Ep 237 | 'Young Turks' Host: Democrats Need to WAKE UP  | Ana Kasparian | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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And now, a Blaze Media Podcast.

We are living at such an exciting time.

Everything is changing and strange times create strange bedfellows.

More and more, I find myself sitting down and having actual conversations with people who even just five years ago would have never thought to talk to me or me talk to them in a million years.

But things have changed in a good way.

And people on the right, people on the left, and the people somewhere in between,

or nowhere at all, are starting to agree, hey, we have problems, and we have to stop this political division before it destroys us completely.

Christmas is coming up, and you'll probably be getting together here soon with a family member who voted differently than you.

Can you bring that back together?

That old friend that you had?

You know, can they believe that you're not a fascist or a communist?

How do we maintain the vision of E pluribus unum?

How can we come back together?

I think we can.

To test my theory, I am joined today by a prominent political commentator from the left side of the aisle.

Welcome, host and producer of the globally popular online news show, The Young Turks, Anna Kasparian.

I can't wait to talk to Anna, and I hope you listen to this entire conversation, because I think this is really important.

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Anna, how are you?

I'm doing well.

Thank you.

How are you?

Very good.

Thank you.

So for people who might not know who you are, how would you describe

who you were,

because you've had some transition on some things, who you were, how you would self-identify

yourself over the last 10 years?

Well, I would say that I was firmly identifying myself as a Democrat.

I think that if you look at my policy prescriptions, For the most part, I'm still pretty much left-wing.

There are some social issues that...

definition of left-wing to you.

Is that a Democrat or left-wing?

What does that mean?

Well, left-wing in regard to, you know,

I would say, like, one of my grounding political values is that workers should have better pay, better working conditions, a seat at the table.

Unionized labor, I think, is incredibly important, which, you know, it's something that's been decimated in recent decades in this country.

But that's like my number one interest in politics.

And that's not really something that has really been favored by the Republican Party, traditionally speaking.

And historically, unionized labor was something that the Democratic Party looked out for.

And I don't really see that as the case anymore when it comes to the mainstream Democrats.

They're certainly more corporate now.

They're certainly captured by their corporate donors.

I think that the way that this last election went down really does show you the kind of political strategist rot that exists, the corruption that exists, and there's real tension now between the voters who want very specific policy prescriptions in order to deal with the rising inequalities that we have in this country when it comes to wealth and income.

And then you have the Democratic Party, which is heavily funded by corporate interests and money interests.

And what those donors want severely conflicts with what the base of Democratic voters want.

And so this has been a growing issue with the Democratic Party.

And what I see as

their campaign call is more and more culture war stuff.

And it gets more and more extreme every election cycle.

And I think that they're pushing more and more people away by sticking to the corporate politics while also getting more and more maximalist when it comes to some of the culture war type issues.

So as I look, because it is so hard, what you do, what I do,

there's so many words that come out of us every single day and

then out of context or not worded, you know,

exactly right.

The way I look at

the Democratic Party or the left is that there is

the

machine that is in bed now with big business.

And that's just the crony capitalism, just the

vomitous kind of corruption that we all hate in either party, any party.

Right.

Then there's the average Democrat who might disagree on taxes or whatever, but they believe in the Constitution and they believe in the Bill of Rights and everything else.

And I think that has been the majority, that is the majority of people.

Absolutely.

And then there's this crazy left-wing Marxist,

you know, destroy it all kind of group.

And that, I don't even know, maybe 8%, 10% is that.

And it's the middle people who have been either...

lied to so effectively by so many people, mainly mainstream media.

But

we're at the beginning in the Democratic Party, possibly, of those people waking up and going, I don't like either end

of this spectrum.

Yeah, look, I take a little bit of issue with the use of Marxist in this context because honestly, I think that there's maybe a total of like five actual Marxists in this country.

In reality, we're talking about individuals whose politics is mostly based on, you know, some fringe issue or some cultural issue that they have.

have.

It's not just that they care about that issue, it's that they've taken that issue and they've made it part of their identity, the core of who they are.

And it's almost like what you would expect from religious zealots, you know, and so there's a fundamentalism

in the way that they treat these issues, and there's no room to negotiate, there's no room to maybe consider the thoughts and concerns of other individuals.

And so, as they become more and more kind of like authoritarian in what they demand, they are pushing people away.

And there are some issues in which the rights of one group might actually end up conflicting with the rights of another group, depending on what type of legislation you're pursuing.

And so of course, this has come up with the trans issue.

And I've always been supportive of the transgender community.

But when the rights of transgender people, particularly transgender women, start to cause some tension with the rights and freedoms of women or the perceived safety of women, well, let's have a conversation and avoid assuming the worst of the people who want to have that conversation, right?

Because I think that in a country like America, where you have so many different people with so many different backgrounds, beliefs, people of faith,

the only way this works is if we respect each other and actually engage in these conversations in good faith.

And I felt that the left was able to do that back in the day.

And I don't know what happened, but we've moved further and further away from being able to have those conversations in good faith without assuming malice toward individuals who have a slight difference of opinion.

So,

I mean,

well, let me just ask you first.

Do you believe in the Bill of Rights?

Of course, yes.

All of them?

I love this country.

Yeah.

I love this country.

I love the idea of this country.

I'm not questioning.

I just want to note, do you believe in the Bill of Rights as written?

Okay.

That used to be our unum.

We could all come together and disagree and live different lifestyles as long as I'm not taking away your rights.

You're not taking away my rights.

I have a right to disagree with you.

We can have conversations about anything and walk away and go, see you tomorrow, Bill.

You know what I mean?

That's what's happened to us.

There's been this erosion of education of how important the Bill of Rights is.

We're looking now at a population, especially younger population, that thinks that there's limits on speech.

Right.

There's not limit on the speech.

Well, there are some limits, right?

What are they?

The typical example is you can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater.

True, that was actually written by the Supreme Court to prove against that.

Really?

Yeah, it was not.

But you can't incite violence.

Yes.

You can't engage in defamation.

You can't say things that directly incite violence or panic.

And it's very clear when, you know, we're going to go kill them and we're going to kill them now.

That's the end of freedom of speech.

But without freedom of speech, where we can't say,

I'm sorry,

I respect this person.

You know, I love this person.

They can live their life.

But if I'm taking them to the hospital, I am telling the doctor, that's a man, not a woman.

Now, they can call themselves whatever.

I could even be cool, totally cool with it, but we have to be able to have a civil,

non-hateful conversation about

truth.

I mean, I agree with you on that.

And, you know, the argument, and I think this is a decent argument that you'll hear from those who are more restrictive in or wanting more restrictions on speech is, well, we want better terms of service when it comes to, you know, private companies, but free speech only has to do with the government.

And if the government isn't violating your free speech, then why are we complaining about, you know?

That's not a problem if the government's not in bed with all of the business.

You know what I mean?

What do you mean by that?

Republicans used to be the big business people.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think they still are to a large extent.

I think the, remember we talked about those, the three with Republicans, there's that machinery Republican.

They're all in bed still.

They're all in bed.

That section, I hope, comes to an end, but they'll always be those people.

So I agree with you on that.

But

it was.

When you're in bed, especially now, I don't know how you define fascism, but fascism, the technical definition of fascism, is a public-private partnership with the government and private industry.

Communism doesn't let you have private ownership.

Fascism says, no, no, you can have private industry.

But you're going to do it our way.

And we'll let you have the company.

And if you don't want to do it our way, we'll destroy you, you know, take it away from you or whatever.

We've been headed that way for a hundred plus years.

Both sides

have been doing it.

Right now, the public-private partnership where the government says, we can't do this, but you can,

that's fascism.

That's wildly dangerous.

And both sides have a propensity to do that because they both like power and both like control and money.

But because of social media and Google and everything else,

we are in a situation to where who's controlling whom?

Which one is more afraid of the other, the government or Google?

Who's afraid of who?

You know what I mean?

Who has more power?

Well, I would say right now, it feels as though the corporations have more power.

I agree with you.

Especially considering the fact that, you know, corporate interests fund politicians on both sides of the political aisle.

And so they're completely captured by corporate interests.

And I think that that has happened to the detriment of the American people, regardless of whether they vote Democrat or Republican.

And so what I see as a bigger problem when it comes to this speech question and how it's impacting private companies is that private companies are increasingly catering to niche audiences or one side of the political spectrum over the other.

And unfortunately, and I understand this because I think I was also kind of in that bubble of seeking

content or

information that only validated what I already believed because it's comfortable.

And I totally understand why people do that.

I used to do that myself.

I didn't do it consciously.

It was like a thing that I think I was just doing because it's like, I trust this source because this source is reporting accurately.

But it turns out, no, I actually trust that source because that source is telling me what I want to hear.

And so, this is a huge problem because the divisions in the country and the inability

because the divisions in the country and the inability to have conversations with people you disagree with, I think is

a product of the bubbles that we live in, right?

The media bubbles we live in.

And I don't know how to fix that.

I mean, one way that I've tried is by providing counter narratives and a different point of view, or playing devil's advocate on TYT.

Or, more importantly, if I've changed my mind, I want to be as honest with my audience as possible.

And living in Los Angeles, living in California, which is completely controlled by the Democratic Party, it has allowed me to see some of the flaws in the policies that the Democratic Party is pushing for on a more national scale.

And I don't want that to happen if I've experienced some of these policies and they have not worked out so well.

But what's interesting is the resistance to any of that critique that you'll see from, you know, not everyone in the audience, not even the majority of the audience, but there's always that very loud minority of people who demand that you only tell them what they want to hear and validate what they already believe.

Or you're a traitor.

Or you're a traitor, exactly.

Yeah.

Or a grifter.

I think, you know, one of the things, yeah, I love that one.

I was against Trump in 2016, very vocal about it.

I remember.

And I was a traitor and a a grifter.

I was just trying to make money.

And then he did some things that I said he'll never do.

And I agreed with the policies.

And I had said, if I'm wrong, I'll admit it.

I did.

And I was a grifter and a trader again.

I mean, it's just, there's no,

in this, there's no way to win.

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Do you have hope that

There's been a sea change?

We're at the very beginning of it, but

it's strange.

I was just talking to Donald Trump.

I was doing a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago a couple of days ago, and

I said,

I think

we're like the cool kids now.

I've never been at the cool kids table.

This is wild.

Look, I'm going to pause on saying the cool kids.

No, no, no.

I'm going to say this.

But we've never been even near the cool kids.

We're at the

hallway of the cool kids table.

You know what I mean?

I know that, but we've never, I mean, and he said,

YMCA,

how is YMCA suddenly cool?

It's not just about that.

You know, Trump is, and the audience hates when I say this, but it's just demonstrably true.

He's funny.

He's an entertainer.

I mean, he was an entertainer before, you know, he was a politician, that's for sure.

That's what also causes trouble for him.

It does.

It certainly does.

But, you know,

I think the reason why you're feeling how you're feeling about the perception of the Republican Party now versus, you know, the Bush era.

Hang on just a second.

I don't want to say Republican Party because that's not cool.

It'll never be cool.

There's this new coalition

of Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK,

Elon Musk, people that are coming from all different points of view.

It's the way America that I grew up in.

It's the way America was.

We disagree on a lot, but we have one central vision, and that is, in this case, end this corruption, end this nonsense.

Yes, yes.

Right?

Yeah, no, that's a great way of putting it.

And, you know,

the CEO and my co-host, Jenk Uger of the Young Turks, he is really trying to bring like a populist coalition of people together, you know, and individuals, basically Americans who see the rot in our political system thanks to the corruption.

And so it's been his top issue ever since I've met him.

And so he's been trying to get money out of politics.

So these politicians actually represent what the people want as opposed to what a small group of corporate executives want.

And I think that's really the key in fixing what's broken in our political system.

The other thing is, I mean, look, members of Congress really should see themselves as public servants as opposed to individuals who are elected into office just to enrich themselves.

All of them should be.

So we have to ban their ability to trade individual stocks.

I mean, this is madness that they're able to do this.

Ban the trading of stocks.

Do not allow them to go into any business that they had any regulation or anything

for at least 10 years.

I totally agree.

This revolving door is obscene, absolutely obscene.

I say this

kindly because I've been on the other side of the table.

And

I wish people

had given me the benefit of the doubt of being a decent human being and actually meaning what I say.

Because I do.

So I say this believing you're an actual decent human being, okay?

Okay.

The one thing that I

look for in people who say, I've seen the light,

is

I know when I've changed, and I've changed many big points of view and many big things in my life, but I can tell you what color the carpet was when I had that.

epiphany.

I can tell you the time of day.

I can tell you everything about that moment because it was like,

holy mother, I'm wrong.

And time stopped and you remember it.

Right, right.

If you're sincere.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

I think for some people, change comes slowly.

And especially if

your career and your life depends on a particular identity, a particular outward identity, you're going to resist.

internal change.

And you're going to resist and resist and resist until you can't resist anymore.

That's what I feel with me.

Okay, so wait, wait, wait.

So then, what was that?

I think, I think we might be saying similar things because it's not, you know, the heavens didn't open up.

Right.

You all of a sudden go,

I can't do this.

I can't say this anymore.

So, was there a time?

Yes, it happened slowly, but was there a moment that changed you and said, I can't do this anymore.

I can't do it anymore.

I mean, I would say

the phrase, I can't do it anymore, for me,

applies to a handful of policy issues that the Democratic Party has been championing, championing that I don't agree with.

So there's no personal, there was no personal event or anything that happened in your life to where you went.

I mean, I was sexually assaulted by a homeless guy.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I was sexually assaulted by a homeless guy in Los Angeles in my neighborhood as I was walking my dog.

Oh my God.

And it was awful.

I mean, I've talked about it multiple times.

And look, I don't want to put myself in this position of being like this victim who's looking for empathy, but it is the moment where something very scary happened to me.

And

why

it wasn't just that that had happened to me.

It was the reaction I received from a

faction of the left, okay, the social justice left, if you want to call it that, who think that, you know,

in some cases, the criminals are actually the victims and the victims are the criminals.

Like it's insane.

And I don't know how big this faction is, but they're loud enough to push me away completely.

And so it wasn't that that had happened to me.

It was the reaction of the left and how they were far more concerned with me talking about it because they felt that that was stigmatizing the homeless community.

I have never gone out of my way to say negative things about homeless people.

I mean, people who are living out on the streets are in a lot of cases victims who need help, right?

Yes.

But I was victimized by a guy that was strung out on something, could have been meth.

You know, he was jerking around as he was walking toward me with his buddy.

And

gosh, I'm so sorry.

I didn't,

it's okay.

It's okay.

But it took a while for me to get over that because I still have to walk my dog.

And so multiple times a day, I literally have to think about that incident.

And so I thought maybe it would help to talk about it.

And then when I did talk about it, I totally regretted it because I was shocked at the way people reacted to me.

But

what that moment taught me was some of the characteristics of the quote-unquote left that I thought

were good, right?

Like the kindness, the open-mindedness, the

you know, willingness to go out of your way, to look out for people who need help, like that kind of stuff.

There's a portion of the left that has shed those characteristics.

They've taken on a more nihilistic approach to things and they don't even believe in reforms.

They just believe that everything about every political system, every program we have, every institution we have is just worthless and we need to burn it all down.

Okay.

So that nihilistic nature, I think, leads to a lot of really bad ideas and terrible behavior online.

And that's pushing people out, pushing people away.

And like, I mean, you look at places like Los Angeles, for instance, right?

Or Cook County, which is where Chicago is.

I paid very close attention to Cook County and what the election results were going to be in Cook County because you have an influx of migrants going to Chicago, right?

You have a lot of anger among the black community in Chicago because they've been nickel and dimed by their local government.

It's crazy.

And at the same time, their mayor, Brandon Johnson, is doling out the cash for migrants and justifying it.

And so they're angry.

And so I'm watching all of this happen and I'm just like, Democrats need to wake up

because more and more voters feel like they're being abandoned by the Democratic Party, economically speaking.

And everyone got mad at me.

Everyone's like, oh, you're anti-immigrant.

I'm not anti-immigrant.

I'm not anti-immigrant.

Immigrants built this country.

Yes, my parents are immigrants.

Yes.

Okay.

I am not anti-immigrant.

But I do have a problem with the Biden administration neglecting the border, pretending like there wasn't a migrant crisis at all,

allowing these municipalities to be inundated with migrants without any federal resources to deal with the problem.

And what?

We're going to pretend like that's not going to cause electoral harm?

Of course it is.

So when you look at places like LA, there was an 11-point swing toward the Republican Party.

Kamala Harris still won, you know, LA County, but 11%

toward Republicans, that's crazy in Los Angeles.

You know, my problem with the policy there, again,

I could be friends and debate and whatever

with anyone.

If it's honest, Thomas Jefferson said, question with boldness even the very existence of God, for if there be a God, he must surely rather honest questioning over blindfolded fear.

Honest questioning means if I ask you a question

and you present me with an answer and I'm like, hmm,

I'm open to changing.

You know what I mean?

We don't have honest questioning.

We now have got you questioning.

We have cancel you questioning.

And beyond that, we have this system that props up lies

and a government that is willing to engage in lies.

If you wanted to bring people in and open the borders the way you did and then move people with our tax dollars on airplanes to cities where you're changing everything in that city.

Can we have that conversation first?

And part of the problem was they were saying it's not happening.

Well, yes, it is.

And you're doing it behind our back in the middle of the night.

Well, it's interesting because,

and look, I can definitely be honest about my own flaws and my own mistakes because I bought the mainstream media narrative that there wasn't a migrant crisis.

And yeah, I did believe it.

I believe because...

Look, I was an idiot because, I mean, who do you trust in today's media landscape?

I know.

Right.

There's a lot of liars out there.

And when it comes to mainstream media, the fact of the matter is they do play defense more and more for the Democratic Party.

And that's an issue because there was a time when that didn't happen.

And so I still believed in their good faith reporting, even though it turns out, you know, a lot of these reports would omit really important details about what's really going on.

And so it wasn't until Texas Governor Greg Abbott started busing or sending migrants to blue cities where that woke me up.

That woke a lot of people up.

And suddenly America realizes, oh, there is a migrant crisis.

Why did that wake you up?

Well, because all of a sudden you're seeing migrants sleeping on the floor in the police department in Chicago because they don't have shelter for these people, right?

You're seeing, you know, these...

I love watching streams of city council meetings because that's how you understand what's really going on in these cities, right?

These are real people who live there and they get their opportunity to speak.

Chicago's been an amazing

wild.

I mean, I watch every city council meeting from Chicago because it's crazy.

And for me,

rather than relying on mainstream media reporting or anyone's reporting, to be quite honest with you, What I'll do is I'll go out of my way and I'll watch, you know, the entirety of a government function, local government function.

I talk to real people and I get a sense of where hearts and minds really are.

And so on election night, I wasn't surprised at all.

I knew what was coming.

I totally knew what was coming.

I knew that Cook County was going to swing, I think it's about eight percentage points toward Republicans.

I knew LA County, and this is what I was surprised about.

I did not expect Donald Trump to flip 10 counties in California from blue to red.

But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised about that either.

Because Because when you look at the conditions that people are living in in a Democrat-controlled state,

well, yeah, you can understand why people are turning their backs on the Democratic Party.

You can understand why people are frustrated at the corruption, at the loss of $24 billion that was allocated to help the homeless when homelessness only exploded during that time, and that money is now unaccounted for.

It was funneled to nonprofits whose executives get paid minimum $200,000, $250,000 a year.

And they have multiple executives who are making at least that or more.

And you just see the waste and you see the real grift.

And so, for people out there who are concerned about the grifters, take a good hard look at the systemic grifting that's happening right now.

It's disgusting.

It is, again,

I think,

the problem with the public-private partnership.

100%, yes.

Stop it.

These NGOs, let them raise their own money.

Let them, if they're doing good, they will prosper.

You know, people will find them.

The government just funneling millions of dollars.

It just, it's a money laundering.

Ukraine, I don't know where he's down in Ukraine, but...

Good God, man, that is just, that is a money laundering system and millions are being affected and hundreds of thousands are in a meat grinder right now.

For what?

I mean, look, I think that the UK and the U.S.

made a big mistake in discouraging Vlodymir Zelensky from continuing or engaging in peace negotiations early on, early on in that war.

So that's the strongest opinion I have about what has transpired in Ukraine.

You know, my heart goes out to the Ukrainians.

They're trying to defend themselves.

You know, they were invaded wrongfully, obviously.

But I feel that the way the United States has carried out its foreign policy, certainly, you know, starting in the Bush years, and it's only gotten worse from that, it's not really benefiting anybody.

And it's certainly not benefiting the American people, which is another reason why I think you're noticing a bit of a shift or a realignment when it comes to our political parties.

And

Trump came in and he just kind of

like messed everything up in the Republican Party.

And it's really weird to find myself in this place where you hear Republican voters take on this anti-war

identity.

And Democratic voters take on a more pro-war, like neoconservative type flavor.

Kamala speech at the convention on it, it was like, what?

Are you Dick Cheney?

What is that?

Not Dick Cheney.

She was honored by his

disgusted me.

But I think there's something to be said that I think with

conservatives, the definition of conservative, what I believe is the right definition, is we look at things that are happening,

what's working, save that,

get that part out of here because

it's corrupt, it's garbage, it's old think, whatever.

And progressive should be, we're more anxious to move forward.

Let's go.

The two of those things together

is what provides the balance, you know?

Totally.

You need that tension.

You need that.

It's important.

It's an eagle.

Can't fly with just one wing.

But

when you look at what has happened to the conservatives,

I started changing 2006.

I mean, I was all for the war.

I was all for that.

Yeah, I was all for it because

I believed that we could change things.

I was dumb enough to believe that you can hand people freedom and they want it or it will just work.

It barely works here.

You know what I mean?

You have to earn it.

You have to want it.

And I was also naive enough to think that we were the good guys.

That's a great point.

I mean, look at Iran.

I mean, we orchestrated a coup in Iran, which is part of the reason why you have this

theocratic

situation that we're now fighting against.

Doing regime change is not a good idea.

Not a good idea.

The U.S.

should not be in the business of engaging in regime change wars, period.

George, if we, I don't know if you've read his farewell address.

Okay.

If we would just do that,

we would have been fine.

But the State Department for decades has been on this

path of we're going to control everything.

If you're a country that says we don't torture,

but will ghost plane you to some place that will torture, you're a monster.

100%.

You're a monster.

I can't believe I'm hearing you say this stuff.

I've said this for years.

I've said it for years.

Wow.

That's awesome.

But

you have to be consistent with your principles.

And I think there's a lot of conservatives, and I'm so happy to see that now there are some Democrats that are doing the same thing.

Like,

I was for big food.

I was for big pharma.

And then I saw it.

And I feel like saying to Democrats, guys, you were right.

Now, why have you abandoned that position?

Because we now we would agree.

We could get so much done.

Can I ask you something?

I'm genuinely curious what you think about this because

I started to really sour on Biden when, in my opinion, he was pretending to fight for his agenda.

And part of his agenda was to allow for our Medicare system to just simply negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Believe it or not, and this is the most anti-capitalist thing imaginable, right?

Because capitalism, you're supposed to have competition.

You're supposed to welcome negotiation.

Our Medicare system not allowed to negotiate drug prices.

So he was pursuing a provision in his Build Back Better plan that would allow for the negotiations to happen.

Well, then they whittled it down, whittled it down to 10 pharmaceutical drugs.

Oh, what can we do?

You know, this is the thing.

The Democrats like to play good cop, bad cop.

So you'll have the majority of the Democratic Party and the Senate in particular pretend like they're all on board with Biden's agenda and the the idea of having Medicare negotiate drug prices.

We have the same problem in the Republican Party, by the way.

And then you'll always have the bad cops who are willing to raise their hands and basically torpedo that provision.

And that's essentially what happened with Senators Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema.

But don't make the mistake of thinking they were the only ones because sitting on the bleachers waiting were other corporate Democrats who would step in if they needed to to prevent the passage of that provision?

And so I love watching Democrats celebrate themselves because now Medicare can negotiate the drug prices of 10, you know, 10 drugs.

And sure, that's better than nothing.

But

I mean, I'm not going to give you a reward

for whittling down a policy that made sense,

that would have saved taxpayers in this country a lot of money.

I think

we could come to agreement on this easily.

That's why I'm so excited about RFK.

Get them out of government.

Get them out.

I don't want them anywhere around.

I want our government to have that limited work of just, who do you run to if the police are in part of it?

You can't run to the press and say, hey, look, because the press no longer is protecting the little guy.

They're protecting the pharmaceutical company or the government which is the same the press was doing positive pr for the democrats on this issue as the democrats yeah essentially destroyed their own agenda okay like it was ridiculous so i i just if you're gonna run to the press to get accurate information about what's going on i mean

what i'm saying though on that is there is no good cop.

We are a system of checks and balances.

Congress and the Senate, they're all backroom deals.

I talk to congressmen and senators who say, What the hell am I even doing here?

We don't debate anything.

We don't talk about anything.

They come out and say, Here it is.

You have 10 minutes to read it and vote, and you're voting this way.

There's no checks and balance.

The administration, it was

does the admit, does the president work for all of these administrators, or do the administrators work for the elected guy?

You know, it's all it's all out of control.

And the one that was supposed to watch is the media.

And the media and now with big tech, they're all part of that system.

We have to find a way to go back to the, I really feel like if we could,

have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again and reset it to its factory settings?

You know what I mean?

There are things that we need that we can't cut.

There are things that

we've got.

But we have got to, it's rotted from the inside on both sides.

We have to, I don't want to,

the American idea

is right.

It's great.

It's to create a more perfect nation, meaning we're never going to be perfect.

And the mission statement in the Declaration of Independence, there's nothing more inspiring from any country in the history of the world than that.

I want to try to create that, knowing we'll never get there, but we can make progress towards it.

So we can't jettison everything, but we have got to go in

with

I don't even know if you can do it with surgical knives anymore because it's so big and out of control.

Just start chopping down some of the, reshaping the tree.

Yeah.

There's been a lot of attention focused on, you know, Doge, right?

The Department of Government Efficiency and what they're going to focus their energies on.

You know, I'm cautiously optimistic, mostly because of the fact that a lot of the conversation is focused on the Pentagon.

And there's agreement on both sides of the political aisle that there needs to be a serious accounting for all of the resources that are being squandered on the Pentagon.

But that also has to happen

in things that you're going to like.

I mean, I believe the Pentagon is completely out of control.

Yeah, I mean, they haven't been able to pass a single audit.

I mean, it's crazy.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

So I completely agree with that, but I believe defense is very important.

We could go back and forth.

But there's also stuff on the other side.

We have squandered trillions of dollars.

We don't even.

How do we have a government that says, geez, where did we put that $2 trillion?

How does that happen?

Yeah, it's crazy.

It is.

I mean,

I agree with you.

I think that even when it comes to, look, I agree with programs that are meant to help the homeless.

I totally am.

So

that's the type of, those are the types of policies.

They're effective.

If they're effective, but there's a lot of waste because the way that those policies are being implemented in places like California isn't really meant to help the homeless.

It's about funneling taxpayer money to nonprofits.

That's what it's about.

And so when we talk about waste, yeah, I'm open-minded about taking a look at these government agencies and really questioning whether these massive bureaucracies make sense, right?

Whether the money is well spent on various programs.

You know, let's do a little bit of testing to see if these policies or these programs are even effective in carrying out what their objective is.

See, this is why I think the 10th Amendment is so important.

It creates 50 laboratories.

You want universal health care in Massachusetts?

Have it, do it, vote for it.

You want it in California?

Have it, do it.

If it works, we'll do it.

If it doesn't work, you can't just say, oh, we need bailout from the federal government.

Why should I pay for?

something that doesn't work.

You know what I mean?

And if there's 50 laboratories, somebody's going to come up with something better.

You know what I mean?

But we have all of this federal regulation to stop people from trying things that might work.

Yeah.

So are you consistent on that issue, though, on the idea of states' rights and allowing for the federal government to just kind of take a step back?

It seems like a setup question.

No, no, it's not a gotcha or anything, but mostly because in conversations with Republicans or with conservatives or anyone on on the right,

they tend to have this idea of states' rights when it comes to economic policies or things like healthcare, as you mentioned.

But then it comes to some of the more conservative social issues where they do want the federal government to be involved and have a standard.

Like, for instance, you know, there's a small but loud group of people who are on Trump's case about not wanting to pursue a federal ban on abortion.

Right.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on.

The federal government has nothing to do with it.

The Supreme Court has ruled with it.

I don't think you can legislate morality.

I think the problem with the abortion case

is

on the right side.

Forget about the baby for a second.

Mom.

Why is she in that?

She is most likely not

in this situation because she's like, I want to shout my abortion.

Right.

Okay.

Rights.

They're in trouble.

Something has happened.

Something has failed.

They have no framework around them to help them.

We

cannot

just say to that person, no,

because they'll go someplace else.

We have to care about the baby and the mother and help fix what's broken.

When somebody is using abortion for birth control,

I don't even understand your moral sense, but I understand 80%, I bet, of people who are having an abortion.

There's no law that will fix that.

None.

We have to find the way by working reasonably with each other.

You know, I went to GLAD

and met with GLAAD this years ago when Iran was throwing gays off of the rooftop.

I've always been for gay marriage.

I'm more libertarian.

I don't care.

Marry who you want.

Don't tell me and my church what I have to do, and I'm not going to tell you what you have to do.

And I went to Glad and I said, look, we could argue all day long about wedding cakes.

They're throwing people off the roofs because they're gay.

This will be wildly unpopular with my audience, and it will be wildly unpopular with your audience.

But why don't we come together and say, we disagree on a whole bunch of stuff, but this we agree on.

Life has meaning.

Okay, they wouldn't do it.

Interesting.

Okay.

Until we have the guts to stand up and say, look, this is going to be unpopular on my side.

It's going to be unpopular on your side.

But we're both reasonable.

Laws

thing, when it's oppressive, when they're just forced on you,

it feels oppressive.

We have to change the hearts and minds.

And the only way we're going to do that is by talking to each other

and actually looking at the problem, not just saying, oh, it's the homeless.

That means, my father used to say, I'd say, you know, Dad, I want to talk to you about God.

Okay.

We cannot talk about God.

What do you mean?

Let's call him first cause

because God means something different to you than it does me.

First cause,

we don't have any images in our head, so we start from there.

When we say we want to talk about abortion,

it means something to you, means something to me that's deeply seated in us.

We have to find our way to the compassionate core of the human experience.

How do we get there?

Like, what is your suggestion?

I'm

uh

uh

i am

i have for so long

uh

waited

for a fair interview on my side from somebody who doesn't agree with me i can get fair interviews i can get bad interviews from people who agree with me and i don't mind um

somebody reporting something and me going, well, I don't think that's exactly true, but I can see how you got there.

There's no such thing as a, it's all a setup.

All of it is a setup.

Yep.

And you now know it because you're on the other side.

And I'm sure people on both sides right now with you.

That's why when I, before we started, the only thing I said to you was, you're in a safe zone.

I'm not trying to get you.

That has to happen.

And the only way that happens is back to Jefferson.

Honest questioning.

I really want to know how you got there.

When we talk to each other

and I've got an agenda, oh, you know what?

I've got some people coming over for Christmas.

I know exactly.

I'm going to say this and they're going to say that and then I can get them to that.

That's not honest.

When you say, I'm not going to talk to you because I disagree, what I'm actually saying is, I'm smarter than you and you have nothing to teach me.

Yeah.

And ironically, that's actually the dumbest

way to proceed because one thing that I have noticed is as

the left kind of

avoids any debate or conversation with individuals they disagree with.

Well, their ideas don't really get challenged, right?

Your ideas get challenged in a debate, in a good faith debate.

I'm not talking about, you know,

gross, you know, rolling around in the mud mud type stuff.

But, you know,

I like when my ideas are challenged because it forces me to consider the flaws or

a blind spot that I might have.

Yes.

You know, and that's so I want to make good arguments.

I think

I think the left is so weak right now, so easy to take apart.

Yes, you're right about that.

I've been thrown up against the wall for the last 20 years saying, you're a racist, you're a bigot.

You can only have that said to you if you're a good, decent person.

So long before you go, am I?

What am I doing that makes me appear that way?

What is it?

And you self-examine and you either fix or you become stronger.

No one's thrown the left up against the wall.

I don't think people have any idea how to defend what they think they're for.

I mean, it's interesting because

I've been forced to realize this when I've been making arguments to my audience, to the left, in regard to, hey, you know what?

We've implemented this criminal justice reform policy and it's actually not working out the way we expected.

We need to tweak it here, recalibrate it there, and maybe, you know, this policy could actually work out really well.

Let's fix these little gaps that we see.

And rather than consider that I'm coming at them in good faith because I want these policies to work.

All they do is just call you a grifter.

Okay, that's it.

That's the thing.

You can call me whatever you want.

Call me a grifter if you want.

But please try to contend with what I'm saying.

Like, debate me on this.

I want to have an actual exchange.

If you just think that you're going to call me a grifter and move along, and that's good enough, that's not good enough.

Okay, that makes you look weak.

There are so many times

I've said this for years.

Please, please tell me, not that I'm wrong.

Tell me how I'm wrong.

I want to be wrong.

Exactly.

I want to be wrong on some of these things.

But we don't do that.

So let me turn that question back to you.

Nobody trusts anything.

I mean,

I'm a conservative.

The FBI is a danger to our society.

The Department of Justice, yes, it is.

And I used to be, oh, I thought it was a guy.

Uh-uh.

I don't trust any of it anymore.

And

it's American and responsible to not trust blindly.

Right.

You know what I mean?

But when you don't have anything and you're not even sure the people you're talking about are grounded in the Constitution, actually

do not want a theocracy, do not want a fascist state, do not want a communist state, they do care and are willing to say, man, this kills me to say it, but you have the right to believe that.

If you don't have that trust, how do we gain that trust back?

Honestly,

we can talk about things like transparency, more accountability in the media, stuff like that.

But I think a lot of what we're seeing in the country right now stems from economic frustration.

And you have to think about it this way.

When Americans feel like they have no stake in the game,

that's where the nihilism comes from.

When you feel like you have nothing to lose,

that's what's going to give you the type of mentality that's going to allow you to literally shoot and kill a United Healthcare CEO

in cold blood in broad daylight.

Okay.

We

have some real problems in this country right now.

Right.

But that's...

And I'm not justifying that that happened at all.

But

you have to think about what led someone like that guy to think it was okay to carry that out in like in the morning.

Okay.

Right.

But it doesn't.

In New York City.

I just want to be really, really careful because I know that I know what you're saying and I agree with you, but I want to be very clear on what you're saying.

Nothing justifies.

No, no, I am not justifying it at all.

That was murder.

Right.

And even if I have deep criticisms of our healthcare system me too okay deep deep criticisms me too however the idea that carrying out vigilante justice is the solution is laughable to me what happened yesterday did nothing to reform our healthcare system didn't even inch us closer to it And at the end of the day, it just led to the murder of one individual who happened to be the CEO of one of the healthcare companies.

That's not going to fix or solve anything at all.

So, but what I'm trying to get at is there's a reason why there has been this increase in political violence in the country, which I'm also not justifying,

but I'm also not surprised by it because people feel like they have nothing to lose or more importantly, nothing to look forward to, nothing to build upon.

So can I ask you a difficult question?

Yeah, of course.

I believe in the American way,

not the system we have.

I believe in the founding ideas.

And I believe we can be that.

And I believe tomorrow can be brighter.

And I believe my children can surpass me.

It's going to be hard.

Very hard.

And in this,

if we keep going this way,

no.

But I do have optimism.

And I do believe the individual chooses to chart their course.

Some people need help, assistance, whatever.

we're not born on a level playing field we're all born equal we all have equal chance but some of us need some help and etc etc

what i hear okay

from the left is you can't do it because that group of people are in your way you are black

whatever color you're a woman you're gay they hate you they'll stop you that leads you to a place of hopelessness.

I agree that there's a certain level of defeatist mentality on the left that I don't think is necessarily helpful, right?

We have to think a little more strategically about what type of

systemic obstacles are standing in our way of helping people become what they want to become in life, right?

Get to where they want to get to in life.

Look, the Federal Reserve put out data in 2021, fourth quarter of 2021, showing that the top 1% of this country owned 30, almost 31% of the wealth.

I know.

Whereas the bottom 50%

owned like 2.3% of the wealth.

Like it was insane, right?

Just insane.

So I give you those stats because there has been a growing problem in the country of more and more of the wealth floating to the top.

And, you know, when we talk about waste at the Pentagon,

understand that one of the biggest redistributive policies that we have in this country that takes money from the bottom to the top is the money that goes to the defense contract.

It's a tiny, tiny group of people who have a lot of sway over our political system because of money and politics.

And so our money gets redistributed from the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, the tax-paying, hardworking Americans, to this tiny group of executives.

But I would say also, I mean, I'm not on the low end of the scale.

Also for me.

Yeah, exactly.

Middle class.

I mean, it's getting harder and harder for people to hold on to middle-class status.

And I understand the frustration and anger in the country.

I mean, I feel it time to time when you see what's going on.

And so

you think about the federal minimum wage, it's $7.25.

I did the calculation earlier today because I was curious, like, what's the exact amount of money?

I mean, you're not, you're barely making like $13,000 a year with that, right?

So

there.

I hate to say this, but I'm such a state's rights guy.

Yeah.

Why should it be $7 in New York City?

That's like a dime.

Well, this is the thing.

I actually think the model that you see in Scandinavian countries makes a lot more sense.

They don't have federal minimum wages.

You know what they have?

They have unionized workers who get to negotiate working conditions and their pay

with like, you know, collective bargaining, which is much makes way more sense.

So for me, Donald Trump choosing, you know, a pro-labor, labor secretary was a big deal.

Because voting in favor of the PRO Act, which does away with the intentional obstacles that prevent unionized labor from even forming, is important to me.

And so I would rather have the workers have a say over what they're getting paid and what they're working to do.

So

let me push back because I actually

I know history.

I actually think unions are important.

Yes.

I think think business is important.

When one side

gets the thumb on the scale, it's bad.

It is.

Yep.

And, you know, FDR was very dead set against unionized federal workers.

You cannot negotiate against yourself.

Okay.

And knew that would cause all kinds of problems.

He was a big labor guy.

He was, yep.

Not in the federal government.

Okay.

we have i am all for

and especially now i mean i'm not a

um

universal basic income guy but i i have been saying for 10 years

we have to talk about this because there's about 10 people that all of the money is going to flow to and you're going to be a serf and a slave for the rest of your life

because it's all going to change so i don't know what the answer is, but I do want a gig economy.

I want an economy that if I'm a mom and I only want to work these hours, I can check in when I want, check in, you know, say limiting people's options is not good.

Balancing and making sure you're not getting ripped off on either side

is better.

Absolutely.

So how do you achieve that when labor unions

can give

so much

money to politicians?

We got to get money out of politics.

And I mean that.

I'm not just talking about corporate interests.

I'm also talking about the power that unions have, both on a local level

and on a federal level with the campaign donations that they engage in, right?

Like, but how do you do that?

You have the teachers' union.

Right.

Teachers' union keeping kids out of school

because it was a union.

There was no science.

We now know this.

How do you do that?

You have to pass.

I mean, look, Jenk Uger, through an organization that he founded called Wolfpack,

has been fighting for a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.

And it wouldn't just impact corporations.

It would impact any entity that engages in these current legalized bribes.

And I think that's the right course of action.

Now, it's difficult because you need lawmakers on a local level, like states, to agree to a constitutional convention.

And that's been an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish.

Yes, exactly.

So, and, you know, there are a ton of Democrats who don't like the idea because they're worried that it's going to be hijacked by, you know, Republicans and they're going to get their way.

But I think that really this is the only way that we're going to fix our broken system because otherwise all of these politicians, they're not working on behalf of the American people.

They're working on behalf of the individuals who have bribed them.

It's that simple.

And we've seen how it's been playing out.

If we do away with money in politics and we pass laws banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks, which

in some cases, it's obvious they're doing it with insider information they're getting from their closest.

No, no, no.

Nancy Pelosi is just a genius.

She's a genius.

She is.

Yeah.

She just outperforms the SP 500 consistently.

Crazy.

Well,

I am thrilled that you are here.

Thank you.

And I know there's probably a zillion things we disagree on, but you are a gracious and very smart woman.

Thank you.

I'm proud to have you on the show.

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

You bet.

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