Find Out: How The Right Weaponized Masculinity

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

Speaker 1 This is our second episode, and that little pause there was because I'm still a little in shock with the reaction that we got to our first episode, which, as of tonight, we were taping it on Sunday night.

Speaker 1 We are close to 40,000 downloads and plays across all platforms. And to give you a little bit of a background into

Speaker 1 what that number really means, to be in the top 25% of podcasts, you need about 120 downloads. And we are close to 40,000.

Speaker 1 And all of us here are pretty blown away. We're going to talk about it for in a second.
But first, just want to thank everybody for taking a chance on us.

Speaker 1 You know, we're six dudes that live all across the country and probably never heard any of our names before. And we hit number 29 on the Apple podcast charts.

Speaker 1 Not any of the categories, the main chart with one episode.

Speaker 1 I'm going to turn it to Chris because he remembers all of the names of the people we beat better than I do. So, Chris,

Speaker 1 tell the folks some of the people that we managed to pass in the last five days.

Speaker 3 So, for those who don't know me, I swim in right-wing disinformation all day, every day. Like, that is my job.
I research disinformation, extremism, and all the like. So,

Speaker 3 here are some of the names that we we surpassed in just

Speaker 3 three days. I think it took us three days to max out at 29.
Yep. Tucker Carlson.
Uh, we got past Charlie Kirk, who Gavin Newsom brought on as a special guest to his new show.

Speaker 5 We'll talk about that.

Speaker 3 Steve Bannon, who is one of the most influential far-right influencers. Remember that racist guy at the Madison Square Garden rally with Trump? Killed Tommy.

Speaker 2 He's like all the way in like 150, right?

Speaker 3 We passed Ben Shapiro. We passed Gavin Newsom, by the way, the governor of California, who just launched his new podcast.
We're still ahead of him right now.

Speaker 6 It's crazy.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is wild. The list of people that we're going with Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, these guys are all millionaires.

Speaker 5 They all have staff.

Speaker 3 They all have professional studios. I was in my basement, my unfinished, freezing basement last week because there was too much noise in the rest of the house with construction going on.

Speaker 3 Like, that is amazing, guys.

Speaker 2 It's crazy.

Speaker 7 I had, like,

Speaker 7 I think I asked before we did this, like, did any of you just have a moment where it's like, is this real?

Speaker 7 And all of us were like, I mean, we all had that moment of like, there's no way this is accurate, like, right? And, but it is. It's crazy.

Speaker 7 It's, it's so wild to think that, like, we did one episode and we just absolutely destroyed a bunch of people who have established audiences that are entrenched in a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 7 It's pretty fucking cool.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I kept checking the rankings to be like, is this like, is this like Nebraska only or something like that? Like, what am I, what am I missing? Because I'm obviously missing something.

Speaker 2 Honestly, I think, I think the whole thing is kind of an indictment of the popularity of podcasting, to be honest. Like, if you only need 150 hours, I'm like, who's is this just an empty room?

Speaker 2 And we're like, yes, we're number one. I'm fine with it.
I'm fine with it. I got my two.

Speaker 4 I'll tell you. So we're all old, except for Luke.

Speaker 3 And like, you know, we feel like we're like peaking.

Speaker 5 Luke,

Speaker 3 what's it feel like to reach a top 20, top 30 podcast at the age of 21?

Speaker 8 I mean, Tim sent that like first, oh, look where we are on the leaderboard. And we were like 130th or something.
I was like, holy shit, like, is this the best we're going to do?

Speaker 8 And then it just kept going wheel.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, shit.

Speaker 8 I mean, it's pretty awesome. It's probably the coolest thing I've done so far with social media anyway.

Speaker 6 I'm feeding on all of of your guys' excitement over it because to me, numbers are

Speaker 6 like, you know, we got Rich over here constantly giving us analytics on

Speaker 6 everything.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, okay, those are cool numbers, I guess.

Speaker 5 I like your funny words, Magic Man.

Speaker 6 It's

Speaker 6 all your excitement that is really what's the most fun for me about it.

Speaker 1 Well, let's let's talk, let's dive into a little bit about why we think this, because I think that's the important thing here.

Speaker 1 And I think we're all kind of you know obviously the last few months have been miserable let's not even beat around the bush like it has sucked it has been royally bad lots of painful things happening a lot of people getting hurt and i think people have been a little deflated lately um but we're starting i think we're starting to see uh some green shoots and some hope and that people are stepping up and realizing that they do have a voice and that there are people that are like them.

Speaker 1 And I think that's partially why we have done so well. There isn't anything like this on the left.
It doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 And I think there are a lot of people, I mean, the review, not the reviews, but the comments that we're getting from people are incredible. And men, women across the board, like,

Speaker 1 you know, people of color, white people, you know, everybody is seems really, really into this and really thinks that there is a need for it.

Speaker 1 So I, you know, I'd love to hear from everybody really about

Speaker 1 from their perspective, what they think this means.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I mean, I expected way more pushback on the fact that we're six white guys.
I just, yeah, I think we all kind of did to a certain degree.

Speaker 7 But, like, you know, Rich was saying before we came on here of like every single time somebody brought that up, they just got smacked the fuck down right away.

Speaker 7 Because, you know, they, the, what I like about this is I think one of the things that the left has had a problem with is that people feel afraid to speak up about certain things.

Speaker 7 And this show is like, who cares? Like, just say whatever, like, just speak your mind and be whoever you are. It's six white guys.
So what?

Speaker 7 It doesn't, we're not, you know, that doesn't make us wrong or bad. It just, it's just what we are.

Speaker 7 And I think that the fact that people care about the content of what we're saying as opposed to the context in which we're saying it, that means everything.

Speaker 3 I mean, the most impactful things that I got were a couple of really long and detailed emails with like some

Speaker 3 really great feedback. One of them was from a,

Speaker 3 and I'll keep the details light because I don't want to, you know,

Speaker 3 share this person's, you know, identity, right?

Speaker 3 They were younger than me, young white male, uh, served in the U.S. Marine Corps, uh, got out, worked in counterterrorism, like global security type of stuff, now is in a three-letter agency.

Speaker 3 And he said that he, you know, had been struggling with his political views, like me.

Speaker 3 Uh, he, when he was in the military, was like kind of far right, he was libertarian, and he's been troubled by Trump. And the guy wrote that in 20, uh,

Speaker 3 in the election,

Speaker 3 he almost voted for Trump and ended up voting for Kamala in the end. But it wasn't until he listened to our first episode that he decided he's like, you guys are right.

Speaker 3 I need to choose a side and I'm choosing a side now. And I'm going to go register as a Democrat.

Speaker 3 I mean, that

Speaker 3 came within hours of Tim putting the podcast online. Like this ended up in this guy's feed before we, I think we're even awake and promoting it.

Speaker 2 Hell yeah. Right.
That's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's wild.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I think the reality is like, you know, representation matters.

Speaker 1 It matters for all people.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think that obviously white men are the toughest demographic for Democrats or for people on the left in general.

Speaker 1 By far, it's not even close.

Speaker 1 You know, if we, if we wiped away five points of Trump's victory with white men, that's a different election. And so I think representation does matter.

Speaker 1 And I think, you know, I've talked to folks and say, I don't really feel like I have a place in the party. And these are friends of mine.

Speaker 1 And the reality is like they have, there's been a lot of right-wing misinformation out there talking about Democrats and framing things.

Speaker 1 You know, these, the conversations like, well, if Democrats call me racist or all these other things. And the reality is the Democrats don't do that, but the Republicans and the and their media

Speaker 1 apparatus say we do, and they pound that message over and over again. So like having something like this for that community matters.

Speaker 1 And I think it's been wonderful to see the reaction from the traditional Democratic base of women and women of color who have overwhelmingly just said, we're so glad you guys are here.

Speaker 1 You know, obviously it took us a little while to get here. We should have been here years ago, but like we're here.
And I think people are ready for it.

Speaker 1 And so I think that's the really exciting thing. And again, 40,000 downloads are, it is impossible to argue that we haven't tapped into something.

Speaker 2 One of my, I don't know, I wish I could call her a mentor, but I think we only had one meaningful encounter as humans, but an inspirational figure.

Speaker 2 I spoke with maybe five, six years ago.

Speaker 2 She described, we were talking about DEI and she was, she described meeting people halfway as, hey, This is how I approach people who are maybe hostile to my worldview or my approach.

Speaker 2 And she said, I can build the bridge, but I can only come halfway across. And I'll hold out my hand.
You got to meet me halfway. And when I look at that in the context of what we're trying to do here,

Speaker 2 there are, I think I pointed out in a video recently, 105 million white men in America. If you say 18 plus straight white men, we're talking about a minimum of 85 million, 90 million.

Speaker 2 That... That decides elections.
That decides every election, frankly, if you win enough of them or if you lose enough of them. And so I hate winning or I hate losing.
Sorry.

Speaker 2 I actually was going to say what? I was going to say, hey, I love it. That's not my choice.
Start over.

Speaker 2 I hate losing more than I like winning. I'm one of those people.
And so for me, it's not an option through that lens to just say, listen,

Speaker 2 you guys are idiots. I hate you.
You shouldn't vote. You're all wrong.

Speaker 2 Even if all of that is correct, or even if I firmly believe all of that, it doesn't change the fact that I can't outvote 85, 90 million people who now are looking at me and thinking, what is this guy's problem?

Speaker 2 Because maybe they're keeping politics and social issues at arm's length or they just don't care as much because it doesn't personally impact them.

Speaker 2 So I think I was anxious to do this in the first place because I felt like this is a this is objectively bad optics, right? You guys like we're all crazy, right? To think this is going to work.

Speaker 6 I think it's worth noting that nobody sat around and said, hey,

Speaker 6 let's do a podcast. What would she do? What would she do?

Speaker 6 What should we do?

Speaker 6 It's not like we said, let's develop a podcast with six white guys sitting around talking about stuff. We said, hey, we're all

Speaker 6 having some really good conversations about all this stuff. We should do a podcast.
It just happens to be we're six white guys.

Speaker 3 Well, I think that we should tell people. uh a secret and that is that the original intended name was supposed to be the soy boys

Speaker 2 and the beta boys and the beta boys

Speaker 7 yeah that was our original like whatsapp chat title i think the beta boys

Speaker 7 because it's i mean like i think it's funny though because the whole idea is like every single time i see these right-wing creators and like doing this like i'm an alpha male and like especially you know what actually pisses me off more is the female right-wing creators who are like if you're a liberal man you're just automatically a beta it's like what the how did this happen How did they get into entrenched in this mindset?

Speaker 7 And it's like, I'm not saying that all six of us here at alphas is definitely like a scale of alpha to beta-type men from that perspective, but like,

Speaker 7 you have to define masculinity differently.

Speaker 7 Like, if you're going to look at masculinity from the sense of like, do you go to work while your wife stays home and you come home and you're just an asshole to her all the time?

Speaker 7 Like, is that the definition of masculinity? I, I, that's all of us have like functional relationships with our partner in our life. That's masculine.

Speaker 7 You know, I don't care what you say. Redefining the whole thing is what's important to meet the moment of what we're going through in life.
This isn't isn't 1955. It's 2025.

Speaker 1 I completely agree.

Speaker 1 And I think that the, I mean, a lot of it is this, you know, you're going to hear me talk about this till I'm blue in the face, but that's that right-wing echo chamber that tells them that that is, that is the way to be.

Speaker 1 And I'm sorry, but I just don't subscribe to a definition of masculinity that, you know, attacks trans people, attacks people of color, and

Speaker 1 it doesn't treat people with kindness and respect.

Speaker 1 Now, yes, you should be strong, but strong strong is also a term that has not been, is not really well defined in this country either, because people look at Donald Trump and see, see strength.

Speaker 1 I see weakness

Speaker 1 because when weak people put people down and weak people attack other people, and I think it's time for us, and I think we've seen, again, from comments and feedback, like there are a lot of men out there who are tired of it.

Speaker 1 It's not just white men, all men are tired of this and don't want to be pegged with this sort of bullshit, macho nonsense from like an 80s movie or something about how you're supposed to act.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just completely ridiculous. And I'm glad to see everybody getting, getting

Speaker 1 wise to that fact. And I want to, I want to ask Luke this, because Luke, obviously we keep going to the youngest guy, but like,

Speaker 1 I'm curious how you have felt about this and the definitions of masculinity and all of these sort of things as a, as a, as a college student today in the middle of America.

Speaker 8 I mean, honestly, it's my contention that if you use the words alpha or beta unironically to describe how masculine you are, you're a fucking loser.

Speaker 2 Like, just straight up.

Speaker 8 I do not take you seriously as a person. And moreover, like, if you have genuinely convinced yourself that Donald Trump is the masculine choice, go fuck yourself.

Speaker 8 Like, nothing about that man is like positive masculinity. Maybe he's negative masculinity, but like.

Speaker 2 Have you seen him drink a bottle of water?

Speaker 2 How many hands?

Speaker 2 How many fingers do you need on a plastic bottle in order to drink some of the water that's in it? It's unreal.

Speaker 1 Well, but Rich, the hands aren't that big, remember? They're very, very small.

Speaker 7 Teeny tiny.

Speaker 8 And the interesting thing about it for me is like, if he's so masculine, why the fuck do you have to use AI on every picture you post of him?

Speaker 8 Like, if, like, if he's, if he's the epidity of masculinity, why do you edit muscles onto him?

Speaker 7 He looks like you in every AI thing I see. It's Luke.
It's Luke with Trump's face.

Speaker 8 Well, he's like minus 50 pounds and minus 10% body fat.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Well, let's go. Let's go to the, Vic, I'm curious.

Speaker 1 So during White Toots for Harris, you were featured uh a few times by the harris campaign because you had that that amazing slogan that frankly made people think you were a republican uh and then you gave the surprise at the end so i you know

Speaker 1 i'm curious what you're you're thinking on the masculinity question as well um

Speaker 6 yeah well as a man who's been married for almost 31 years come july june

Speaker 7 looks back at his wife to confirm

Speaker 2 she just helped you out with technical difficulties, too.

Speaker 6 As somebody who's going on 31 years of marriage, I like to think that

Speaker 6 if I was not masculine, she would have let me know by now. I just, I've never bought into why

Speaker 2 it works

Speaker 6 to me. I mean, this whole, why do they keep talking about the masculinity thing?

Speaker 6 Because any woman I've known, my daughter, my wife, my daughters-in-law, if you start talking about or masculine, the first thing they're thinking is, but are you?

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 6 if you have to say it, then you're probably not.

Speaker 6 And it's a foreign concept to me to be bragging about being masculine.

Speaker 3 So I saw a brilliant TikTok today by a creator who goes by Jordan Gray.

Speaker 3 This woman

Speaker 3 explained how

Speaker 3 this masculinity thing

Speaker 3 for folks like Elon Musk, how they view masculinity and kind of the,

Speaker 5 you know, what I see.

Speaker 6 You purchase my masculinity.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what a lot of us, I think, you know, see is the Joe Rogan crowd, right? And when I say us, I mean liberals, the left.

Speaker 3 We look at people who listen to Joe Rogan and we think like, oh, they're all misogynists. We're probably wrong about the majority of the audience, but let's just admit that.

Speaker 3 But the way that Jordan explained this was

Speaker 3 they are resource guarding when they assign a value to a woman based on her looks because

Speaker 3 it makes them feel masculine if they can like put a woman down or put a woman in their place and then take that woman out into public and basically say, hey, look, look what I was able to achieve.

Speaker 3 Jordan talks about how, you know, this manifests in legislation. Like legislation to control women's bodies to stop them from being able to get abortions is kind of like

Speaker 3 one of these wannabe alpha moves where they're like, well, no, I locked it down. You know, I got her pregnant and that's it.
Like we're married now, right?

Speaker 3 That's this old school thinking of treating women like property. And that is the way that these guys who are obsessed with this beta alpha system,

Speaker 3 that's the way that they view women and that's the way that they view themselves they can push all these things like you're talking about because

Speaker 6 on a one-on-one basis these guys cannot attract a woman

Speaker 6 they have to legislate things against the women to say look at how tough and brave i am and look at how in control i am because they do not have the capacity to actually be in control of anything

Speaker 7 I mean, I think one of the other things that's interesting about it, too, is like, in this day and age, women respond to men who are able to tap into how they feel.

Speaker 7 And I think that's a huge epicenter of how this is all being framed is like the alpha men of the right are dudes that don't want to talk about that stuff, right?

Speaker 7 They just want to get as far away from it as possible. But women are responding to that less and less.
And men have to realize that like.

Speaker 7 the emotional side of you is not a beta element of your personality. It does not, like, even trying to define it within the structure of alpha and beta is irrelevant.

Speaker 7 It's just like one of those things where like men have been been groomed to think like, oh, I can't feel. That's a horrible thing to feel.
It's like, dude, you're a human being.

Speaker 7 You can feel what the fuck you want. Like, and even you, and then that like spiders out into all the things that you like as a person.
Like for me personally, like, I love the NFL.

Speaker 7 I love football, but I also love fucking interior design. It doesn't make me an alpha or beta.
I just like different shit. And like, that's okay, you know?

Speaker 7 And I think that the structure of how that's all been built on the alpha side is so simplistic and stupid that at a certain point, the construct just comes under under attack.

Speaker 7 And I think that a lot of what happens on the right now is like all these constructs that have been under attack for a long time, they're just trying as hard as they can to defend them.

Speaker 7 And eventually they'll fall. But right now, it's not the moment, apparently.

Speaker 2 I think that's

Speaker 2 you, you alluded to something that just drives me crazy about the right-wing definition of men, which is they don't meet their own definition of masculine.

Speaker 2 Like they don't, that's not even my, that's not how I prescribe or define masculinity, but there is so much insecurity in their definition and their version of masculinity.

Speaker 2 And in my head, masculinity is, you know, let's go with some, let's just go with the dumb cliche stereotypes. A man who can just wear a pink tutu to support his daughter at a ballet recital.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 And look around and be like, hell yeah, dude, I'm supporting my daughter because as the male role model in my family,

Speaker 2 this is my role so that my daughter grows up confident and strong. So she has a healthy understanding of what it means to be a leader or a person in a position of power.
100%.

Speaker 2 And so, and they, they can't do that by their own definition. And so it, they destroy themselves.

Speaker 2 And it's kind of embarrassing because I want to just show them, like, if you could just be comfortable with who you are

Speaker 2 and you could just put that out in the world. You're weird.
You know, suicide rates are going to go down, believe it or not.

Speaker 2 Definitely. All of the bad stuff.
They'll take you a whole lot more fucking seriously, too. True.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 All of the dangerous things, all of the unhealthy things, all the self-destructive things, those all go away when you're comfortable in your own skin.

Speaker 2 And you actually end up exuding more confidence, more power, more leadership because you feel comfortable in whoever you are.

Speaker 6 I got to push back real quick, just something real small.

Speaker 6 Zach, you said something about in this day and age, the women, I don't remember exactly how you phrased it, but as the old guy here, I can tell you, a long time ago, when I was Luke's age,

Speaker 6 it was like that. The women respected the men who cared about how they felt.
That's always been the case.

Speaker 6 I think that the Rogans and the Kirks and all them right-wing radicals are just trying to exploit the idea more than anything.

Speaker 7 No, for sure. I think you're right about that.
I think that, you know, look, when you look at how this is structured today, I think it's just like the conversation becomes more open, right?

Speaker 7 So I think that if you've rewind,

Speaker 7 you'd find people who feel the same way as they feel today. But I think like today,

Speaker 7 the threat to the right is the fact that more and more men are willing to just openly say, like, hey, I'm a feeling person and that's okay.

Speaker 7 I think that that existed in the past, but today it's like, it's, it's more okay.

Speaker 2 It's not okay enough.

Speaker 7 And that's why we're having this conversation, but it's not okay enough yet. But it's,

Speaker 1 I think this is all 100% right. And I think this is also why the right focuses on culture wars.

Speaker 1 They want to blame, they want to put the blame on other people because they need to distract from the fact that they haven't done anything.

Speaker 1 I mean, the reality is the Republican Party has done nothing for poor and working class or middle-class Americans in decades. This is a fact.

Speaker 1 You can look at the jobs numbers from Democratic presidents to Republicans, which is like something like 45 million to one or two million.

Speaker 7 51 to 1.

Speaker 2 51 to 1.

Speaker 7 51 million to 1 million.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And that's, and I think, I think

Speaker 1 Republicans got four extra years in there because it started with, if you go back to H.W. George Bush 88,

Speaker 1 you know, are

Speaker 1 any of the infrastructure stuff that we passed, the rescue plans, like, but this is, but they blame immigrants.

Speaker 1 This is why you have people in states that don't border another country saying immigration is their biggest concern, even though it is not like for their issue.

Speaker 1 But like, this is what the right has done.

Speaker 5 And I'll be honest, like, it's worked.

Speaker 1 So like, that's why it's like, great, we're doing this because I think this is our small way of trying to say, there is another way. Come with us.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I mean, to me, I, and this might be, I think a lot of Democrats would maybe dispute this perspective, but my perspective is this is all a gigantic delay tactic.

Speaker 7 Like, the right knows they've lost.

Speaker 7 Like, it's just a lot, like, they haven't lost yet, but the long, like, if you fast forward to when my daughter, who's four now, is 50, what their vision of reality is going to be is nowhere close to what actual reality is going to be.

Speaker 7 They know they've lost. Society has left them.

Speaker 7 They're just using the remaining power they have to make society structure around how they think the old world was supposed to continue, but it's not going to.

Speaker 7 So it's like, yeah, we're suffering through their last throes of lunacy at the moment. But if you fast forward a few decades, their perspective is going to be buried underground.

Speaker 7 There's no question in my mind.

Speaker 1 So I want to transition just a little bit here

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 Governor Newsom's podcast that he has launched, because we've talked a lot about

Speaker 1 how the right has basically

Speaker 1 convinced a whole generation of men that they need to be Republicans. So, we Democrats or liberals, however, you want to identify yourself, have to find ways to reach out.

Speaker 1 And so, Gavin Newsom has done this. He has had a few episodes so far where I believe he has interviewed Charlie Kirk, who is about as far right-wing extremist as you can get.

Speaker 1 Steve Bannon, exactly the same.

Speaker 2 Michael Savage. Did he do Michael Savage too?

Speaker 2 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, I kind of just gave away what we all think about this, but I was going to say, it's not a shot.

Speaker 1 What do we think about this approach by the governor?

Speaker 1 And do we think it was smart, not smart?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 2 So should I defend him first and then you guys eviscerate me? Or I don't know. Go for it.
Yes, please do. Please do.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I went through a lot of things as I looked at his guest list and as I started listening, he did not push back. I listened to Stephen Bannon's episode first.
He did not push back on the election lie.

Speaker 2 There was another big lie that he didn't push back on, but it felt like this is weak liberalism as a cliche put into a podcast. And then as I listened to it,

Speaker 2 I went through a lot of processes

Speaker 2 coming to grips with the fact that my natural instinct is to is to hide from these voices and hope that they go away. Like that's, that's what I want to do first.

Speaker 2 And so then as I'm listening to Stephen Bannon and I'm thinking, God damn it, this guy sounds smart.

Speaker 2 He's very articulate. He's a brainwashing master, if you want to put it that way, which is probably the most appropriate.

Speaker 2 I got to the end of it. I thought about it a lot, and I realized you can't hide from these people.

Speaker 2 We have to, like, this conversation is happening, and it's happening with the people that we're all collectively talking about here.

Speaker 2 It's just happening without any women, any marginalized people, and any progressive men in the room.

Speaker 2 And so we're just hiding from it, you know, in academia, in research, in science, in our liberal echo chambers, and thinking, hey, like, we're very safe here as long as we get Kamala Harris elected.

Speaker 2 Then you start losing and you think, oh, God, we might have to do something about this. And

Speaker 2 the way I thought about it, to use a very familiar metaphor that I'm sure we've all heard.

Speaker 2 If you go to a zoo and you see a leopard and then you go home and then you go to work, you're not going to be like oh my god everybody at work i saw this leopard at the zoo it was crazy but now if you go to the zoo and there's a dozen leopards and they break out of their enclosure and they start eating the faces of all of the zoo visitors and they eat half of your face and you get to work and you're all torn up you're probably going to say hey we have a little bit of a leopard problem

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we need to probably address this.

Speaker 2 People have lost their faces,

Speaker 2 including myself. I think that's where we're at with MAGA.

Speaker 2 I thought of like, is this a cancer metaphor? I went with the leopard metaphor, but this is happening and it's real and it's painful and it's brutal.

Speaker 2 And liberals, classic liberals, are not good at confronting that kind of a challenge.

Speaker 2 Chris liberals and Luke liberals, and I think Vic liberals are maybe a little, you know, leftists, whatever you want to call them, or maybe a little better at meeting that conflict head on.

Speaker 2 Certainly liberals or however you wanted to call them, the people who fought Nazis when we actually fought Nazis.

Speaker 2 They probably didn't call themselves, you know, hippie liberal progressives, and yet they were doing the work that we're all asking Americans to do right now today. So

Speaker 2 there's a reality that we don't want to confront that's incredibly uncomfortable, and yet it's happening to us. And so we either confront it or not.

Speaker 2 And I think Gavin, he didn't say all the things that I would say if I were in a room with those guys, but he's starting that incremental process of doing what has to be done.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 Rich, I think that your metaphor was great.

Speaker 3 And I

Speaker 3 am glad that you came away with those lessons.

Speaker 3 But I will be honest, I just don't trust the average American who's exposed to that kind of shit to come away with the same impression.

Speaker 3 You know, and

Speaker 3 part of my response to this, I think, is anger at

Speaker 3 Newsome-like characters in the Democratic Party who have not been taking people like me and people from my industry seriously.

Speaker 3 I watch, so I'm a threat analyst, right? So part of what I do is I predict things like January 6th.

Speaker 3 And in the months leading up to January 6th, I was watching what figures like Steve Bannon and Nick Fuentes

Speaker 3 were doing around the country. And

Speaker 3 they were talking about the insurrection happening out in the open. And people like me were listening.
And we were bringing the receipts. We were bringing the evidence.
Hell,

Speaker 3 I was recording the 3% Security Force as they were talking about raiding the capital of Georgia, right? And

Speaker 3 live-fire drills, practicing raiding the Georgia state capitol.

Speaker 3 I was sending videos to the FBI and to journalists of members of the 3% security force outside the governor's mansion in the days after the 2020 election, shouting things like,

Speaker 3 traitors get the rope, right?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 Democrats didn't fucking listen to me. And I watched January 6th happen.
from the perspective of the insurrectionists.

Speaker 3 For anyone who's listening to this, you can't see anything, but if you're looking at me on this screen right now, I have four feet of monitors in front of me.

Speaker 3 I watched January 6th happen from the perspective of multiple insurrectionists who live streamed it, right?

Speaker 3 People in my industry have been screaming from the rooftops that the leopards are eating faces.

Speaker 3 And I don't think that Gavin Newsom, having two leopards on in a row is going to make a big difference.

Speaker 3 I think what it is doing is it is, because he's not doing the truth sandwich, and I know I'm going on long, but this is important. There's a thing called the truth sandwich.

Speaker 3 And if you are going to have someone on who you know is going to lie and you know what they're going to lie about, you have to pre-bunk, they lie, and then on the end, you have to debunk.

Speaker 3 Because if you just let them lie and you don't push back and you have not pre-bunked, you have not pre-buttled their argument before the audience hears it.

Speaker 3 The net effect is that people who listen to these arguments on the net, not every individual, will start to believe that it is true. So by allowing Steve Bannon, especially Steve Bannon

Speaker 3 and Charlie Kirk to have a platform, I think that the science says that Gavin Newsom has done our country harm.

Speaker 7 I have a question for you actually on that, because my perspective watching Newsom's podcast, because I caught like you know 10 15 minutes of it here but the general takeaway for me was I didn't care that he platformed them because I think it's okay like I get thrown off when it's like hey don't platform these guys like no we need to we need to be able to have the conversation I think he did a terrible job with the conversation so my question is if he had handled it in the way that you're describing it setting it up in a way where he's actually putting his guests in a position to be on the back foot as opposed to pressing forward, do you think that would have been a beneficial conversation then?

Speaker 7 Or do you think it still would have been bad?

Speaker 3 I think that it is totally legitimate to

Speaker 3 expose a liar.

Speaker 3 I think that

Speaker 3 like we watched the presidential debates, right? And it was the Biden campaign.

Speaker 8 I'm just going to bring that up.

Speaker 3 The Biden campaign was like, no moderators, no fact-checking, right?

Speaker 3 That was the dumbest thing that I think any presidential campaign has ever done in anything related to debates.

Speaker 3 So simply not responding to

Speaker 3 lies, not fact-checking in real time is so, so, so, so damaging because the average listener who isn't obsessed with politics like the six of us,

Speaker 3 they're going to come away with a different impression than the rest of us.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 7 That's true.

Speaker 1 So, so yeah, I want to give an example that happened in like, I think it was in 2009

Speaker 1 around climate change. And this is when there was the rise of people saying that climate change didn't exist.

Speaker 1 And a lot of right-wing folks were challenging former vice president Al Gore to debate climate change. And he made a decision to basically like stay above it and not give them any oxygen.

Speaker 1 But what that ended up doing was that it then meant they all went and said, he won't even debate us on this. What's he hiding?

Speaker 1 And that set the climate movement back, I would say, at least a decade. We're still fighting this battle where some people somehow do not believe that climate change is real and that it is man-made.

Speaker 1 So I agree with like it is

Speaker 1 ignoring people doesn't work.

Speaker 1 But I think, and we're all kind of saying this, but the fact that the governor had them on and made them sound sane and made them sound smart is a real problem and did not serve the country at all.

Speaker 1 Like I listened to the part of the Charlie Kirk one and I was like, oh, this guy is like actually, I even found myself doing this. I was like, wait a minute, no, no, this guy's horrible.

Speaker 5 Often does horrible things.

Speaker 1 But like, you know, Newsom's like patting him on the back.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, what are we trying to do here? And that's what I don't get.

Speaker 2 For me, that's, that's the problem is like, Chris, what I'm hearing from you, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing from you is like, we're, we are way out of our league in addressing the message and the messengers.

Speaker 2 It's, and that's where, you know, I mentioned like I wouldn't have said the things that Gavin said. And, and frankly, if I was a podcast host, well, I guess.

Speaker 2 I guess we are.

Speaker 2 If we bring Stephen Bannon on, if we platform Stephen Bannon, he's below us. We don't need to give him that kind of shit.

Speaker 2 If he came on.

Speaker 1 In the ranking, he is below us, by the way, still.

Speaker 2 Eat it. Lucky Stephen.
Make sure everybody understands this.

Speaker 2 Exactly to your point, I would have said something like, he is going to say a lot of things that sound smart. He's going to tell you things that are not true.
And now here he's doing it.

Speaker 2 You know, tell him what you're going to tell him, tell him, and then tell him what you told him.

Speaker 2 And I also probably would have said to Stephen, hey, I'm going to let you say into the recording whatever you want and I'm going to edit out all of your lies or I'm going to, or not even tell him.

Speaker 2 Don't even tell him. Just delete the part where he says, you know, I have good authority that says that 2020 election.
It's like, no, no, and no. And we're not talking about this.

Speaker 3 See, I think that the venue is important. Now, I'll be honest, I fucking hate podcasts and I'll listen to them.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 thank you for listening to me, but I don't listen to a lot of podcasts.

Speaker 7 I have caught

Speaker 3 some podcasts. Now, I think that if Charlie Kirk wanted to walk on to the Breakfast Club, I think that would be a great venue to have Charlie Kirk on because he would get hit real fast.

Speaker 3 Those hosts don't fuck around.

Speaker 3 They wouldn't let him just lie. Steve Bannon, he wouldn't fucking get caught dead in their fucking studio, but I bet Charlie Kirk would.

Speaker 3 And I think that Charlie Kirk going on to something like the Breakfast Club, I think that would be an appropriate venue. But having, you know, Gavin Newsom hugging fucking Charlie Kirk and

Speaker 3 showing that whatever Charlie Kirk does, it will bring Gavin Newsom, the individual, the governor, the celebrity, no harm. Like that's where it matters.

Speaker 3 The people on the Breakfast Club, however, they're connected to their community that Charlie Kirk is bringing harm to every fucking day. And that is why they wouldn't let him get away with that shit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's tough.

Speaker 7 I mean, I also have a kind of a unique viewpoint of this because my other podcast is me debating a like hard MAGA, you know, like the most MAGA you could imagine. He's slick.

Speaker 7 He's like, I call him like the mini JD Vance because he's very smooth. Everything he says sounds cordial and nice, but it's all ridiculous.

Speaker 7 And the challenge on being on the other side of that is their strategy is always just throw as much shit at the wall as possible and make you try to respond to all of it.

Speaker 7 And you have to sort of pick and choose what you go after. And that strategy is so tough to fight.

Speaker 7 Like, I think, you know, I do an acceptable job on it on my particular show, but at the same time, there are so many comments that I get where people do, Vic doesn't agree.

Speaker 7 Because Vic is exactly the person I'm referring to now, where they want me to respond to every single piece of misinformation, but it's impossible.

Speaker 7 You can't possibly be in a fight and constantly be in the back foot because if you're responding to everything they're saying, you're not making your own point. You're just refuting that.

Speaker 6 You're not in a fight when you're letting somebody beat the hell out of you and not hitting back.

Speaker 7 But here's the thing: it's not about choosing where, but that's the thing with the left: it's about choosing how you hit back.

Speaker 7 Because if you're just trying to refute everything they say, which almost all of it is wrong, but if you spend all your time saying, no, that's wrong, no, that's wrong, no, that's wrong, you're not offering a perspective of your own, you're just refuting their perspective.

Speaker 7 So the left needs to figure out how to present their own case without having to respond to every single wrong thing they say, because that's their strategy. They go, here's 10 wrong things, Go.

Speaker 2 And it's like, well, I can't respond to 10 wrong things.

Speaker 7 It's too many. They're all unrelated, too.
And they weave them all together like they are.

Speaker 7 It's, it's a really smart strategy to trick people, but it's, and it puts us in a difficult position where it's like, is this helping anybody?

Speaker 7 Like, let's focus our attention on a rebuttal that focuses on the main point and just try to ignore the fact that they lied 65 times to get there.

Speaker 6 I want to let Lick go and then I want to blow all that up.

Speaker 8 The thing that's interesting to me is like, there's a reason that Charlie Kirk Kirk and Ben Shapiro, they don't debate people who do it professionally.

Speaker 8 They go to college campuses and they debate kids who come up with emotion, who have no sources, and they've got a fucking laundry list of bullshit that they pull from and they talk it about a million words a second.

Speaker 8 And then the kids, they post their 30-second clip on TikTok and Ben Shapiro looks like a genius. But you look like Elon Musk fucking ran from that Jon Stewart offer.

Speaker 8 He put out all that shit about how he wanted to go on the daily show and John said, all right, name it, say when.

Speaker 8 Back down immediately because he knew he was about to give him that tucker carlson crossfire experience you really weren't a bow tie

Speaker 8 but there's a reason they don't debate people who actually do it right

Speaker 6 all right so here here's the problem with what rich and chris and zach are saying

Speaker 6 and this is coming from a perspective of a guy

Speaker 6 the debate the the trump-biden debate but i don't even think it was over yet when i posted on Facebook that Gavin Newsom would be our next president.

Speaker 6 There was no way in hell that it was going to be Biden.

Speaker 6 And I think if they would have started the process right away, there's a good chance that might have happened.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 6 that's just to say that I don't hate Newsom.

Speaker 6 I don't like him a lot more now than I did. And here's why, because one, you got to look at the cost-benefit ratio of what he's doing.

Speaker 6 It's not like he's going on, giving them a few points and then jabbing back. He's bringing these idiots on and letting them have free reign and not pushing back at all.

Speaker 6 And all that's doing is damaging the Democratic brand. There's one problem.
Two, I'm starting to wonder if Gavin isn't believing that this far-right

Speaker 6 idea or whatever feeling that's going on in this country right now is going to last enough that when he runs for president in 28, he's going to need to tack to the right in order to win.

Speaker 6 But finally, the biggest problem with all of it is that instead of letting these

Speaker 6 Bannons and the Charlie Kirks and all those guys come out here and say, this is how we feel and this is why we're right, not pushing back, instead of letting them do that, here's an idea.

Speaker 6 How about if we get out there and push our ideas instead? Spend all that time and energy and push progressive ideas instead of just giving those guys a free mic.

Speaker 1 So, Vic, you gave me the perfect segue.

Speaker 1 I just want to say before I do move on to the next topic, that there have been a few polls that have come out and Gavin Newsom's popularity among Democrats is absolutely catered.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think, you know, regardless of whether we think that that approach was right or not, the Democratic Party is angry. And the Democratic Party doesn't have real leaders right now.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think Newsom, I think at one point was formidable. I'm not sure he is anymore.
And, you know, or he's going to have to do a lot of work,

Speaker 1 which is going to be really tough.

Speaker 1 But I want to move to sort of, and it's a little bit like how we were talking about our success. I'm going to pat myself on the back, ourselves on the back again.
But we're seeing these huge rallies.

Speaker 1 across the country, in many cases in red area, mostly in red areas,

Speaker 1 whether it's Bernie Sanders and AOC or whether it's Tim Walls.

Speaker 1 It seems like the Democrats are starting to find a lane and to find a voice to push back on this lawlessness. Because let's be very clear, most of what is happening right now is illegal.

Speaker 1 They're ignoring orders from courts, which is like, you know, I mean, those are impeachable offenses.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're not even saying those words because nobody even believes that anything like that could happen.

Speaker 1 What do you guys think about these?

Speaker 1 I think there was one this weekend that they thought 3,000 people were going to show up, and I think it was like 25, 30,000.

Speaker 2 Yep. It's very

Speaker 2 in Denver. Yep.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Luke, you want to

Speaker 1 take this one first?

Speaker 4 Sure.

Speaker 2 Just putting you on the spot.

Speaker 1 By the way, Luke had the least amount of talk time last time. So I am making sure that we get plenty of Luke in front of this audience.

Speaker 2 Luke, Colorado's in the middle, by the way. Vic could actually show you what I'm at.

Speaker 2 Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 You're closest to school than any of us. He probably, he could, he could, you could teach.

Speaker 6 You're an Easterner in my book.

Speaker 8 It is like very fucking concerning. Cause like I saw this big Reddit deal about how there's all these news articles that are propping Kamala up as the 2028 candidate.

Speaker 8 And then you're watching 30,000 people show up to an AOC Bernie rally. And it's like, it's pretty fucking clear who we're looking for here.
Like the people that are loud, we want that.

Speaker 8 I think that clip of Jasmine Crockett telling Elon to fuck off.

Speaker 8 That was one of the most viral things I've seen in a while. Like channel that energy, not the spineless, you know, the Chuck Schumer approach.

Speaker 7 I think there's two prongs to it, right? Like, I think you're dead on about

Speaker 7 the presentation side of it, right? Because the Chuck Schumer side is so weak and just feckless and just nonsense.

Speaker 7 But then, once you get past that, all the people who are strong right now are people like Bernie Sanders and AOC, the ones who have a big voice.

Speaker 7 And there's a ton of Democrats and independents who will never vote for that kind of policy. And that's the channel.
It's not. It is such bullshit.
It's not.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 even

Speaker 5 they won't vote for him, but it's bullshit that they won't.

Speaker 2 No, no, right. Now I agree with you.

Speaker 7 I agree it's bullshit, but at the same time, it's reality, right? So like what I'm not saying that they're reality.

Speaker 7 I mean, Bernie Sanders lost twice. It's proof that it doesn't work.
I mean, maybe it'd be a little bit more well-received now.

Speaker 7 But regardless of, like, I mean, for me personally, I would never vote for a person that's in that position, unless it was like against Donald Trump or whatever.

Speaker 7 But in a primary, I'd want a person who is... from a policy perspective, at least living in the real world of what is achievable, but also well-spoken and trying to take this approach.

Speaker 7 I think that the challenge with Democrats is that that's the splinter.

Speaker 7 It's a difference of like the far left, even though I don't believe it's like far left, but the far left, you know, the AOC, Bernie Sanders folks, those are the people where, yes, you can get a ton of Democratic voters to vote for that, but you're not going to get any Independents to vote for that.

Speaker 7 You're not going to get any Republicans to switch over. It's a death sentence.

Speaker 2 I reject that premise, but Keith.

Speaker 7 I'm curious.

Speaker 7 I get pushed back on that all the time, and I've yet to hear an argument that's convinced me that I'm wrong on that because the data just doesn't show it.

Speaker 3 I want to put policy aside and ask you guys, do you think that like Minnesota, Midwest, like, and I don't mean Minnesota nice, I mean real nice. Like, do you think Tim Wall's nice

Speaker 3 is what the country is looking for? Or do you think that the country is looking for a Jasmine Crockett?

Speaker 2 Jasmine Crockett.

Speaker 7 100%.

Speaker 7 It's just a policy question. Like, I don't know.
I don't even know Jasmine Crockett's policy.

Speaker 7 For me, it's just a question of like, and I want to hear an answer from people who disagree with me here of like, how can you defend the idea that somebody who is like essentially a democratic socialist, which I don't, and let me make this clear for everybody who's listening.

Speaker 7 I don't disagree with the intent of these policies. I think it's a great idea.
Like, almost everything Bernie Sanders stands for, I'm with. It's just a question of can that win?

Speaker 7 And I don't know if that policy can win. So I'm curious why people think it can, because I haven't seen the data.

Speaker 2 So let me give you, we talked a little bit about this last time.

Speaker 1 And I think this is one of the reasons why I disagree on this one.

Speaker 1 And that was the Instagram Live that AOC had a few days after the election, in which she asked, she had a ton ton of Trump AOC voters and she asked them why.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 1 from a policy perspective, it doesn't make any sense, right? Unless you're just like, I want a Democrat and a Republican.

Speaker 5 Some people do that. But

Speaker 1 the answer was because the systems are broken.

Speaker 1 And they are going for the people who are trying to fix them.

Speaker 1 Now, Donald Trump is destroying it to help billionaires, whereas an AOC or a Bernie is trying to help poor working class, middle-class Americans.

Speaker 1 Now, you can argue that some of those policies are out of reach. I, for one,

Speaker 1 many years ago, I would have probably said I was against Medicare for all. I don't see why we can't have that.
We spend a trillion dollars a year on defense.

Speaker 5 Like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 we don't tax our billionaires at the same rates that they are taxed in Europe. And it is imminently doable to do these things.
I think that in 2000 or 2016, probably not.

Speaker 1 But people are angry and and things aren't working. And I think that Democrats who are speaking to the systemic problems that we have are going to go a long way.

Speaker 1 And I think we are going to start seeing a realignment of who is in which party based on who actually can convince poor and working class Americans that they are for them.

Speaker 1 And right now, in the Democratic Party, the person who is doing that the best is AOC.

Speaker 2 Unquestionably. Yep.
I want to go back to something that Vic said earlier about Gavin Newsome. So it's the same thing that I'm going to tell Vic that I have been ready to talk to our viewers about.

Speaker 2 And I haven't had to use this line, but if you don't like the message, you have to recognize that you might not be the target audience.

Speaker 2 And the same, that's the same issue with Gavin Newsom and Vic and Luke.

Speaker 2 He is in a phase of his 2028 aspirations where he does not care about you or your vote right now because he knows he can make that up in 30 days at the end of the campaign when it comes down to it.

Speaker 2 Right now, he is in the, I need to, I need to rebuild a coalition of Democratic voters that can even win the White House, regardless of whether it's Gavin Newsom or somebody else.

Speaker 2 As we're looking at Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Tim Walls, as we're looking at who is the right energy, who's the right mix, you have to remember that 70% of Americans said they would not vote for a convicted felon and Donald Trump as president.

Speaker 2 Americans don't have strong enough opinions about policies to vote vote for policies when leadership traits are on the table.

Speaker 2 And for whatever crazy, completely inaccessible reason, Americans view the things that Donald Trump does as the traits of strong leaders.

Speaker 2 And that is a very painful thing to me, but I'm also not Donald Trump's target audience.

Speaker 2 And so when I look at like, you know, Bernie and AOC, the passion they're bringing up, Yes, it's resonating with leftists because we're the angriest and we are the target audience.

Speaker 2 They are doing exactly what we want them to do. And yes, you can carry that to victory.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, if those people at the same time develop those leadership traits or are exhibiting the leadership traits to enough people, their far left policies won't matter.

Speaker 2 And they won't prevent them from being elected because people do want more pay. They do want better benefits.
They do want a more secure retirement. They do want better safety nets.

Speaker 2 And they don't want billionaires to be making 500, 600 times the wages of the average worker who's building the wealth for that billionaire.

Speaker 2 So I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with leftist policies.

Speaker 2 It's the fact that we get hung up on policy debates, which is exactly where Republicans always want us when we're debating because they're debating leadership. They're setting the stage.

Speaker 2 They're setting the environment and they are presenting themselves as a dominant voice.

Speaker 2 And we're talking about whether we can offset $200 million in the budget 10 years from now so that we can pay for this policy that nobody understands.

Speaker 2 And so if we can just get back to that, if it's AOC, if it's Bernie people, or if it's Jasmine Crockett, I'll vote for Jasmine Crockett for president tomorrow if she's on the ballot.

Speaker 2 It's the leadership traits and it's the message that they're bringing along with them. It is not the policy details.

Speaker 2 If we get sucked down that road again, we're going to just see the same thing happen.

Speaker 7 Can I ask you a question?

Speaker 7 I think there's a lot of relevant points you just made. So in 2020, if Sanders had beaten Biden in the primary, do you think Sanders would have won that election?

Speaker 6 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 I'm curious what Rich has to say.

Speaker 6 It's one thing for Bernie Sanders and AOC to go to Denver and fill an auditorium. But before they went to Denver, they were in Greeley, Colorado.

Speaker 6 Greeley, Colorado was the heart of the district that I,

Speaker 6 the Congressional Fourth District, when I ran for Congress 10 years ago. That place is as radical right as you can be.
They wanted to secede from Colorado and join Wyoming. And 10,000 people showed up

Speaker 6 10 000 people in that town that that that's more than just saying that

Speaker 6 that he's you know people are bust in i mean the democrats keep losing because they

Speaker 6 fail time and time and time again to actually address the needs of the working class. And the working class is saying, well, you know what?

Speaker 6 I'd rather vote for somebody who is a Republican than somebody who acts like a Republican. That's what's going on.

Speaker 6 You give them a choice between a Republican and a Democrat that will actually fight for working class people, and they're going to pick the working class candidate every time. But we haven't had that.

Speaker 3 So, what I'm

Speaker 3 a threat analyst. My job is to predict the future.
What I

Speaker 3 can predict threats. What it is difficult for me to imagine is to figure out how things are going to be repaired.

Speaker 3 So, so what are the promises that we expect the Democratic nominee for the 2028 election to be making?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 Do we want just straight populism of like eat the rich? I mean, I, I'll be, I'll be honest, man, the last few months have made me like feel like if there was an eat the rich party, I'd join it.

Speaker 8 Like you'd like to see somebody run on a pro-guillotine platform.

Speaker 3 No, and, and, and for real, and, and this, you know, I want to kick it over to Luke because I don't, I don't think my feed is, is serving me the same things that he's getting.

Speaker 3 Like, the response to the Luigi stuff

Speaker 3 for me, you know, looking at, at

Speaker 2 I study the far right, the far right liked Luigi.

Speaker 3 Like, and my TikTok feed is a lot of leftist shit.

Speaker 1 They love Luigi.

Speaker 3 Like, what's what's your feed? What's what's this?

Speaker 2 It was very interesting.

Speaker 8 It was like the first time I've ever gotten shit from both sides that were saying the same thing.

Speaker 5 And it was like, it was so fast.

Speaker 8 Like every, every position of power is like, we got to shut that shit down. There's class consciousness happening here.
The ants are going to stand up.

Speaker 8 And it was like, boom, we got to make him a villain.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 8 I think you get somebody that actually comes in and says, yeah, fuck it. Like, it is time.
They get to pay their fair share.

Speaker 7 I think it could get traction. It's an interesting, like, listening to all this and being the one who sort of spurred the pushback on the perspective.

Speaker 7 It's the first time I've actually sat back and been like, maybe I'm wrong potentially on this because like the context is different, right?

Speaker 7 In 2020, Bernie Sanders didn't really stand a chance in my mind because people weren't thinking about these topics. They were thinking about COVID.
They were thinking about, you know, BLM.

Speaker 7 Other things like that were much more important. And it really didn't matter if it was Sanders or Biden.
It was the issues that mattered.

Speaker 7 But now, if we're talking about the standard of living and how people feel about their position in society, and the coalescing thing for both parties is, I'm getting fucked.

Speaker 7 And, you know, it doesn't matter where I come from politically, like I'm getting screwed over. Maybe there is a space for somebody to come in and do that.
It just had to do it.

Speaker 7 Like, my concern is they have to do it the right way. Right.
You can't just come in and go, fuck the rich, the end. You have to have a plan.
Like, it's right now, fine. It's 2025.

Speaker 7 You got three years to figure it out. But when that time comes, you got to show up with a game plan and a strategy to go, okay, here's how we're going to fuck the rich.

Speaker 7 And I haven't seen, at least me personally, somebody who's very data-oriented.

Speaker 7 Like when Bernie Sanders came out, the reason I didn't like him was not because I didn't agree with him, it's because he didn't show me enough information to prove that he could actually do what he said he wants to do.

Speaker 7 That's the issue I think is still going to trip them up. But if they can come with that, maybe there is something to this.

Speaker 1 So I actually think, and I agree with a lot of that. I actually think that, you know, AOC may be a very formidable candidate in 2028 because Bernie paved the way for her.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't think Bernie would have won. I think Bernie being in the Senate for 40 years and never passing a single piece of legislation is a problem.

Speaker 2 And that was one thing. That's a bad argument.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 6 Because he passed more amendments than anybody else.

Speaker 6 You don't have to have your name on a bill to be productive.

Speaker 6 He passed amendments to bills that did pass.

Speaker 1 Sure, so did every other senator as well. But like, you know, nobody as much as Bernie.

Speaker 1 Well, Joe Biden actually wrote legislation that has, you know, single-handedly changed the country. So I don't really, I don't really go for that.
But, but I think AOC is,

Speaker 1 I think, the Bernie 2.0. I think she's, frankly, a better campaigner, a better messenger.
She's working across the aisle to pass a bill to limit credit card fees.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is the thing I think Democrats have missed that Republicans are very good at is the fact that you've got to make things tangible.

Speaker 1 And I think the Biden White House did some of that with junk fees and things, but like

Speaker 1 limiting the amount that you can get charged on a on a credit card

Speaker 1 could be a life or death situation. So I think she's really formidable.
I think the country may be ready for this, especially after the Trump administration breaks so much.

Speaker 8 I mean, I think in four years, provided everything is still like in working order, you're going to have a shitload of data that says, look at what he did. And did it help you at all?

Speaker 8 Like, maybe, maybe the no tax on tips things comes through. I don't think it's gonna.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 8 is that going to offset the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the ultra fucking wealthy that's ever been done? No.

Speaker 8 And I think there's going to be a shitload of people that all you have to do is say, how do you feel compared to four years ago? Because that's the same thing he did this time.

Speaker 7 I have a question for Chris actually on this because like

Speaker 7 I all this makes sense to me, right? When we silo the conversation into economics and the billionaires versus the people who have nothing, that all makes sense.

Speaker 7 But when I think of somebody like AOC being the nominee for the Democrats, I think, how is the military community going to look at that and go, this is going to be our leader? I don't think so.

Speaker 7 And I feel like that is a gigantic weak spot for people like AOC and Bernie Sanders. I'm really curious what your perspective is.

Speaker 6 Did you say that about Trump?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, Trump has this,

Speaker 7 but Trump has that strongman persona, like Rich was saying.

Speaker 2 Trump is male too. But like Rich is male female.
Trump is male. Right.
He's male.

Speaker 7 And he presents as a strong man.

Speaker 7 A, you know, a late 30s,

Speaker 7 a late 30s female who used to be a bartender is not exactly the dream for a military leadership, right? So I'm curious what Chris's perspective is.

Speaker 3 I was in the Army in 2007, and I distinctly remember the primary.

Speaker 3 I mean, it was a very rough period for my life, and watching the primaries was an extraordinarily triggering thing because it seemed like

Speaker 3 everyone had forgotten that we were fighting two wars while my friends were overseas dying.

Speaker 3 And I think that living in the state of Georgia, Fort Stewart, Georgia, outside, it's the, it's not outside Savannah, like you think of the suburbs. It was nothing like that.

Speaker 3 It was very Confederate flag, Georgia.

Speaker 3 And, and I remember

Speaker 3 some of the black dudes in my unit, like some of my good friends saying like, we're not ready for a black president.

Speaker 2 Right. And, and then we had one and we were okay.

Speaker 3 Now there were some fucking scandals, like Stanley McChrystal talking to the Rolling Stone, thinking that what he was saying was not going to end up getting like, you know, a major spread, right?

Speaker 3 There was some disrespect

Speaker 3 and perhaps not racist in that

Speaker 3 singular incident, but

Speaker 3 we made it through. You know, he was commander in chief for eight years.

Speaker 3 He, like every modern president, has had a fuckload of failures with the global war on terror, but the military made it through. And I think that the military,

Speaker 3 after four years of hegseth, is going to be an entirely different animal.

Speaker 2 Scary.

Speaker 5 Well, go ahead, Chris.

Speaker 3 I think there's going to be, I forget, was it, was it Romney that used to say self-deportation?

Speaker 3 Like, I think there's going to be something like, like, there's going to be self-identification of like, this is not for me.

Speaker 3 I think the military is going to become far more right-wing than it is today. And it is not nearly as right-wing as everyone thinks it is.

Speaker 3 The military is the most diverse institution on the planet as of right now. But I think four years from now,

Speaker 3 a lot of generals are, I mean, fucking Hegseth has a list of, quote, woke generals, right? There is going to be a purge of decent people.

Speaker 3 And I think that people who are excited by Heg Seth's rampant misogyny and racism and Islamophobia, they are going to be joining the military en masse. So, Zach, I think you do have a point.

Speaker 3 It's going to be unlike the military I served in.

Speaker 6 But why does it matter what the military thinks?

Speaker 7 Well, I mean, because I think that when you like when we talk about these issues now, it's easy to silo it in because a lot of people who are politically active right now care about these economic issues and all that stuff.

Speaker 7 But when you get down to the final 30 days of an election, a lot of the folks who just show up at that point go, who's going to lead the military?

Speaker 7 Like basic, just like check the box kind of questions.

Speaker 2 And if you have somebody who has literally no background.

Speaker 7 But even that in the end,

Speaker 7 even if it's a small demographic, most of the electorate is just predetermined bricks of votes. And then the last 30 days is the vote that matters.

Speaker 2 And people that vote on vibes.

Speaker 7 Right. And it's like if the vibe is AOC is going to be the commander-in-chief of the American military, I think a lot of folks who would go, I don't know how comfortable I am with that.

Speaker 7 Not because she's not qualified to do it, just because her background is not for that job, right?

Speaker 7 Her back, like if you want to elect a president to re-energize the idea of the lower class getting lifted up and the upper class getting taken down in exchange, she's perfect.

Speaker 6 But if you want to, if you want to vote based on the military, she elected a 57-time or 50, 34-time convicted felon, insurrectionist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 7 We elected that guy.

Speaker 6 So that's why what you're saying is is.

Speaker 1 But it was a guy.

Speaker 2 Right. Exactly.

Speaker 1 I think we have to, especially as

Speaker 1 white liberal dudes, like there was a TV show that made him look like a very fancy, successful businessman, even though he wasn't.

Speaker 1 And then he was a white man in a Republican Party who said he was going to give the military literally everything that they wanted.

Speaker 1 And I think that's very different than AOC, who I think is imminently qualified at this point, incredibly intelligent.

Speaker 1 I don't, I don't always, I'll have to disagree with you, Zach, on calling her a waitress because she was doing that while she was at school. So, like,

Speaker 2 you know what I'm saying? Like, that's not.

Speaker 1 I'm not called a bank teller because I worked at Summer Joe.

Speaker 7 No, I know, but that's the perspective that the average voter who's coming in at the last day will have it.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying because it's my perspective.

Speaker 7 That's not my vision of anyone.

Speaker 1 But I just think, I think we all realize that a woman running for that position, especially a woman of color, is at a disadvantage no matter what. It doesn't mean she can't win.
I think she can.

Speaker 1 I think the country is changing. But anyways, guys, we're going to have to wrap that up there.
I've actually tried to wrap wrap this up three times and we keep going.

Speaker 1 So, I'm going to finally shut us down. We are going to be shorter than last time, which is great.

Speaker 1 Thank you, everybody, for listening.

Speaker 1 If you want to continue the conversation, you can go over to our Substack

Speaker 1 through the live chat and the comments. We've been responding.
We've been trying to write to everybody because you've all written so many kind things.

Speaker 1 But if you don't have the web, if you don't have the address yet, it's findoutpodcast.substack.com. Findoutpodcast.substacks.com.
And now, Vic is interrupting my wrapping up for a special reason.

Speaker 6 Just like Chris did last time, I promised some people I would tell them something. I'm very proud to say that my last single child told me the other day that he's getting married in May.

Speaker 2 Congratulations, man. That's awesome.

Speaker 4 I love it.

Speaker 2 That's great.

Speaker 1 You and Chris have now set the expectation that people are going to get an amazing piece of news at the end of every one of these things.

Speaker 6 So they get to find out every week.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 1 There You go, I love it.

Speaker 2 Throw it in there,

Speaker 2 next week. I'm gonna announce that I'm a beta.

Speaker 2 I think that got announced today, didn't it? Didn't that get announced today?

Speaker 2 I think it's in everything that I say and do, so

Speaker 2 we can say it though.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, now we are going to be two minutes short, so I guess I'll still take that as a win. Thank you, everyone, for listening.
We cannot thank you enough for all the support so far.

Speaker 1 You guys are amazing, and we are just really excited to be on this journey with you. So, from my

Speaker 1 co-hosts to me, thank you you very much. And we will talk to you next week.