media that they own, all of the data that they're taking out of the federal government.

Palantir and all these other techno-fascists are now getting lieutenant colonels.

I know that people appreciate the Lord of the Rings should have got the fact that they stole, like, they use the Palantir, which in Lord of the Rings is a fucking orb that allows you to see all the terrible shit that people are doing.

And people are still cheering for it, as in the real world, they're using it to see all the shit that you're doing.

It fucking boggles my mind.

JRR Token is rolling over in his grave right now.

So, as of either this week or last week,

it was announced that Palantir and a bunch of other techno-fascist types are getting direct commissions, not to lieutenant, but to lieutenant colonel.

So they're going to be commanding brigades or battalions.

So, anyway,

so the techno-fascists are basically, they're going to win no matter what.

It doesn't matter how much the Bible thumpers or the fiscal conservatives or anybody else is fighting because the techno-fascists are going to just keep giving them the red meat that they crave online, in their phones, in their media.

And that, beyond Trump is going to continue unifying them.

I think they'll win in the Republican Party, but I mean, look at Elon Musk's approval rating.

People don't like big tech leaders.

And if you put people like

Peter Thiel or Mark Andreessen, you put these guys in front of the average American.

Like they see Jeff Bezos, they see Mark Zuckerberg.

They just see a billionaire weird, weirdo.

Like they're just, they're very, they tend to be very weird people.

Like these are not the leaders that Trump is.

And there's a reason why Trump is not a tech CEO.

Like the guy can't open a flip phone.

So his phone doesn't have a fucking flash on the back.

I was looking into the specs on his Trump phone.

It doesn't have a flash.

The RAM is listed twice as both RAM and storage.

And it doesn't tell you what processor it is.

It's ripped directly off AliExpress and then just painted gold.

All for $490.

And also, also, if you pre-order it right now, if you pre-order right now, it bills you the wrong amount, like in excess of the whatever the down a hundred dollar down payment is and you can't start your service sweet other than that that sounds like a trump product the biggest grift ever

hang on hang on just just to just to wrap up the point so like chris i totally they have money they have an ungodly amount of money they're all behind the heritage foundation and project 2025

absolutely nothing to diminish the authority they have within that movement and the power that they have within that movement.

But as public-facing leaders, if we continue to do what we did with Musk, which is hang our public leaders around the necks of these billionaire creepos behind the, behind the, the, the desk or behind the curtain, um, I, you know, it's, it's work and it's going to take a lot of effort, but we can continue to keep them tied together.

And I don't think

that person is going to be stoked about those people.

Yeah.

But until we get Democrats like coming up with the serious plan to make it so that Elon Musk doesn't own critical infrastructure, which he does right now.

Like, he could literally say, shut it off, and our entire military is more or less like essential parts of our military are completely fucked.

So, until we get Democrats talking about, I don't know, we could, I'll take it as far as nationalizing his fucking companies.

Like, they are

essential defense infrastructure.

We need to nationalize it.

That'd be my argument.

You don't get it anymore.

Yeah.

I don't need Democrats to go that far, but until we have Democrats talking about seriously making it so that these individual men, like Palantir has, has huge contracts right now that have

are helping ICE.

Like

we need Democrats to be talking about ending these contracts, these relationships, or just fucking nationalizing anything that's become too essential.

We just need to win.

If we win, then we get to do what we, what needs to be done.

Well, I want to make a point to that because we talk about it.

The winning element,

we have to take a look at why, because Chris is right.

The technocrats are winning and the billionaires are definitely in a position of power.

Why?

They're in a position of power because they uniformly represent one thing and that's progress.

Democrats no longer own that space because we don't present anything that represents this progress.

Billionaires are coming to the table going, look at this AI thing I've got.

Look at the SpaceX shit.

Look at whatever the fuck it is.

They're bringing something to the table where people go, wow, look at the cool thing they're bringing to me.

Wow, look at the value they bring to me.

Look at the immediacy of that value.

That is why these people are up in front and winning, regardless of being weird and unlikable people.

They're actually providing something to the people at the end of it.

So it's not just as simple as like, hey, we got to win and these people go away.

They're still going to wield huge amounts of power because what they're bringing to the table is progress in spaces people are interested in, making their lives easier, making their lives more exciting.

We need to recognize that and be, and only then will we be able to actually fight back appropriately because we just don't give the same value.

Like we come to the table with nothing at the moment and we need to have a contrast

that's how they're winning in that's how they're winning in the business world

and in political world too because they're aligned with the people with these people and they're part of government

but trump's actual brand is let's go back to the 50s of america where we all just like work in the manufacturing plant socially but not in business

It is for the average person, but the average person isn't looking at it like that.

If you look at tariffs and manufacturing jobs, he's talking about a world that was 70 years ago.

And I agree with you.

The nostalgia of his movement is not around the future of technology.

Like, that's how they gained power and that's how they gained money.

And they're making it work right now.

But there's an innate conflict here.

Like, a 60-year-old white guy in Pennsylvania is not going to vote for Peter Thiel to be the next president.

Like, because he's inventing amazing things, we have become incredibly dependent.

And I think

in that sense, both parties have become far too dependent on big tech and government contractors

to do everything for us so like i'm looking at it differently with progress there i'm looking at it from the other end of the age spectrum which is the reason why we lost like gen z men aggressively because that is the generation of people who look at this and go ooh i like these

he can make a car that can drive by itself and that's that's the problem Zach is right Zach is right yeah that is the problem and we don't have a compelling argument by comparison and unfortunately Trump has done an exceptional job at embedding those people into him as a personality in his administration well and I think I think that's right but I think that the Democratic vision needs to be some version of capitalism with guardrails.

And we do not have guardrails right now.

I would love to see

all Democrats come out in favor of basically requiring social media companies to have a algorithm-free chronological feed, because I don't think that tech companies should decide what information you're looking at, because they are.

right they are

chuckle fuck musk is fighting it in new york about that hate speech thing where they they because the the case is that they have to disclose how they fight against hate speech and musk is like well I don't want to do that I don't want to show how I'm fighting hate speech because he's

not right because

he's not but I amplify it but I think there's I think there is a lane though to to be all for innovation and progress but also making sure that you know there are guardrails in place that like businesses don't get your proprietary you know data without consent and that they can't manipulate you as easily as they can now.

Because honestly, like if I go on Twitter right now, I mean, he's Elon has made that algorithm so that all you're getting on your for you page is extreme right-wing content.

And I just, and that's the default, right?

So that's what you're seeing when you go onto these sites for the first time.

And like Facebook, right?

Like, you don't, you see like the same five people, and it's usually the people who are all yelling and screaming at each other.

And I, I just think that there's five people on my personal account.

I go absolutely fucking ape shit on people.

That's what makes you so great, Luke.

That's why you've got Get Fucked is your T at your trademark.

So, anyways, I just think that we don't have to be against business.

I think we just need to be for a smarter capitalist society.

That's such a hard sell, though.

Well, like, I agree with everything you're saying, but it's such a hard sell to like, hey, guys, let's put guardrails on shit.

That has almost never been a success.

But let's not forget, though, that this is like

tech leaders seven minutes ago were considered the evil socialist left.

Like Elon Musk has helped normalize that, that whole thing.

But

if you, if you know people who work in California, who work in tech, it is 95%

liberal, leftist liberals.

And they're going more left.

They're getting because AI

is

in a lot of parts of the world, a lot of industries, being careful here, a lot of career lines.

AI poses an absolutely horrific, dreadful, existential threat.

And

I think regular people see that too, because blue-collar workers have watched their jobs get made obsolete, like we talked about with John Harwood,

by technology for 50 years.

And so I think there is a unifying thread here where, no, we are not anti-innovation.

I freaking love technology.

I want to talk about all of this stuff.

I want to have a world in the future where innovation and AI does so much work for us that it creates so much wealth by default that we can actually talk about like the, what was the Andrew Yang, like the universal basic income.

If we use all of the wealth we generate to provide a better quality of life for people like FDR did, like labor unions protected, if we just get back to that argument of we produce amazing things, we do amazing work, we are the best, smartest go America.

And that wealth should stay in our pockets because we are the ones doing the work.

That is a progressive argument.

It's a winning argument that if we can harness that in this new era of AI and technology, we can absolutely reclaim that whole world.

But somebody has to do it.

We need a goddamn leader who understands it, which is why we're talking to people like Deja Fox.

We need people who live in this and understand it, understand the consequences and the benefits so that we can make it part of our thing and not just have it be like the evil technocrat billionaires.

Like, no, I want the benevolent technocrat billionaire.

I'm just waiting for the Democrats to roll out their AI chatbot tool on their website that helps you donate.

I'm waiting for that.

I know that fucker's coming.

It's true.

If I looked at your IRS records, you could afford to double your donation.

God damn it.

So I agree with you, Rich, and I think that's compelling.

But the reality that we live in is if you can't break, if you can't take that and condense it to a tweet.

Yeah, if it doesn't fit in one sentence,

that was a great speech.

Yep.

But it's not a great tweet.

And until we figure out a way to i can turn that into a 90 second tick tock that's why i'm that's why i'm talking about like i mean what i really mean is like you know break up monopolies but that's why i'm saying fuck it nationalize all these companies right because we need to have clear messages that are just fucking ridiculously strong that people can gravitate towards that's you know that's kind of my my focus here and like what i was going to say next is that what we can do here is use marketing to our advantage because nobody really like i mean not nobody but the majority of people in this country have no idea what AI does how it works what it could do if Democrats could come out and go look what we want to do with AI over the next 10 years to revolutionize your life is this this and this that's a fucking tweet and that's something that takes your fucking job

exactly market it exactly if you can sell the benefit then you can get the guardrails in the back door but if i think if you lead with like well we're trying to be responsible to be like shut the fuck up get out of the way you're getting in the way of progress we got to sell the progress first and then backdoor all the guardrails I just hide the mess.

Toss in some fear.

Yes.

I mean, what Democrats really need to do, and I'll tell you the winning message, the singular winning message that

straight up radicalizes people.

So you have to be careful with it, is reduce it to protect the children.

Like if...

Whether it's AI or it's talking about anything in the future, if you just reduce it to protect the kids, that is a winning fucking slogan.

And you just got to be able to tie good ideas to it.

Conspiracy theories.

And education, too.

I mean, I have a four-year-old and I always wonder, like, what is AI's role going to be in her education?

Because it's not going to be zero.

I'll tell you that shit.

That means that some people are going to be able to do it.

And people fired a shitload of their people and brought AI to do it instead.

Like, it won't be long before actual schools do that.

Exactly.

Well, guys.

We covered a lot of ground today.

I think this is a good time to wrap it up.

I think in conclusion, ICE is bad.

Don't bomb Iran.

And Democrats, we just came up with your messaging around AI.

So we're all good here.

DNC could take in a couple of weeks off and deal with all their infighting that's happening right now.

But anyways, as always, thank you guys.

Thank you, everyone, for listening.

We really appreciate the last episode.

We got a lot of really great feedback, and it was just really great to see that.

So

that's why we're doing a second episode without guests.

But I think we might have a guest next week,

which I will just mention here because this is going to go live on Thursday.

I think we're going to have Brad Lander on.

They just emailed us

back about coming on the show.

So he's going to tell us all about what it's like to get arrested by ICE or detained.

Is he back from El Salvador?

You know, like I didn't, it was just an email, so I didn't see the, there was no area code on the text.

Yeah, Trace the IP.

Yeah, Trace the IP, exactly.

Yeah, I'll have to, I'll get on that because I definitely know how to do that.

But anyways, so we'll probably be doing that early next week.

And also, don't forget, we have merchandise for you to show your support to the best.

Where can I buy one of those t-shirts?

That's a sick shirt.

Where can I buy that?

Oh, well, you can buy that at findoutpodcast.com.

And on top of that, all of our merchandise is made in the USA and union-made where available.

So by AI bots.

Yeah, by

union, well-paid

AI bots.

Yeah, I don't know if

they'd be super into that.

Also, find us on Substack, uh, findoutpodcast.substack.com.

You can become a member there, uh, where you get some extra benefits if you kick us a few bucks.

And it also just helps support building what we are building all together.

So, with that, thank you very much, everybody.

Uh, hope you stay safe out there, and we'll talk to you soon.