Find Out: How to disarm MAGA’s disinformation machine

Hi, everybody.

Welcome back to the Find Out podcast, episode seven.

We have a lot of things to cover today, and we literally just got some breaking news.

We're recording on Friday, that George Santos, the disgraced former congressman, was just sentenced to 87 months in prison, which is seven over seven years.

Which

for

BLG's weaponized.

I'm not even sure which of the charges, but

it'll be old news by the time you guys guys listen to it.

But we had to get a reaction because it is kind of funny because that guy is just pathetic.

But anyways, on to better things.

So

Rich and Luke participated in something called the Unfuck America tour last week down in Houston, Texas, going up against Charlie Kirk and his minions.

Could you guys just tell us what happened down there?

College Station, Texas.

And we were at Texas A ⁇ M.

Come on, Tim.

Come on.

Jesus.

All I know is Austin.

Because I'm from New York, of course.

So, anyways, go ahead.

Well,

we went down there.

We were supposed to debate him.

That's his whole shtick, right?

As he sets up in the middle of a campus and he's got a big fucking banner that says, prove me wrong.

Then he lines people up and you get to debate him on a topic of your choosing.

And we got there and it was immediately a cluster fuck and through no fault of our own.

I mean,

we got there and we were asking, okay, where's the line to wait?

And they told us all about 50 different places to wait.

And so we all spread out, hoping to be the one that got picked.

And like, I think one of our people actually got to debate him.

None of the rest of us did.

They came up with different excuses.

You know, you don't have any permits, but we did.

And then also it was held in the free speech amphitheater.

And, you know, Charlie Kirk is such a big free speech guy, but that's neither here nor there.

And then it was like, you're not students at A ⁇ M, but also the people who drove four hours aren't students at A ⁇ M either.

So he was, he was fully coming up with as many reasons to run as fucking possible.

But I think the organization on a whole did a pretty good job pivoting.

We ended up holding our own debates and pulling some of his crowd and stuff.

It was a good time.

I had a lot of good conversations,

one or two that were maybe productive.

But I think I was a little caught off guard.

And it took me a minute to get my head on straight.

And after talking to some of these, the other creators who are with us on the, and you guys are going to hear a lot of swearing in this episode because

I'm not going to not say unfuck america tour because it's just it's fun and it's a good logo um

but

we

you know we walked into this free speech arena or whatever you want to call it this this uh this maga rally and the first 30 minutes is just them pumping music um certainly from liberal artists and creators um pumping music and frisbeeing MAGA hats to kids, screaming kids in the crowd.

And we're talking 17, 18, 19-year-old, like literal kids.

Don't also don't forget the parents who brought their like nine to 10-year-old kids.

That was the most disheartening part for me.

And so we were, we were talking to one of the volunteers at the event and he was eavesdropping.

And then he came over and our conversation pivoted over to him.

And

he described himself as he voted for Trump three times.

He firmly believes the 2020 election was stolen.

He

described himself as a fundamentalist evangelical Christian.

I mean, this is a person who, if you wrote him down on paper and you wrote me down on paper, you couldn't even get us in the same room or it'd be like when matter and antimatter collide.

And it just ends up being a terrible, terrible explosion.

Long story short,

we wrap up this conversation and it's very difficult.

We a whole lot of agree to disagree.

He's like, I know we don't agree on it, but I'm sure we don't agree on abortion.

I'm sure we don't agree on 2020.

We don't have to go down that path.

And I was like, I agree.

We don't have to go down that path.

We wrap and I said to him,

okay, now let's like 50,000 foot view.

I want to ask you a question because if you wrote my, you know, I'm not a religious person.

I describe myself as the A word, which is hard to even say out loud because it's America.

But I said, I'm a, you know, I'm an atheist, liberal, uh, academia sort of like scientist-minded guy.

Like I am the radical left lunatic that is described by the internet and by president trump after this conversation would you describe me as that and he paused and actually thought about it and he said you've been very respectful you make eye contact you haven't interrupted me um we had a reasonable exchange of ideas no i would not describe you as a radical left lunatic and i was like okay get out like take take the win um so we leave and then we're doing all this other stuff this is like maybe two in the afternoon and maybe seven seven thirty eight o'clock as we're starting, as we're packing up speakers and everything.

Um, I look over, we're looking at the- Which was the same time as the paid event got out for a restaurant because that guy went to the paid event.

Right.

And so he's, he's coming out.

He's walking down the sidewalk.

And I, and I looked over and I was like, that's the same guy because I heard him talking as he was walking.

And he didn't, he didn't see me or pay attention.

He's walking with what looked like maybe seven, eight, nine teenage boys who I presumably were students there who attended the rally.

And all I picked up from him was the back half of a story about our conversation.

And he said, and we had, you know, I talked to these guys for a long time.

And

it was, he was actually really nice.

And all I, and afterward, I felt better.

And all I, all I hope is that he took away that maybe I'm like a reasonable guy.

And so.

We had like, and I heard him and then they's walking by.

And so it's, I'm never going to win that guy's vote.

But what happened was

I was a decent human to him, as difficult as that was.

And he went and passed on to a whole bunch of kids who are going to now develop their own perspectives of the world.

And they're at least now aware that there is a graying, white, straight man who is a liberal who was a decent person to somebody who they, you know, respect and admire.

So,

you know, these seeds, these seeds take a long time to grow.

But when you walk in and you're greeted by, you know, screaming MAGA hat wearing kids and you think all hope is lost,

We were really looking for anything.

Okay.

I mean, I think what you guys are sort of circling around here is that

all hope is not lost for all of these people.

And, but.

And they're not all like, just like we're not all radical left lunatics.

They're not all radical right lunatics.

And that

more situations where we actually get to have conversations with people is a good thing.

And

if you at least, I mean, look, like you said, this guy's never going to vote for us.

But like, you know, at least if we're starting to knock down some of this, like every man on the left is like this like feeble, pink-haired, whatever.

Okay.

I mean, I think that's good.

And, you know, I think for everyone here, there were like 30 of you, I believe, 30 creators that went down there to sort of

go toe-to-toe with Charlie and thousands of

kids from Texas A ⁇ M that are definitely more pro-Trump than anything else.

I think to me, because I went to like a MAGA type, like

my other podcast, I to United Debates with this guy who's like an ultra-mega dude, and he has like, I don't even know what you call it.

It's essentially a nonprofit to teach MAGA kids how to debate.

So I went and debated those kids.

And I had a very similar experience where it was like walking out of it.

I'm like, these are regular people that just like got led astray by a whole bunch of bullshit.

But like, it proves to me a simple point, which is it's how you approach it that matters.

I think like, you know, as much as I I like the whole concept of the way that this Unfuck America was put together, I think the better approach to trying to reach people is to talk to them like human beings and not yell at them, not try to debate them, not try to go and scream, hey, you're an idiot.

Like, you know, that just doesn't, it doesn't work.

But just having a conversation with somebody in two seconds, when they see that you're there in good faith, it disarms them and they listen.

If you just give them a piece of humanity, they will return it because the overall majority of people on that side are very misguided, but they're also just regular people who just want to have a real conversation and they feel attacked when you come at them too aggressively.

So I think like, I don't know how to do this on scale, but that's the way in.

That's how you get the people who are malleable to be molded.

You go in and go, hey, I'm going to respect you.

I'll treat you like a person.

Here's what I think.

Let me hear what you think.

And then you listen.

That's it.

It's not that complicated.

It's just how do you, you know, scale it to something where you can actually affect millions of people.

Yeah.

And that was something that was difficult to, you know, come to terms with is like, there's a certain part of our society, our culture that is not going to change.

Um, the fact that the fact that uh Parker and Dean and Charlie Kirk, who are all people who make uh dunk reels, um, that are very entertaining to watch, um,

that's they dig both sides in harder.

That's in well, but it's incredibly entertaining and gets a lot of eyeballs.

And so, you know, you need the hook because if we sit down and we say, hey, we're going to have a healthy exchange of ideas, like I'm already walking out the door.

I'm like, show me something that's, that's like, even if I would take part in this conversation.

And so,

so

that's something where, like, national ground game, the, the pack that put this on, I mean, this was, this was gritty, um, like, is, is, as efficient as we could possibly be in putting this, in running this event.

Charlie Kirk's got $90 million a year.

He raised $90 million for this tour alone last year.

Half a million dollars per event is what he has budgeted for this tour.

We're going there on

maybe 1% of that budget, and we're trying to do this.

And so this is a huge problem and they're not going to stop doing it.

They're not going to stop exploiting reality TV culture to get it to get clicks, to get views, to do these dunking on libs, owning the libs videos.

And so we got to be there.

But

how are we there?

It was a very effective cocktail of having Parker and Dean there.

pulling, I mean, pulling, they pull the kids.

I'll say that.

They get a mic and they stand up and

everybody knows and they're taking selfies with them.

And then those kids are hanging out, having conversations, and they're, and they're, you know, and it's going from there.

So National Ground Game did a great job.

Z did a great job, the people organizing it.

And it allowed people like Luke and I, who are nobudies, or at least eight months ago, we were nobodies, to go and have real conversations, as he describes Zach.

And I think those are going to be the things that stick with people more than the two-minute, like owning the libs videos.

And trust me, I started with that because like it was like

two when we realized there was no fucking shot we were going to get to debate Kirk.

So at that point, I just started walking around because Dean started, Dean and Parker started doing their own debates in the crowd.

And I was like, oh, fuck it.

That's what I'll do too.

And so I went around and did some of the, you know, just, yeah, you're a fucking idiot.

And it's not hard to prove it.

Like when somebody says, I don't believe in due process, there's not a whole lot of room to like, you could just go, oh, well, you're a fucking idiot that doesn't stand for the Constitution.

Like, it's not hard to do that, but it didn't get me anywhere.

So I was like, all right, we got to do something different.

Now, you got to disarm.

I mean, the one thing I saw, there was that video that went super vile.

I think, Rich, you sent, it was like 9 million views, and you sent it the one of where it was, I think it was Dean was like really trying to debate Kirk.

And they just weren't.

Yeah.

He like literally, and the girl kept calling him a pussy.

And he got so squirmy with that word.

And I was looking at going, there's something in this.

Like that, if you want to attack these guys, you got to go after their weird veil of like hypermasculinity.

Just be like, you're a fucking pussy, dude.

What are you doing?

You just debate this guy.

They've already established.

They got to him so bad that they've already got an in-person debate in Chuck's studio set up for Dean and Charlie.

Oh, there you go.

See, that works.

It's great.

Which is not as good as, you know, a knockdown in the public sector, but it's still going to get a lot of views.

I mean, it'll get a lot of views.

Yeah.

But, but I think that's why some of what we're trying to do in showing like positive masculinity is so important because when there's no there's no uh model to follow, they're going to follow a bad one.

And that is what we have seen happen on the right over and over again.

Donald Trump's the same way.

He is terrified of being projected as small or a loser or weak.

He does have small hands.

That is true.

He also doesn't weigh 235 pounds, but whatever.

But like, and the same with all of these guys, like all of this like bravado is masking insecurity.

And so when it gets called out, they're terrified because their hold on these people is not as strong, I don't think, as a lot of people believe it to be.

And with more, you know, examples of positive masculinity to follow, they know they're in a lot of trouble because people have started to figure out why they've been so successful.

Yeah.

I mean, we've seen the power of a handshake.

Like, I know it feels like forever ago, but remember the debate when Kamala Harris walked right up to Trump.

That was sick.

We're all over the place.

That was sick.

Power movement.

And he was like, you saw his,

like, he is a very, very visually obsessed person.

Yes.

And for him to, in, like, he knows this is the definition of prime time.

For him to like slump his shoulders and slump forward and like do the like old man hands in front of his, like,

he looked completely emasculated.

The fragility.

of these alpha males is so, so, so incredible, which is why, why like Hegseth right now in the news, who knows if he'll still be Secretary of Defense by the time people listen to this.

I think he will.

I don't think Donald Trump would ever fire a man that pretty.

I think he loves him for the way that he presents on television.

But Pete Hegseth's masculinity is so fucking fragile.

You know why I know this?

Because the dude is obsessed with trans people.

He has been talking about trans troops for years.

The first things that he did when he got into the Pentagon was he started like kicking out trans troops.

And the first thing that he, and like one of the first things that he has done as Secretary of Defense is install a makeup room because the man is so insecure about his own looks

that he cannot function in his role as the Secretary of Defense of the United fucking states military until he puts makeup on.

And that is not, that is not like a judgment statement on people who wear makeup.

It It is a simple acknowledgement of the massive, massive hypocrisy of the alpha male.

Hey, at least he didn't have his makeup kits stolen from under his seat as Secretary of Defense.

What Rich is talking about is that another cabinet secretary, Homeland Security

Secretary Dome,

was apparently had her purse stolen.

uh at a restaurant by the way she has a secret service detail and in the in the purse was was three thousand dollars cash which i would love to know why on earth around with three thousand dollars cash also if you're in a detail like

you that doesn't it doesn't make any sense it's just strange also i don't know what that says about the secret security secret security or to like steal that like to someone stole that but and to be clear with hegsef the taxpayers paid for the makeup broken.

Oh yeah, we paid for that.

He did not spend his own money.

We paid for that.

But think all the money he's going to save firing those three trans troops from the military on their salaries, you know.

So really breaks even.

I also saw a story about Hegseth right before we shot this that, like, they're, they're removing like 400 books from the naval library that are all like, you know, woke books or whatever.

But you know what book gets to stay?

Fucking Mein Kampf.

Still available.

What a joke.

It's not a joke.

Don't read Michaangelo, but like you can read it all.

It's like nuts, dude.

Crazy.

So so for people who don't know me, again, this is Chris.

I'm the guy who investigates neo-Nazis.

And for the last, I don't know, five plus years, most people have known me for my work on extremism as it relates to the military and veterans community.

The fact that we have a Christian nationalist running the Pentagon right now is

just so profoundly dangerous.

And it is going to damage our national security and our standing in the world for a generation or more.

Like the damage that has been done to our credibility on the world stage,

not just militarily in terms of our strength, but

the real strength of the military is its role in enforcing our diplomatic demands and our diplomatic morals and ethics.

All of that is crumbling so, so, so fast under Trump, Musk, and Hegseth.

It's, it's, uh, what's happening at these academies today will affect today's trainees, today's cadets, for 20 to 40 years.

It's a really fucked up situation.

And I'm curious, like, because Hegset, to me, the thing about Hegseth and Trump and all these folks in this area is like, they're very unpredictable.

You know, for me,

I don't love that as a, it, as just a common citizen look from the outside looking in.

But a lot of the right always defends Trump and says, like, no, I like that he's unpredictable in the world stage.

I like that Hague says it's unpredictable because it makes us unpredictable.

And that's a good tactic for America.

But I'm curious, do you think that's true?

Because I've heard that argument a thousand times and I just don't know if it's actually true.

No, it'd be a good argument.

I mean, unpredictable is just a synonym for unreliable.

And if we are an unreliable ally, then we are irrelevant.

And this whole make America great

again thing on the world stage, everyone that I have ever met in real life having these discussions, like I'll go on vacation, nobody knows who I am.

We'll have these discussions and we'll talk about how

we are respected on the world stage.

And these are people who've never left the country.

Like they don't know anyone outside the country.

If they do, it's because they've gone to Cancun and they're at a resort.

Like they're not seeing people.

They're not meeting people from other cultures or anything like that.

Their belief that we are respected on the world stage is just what they're told from Fox News or Breitbart or whatever.

The reality is, as someone who does like to travel, whose friends do live overseas, is that the world knows that they can't trust us anymore.

And that's not just militarily, that's economically.

So we are being phased out of

Europe's plans for the future.

We are not a reliable ally in the military, and we're not reliable economically.

Well,

let's pivot.

This is a good segue into the next part, which is there have been several polls that have come out in the last week, and Donald Trump's handling of the economy has never been lower.

And that includes when he lost 3 million jobs in his first term, which I keep saying this until I'm blue in the face.

He's the only president in U.S.

history to ever do that.

Can I push on that, though?

I want to push on that.

Because I guess I am like the resident resident moderate.

I used to be a Republican and all that.

I hate that argument.

I want to push on that argument because Trump didn't lose those jobs.

Trump was on pace to gain jobs.

And in the end, COVID lost those jobs.

And I think

I watched the Democrats use that line over and over and over again.

The average person doesn't buy it because they look at it and go, I know what happened.

I lived it.

It was COVID.

So I'm curious.

I think we need to lose that argument.

And like his job growth numbers weren't very good like before COVID.

Like he was average job critic.

Sure.

We could attack, but like, so like to attack him on this, it's like, it just seems disingenuous and it comes off wrong to me.

It might just be me, but it's like he didn't lose those jobs with his own tactics.

He lost those jobs because COVID happened.

Let's talk about it.

There was a plan early in COVID to supply masks to every single American through the U.S.

Postal Service.

Jared Kushner said no, because it would help blue states more than red states.

It is an undeniable fact that if we had sent masks to everyone early on and we had stopped the the mask bullshit, less people would have died and less people would have lost jobs.

That is an undeniable fact.

Because if you had given people the tools early on when we were just telling people to wash their hands, we would have slowed this down.

We would not have ended it and there still would have been losses.

The other part was.

I'm skeptical of that point.

You don't think masks work?

I think they work, but I don't think like we early in the pandemic, it was extremely difficult to control anything because we had no vaccine.

That was the real, the turn of the tide happened when we had the vaccine widely available prior to that it just spread like wildfire regardless of what you did i mean i was around i got covet the first time in december of 20 because we had a worker in our house trying to do some you know i forget what it was plumbing or something his mask slipped down for a millisecond and then it was got covet just like that outside of that i was extremely cautious about everything the the ability to get actually you know to get covid was so simple at that point because there was literally zero protection so like masks are helpful but there's not overwhelming evidence that they would have fundamentally changed the progression of the pandemic.

I think it's just a mask, though, right?

Like, you get a guy in the Oval Office who treats it like it's a fucking joke.

Yeah, yeah, that's not true.

Like, I think it's his entire handling of it that it's not just the masks, right?

Like, you get a guy up there that's talking about injecting bleach, not a great look for the president, right?

Like, well, it and he turned against the vaccines.

We also had one of the highest death rates in the world.

So, the masks do work.

And if we had continued down that road and if he had told the people on the right to stop demonizing that stuff and to get with the program, first of all, he would have won re-election easily if he had just gotten us together and led us through that.

Yeah, I'll doubt that.

Second of all, he then did turn against the vaccine.

And we still see the highest rates of COVID deaths because we still have hundreds to thousands of people who die every month from COVID.

It's all in red areas.

So I

think we will just have to respectfully disagree.

I don't think that we would have been.

But that's not the point.

But the point was centered around the jobs element.

I'm not trying to argue like that masks don't work because I think they do, but my argument is that the jobs numbers would have been dismal regardless of mask distribution.

That's my point.

So I think this is actually exactly the kind of conversation that we've been hoping to have.

And I'm really glad that we had it because, Zach, I agree with you.

I do think the way that we use this as shorthand, like there's a lot of assumed knowledge when Tim says about the worst job performance ever, right?

And not everyone in our audience, not everyone in our, in our lives has all of that.

So I think it is important

to

have this discussion and add the nuance because I've been feeling a little

uncertain about that argument.

I didn't think it was as powerful as the DNC and Democrats and all of their consultants felt it was great.

And I think it's because they were not giving the details that Tim just did just now over the course of two minutes, right?

Two minutes is a long time when it's airtime.

That's been my argument for like what was so weak about the 24 election or 24 campaign for me is that they Democrats came out and talked like they were talking to people who knew things and they should have been talking to Americans because They don't know things like

at all.

No, you need to tell them.

I mean, and Zach is also also right.

His growth numbers before COVID, they weren't actually growth numbers.

They were just a continuation of the economy that we had under Barack Obama and the policies that he had.

And that tax cut that was, what, $2 trillion or something like that?

If you go back and look at it, there was no stimulating effect to

the economy whatsoever because the tax cuts primarily went to rich people who didn't need them and they just stuck them in their pockets.

And this is why, like, when Republicans scream and yell about food stamps, I lose lose my mind.

Because the number one most stimulating thing you can do is give people money to purchase food.

It is not like, it is the, that is the best way.

Crazy that people want to, you know, work and make their lives better when they can fucking eat.

That's right.

I mean, it's also a bigger argument, too.

Like, it's with student loans.

People, the Republicans went, no, no, no, don't repay their student loans.

It's not fair.

It's like, do you understand the economic stimulus of telling people, hey, this debt that you were budgeting around, you don't have to budget around that anymore.

Like, Democrats don't sell this shit the way they should.

It's the same thing with things where you can sell, you know, whole packages as giant tax cuts and they instead sell them as like, well, you know, it's here, here's it, like they try to sell the math.

Don't sell the math.

No.

Sell the energy effect.

100% right.

I completely agree.

And I, you know, I worked in that world for a long time.

And, you know, there is a lot of stuff where people are like, you got to get the sound bites and you got to do the polling.

And I think honestly, we have just moved beyond that because there's too much information out there.

Like

we can't do that stuff anymore.

And I completely agree.

I mean, Joe Biden cut child poverty in half, in half.

Nobody knows that.

No.

Nobody knows.

And then the Republicans

let that stuff expire and the poverty rates went back up.

You didn't hear anything about that in the in the election.

Like these are, we have a serious messaging problem.

And I, you know, and I, I, I could take some of that about the criticism about the 3 billion because you're right.

Like it would have been a negative of some sort anyways, though apparently we didn't lose jobs during the Spanish flu, which I'd love to know why that didn't happen.

Oh, that's interesting.

I didn't know that.

No.

I mean, well, but you also, it's also that, that, that figure is first term.

Right.

Because I'm pretty sure that George Bush in his second term lost jobs because the Q3 and four

of 2008 was so devastating.

Like Lehman Brothers just like ceased to exist.

And we were losing 800 to a million jobs.

And you should also count the jobs that were lost in the first quarter or the second quarter of Barack Obama's term for George Bush because his stupid tax cuts did not, like, that's another one.

The last two times we have done massive stimulating or quote-unquote stimulating tax cuts, it doesn't work.

It just doesn't work.

Yeah, it's a shocker.

It's ridiculous.

You look at like the jobs numbers.

I remember, what was the stat?

It was like, of the last 52 million jobs created, 51 million were from Democrats and 1 million were from Republicans.

It's terrible.

So like, you know, we could attack on things like that really easily, but I think you're right.

Like we need to reassess how we message on things.

Even things like that, I don't necessarily agree with like universal healthcare.

Like there is a, you can sell that that as a massive corporate tax cut because in the end, all these corporations that are paying for health insurance for their people out of pocket don't have to do that anymore.

And they can redistribute that money in a very big way.

That is a smart messaging strategy for moderates that Democrats just miss.

I don't know how they miss it.

I completely agree.

And the other part is it's actually a great small business development.

tool because a lot of people can't start small businesses because they don't have health care.

And the only reason that I was able to start my small business is because my wife had good health care.

And we just, and like, there's all the morally right reasons to do it too, but there are economic reasons that we are just swinging and missing on.

And I think sometimes that's why Republicans have tend to have better ratings on the economy, even though they don't run it better, but they're better at messaging it.

Well, that brings it all back to Charlie Kirk because that's what he's good at.

He's good at making idiots sit back and go, well, that sounds right.

And then that's it.

All of a sudden he's right.

Even if he provides no context, it doesn't matter.

He provides an argument that makes sense.

And it's common, like common sense is the thing they're all rallying around now this whole concept like as long as what you say makes sense in one sentence you win and they're just capitalizing on that non-stop do you think that going to texas a m do you think that that is a strategy that we should continue to do and do you think that we will be able to um flip some some voters and luke you're gonna have to answer this one yeah well listen like going there for me was like going to the ninth circle of hell i mean it's about two shades away from a Klan rally.

It was fucking trash.

Like the surrounding people, I have never been more disheartened than to see that fucking crowd.

But here's our clip of the week.

I do think that that's the effective way to do it.

Like maybe not A ⁇ M.

I name A ⁇ M is fucking full-blown.

There's nothing to do there.

I mean, I've been super happy to get the DMs I have from people that are like, yeah, I'm so happy you were there.

Like I've had an Aggie alum that reach out.

They're like, oh,

my kids came and saw you.

So happy you were there.

there.

But those people aren't getting flipped.

They already felt that way.

I've done undercover work where I've gone to QAnon rallies.

And what Luke is describing is what I felt when I was there.

What Rich has been describing is

I do not have a brain that would allow me to interpret things so

rosily.

I just cannot.

cannot get past being surrounded by a bunch of fucking maniacs but but but and i want to go to rich on this one but but do we think this is an effective strategy to start to pull some of those people away?

Or is it just frustrating for everybody involved?

You have to look at time scale.

Right now, when you're in that moment, nobody's changing anything.

We saw, and

this is even a hard conversation for me to get into because I have a son, but we saw a young man get up on stage to try to debate Dean and Parker on the assault weapons ban.

This kid is 18 years old.

He didn't know what AWB stood for.

And he found himself on a debate in front of 200, 300 people in the audience with people who know how to debate this.

And he gets up and

won't go into the extensive details, but somebody

in our group was the parent of one of the Uvalde victims.

He lost his son at 10, which is why it's hard for me to think about.

It was a painful experience.

It was a sad experience.

Half of us were trying to not just cry on stage.

And that that kid, he stood there and he looked at this dad

and he listened to all of it.

He wasn't ready to change his perspective on the assault weapons ban at the end of that debate.

But when he walked off the stage, I shook his hand and I talked to him.

And I could see in his face

he was going to be thinking about this for maybe the rest of his life, but certainly for the next couple of days, he's going to sleep on it.

He's going to think through what he just experienced.

The first reaction is, is fight or flight.

He did neither.

He stood there.

And the second reaction then is to process that and say, okay, now that the humiliation is behind me, now that I'm not angry or sad or embarrassed anymore, do I need to do something different with how I'm thinking about this?

And I guarantee this kid is going to be at least a moderate, if not a Democratic voter in the next five years.

On that stage, if everybody had tripled down, quadrupled down, and he had had the worst, most embarrassing, humiliating experience of his life, we might have made a Republican voter for life.

And so when you're in that moment, it's extremely difficult.

But I just, this is turning a cruise ship.

I mean, this is turning a cruise ship where every motor is broken or where every engine is has exploded.

Like this is going to take for fucking ever to unfuck America coming back to that.

But I absolutely think it's worth it because you have to start.

They've been doing this for years.

They've been working on this for years since Charlie Kirk was a teenager.

And now he's what, 30, whatever.

And, and there's, and this is where they got.

So it might take us 10 years to unravel this shit.

See, and that's the difference between the debates that we held and the debates that Charlie holds.

Charlie's whole thing is he wants to make you look as big of a fucking idiot as he can in front of his crowd.

And his crowd feeds on it.

I mean, the one guy that got of ours that got up to debate there, his name is Simple Black Theory.

That's his tag.

I mean, he would.

He handled the crowd excellently because Charlie was even talking.

Charlie goes, oh, the crowd hates you.

And Simple Black Theory goes, Yeah, I know, but I'm talking to you.

And like, that's a powerful fucking bar to drop.

But most of the people who get up there and talk to Car talk to Charlie, as soon as that crowd starts going ape shit,

Charlie's feeding off it, and the people are just like feeling completely embarrassed and they feel completely put out.

And they walk off the stage, and they might not even be as strong, like they might even not hold their beliefs as strongly as they did when they walked up there because they feel like they just got thoroughly ruined.

100%.

Whereas this guy came up with something he thought was a strong opinion, was was

firmly, but not rudely, established, yeah, you're fucking wrong, buddy.

And he walked away thinking differently.

Like, that's an entirely different vibe.

Yeah, it really, and that's really the vibe difference between the two parties right now.

The right are trolls and the left are decent.

Like, that's it.

And, and, but trolls are more fun to watch, and that's why they're winning right now.

Decency is not exciting.

And, you know, look, that's, I think, a temporary thing.

There's a pendulum swing to all this shit.

I mean, mean, that's the reason that Joe Biden won in 2020.

It's because we needed the calm, sweet grandpa to get us through the scary time.

And then all of a sudden, when your money seems to be not going as far, you need the crazy businessman to come back and do some crazy shit to make you money again.

The pendulum swings.

The only thing that sucks from my perspective is I thought that America was better than letting the pendulum swing back to the trolls.

That, to me, is the most disheartening thing about all of this is that I really thought the average person was better than letting the horrible people be in power again and not apologize, just going, doing whatever they want.

Everybody's like, it's fine.

It's cool.

As long as I get money, it's fine.

That part sucks.

I think

this is a trauma processing problem.

I think that

most of us,

Americans,

most of whom don't have access to great, because I'm a veteran, I can get, and I'm disabled because of my service.

All of my healthcare is free.

I never have to worry about paying a bill for my medications, for anything, right?

I have learned, because I have had free access to healthcare, how to process trauma, how to

not distance myself from it, but how to grow from it.

When I first heard the term post-traumatic growth, And I was in the throes of PTSD, I was like, this is bullshit.

Like, that is a fucking made-up term.

It's unscientific.

I fucking hate it.

Now that I'm kind of on the other side of a really, really tough time with years of therapy, I kind of understand like how you can take that and grow.

But most Americans have not had that benefit.

No, no, most Americans have had nothing close to this from

processing traumas as a kid, you know, and

how that shapes people's interactions with authority for the rest of their lives, whether it be, you know, parents or cops or bosses, to the trauma that we all collectively experienced during COVID.

Even the people who denied that COVID was real and truly in their heart of hearts believed that COVID was overblown, they still were traumatized because they were under the perception that a tyrannical government was trying to destroy their lives.

and very, you know, very effectively doing it.

They blame the government for the economy, et cetera, right?

So that is the reason why Americans are not better than this, because Americans have not had the support that they need to learn from these horrible, horrible experiences.

Yeah, I think coming back to what we were just talking about with fight or flight,

the idea of fight forward just kind of popped into my head.

Like, what do you do?

Are you fighting forward or are you running away?

You're fighting backward.

And you look at, because I agree, Zach, the pendulum went farther.

Usually, usually you're going to mitigate a little bit, but

we were

so

complacent, I think, in a lot of ways.

We let like, well, egg prices are the most important thing in the world, where literally when this guy left office last, we were losing 10, 15,000 people a day, Americans a day.

And you can't,

we have let them rewrite history on all things COVID.

And earlier when we were talking about the job transition, I was screaming into my mic, which it turns out wasn't working

because I pulled the data because this is an argument that is so important for us to win.

And

we can't win it by just saying he lost all the jobs because of COVID.

We also can't concede it because we're fucking right.

And so I'm stuck in this place.

And so I pulled the numbers.

He had a full year of recovery under his first term, 11 months of recovery

under his first term

from 2020 to 2021.

we entered february of 20 152.4 million total non-farm employment by

by the time he left office we had recovered more than half of those jobs more than half of the of the ones that were lost and by the time we got to full 152.4 million again it was uh beginning of 2022.

So he got one year of recovery.

Biden got one year of recovery.

And so that's, I mean, that's the the argument and correct.

The trend line was identical through his entire first term as what we saw for eight years with Obama.

But what I think we need to land with

listeners and with voters is that it's not just the what, it's the how.

And if Trump had started his response two, three months earlier, he could have avoided a lot of damage, a lot of loss of life if he had managed the shutdown better.

I mean, this is the same thing that's happening with tariffs.

Fundamentally, these aren't always the wrong things to do.

But when you do it like a fucking idiot toddler and somebody just gives you a hatchet or a Sharpie or like pick the things that he uses, the ways that he solves problems, he does it not just in the worst possible way, but he does it in a way that

leaves you 10 times worse off than you were if you just didn't do anything, which is why I always joke like I'd rather have a severed head as president or like a chicken as president.

Magic Ape is my choice.

Ruin anything maliciously.

Whereas it feels like

his negligence,

his

ineptitude is malicious.

It really does.

And like, to me, so just so people have a background on where I come from,

I was a Republican for like 10 years up until pretty much the middle of Trump's term.

And Trump is the sole reason why I left the Republican Party because of exactly what Rich is talking about.

The fact that his ideas, a lot of them in theory, are not bad.

The execution is horrendous.

And I just kept looking at this guy and being like, he's just, it's, it's just him.

Like, I mean, there's a million of things I disagree with in the Republican Party, you know, socially.

I'm, I've always been liberal, but when it came to economic policy, like there are things about tariffs that I think are very smart.

And there are certain elements even now that he could be like Pete Buttigieg, one on, I forget which podcast, but Pete Buttigieg was explaining exactly this point of.

It's strictly execution that's screwing up Trump's approach to trade.

If you went to countries that were having unfair trade practices with us and said, look, if you stop doing this or this, we can be cool.

But if you don't, we're going to impose X amount of tariffs on you to make it appropriate.

That's a really good idea.

But just to arbitrarily throw tariffs on top of countries that are not engaging in those practices for the sake of PR is a stupid approach.

And that's the difference between, you know, functional executional ability and, you know, like, for example, Trump is in a situation here where he doesn't care if the ideas work.

He cares if they sound good to voters as he pitches them.

And that's why they're winning, because in the end, they don't focus on the feasibility.

They focus on how does it sound?

And Trump going, I'm going to be Mr.

Strongman.

I'm going to threaten everybody, and everybody's going to do what I say.

That plays well.

People dig it.

No tax on tips.

Right.

It's never going to happen.

It's never going to happen, but they're never going to

doubt him.

I loved it.

Of course.

He's going to get rid of it.

And people believe it.

And Harris stole it during the year, too, just for good reason.

You offset it.

You offset it correctly.

I mean,

his entire policy is like, hey, no tax on tips so that working class service people can

take take home more money.

Let's shift the entire tax burden out of tariffs, which are catastrophically regressive.

And 10x

the benefit that those people got

from keeping the taxes on tips.

So again, it's the how that

is so fucking awful with him and not always the what.

Because we can we can make money elsewhere we can we can raise taxes on billionaires all day long i'll sign up for that if that means that a a server at a at a steakhouse who's trying to you know put her kid through school is uh is able to do it a little more easily i saw he was actually considering putting higher taxes on on higher income groups which i was like holy shit that's not going to go over well for your people that gave you a ton of money but i mean look if he's open to it that's fine but i mean i think we also have to recognize that that is not enough you know from just a pure metrics perspective.

We need to start taxing Wall Street.

Like, that's how we actually make money.

Taxing billionaires' income is like a drop in the bucket compared to what we can make on transactions.

I mean, do most people know what capital gains is and what the percentage is?

Right.

No, so let's talk about it.

Let's talk about it.

So, so, capital gains.

So, basically, if you have money invested somewhere and you hold that money for at least a year,

when you cash out, your profits are charged at 15%.

I think the average tax rate for the American is somewhere in the 24, 25%.

Democrats have always talked about raising capital gains, but I don't think they've done it in a very smart way because it's basically that is a tax that mostly hits rich people.

Like, I mean,

there are...

upper middle class families that also have that, but the fact that it's taxed almost 10% less than like the,

you know, the mom that works at the steakhouse and is making $15 an hour continues like this should be an issue that Democrats should be able to just pound the shit out of the Republicans.

Because again, it's just, that's like those people who like live their life.

Like they, they never work a day in their life.

All of their money comes from this and they pay a lower tax rate than somebody on minimum wage.

It's just outrageous to me.

I think that one of the things that Democrats have a

one hand tied behind their back, for better or worse, is that they're not willing to demonize certain people.

And, you know, if we were Trumpian, we could sloganeer this.

And in the context of like the Luigi CEO shit going on, like we recognize we need to be careful with our words sometimes.

But like you could say, if you're a plumber,

like that, that is, if you're earning a salary because you're working for it, we don't want to tax you.

If you're a banker and you don't work for your money,

we're looking to tax you for it.

We're looking to tax, right?

But but a Democrat cannot say that because,

I mean, we already saw how Fox News tried to

put what happened with Luigi on Democrats.

Of course.

Right.

That's, yeah.

I mean, it makes it, you draw that comparison.

It's easy.

But there's also like, there's been really good proposals just been buried.

So like Elizabeth Warren had one.

I don't remember all the details, but essentially she wanted to put like the most fractional amount of tax on every single Wall Street transaction that occurs.

Every trade.

I love that idea.

It would have made so much money.

Who gives a shit?

Take the teeny penny from it.

Nobody's going to notice.

And you're going to have a pile of cash sitting next to you.

These are people that do not hesitate to use the instant transfer button when they get Venmo money and they want to put it in their bank account.

But God forbid that a little bit of money gets taken off their transactions.

God damn it.

That's perfect analogy.

I love that.

Every fucking time, that's what comes back to me.

It's true.

It's exactly right, though.

Like people don't think about how simple this could be.

And it's just a bunch of asshole lobbyists that are making it not happen.

That's it.

That's the only thing that's in between it.

Well, and it's the

tech sector, the AI sec, like that, that fraction of a penny on every trade thing would be so fucking disastrous for AI companies that are doing like micro trades.

Like they're true.

Like they are, they're

buying and selling in seconds the same thing, right?

Guillotine.

The same stock.

They'll sell like many, many, many, many times an hour.

Because with the AI, with a server on Wall Street like literally fucking as fast as light they can make these trades and they would they would lose a lot of fucking pennies pennies that they do not need they would still be making a fuck ton of money but they recognize the number of trades would would I mean fuck we'd we'd none of us would be paying taxes if if that went through I still can't believe he's claiming that Trump is claiming this fucking oh we're gonna get rid of income tax with the with the money from these tariffs and then just repeatedly backs down who still fucking believes that but this is the point like we were talking about earlier is that his numbers are lower on the economy than they've ever been do we and do we it to me it seems like more and more people are finally like this guy is a fraud Did you see that he claimed he had a 90% approval rating because he added the 44% and the 45% from his first term to get 89?

And he claimed that that was his current approval rating.

None of the same people voted in the

whole new group.

It's completely different.

So

getting on his ratings and the tariffs, because

like, well, so Chris, you mentioned like that we have a hand tied behind your back.

I've been thinking about this as like, this is why the left can't go, we can't do the blue MAGA thing, which I despise that term, but you can't.

debate chaos with chaos and we can't be the party, the left party of chaos and then the right party of chaos because this whole country will be destroyed.

We're not talking about left versus right.

We're talking about stability and sanity and reason versus absolute fucking chaos and madness.

And

just like it's harder to build something than it is to destroy something, we have far more capability and far more responsibility in building the future of this country going forward.

And so we have to win these arguments.

We can't just say Trump is a fucking idiot and get the dunk reel on YouTube and then win the next election because then that pendulum is just going to keep going.

And so bringing it back to the tariffs and approval ratings, a bunch of new polls have come out and

he is losing across the board.

He's losing on tariffs.

He's losing independence on tariffs.

Independents are 70-28 against him on tariffs.

And in the brand new poll from the Washington Post, ABC News, Ipsos.

And you look over, even at, he just went upside down on

immigration.

Abrego Garcia,

42% of people believe he should be returned to the United States.

26%, this is all voters, say remain in El Salvador.

31% are juries out still.

So these are the people that we're winning over when we say, listen, guys.

We don't love criminals.

We don't love violent criminals.

We don't even love our immigration system.

But we do know that you can't take a person who's living here legally.

And this is a complicated argument.

A guy who's living here legally, who may have had issues in the past, there's a lot of things going on here.

But what we know is he's never been convicted of anything.

He's never even been charged with anything, never been convicted of anything.

And a judge said, you can stay here.

And the DHS gave him a work permit to work here.

And he was working in the trades, paying taxes, raising an American citizen child.

This is a multi-layered, complicated argument.

They get to say what Charlie Kirk said on stage.

He's an MS-13 gang member, wife beater.

That's their whole argument.

Exactly.

And that exact terminology.

And somebody took the stage and dunked on him.

And he raised his voice.

This is like one of two times in this thing

where he stopped debating and he just started yelling.

And he said, I will never apologize for letting, for saying that illegal alien gang members have to go back to their country.

And everybody's freaking out.

The red hats are flying.

And we're like,

This kid was a child when he came here.

You can't even be an illegal immigrant when you're 15.

You're a child seeking asylum.

And so

this is a very difficult story to tell and to also win when you're against somebody who just says MS-13, illegal, alien, criminal, deportation.

But we're winning it

and it's showing.

I think it's the responsibility of my community of veterans to

make this a little more of a simple argument.

And that is that when the photos of Abu Ghrey and

the stories of Guantanamo Bay got out, those were the singular most successful recruiting campaigns.

It was Americans who did this.

But what Americans did was the most powerful, most successful recruiting campaigns for what turned into ISIS, for what

led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

So, what we are doing when we are sending people overseas without any due process is we are recruiting a generation of terrorists.

And those chickens are going to come home the roost.

Not tomorrow, not during the Trump term.

They're going to come in 20 years.

They're going to come in 30 years.

Some of these, they may all die in prison, but some of these guys have kids who are American citizens who are always going to remember America as the place who stripped their father of due process and sent him to a gulag to die.

And if Donald Trump doesn't think that he, like he used to like to say that Barack Obama created ISIS, he's the founder of the ICE, of ISIS.

What is the memory of Donald Trump going to be?

I'll tell you,

it's going to be that he has recruited an army of fucking terrorists that are going to be killing Americans for the next few decades.

Well, we've seen this in the past.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons.

Like you said, these are complicated issues.

And I'm going to bring up two that are pretty, but like, you know, we, in the 80s, Ronald Reagan, gave Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen weapons to fight the Soviets.

And then we decided it wasn't worth it.

We pulled out and his people got slaughtered.

Now, he is a monster.

This is not a defense, but you have to look at these things.

The same situation, and this is where it's going to get dicey for some people,

is the Israel-Palestinian issue, right?

What Israel is doing, and I'm not saying Jewish people, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, because there is a difference here.

What he has done in Gaza has just, I know they said that they've wiped out all the terrorists there.

He has, they have like militarized, turned people militant kids that wouldn't ever be because they said, go to these safe spaces.

And then they bombed them.

Then they put, like, I know this only, and there's problems on both sides, but they put dead Palestinians on the trunks of their cars.

The military were driving through towns.

What do you think is going to happen to that 14-year-old that watched that go by or heard that thing?

And it's just madness.

Because Netanyahu wants that to happen because as soon as it's done, he's fucked.

Right.

But like it happens.

Like we always talk about history is we're, we're going to repeat it if we don't like learn it.

It happened.

It's just like we keep doing this as

a country over and over again.

And it's like, it is never, it doesn't work.

So, you know, we've we've talked in past episodes about like how I used to be a Republican.

I was I was a Ron Paul Republican.

And one of the books that was on his reading list that I would encourage people to read is called Blowback.

And it talks about exactly this: the history of American foreign policy and domestic policy mistakes that have resulted in violence and death against Americans.

And for people who can't imagine what it's like to be a Palestinian, who have no sympathy for it, just think about who I was when I was 16 years old when the towers fell and I could see the smoke from my house.

That was 20 miles between me and Ground Zero.

And

I was still,

I could not fucking wait to go overseas and kill fucking bad guys.

I joined the army right after graduating high school.

Within a year, I was in Iraq, in a fucking combat zone, filled with hate and ready to spread, you know, as JD Vance with his fucking social media team likes to say, ready to spread freedom seeds, right?

But

let's take away the the euphemism.

I was ready to fucking murder people.

That's what you do at war, is you murder people.

And that is

what Donald Trump is doing right now.

He is creating that level of anger and resentment that will last for decades, generations, and it will kill Americans.

Yeah.

And he pretends to be the president of peace, too.

And he's just causing a bunch of future problems.

No more wars, right?

Yeah.

Something that I was thinking about with the abreo garcia case was you know looking through like republicans they're they do i think a much better job than liberals of talking about people like policies when needed and talking about policies like people when needed um we kind of feel like talk about everything as policies and so

but it's not it's not effective you have to talk about real people and so looking at

how will this

process that's playing out with Abreo Garcia, how will this affect his son?

He's got a five-year-old, nonverbal, autistic son who is an American citizen.

He will be here forever.

His trajectory

under progressive policies is going to a public school, getting an IEP, which is funded by the Department of Education,

getting special education assistance, just like I know a lot of people's sons and daughters have received across this country.

And

those programs work and they help the kids.

They get special attention from people who know how to work with kids who are neurodivergent.

And usually they show such remarkable improvements, especially early in life

when it's identified and behavioral therapy begins.

It's almost not even noticeable as they're adults.

They're 100% functioning.

Now, and so

he's a neurodivergent kid who's getting the care that he needs.

He grows up and he becomes probably a really great American citizen, just like so many people do.

You look at the Republican path.

His dad's in a terrorist prison in El Salvador.

This kid's going to be what, if they get rid of birthright citizenship, which they won't, but if they did, this is their dream utopian, dystopian scenario.

He is what, deported to where his dad lives?

Is he even an El Salvadorian citizen?

I mean, this is, the kid was born here.

So what are they going to do?

They're going to have a homeless special needs kid.

living in El Salvador with a dad who's in a terrorist prison for life.

And his mom is a U.S.

citizen.

So what is she going to do?

So

tell me, tell any reasonable person, look at me and tell me which path do you prefer for this child as a member of the party of fucking pro-life?

Tell me that you love children, right?

You want to save onboard babies.

How about this child who's right now who's, you know, to use Elon Musk's favorite metaphor, he's ahead of the fork in the road.

And you got to pick the path for him.

Which one are you going to pick?

Are you going to pick the wrong one just because he's brown?

Or are you going to pick the right one?

George Carlin said it best.

If you're pre-birth, you're good.

And if you're pre-K, you're fucked.

Well, and even look at it, if they let him stay in the country,

but they get rid of the Department of Education.

And depending on where he lives, that

special education funding doesn't exist.

And, you know, some states will step up, but some states won't.

But the other part of this is that you are also ensuring that that person, that kid, probably needs assistance.

for the rest of his life.

It is more efficient to do this and also morally the right thing to do.

And instead, we have fucking RFK Jr.

going out last week talking about the fact that autistic people will never be contributors to society.

The first thing he said was, they're not going to pay taxes.

First of all, what a fucking awful thing to say.

And the first thing that you say about somebody that's a negative is that they're not paying taxes.

And then now he has said that they are going, the federal government is going to create a registry, meaning a list of all Autistic people Philippe

or not.

And I think most Americans, like, they'll say they care about people with disabilities, but those issues generally get pushed aside.

But I think in the last week, when we saw that this administration doesn't give a shit about due process and is now starting or HIPAA and HIPAA on the next one, and we're going to start creating lists, I think a lot of Americans are like, fuck you.

Like, no, fuck you, you cricket-throated piece of shit.

Right.

I'll get a little, get a little, little, get a little like Luke here for a second.

But like, I think the combination of those two things, because the thing is, a lot of people, like everybody has somebody in their family that is probably neurodivergent, whether they know it or not.

So it's going to make people like they're going to think about their family members and the due process.

Trump said on a hot mic, well, we want to do this for American citizens next.

Like this is, this is fascist shit and it is no longer in theory.

This is what they are going to do.

And I think that the combination of a bunch of these things, plus the economy just not doing particularly well at the moment,

I think it's going to tank him, but that's also a very scary place to be too.

I don't think that I've talked about it on this podcast yet, but I am a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government to try and get Doge out of several departments.

And the basis of the lawsuit is that everything that Elon Musk and the Doggy Boys are doing is a violation of the Privacy Act.

The reason the Privacy Act was passed in the 1970s was after Watergate, when Richard

Nixon started using the powers of the federal government, the FBI, et cetera, to spy on American citizens and to build enemies lists.

So the prospect of RFK Jr.

working with Elon Musk and the doggy boys to assemble these massive lists that are cross-referencing everything from health care to your education and your debts, from your student loan debts, to

your service, if you ever worked for the military or as a federal contractor, to things like FEC records,

your voting and your donating history.

That should scare the shit out of everyone.

And I am not quite certain why it's not a bigger deal than it is.

I can't believe that

even within Trump's administration, there aren't people going, well, if we can build an enemies list, a master list, the other guys can too.

Like

assuming Democrats someday come back into the White House, they would have all of the powers that Republicans have right now.

I don't think Republicans want us to have that power.

So

can't we like tell MAGA, guys, you don't want us to have that power.

You shouldn't either.

That's where I wanted to go with that, which is

let's just make a trade.

I mean, you can see that I'm a citizen.

You can see that I pay pay my taxes.

That's fine.

You can see that I maybe had an antibiotic like five years ago for like a sinus infection.

This is great information.

I'll tell you what, I'll trade you that information for a full-on registry that cross-applies name, identity, home address, let's say gun ownership, domestic violence charges,

stock ownership.

mental health history, any civil charges or criminal charges for illicit or lewd behavior, maybe things like that, DUI arrests, tax records, your social media posts, and maybe like your phone calls and your text history.

And let's just put all that together and

let's see who wins in the end.

I want to see this like on a reality TV show of

let's take the top 20 Republicans on that list with the most of the juiciest stuff and let's compare them to the top 20 Democrats and let's just let's just have it out.

Let's see which is the party of you know law and order and family values and Christian life.

And Christian life.

And let's see which party is just quietly going about their business

thinking, wait, I'm not trying to game every single system.

I didn't know that that was a thing that people could do.

I know how this would end, but I would love to watch it.

Yeah, it's it's funny to see these people either indifferent or pro lists of people when there's things like a gun registry is not something that's legal in this country.

And, you know, that if you'd want like one list, then you got to be okay with the other, it seems like.

And honestly, honestly, like the gun registry list probably would save thousands of lives also, because we keep selling guns to people who are prohibited because our background check system is so screwed up and it requires police officers to go back into hostile situations to get those guns back.

It's about 6,000 per year.

So every fucking time I saw one of those idiots in Texas that had that dumbass gun save lives sticker on.

Fuck.

My blood pressure shot about 50 every time.

So I worked for every town for gun safety for two, almost two years.

So I know a fair amount about this.

And that whole argument is just so completely insane because there is literally a, talking about lists, of all, most of the mass shootings in this country.

There was somebody with a gun somewhere, a good guy with a gun somewhere.

But, and Chris would know this better than me with his military service, but like good guys don't just fire into the crowd to try to shoot the bad guy.

They don't fire back because they're going to cause collateral damage.

It doesn't work.

There are no, almost no examples of good guys stopping bad guys with guns without people dying.

Like Gabby Giffords, there was a shooter.

There was a gunman there.

At Stone, the

one in Parkland, there was a security guard with a gun who literally cowered and hid.

Like, and look, and I'm talking about the

cops stood outside.

You talk about it.

It was over an hour.

And they had, and they were armed to the teeth.

It's Texas and they didn't do anything.

I'm glad that that sheriff got fired.

The police chief got fired because that is one of the worst things I've ever heard.

Because you choose that profession, and your job is to save those people.

They didn't do it.

So, that the gun thing, I'll have that debate all day long because it is so obvious that you can have

responsible gun owners and stronger gun laws and save lives.

It is so obvious, even just a background check.

30 states, you can buy a gun without a background check because you just go online and you meet somebody in a parking lot, you give them cash,

gone.

Yep, nothing.

You know, and I want people to know as, as they're listening to this, that this is not a bunch of people who are anti-gun lefty liberals.

I own a gun.

I'm wearing a firearm right now.

You guys have enough left.

You get your guns back.

I have a concealed carry permit.

He's not the only one.

So there is such a thing as responsible and safe.

gun ownership.

And you know what?

I wouldn't have a problem with

the records of what firearms I own or might sell or might be buying.

I wouldn't have a problem with that list being federalized.

New York State has it.

It is on the back of

my permit.

The registration for every single gun has to be on the back of my concealed carry permit.

I don't understand

what kind of American

is afraid of that.

The same people that walk around afraid that they're going to have some kind of a fucking,

you know, same people who are constantly fucking ready that they're going to break into their house and they have to murder somebody.

Like they live in a constant state of paranoia.

Since we started, I know we need to wrap.

Since we started with the Unfawk America tour, this is a perfect tie back in because

a person in the audience pushed Charlie Kirk on this and he pointed out some, he had statistics he was ready to go about

how

illegal gun ownership and gun crimes are, they create the single most dangerous encounters for police officers who have to then go and try to get those guns from

those people when those crimes happen.

And so his argument was we can protect police officers' lives if we know more about gun ownership.

And Charlie Kirk actually conceded, he said, that's a really good argument, which is the closest to taking an L he'll do publicly.

He said, that's a really good argument.

And I could see you're arguing in good faith, blah, blah, blah.

And ultimately, he came back to creating a registry, textbook slippery slope.

The only reason you'd create a gun registration is so that you could plan in the future to take them away.

And he just left it on that.

And now you look at, what are you guys trying to do with

people with autism again?

What are you going to do with this list of?

So do you want to talk about slippery slope arguments and lists?

Because you guys are doing it everywhere.

And you're saying that it's not the case.

We actually have the Constitution protecting our gun rights.

Having our name on a list that says, oh, that's rich, owns, you know, what do I own?

A tenant.

We're all on a list, a separate bomb.

I have no illegal weapons, actually.

But we have guns in the family and they're fun to shoot.

I'll be the first one to say that.

as long as you're out of range and you're shooting them legally.

Nothing wrong with that.

And the Second Amendment protects that right.

So

it's a bullshit argument and they still cherry-pick it whenever they need it for their own ridiculous reasons.

And we're going to, I want to end this with, with even Justice Antonin Scalia ruled back in the day that you could have limits on gun ownership based on certain criteria.

They've, they're even there, like their holy grail of Supreme Court justices has said that.

There are quotes.

You can go look them up.

Anyways, we'll probably dive into the gun thing at another one because there probably will be a horrific event while we're doing this show at some point because we don't do anything about guns.

And I quote, these things just happen.

Donald Trump.

Yep.

Yep.

Just get over.

Basically, he said that too.

Guys, I have a quick confession.

For a second there, Tim, you just made me miss Anton and Scalina.

Oh, my God.

I just, I had to get it out because it was eating me up inside.

Dude,

it was there for a second.

My opinion of you just went down a little bit.

Oh, my God.

I'm going to have to

end on a a good note.

Rich and I got to meet for the first time in person in Texas.

That's nice.

And it was the coolest fucking thing ever.

Like I like him way more than I did before.

He's the fucking best.

We had a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun.

And Luke is absolutely awesome.

He is exactly as

packaged.

Like he's just

this guy.

He's a little taller than you might expect.

I think it's a camera angle thing.

And I had a lot of people tell me I was shorter than they expected, actually.

And actually,

if anybody's listening still, we have about seven, eight listeners.

I know where you're going with this.

I want to challenge our listeners to post in the comments wherever you're watching this.

How tall do you think each of us are?

Yeah, yeah.

I knew that.

I know that we're here.

I want to hear that.

I want to hear that.

Yeah, you do.

Let's go all five.

Just post like what height do you think we are

based on how we carry ourselves?

Well, this will be a wonderful segue into, and where you can do that is going to our sub stack, which is findoutpodcast.substack.com.

We will have a chat dedicated to this episode seven.

I also want to make a separate exciting announcement that we now have merchandise that you can purchase.

And because we live our values or are trying to, all of our stuff is made in America.

And I think at least the embroidery and things is also all union.

So

we, you know, you'll see in there that maybe the prices are a little bit higher, but that's because we're supporting Americans doing, doing great work here in the U.S.

So you can see that also on our Substack, which is findoutpodcast.substack.com.

As always, thank you everybody for listening.

I think we have more than seven or eight because we keep getting comments about going longer.

And I'm like, my God, you guys want to hear us go longer than this?

But I think an hour and 15 is pretty good for this episode.

So, and I think in the coming weeks, we'll probably, we've got some stuff in the works that I think people will be really excited to hear about, which we will, we'll talk about then.

But, you know, if you want to buy a t-shirt and support some American businesses, go do that on Substack.

And until next time, guys, thank you again for everything and have a great day.