2 Liberals vs. 1 Conservative: BAR FIGHT | Michael Knowles, Brian Recker, & Ryan Basham

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Speaker 1 What's up to you? Why are you determined for another couple?

Speaker 1 I'm not controlling anyone. I'm just describing marriage.

Speaker 8 I just think it's kind of fing stupid.

Speaker 9 Whatever you do in your marriage is your fing business.

Speaker 1 Okay, and we have no from the libs and we have yes from a married man who has a good time.

Speaker 1 Welcome, everybody. Thank you for being here.
Welcome to Bar Fight.

Speaker 4 It's splitting a family apart political violence.

Speaker 3 Can I speak to that?

Speaker 1 No. You might know him from TikTok, Ryan Recker.

Speaker 4 No wonder there are resistance.

Speaker 1 Okay, now hold on. I have to ask.
Oh, my God. Hold on.
I know you've decided that all comments that paint Mark him in Bad Light is bad.

Speaker 1 An advisor to Joe Biden's totally legitimate 2020 campaign, Ryan Basham.

Speaker 1 Nashville's premier beverage-fueled brawl live at John Rich's Redneck Riviera, the show where I, Michael Knowles, go head-to-head with two esteemed interlocutors on topics chosen by you, our most esteemed barflies.

Speaker 1 I've never debated an advisor to an auto pen before. This should be fun.
Here,

Speaker 1 here is how it works. We have each brought three topics to the table.
The audience chooses the topics. We will duke it out.
And then...

Speaker 1 Our eminently sober patrons can come up to the microphones to pick a fight with any of us. If you want to fight me, you go to the blue microphone.

Speaker 1 If you want to fight either of my wonderful guests, you go to the red microphone. Gentlemen, are you ready? Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, let's get started.

Speaker 4 Yeah!

Speaker 9 Ding, ding!

Speaker 1 All right, what's everybody's first topic?

Speaker 4 All right, topic number one for me.

Speaker 4 You know, Christian nationalists accuse Zoran Mandani of wanting to institute Islamic Sharia law because they are projecting their own desires for dominance onto him.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 dead silence. Next one.
That's a heady one.

Speaker 4 I didn't actually want that one, if I'm honest. That was a producer pick.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 9 My first claim is: the people who are most confident about gender-affirming care are the mainstream medical community.

Speaker 4 Absolutely. That's very true.
It's a factual truth.

Speaker 1 We'll see about that. It's not

Speaker 1 true for some people, but it is true. Mine is that political violence is a distinctly left-wing problem.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God.

Speaker 9 I love being on Earth too.

Speaker 1 It's pretty good.

Speaker 4 Start with something that's this broad. Do we?

Speaker 1 No, I know. We have a decibel counter here to figure out which topic you all picked.
I don't know. It was a little unclear to me.
Ben, do we know which topic won?

Speaker 1 It was hard to pick because I thought it broke because it read nothing on the first two. So we're doing the last one.
I'm actually a little upset about that. I wanted to do the transgender one.

Speaker 1 That's okay. We'll do mine.
That's fine.

Speaker 9 I hate that things are turning out well for you.

Speaker 1 That's brutal. Maybe at the end.
Maybe at the end we'll get it in. Okay.
Political violence is a distinctly left-wing phenomenon. You don't have to take my word for it.

Speaker 1 The Center for Strategic and International Studies just came out and admitted this, that it's a left-wing phenomenon. No less a liberal outlet than the Atlantic admitted it.

Speaker 1 And this is based on data that systematically exclude left-wing violence. So that's even not counting the BLM riots.

Speaker 1 It's not counting clear left-wing ideological violence like the Covenant School shooting that happened here in Nashville, transgender shooter targeted Christian children.

Speaker 1 It's not counting the Annunciation shooting. It's not even counting an experience that I had.
I was at the University of Pittsburgh two years ago. I just testified before the Senate on this.

Speaker 1 I go down to Pittsburgh, two Antifa operatives who are members of a formal Antifa cell, the Torch Antifa Network, they show up, they throw an explosive at the building when I walk on stage.

Speaker 1 They seriously injure a cop. One of them is in federal prison for this.
Not counted on any register as left-wing violence.

Speaker 1 So even excluding all the big left-wing violence, nevertheless, even the liberals admit, terrorism today in America is a left-wing problem.

Speaker 4 But what you're actually lying about from that study, the study actually says that this year is the first time in 30 years that left-wing violence has outpaced right-wing violence because historically it has always been white nationalist right-wing militant violence that has by far been the greater historic problem.

Speaker 4 Only right now, in a moment where authoritarian fascism is creating police states throughout the country and Trump's secret police is going around brutalizing and kidnapping people, are we seeing people respond with violence, which is understandable because Trump is creating a violent society?

Speaker 4 When you create a violent society, no wonder there are resistance. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Okay, now hold on. I have to ask.
Oh my God. Hold on.
Hold on. What counts as political violence?

Speaker 4 I'm sorry. Is splitting a family apart political violence? Or is it only political violence when it's not masked thugs doing it? No, sir.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 It seems like political violence when a masked thug tears a family apart.

Speaker 1 We can establish our terms.

Speaker 1 So political violence, as it's counted by even the left-wing groups, is when the violence is conducted in furtherance of an ideological motive, identifiable on the left-hand side.

Speaker 4 Like tearing people apart and sending them to deportation centers surrounded by alligators, like that kind of ideological motive?

Speaker 1 No, enforcing immigration law is not ideological violence.

Speaker 4 Sending people back to countries they're not even born in, is that an ideological?

Speaker 1 Well, they weren't born in this country, and they don't belong here either, so they're going to get out.

Speaker 4 So you guys are happy that you just clap for people to be sent back to countries that they weren't even born in.

Speaker 4 Y'all are telling me that.

Speaker 1 As long as they're not here, I am.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry. Do you know those are real people you're talking about?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, hold on, you made a claim, though. You made a claim, which is you said I lied, but I don't, what is the lie I told? I said that the study came out and it said that right now in America, left

Speaker 1 terrorism is on the left.

Speaker 4 It's the first time in history that it's been hired this year, specifically. Well, I left that.

Speaker 1 So I left that out. That wouldn't make it a lie.

Speaker 1 But then I think the thing you have to answer to my point is that the CSIS study csis is a left-wing organization even they're admitting the problems on the left now the federal data all of the other studies that we have exclude most of the left-wing violence including blm which left dozens of people dead a billion dollars in property damage including the two transgender shootings and including the antifa attack on me dented cop cars are the violence here you're more worried about dented cop cars than families being torn i'm just saying that it's violence and you're changing the subject to immigration because you know that left-wing violence is the chief problem what i would say is that when you are militarizing cities, that the governors are saying we actually don't need you here, you are actually instigating violence, and Trump wants that violence.

Speaker 4 You know why? So that you don't pay attention to the Epstein files.

Speaker 1 So as I understand it, my friend and interlocutor here has no answer on the left-wing terrorism problem. So he wants to talk about immigration.
He wants to talk about Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 1 He wants to talk about any other topic.

Speaker 4 I repudiate political violence. I don't believe that's the way.

Speaker 1 Well, that's good because many left-wingers do not.

Speaker 1 I do. Many is not a data judge.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, so there was a study came out, you gov after Charlie was assassinated that showed that very liberal people are eight times as likely to justify political violence as very conservative people, and 26% of young liberals are likely to justify political violence.

Speaker 1 Many multiples that of young conservatives.

Speaker 9 I think you have to take that in the context of what else is happening, though. A couple years ago, those numbers were flipped.

Speaker 9 I think we're in a situation right now where the outsiders are the liberals and raging against the machine.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, look, the vast majority of credible studies on political violence from the last 30 years have found that it's like an 85 to whatever split.

Speaker 1 But can you address the point that I raised answering that?

Speaker 9 Yeah, which one?

Speaker 1 The fact that the BLM violence was not counted as ideological in virtually any of the registers, the fact that an Antifa attack on me that resulted in federal prosecution and a guy in federal prison was not counted as left-wing political violence, the fact that the transgender shootings are not counted as political violence.

Speaker 1 Can you address that? Because if you can, then what you're saying is the numbers were cooked for years.

Speaker 9 Well, no, two things. First of all,

Speaker 9 I haven't read those studies to know the detailed definition. I know you love to do that, which is cool.
But also, we already have a data collection problem when it comes to crime, anyway.

Speaker 9 All violence is bad, but we, and by the way, some of this is enforced by federal law, have a horrible time trying to track violence in this country. So often our data is not that harder.

Speaker 1 And you know what's making it harder to hold it?

Speaker 4 Hold on, though, but do you know that what's making it harder to track is that the Department of Trump's Department of Justice actually removed a study following Charlie Kirk's very, very

Speaker 4 reprehensible assassination. After that happened, they removed a study that says that right-wing violence has led to 520 deaths since 1990.
Left-wing violence, only 72 deaths since 1990.

Speaker 4 And they removed that and hit it. It's archived.
I can send it to you. Just DM me.

Speaker 1 They didn't remove the study in the sense that the study still exists.

Speaker 1 They're just pointing out, as governments are wont to do, that new data and better data should be preferred to old data that are inaccurate and that exclude left-wing violence.

Speaker 9 I think violence is just bad.

Speaker 1 And I think

Speaker 1 we can all just agree on that.

Speaker 4 But I do think we should look at why it's happening and who's instigating it.

Speaker 1 Hold on, what do you mean why it's happening? Is this a justification guy? I'm not going to go with the T.

Speaker 1 What do you mean why it's happening? What does that matter? If the violence is coming from the left, my question is not, well, let's figure out why they're committing all that violence.

Speaker 1 No, I want to arrest them and stop the violence.

Speaker 4 Governors are saying, no, thank you. We don't need your military here.
So you're saying that because Trump is the violence, yes, he wants

Speaker 4 a violent society to justify all the other things in the future.

Speaker 1 So you're saying the right-wingers are asking for it. You're saying Trump is enforcing immigration law and therefore the left is becoming violent.

Speaker 4 I do not justify. No, absolutely.

Speaker 9 I didn't say that.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. That's what it sounded like you were saying.

Speaker 4 No, I'm saying that when the right uses fascist authoritarian tactics, they know what that's going to create.

Speaker 1 What's that going to create?

Speaker 4 People will, yeah, they're literally putting pressure on the right.

Speaker 1 The left will commit violence. I mean, it's a pretty straightforward thing.
So that is the point that I'm granting the premise. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 If my home was invaded, something bad would happen. That's a bad thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the left is committing violence at higher rates than the right, and they're justifying it at much higher rates than the right because of Trump. You know, this is basically like...

Speaker 4 Trump should just militarize cities when the governors are saying we're actually totally safe here and no need for this military here.

Speaker 1 Well, we've had federal law for many, well over a century that says that when cities fail to enforce order, that we have an insurrection act.

Speaker 1 No, there is. It's federal law.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Speaker 9 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but the thing is,

Speaker 9 every single one of these are instances of situations that the local police were already trained and prepared to handle.

Speaker 1 Were they? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Crime has exploded in the city.

Speaker 9 Absolutely. Listen, every single sheriff or police captain that has been affected by this has tried to find a polite way to say, No, we had it, but we're going to work with you because you're here.

Speaker 1 Two murders a day in Chicago. You think they have it? You think it's just fine? I don't think they have it.
No, no, no, no.

Speaker 9 People like to do that, but like every place in America.

Speaker 1 People in Chicago like to murder, yes, that's true.

Speaker 9 Listen, every place in America is violent, and we like to blame big cities as violent places, but they're just more people.

Speaker 4 It's a per capita problem.

Speaker 9 If you're in a rural place, people still get murdered just less often because there are fewer people.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 if anyone has any questions, any, any, oh, I see the line is already very long. Okay.

Speaker 11 Hey, what's up? I was just at Raising Canes with some friends, and they're like, oh, we need some people that probably aren't Republicans in here.

Speaker 1 So we're in here now.

Speaker 1 If you're a Republican, no, hey,

Speaker 11 I'm like kind of way more small government leaning. So like all this like, oh, like what the states want and f what the mayor wants.

Speaker 11 I'm just going to do what I want because I'm the White House is like kind of psycho to me, right?

Speaker 11 Like that's not, that's probably not going to foster like a healthy society when you have like the federal government really overstepping coming from this uh side of things i'm just kind of curious why are you so set on making like left-wing violence and right-wing violence because like obviously sometimes people are psychopaths right like we're on the same page there like there's people that like oh they grew up in a maga household and then they like got addicted to porn on like porchan and they be you know they go psycho and they kill people and it's so weird to watch like experts be like was he a republican or was he a democrat no he's a psychopath Like,

Speaker 1 so I have my master's degree in psychology, right? That's why I don't care.

Speaker 8 And, like, I just think it's kind of stupid, just to be real.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 okay. I mean, you have to do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 it's just

Speaker 8 very reductive the way that we do this.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think

Speaker 4 one thing that I will say is that if we look at some of the trends that are worth looking at,

Speaker 4 there is a real white male violence problem. Just about every time there's a shooting.

Speaker 1 I know you, I know, look, I know, I know you don't like, I know you, I know you've decided that all comments that paint light name with bad light is bad.

Speaker 1 Do we have to break out the crime statistics every single day? Because I don't know if we want to break out.

Speaker 4 Just about every time there's a shooter, it's like, oh, surprise, surprise. It's another white guy who got radicalized online.
We have a radicalization problem.

Speaker 1 You think white guys are more likely to commit violent crime than other races?

Speaker 4 No, I didn't say that.

Speaker 4 In mass shooting specifically, we have a lot of people who are in mass shooting. There's a radicalization problem with white men.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, okay.
Well, I guess one thought that I would have

Speaker 1 in response to your question is: the reason why it matters if they're on the left and the right, some people are just psychotic and you can't identify an ideological motive. Sure, that's true.

Speaker 1 But sometimes you can. And it seems to me that if you want to fix a problem, you have to first identify what the problem is.

Speaker 1 And so, if you refuse, if you just bury your head in the sand, or if you say it's the other side, then you're not going to solve the problem. Next question.

Speaker 3 Hey, so I want to speak to your analogy.

Speaker 3 You said if in in response to the uh ice agents coming into cities where the the governors are saying they don't want them you said if someone came into your house uninvited there would be consequences so this country is our house is our home so how would you uh how would you feel about the consequences for the people who are here illegally and uninvited

Speaker 9 you know great point I was just reading about reading up on statistics on that today, and some of you are going to hate this, but it's factual.

Speaker 9 Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are are less likely to commit crime than people who were born in this country.

Speaker 9 And statistically, the more immigrants there are in a community, the less crime there is in that community.

Speaker 1 Statistically, 100% of the country.

Speaker 1 It's not

Speaker 1 good, man. It's actually factually true.

Speaker 1 It's a little complicated.

Speaker 1 Let's be clear about it.

Speaker 9 He just said they already committed a crime. I want to be clear.
Being in the country, most people who are here without papers got here on like a tourist visa and overstayed.

Speaker 9 Most people who are here illegally did not.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Hold on.

Speaker 1 I have a whole sentence that you're interrupting.

Speaker 4 But to be clear, that legally,

Speaker 9 if all you've done is been in this country without papers, that's legally more like a misdemeanor closer to a parking ticket than it is to a felony. That's like a parking ticket, hold on.

Speaker 1 So hold on. You make a very good point, which is that a first-time entry, barring other conditions, can be a misdemeanor for sure.

Speaker 1 Re-entry would be a felony. There are other associated crimes with this.

Speaker 1 However, I would ask one question. Do illegal aliens pay federal taxes? Yeah, actually, they do.
They do. They hold tax and income tax often.

Speaker 1 90% of the taxes are.

Speaker 9 Actually, the IRS is a whole system for people who are undocumented to file taxes.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I'm glad.

Speaker 4 And by the way, economists overwhelmingly believe that immigration, including illegal immigration, is a net positive. Forget about that.

Speaker 1 I just have one question.

Speaker 1 I have one question for you.

Speaker 1 Because if you make the point, as you have, that actually illegal aliens, even though they don't have Social Security numbers, they do pay federal taxes because

Speaker 1 to get employment, sometimes they'll use other Social Security numbers, numbers. So they don't get the benefits, but they do pay into the system.

Speaker 1 That's a fact. Yeah, okay.
That's a federal crime. 42 U.S.
Code, Section 408. It's a federal crime to steal a Social Security number.

Speaker 1 So there you go. You've got it.

Speaker 1 I just want to be clear.

Speaker 4 I just want to clear the process for people to pay taxes without the payment.

Speaker 1 Which you just admitted is a crime.

Speaker 9 I'm going to violent crime versus paperwork.

Speaker 1 Okay, so now it's

Speaker 1 option. It's not that they don't commit crimes, it's that they don't commit violent crime.
Who has not had a speeding ticket ever in this room? I don't know if it's going to be a problem.

Speaker 1 You guys should all get live your life.

Speaker 1 A lot of good drivers out there.

Speaker 4 We'll throw you into a prison surrounded by alligators because of your speeding ticket.

Speaker 1 Also, also funny different.

Speaker 4 Fun fact,

Speaker 9 more than 70% of people in ICE custody today don't even have an accusation of a crime, let alone a record.

Speaker 1 I think the accusation is they came into the country illegally. Okay, do we have any more questions?

Speaker 12 Okay, so when we talk about these left-wing violence cases and things like that, we seem to like kind of talk around cases and things like that. When we're talking,

Speaker 12 all of us have been paying attention we see Charlie we see the Brett Kavanaugh we see

Speaker 12 you know BLM violence all this stuff we all have lived through these examples that we've seen face-to-face but other than January 6th

Speaker 12 and maybe Charlottesville how long has that been that's been 10 years ago

Speaker 12 you know we kind of just

Speaker 12 don't pay attention to the fact that we have all these examples of left-wing that we talk about very specifically but when we talk about right-wing violence we don't have a lot of examples we we We kind of

Speaker 1 say that.

Speaker 9 No, there's a difference between what you saw on TV because it was big and the statistics. It's important to look at definitions and what you're studying when

Speaker 9 you define what violence is.

Speaker 9 It's not like anecdotes are the same as data.

Speaker 9 Those are huge anecdotes and it's awful and bad, but also anecdotes and your awareness of them do not equal the objective facts of the data as a whole.

Speaker 12 And then every time we look into a right-wing one, it's a hoax.

Speaker 1 Yeah, hold on.

Speaker 1 So he asked, he said, look, you can point to all these specific examples of left-wing violence. And then you guys said here, you said, no, that's not true.

Speaker 1 You can point to all these ones on the right. But then you didn't provide any specific examples.

Speaker 9 Because I'm not relying on anecdotes.

Speaker 1 The plural of anecdote is data, by the way. Because crime in the aggregate is made up of individual instances.

Speaker 1 Because when you pick a specific one, it's always a hoax.

Speaker 1 You can't name them, though. Name what? He asked me.
Specific instances.

Speaker 4 January 6th, right?

Speaker 1 He mentioned January 6th. The only person who died in that political violence, by the way, was a Trump supporter, a military veteran who was killed by a trigger happy cop.

Speaker 1 We'll put that aside for a second.

Speaker 4 Because they stormed the Capitol.

Speaker 1 Yeah, by the way,

Speaker 1 not even the worst attack on the Capitol, by the way, because you had in 1915 a Harvard professor left-wing bombed the Capitol over protesting capitalism.

Speaker 1 You had Puerto Rican nationalists in the 1950s shoot it up, injured five congressmen. You had the left-wing Weather Underground bomb it.
You had the left-wing Maoist Liberation Front bombet.

Speaker 1 So five events, four involve explosives, four involve leftists, one involves a silly Hornhat guy on the right. Which are the serious attacks on the Capitol?

Speaker 4 That was a lot of words.

Speaker 1 I don't have a list.

Speaker 4 We've got to keep up.

Speaker 1 I know. We got to keep up.

Speaker 1 Look, look, look. Again, you're

Speaker 9 again,

Speaker 9 you're going to have anecdotes that support what you believe to be.

Speaker 1 Are we going to have it? You guys don't have anecdotes, so is the product that's going to be. This wasn't our topic.
I don't care. We weren't.
Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 that was your answer. What about what happened in Waco? I I mean, there are plenty of people.
My point. When the cops went in and murdered that cult? You can Google this.

Speaker 4 The data is very clear that historically, since 1990, deaths, let's just talk about deaths. 520 deaths from right-wing militant violence.
72 deaths from left-wing violence. All right,

Speaker 1 it's meant a lot of time, but no specific instances. I think it proves the question.

Speaker 1 Okay, next question. That's very specific.

Speaker 4 I'm talking about dead bodies. I don't know what, but like the BLM violence you're talking about.
Are you just talking about some property damage?

Speaker 1 No, I'm talking about dozens of people murdered.

Speaker 4 I'm talking about 520 people.

Speaker 1 But I'm giving you a specific instance, which is the BLM riots. You can't point to any instance.
I don't know what to say. Okay, next one.

Speaker 4 Next question.

Speaker 4 I have 520 people. That's it?

Speaker 1 That's it? That's it. Okay, so two questions.
Which one of us at this table won the round? And then there's going to be a follow-up question after that. So, who here

Speaker 1 thinks that our friend Brian won the round?

Speaker 1 Hey, Kyle, hey, you go. Here you go.

Speaker 1 You got some out there. Okay.

Speaker 1 Who here thinks that our friend Ryan won the round? Oh, all two of you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 All right. Thank you, guys.
Stop it.

Speaker 1 You love this stuff.

Speaker 1 Who here thinks I won the round? Hey, come on, stop it. Come on.

Speaker 1 Exciting. That was rough.
Okay. All right.
Now, this is actually the most heated debate of the entire show. Who do you think won the question round?

Speaker 1 Who do you think deserves a seat at that beautiful Redneck Riviera whiskey VIP table?

Speaker 1 My longer.

Speaker 1 Do we think of those guys back there, there? Is it our friend from Raisin Canes, our hippie friend? Is it?

Speaker 1 I agree. There's no more voting.
Mr. Hippie friend, you are at the VIP table.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. This is a long hour.

Speaker 1 Now we've got.

Speaker 1 I can't wait until he's been drinking a little bit and we get more questions.

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Speaker 1 Woo!

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you, Molly.
Yeah, ding, ting. Thank you, Molly.
Okay, so let's go. Second topics.

Speaker 1 You get I'm starting?

Speaker 4 Okay, Michael, you have said that wives owe their husbands sex. I have.
You call it the marital debt.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 4 I would like to propose...

Speaker 1 No, they fucking don't.

Speaker 1 All right. All right.

Speaker 1 I'm glad my wife is not in the audience tonight to argue against me. It's good.
I would love to hear her internal monologue.

Speaker 9 We already kind of touched on this, but I'm going to read it anyway. I should focus on deporting violent criminals, not whoever they can get their hands on.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 My topic is that Democrats are entirely responsible for that stupid government shutdown.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 You agree with that? Do you want, okay, I actually don't.

Speaker 4 Remember, we're going to argue about it.

Speaker 1 So what do we think?

Speaker 1 Let's talk about sex. The people have spoken.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about sex. Here's the thing.

Speaker 4 It's not that I don't want you to be.

Speaker 4 I don't want you to be raising.

Speaker 9 Okay?

Speaker 1 I feel like that's fair.

Speaker 4 So I grew up in something called purity culture. Very strict traditional gender roles.
This is what men are like. This is what women are like.

Speaker 4 One of the tenets of purity culture is that men need sex. Men want sex.
Sex is more for men than for women. This creates a lot of problems.
Here's the thing. Everybody's actually horny.

Speaker 4 Everybody wants to have sex. Speak for yourself.

Speaker 4 When you create a system where sex is a duty and it's obligation, you're actually doing a lot of things. First of all, you're not creating a culture of consent.
You're creating a culture of rape.

Speaker 4 And you're not creating a culture where men actually develop the skills which cultivate desire in their partners.

Speaker 4 When you have experienced sex where the other person deeply desires you and wants to be there with you, you would never talk about any kind of marital debt or obligation because that

Speaker 4 robs you of the experience of actually being in a mutually pleasurable sexual experience. And it also sets up men and women really for failure with how to view healthy relationships.

Speaker 9 I mean, I feel like if you're not getting the sex you want in your relationship, that's probably on you. Like, just generally speaking.

Speaker 1 If you want to

Speaker 4 cultivate emotional intimacy. Get enthusiastic content.

Speaker 1 Find out what makes them happy.

Speaker 4 Absolutely. Any talk of obligation and debt actually is just incredibly unhealthy.
It's toxic.

Speaker 1 Okay, so all fine points. Now, I agree, sex is a privilege.
I've always said with me, it's especially a privilege.

Speaker 1 And everyone says nothing when you know.

Speaker 1 But what we're talking about here is not, you know, just sort of the ideal situation where everyone's always in the mood all of the time.

Speaker 1 What we're talking about is situations where, at the extreme case, we're getting to the nature of what marriage is. Do husbands and wives...

Speaker 1 broadly speaking, at the end of the day, have an obligation with some frequency at some point, maybe to at least consider having sex with each other?

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 4 but here's the thing. An obligation.
Pressure, this has been studied. The data shows pressure decreases desire, decreases satisfaction within marriage.

Speaker 4 When you have that obligation and pressure, that will make your wife less likely to want to have sex with you and also less happy in the relationship.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's say you're married, you get married, you say, this is great.

Speaker 1 What a wonderful honeymoon, honey. And then your wife or your husband tells you that night, say, hey, by the way, I should have probably told you this beforehand.

Speaker 1 I never ever want to have sex with you, not even one time.

Speaker 4 You should probably sign for an adult. That sounds like an unhealthy relationship.

Speaker 1 Get divorced. Get divorced.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but you're not.

Speaker 1 Okay, so now there you go.

Speaker 4 You want to be in that marriage?

Speaker 1 Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 4 I don't know what you. I want to have sex with people who want to have sex with me.
But Brian, then you.

Speaker 1 You call me crazy.

Speaker 9 And I feel like if you mean crazy, I feel like if you get into a marriage with somebody and then they tell you that after you're married, that's that came in the middle of the morning.

Speaker 1 But Brian, you've just admitted the point. By saying at that point you should get divorced, you're saying if you're within marriage, you have to have sex at some point.

Speaker 4 You've admitted it. If that's what both people, if that's what you want.
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 You just said.

Speaker 4 If you're a sexual relationship, and you married someone who's ace or asexual, not interested in sex, then you probably don't belong to each other.

Speaker 1 Did you say ace? What is ace? Asexual. Asexual.

Speaker 4 Asexual. Asexual.
Some people don't

Speaker 1 have sex. Bad for a marriage.

Speaker 4 Yeah, some marriages are happily sexless. Not most.
I would say that's not normative, but it certainly is. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

Speaker 4 I personally don't need to control how other people do their sex. Like they can have, I want everybody to have the sex that they want to be having.

Speaker 1 All right, this is getting too body.

Speaker 1 I have a more basic question. I have a more basic question.
What is marriage for?

Speaker 1 What's like the point of it? What distinguishes marriage from other unions, like two buddies or whatever, boyfriend and a girlfriend? I have thoughts, but you answered that. Siblings, I don't know.

Speaker 4 Intimacy, connection, companionship, partnership.

Speaker 1 But I'm

Speaker 1 not. I'm intimate with my buddy.
I'm intimate with my cousin. But I'm not, not that way, not that way.
I'm saying it's different. Listen, marriage.

Speaker 1 It's different.

Speaker 4 Hey, this is beautiful. I think coming out is a really simple thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, not for everybody.

Speaker 4 Different. Do you want to tell your story of when you came out, Ryan?

Speaker 1 We can all be in the middle of the day. I think it was like others.

Speaker 1 But it's different. I am from this state.
Listen, not about my country. Can I propose something?

Speaker 4 So I think one thing that's really important about the whole idea of debt is we are giving men and women a very bad idea of what sex even is and how it should be experienced.

Speaker 4 We're letting boys think that actually women probably don't want to be here and it's actually normal to be in a sexual relationship where the other person is in a position of duty rather than cultivating that desire, which we're seeing this.

Speaker 4 We are in a male loneliness epidemic for a reason. Men are not learning relational and emotional skills.
They're not learning how to connect with people as people.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah, I totally agree that people should get married and not be lonely. By the way, if you have questions or comments, go to the microphone.
I guess I'd like to propose something.

Speaker 1 It's a little weird. I'm not going to marry you.

Speaker 1 I know. Listen,

Speaker 1 I've only had half my drink. We'll see how the next one is.

Speaker 4 We did learn in the Epstein files today that Trump sucked Bill Clinton's dick, I guess.

Speaker 1 Did you guys read that one? Anybody read that one? Did you guys see that? I must admit.

Speaker 4 I did not make that up. That is in the Epstein files.

Speaker 1 Google it. I think I missed that file.
You missed that file.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I have something to propose on the topic, which is because I'm very old-fashioned. So I'm of the opinion that marriage is for having children.
I think that's what distinguishes it from other unions.

Speaker 4 A bunch of childless people out there.

Speaker 1 Not everybody gets, you know, there's infertility and everything, but it is a union between a man and a woman ordered toward the procreation and education of children and also for the mutual support of the spouses.

Speaker 1 That's what distinguishes it from buddies or cousins or siblings or whatever.

Speaker 1 So then my point is, if you don't do the thing that distinguishes marriage from other relationships, you've totally undermined marriage. And you see this in religion, obviously.

Speaker 1 You were raised in a religious household. St.
Paul writes in

Speaker 1 1 Corinthians, he says that husbands should not deprive their wives of sex and vice versa, because they're not totally in control of their own bodies. We control each other's bodies.

Speaker 1 Let me just get this point out. And so there's a religious basis all through Christendom, all through religious traditions, but there's a secular basis too.

Speaker 1 There was a study in 2015, University of Toronto. It found that couples who don't have sex are less happy than couples who do.
I don't know why there's a study for that, but there is.

Speaker 1 I don't know why that name is. Couples that don't have sex are much more likely to get divorced, and couples that don't have sex are much more likely to use pornography, which itself predicts divorce.

Speaker 1 So it seems to me, and I guess this is just my basic claim, that within marriage, an essential part of it is occasionally bumping uglies. Is that fair?

Speaker 4 Sure. It's going to be different for everybody.

Speaker 1 But I don't think it's different. I think marriage, by its very nature, involves.

Speaker 4 Many people get married later in life and don't have children for all kinds of reasons. They have dasectomies.
They've already had marriage.

Speaker 1 Not saying they have to have children. It's just ordered toward having to be marital.

Speaker 4 Some people don't want to have children, and they can still get married because they want companionship without children. You're allowed to do that, too.

Speaker 4 You actually don't need to control people, Michael. You can actually let people live their life.

Speaker 1 I'm not controlling anyone. I'm just describing marriage.

Speaker 4 I want to give people to have the sex that they want to have.

Speaker 4 And because I so badly want men to not be lonely and want them to have satisfying sex lives, they should know that gaining enthusiastic consent and creating emotional connection is the way, not talking about obligation and marital debt.

Speaker 4 That will not work, boys.

Speaker 1 But once again,

Speaker 4 I get some ladies out here, please.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Once again, though, these things are not pitted against each other.
It's great. You know, couples.

Speaker 1 They're not pitted against each other.

Speaker 1 When you talk about

Speaker 4 debt and obligation you actually shut down desire the data tells that if you actually read sex researchers and sets no i just cited a number of sex research studies didn't i and i just pointed out that couples that don't have marriages are healthier when they're having sex yes but marriages that talk about debt and obligation have less sex is what i'm telling you but the question the question that we're asking here

Speaker 1 the question that we're asking is

Speaker 1 do does marriage necessarily involve having sex That's the question. Okay, and we have no from the libs and we have yes from

Speaker 1 a a married man who has a good time. I want your mother.
I wouldn't say the majority do, but why would you determine that for another couple? Do we have questions or comments?

Speaker 1 We have a lady.

Speaker 1 Hi.

Speaker 2 I want to make sure I can look you in the eyes when I speak to you.

Speaker 1 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 2 A large part of what brought me to this bar is this specific statement that you've made.

Speaker 2 This isn't exactly fun to share to a bar full of people, although I see that this bar has women in it and men, and I understand that that means that a large number of us in this room have unfortunately experienced rape.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna be very honest and open and look in your eyes and tell you right now that I'm a victim of child rape.

Speaker 2 Rape started for me as a baby and lasted into my well into my adolescence and then through my adult life as I now am a 31 year old woman tried to reclaim my body back.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna be ultra honest. This is something that I'm already honest about in my own community, but I am a survivor of sex

Speaker 2 that happened to me in the fifth grade.

Speaker 2 I devoted a lot of my adolescents, especially the 14-year-old, as I started to learn about this towards fighting against girls that were funneled and trapped into sex trafficking.

Speaker 2 So a lot of my life growing up is about

Speaker 2 really beautifully trying to reclaim my own body.

Speaker 2 And anybody I intend to love or marry, I should hope that if I need to lay in bed next to them beside that night and all I can do is hold their hand, if that, I should hope that they would love me enough to give me that safety and my body, especially my husband.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Amen. Well, I'm terribly sorry to hear of your experience.
I mean, thank you.

Speaker 2 And then thank you for saying that.

Speaker 2 And so I guess to ask an actual question, because I said that as a question, hearing my experience, because a lot of this is, you know, we're speaking theoretical here.

Speaker 2 I am truly a human that has endured that.

Speaker 2 and fought against that.

Speaker 2 So looking in my eyes as a woman, when I hopefully get married someday,

Speaker 2 when I don't want to, if there's a night I don't want to have sex with my husband that night,

Speaker 2 do you think I owe that to him?

Speaker 1 No, no, not at any given time, whenever.

Speaker 1 That's not any part of the claim or any part of the traditional Christian understanding of marriage.

Speaker 2 So if there's a year, thank you. And so if there's perhaps like a certain time in my journey,

Speaker 2 after I have opened myself up to a man to trust him, to say, hey, thank you. I do want to share my body with you, my love.

Speaker 2 Let's say at a point in my journey, I start struggling with my memories that I will tell you are graphic, are horrific, they're difficult. So if there's an entire, perhaps even

Speaker 2 five-month period or even a, God forbid, a year

Speaker 2 that I don't feel comfortable letting somebody into the body that somebody has taken from me so many times,

Speaker 2 do I owe that to him?

Speaker 1 No, so in the traditional sort of Christian understanding of this, there are all sorts of circumstances that would obviously, you know, mitigate what is traditionally called the marital debt, which would be like if your wife has just given birth or something, if I don't know, all the way down to a headache.

Speaker 1 And so, obviously, a very grave condition, as you're describing, some kind of trauma, some kind of medical condition, would, of course,

Speaker 1 and one would hope in a loving marriage, would

Speaker 1 willfully impel the husband to recognize that. That is, of course, the case.

Speaker 1 The only question that is being debated here is whether or not the institution of marriage necessarily entails sex in itself.

Speaker 1 Not sex every day, not sex every two hours, not sex when people are upset or have difficult conditions. Certainly not sex when a woman has just given birth or anything like that.

Speaker 1 The only question, the very modest claim that I am shocked that my liberal interlocutors could not acknowledge here, is that marriage at some point in its intrinsic nature involves sex.

Speaker 1 And I think you would agree with that.

Speaker 2 I think that for the most part that is a natural outcome of marriage.

Speaker 2 But I also believe that

Speaker 2 while there's a lot of byproducts of marriage, I do think that the main point of marriage is to join together and love each other and respect each other, and especially respect each other's dignity, autonomy, and safety.

Speaker 1 Certainly, but wouldn't you say, it's a great point, but wouldn't you say

Speaker 1 beyond that because we were joking about having buddies and stuff, being intimate with buddies or whatever, you know, and it's like you're not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 We can have intimate, safe, loving relationships with lots of people, you know, with your your family members, with your neighbors, with your teachers, with your coworkers, whatever.

Speaker 1 So there has to be something that distinguishes marriage from all of those other kinds of loving, intimate, beautiful relationships.

Speaker 1 And it seems to me that what distinguishes it is not going on a honeymoon. It's not that you share a bed or don't share a bed like Lucy and Ricky.

Speaker 1 It's that at some point there's this act that you do with your spouse that you don't do with your cousin or your teacher, hopefully. So that's the only point of the claim.
And

Speaker 1 once again, I want to speak for you.

Speaker 2 It does seem like you agree with that that sex is a typical outcome or a hopeful outcome of marriage a distinctive part distinctive yeah absolutely especially through a Christian view yes you you are you know suggested to wait till marriage all those different things

Speaker 2 however I would like to point out two points and then I won't take up I won't hog this microphone thank you for listening thank you all of you guys for having the discourse

Speaker 2 But the two points I guess I would I would like to answer you on are that if the most desired outcome of marriage is having a child, there are a lot of people that deal with fertility issues, both men and women.

Speaker 2 So that doesn't negate the validity of their marriage. Certainly.

Speaker 2 And then,

Speaker 2 you know, 10 years ago, the statistic was like one in three women have had that trauma.

Speaker 2 The statistic has grown much higher, but I'd also like to point out that men also have a significant amount of sexual trauma. So you have both men and women in marriage that

Speaker 2 could possibly have these extenuating circumstances.

Speaker 2 Therefore, I believe believe that it should have a fair, it's a bold claim to say that sex is a debt to marriage when there are so many people in this room that have probably,

Speaker 2 actually, there are probably people in this room that have shared some of my experiences.

Speaker 1 I just feel like, you know,

Speaker 9 this conversation is basically the baseline is, do you have sex? To me, the baseline is, are you committed to being in it with each other, lifelong partnership no matter what?

Speaker 9 And everything y'all do together

Speaker 9 is none of my f business.

Speaker 1 You're in a lifelong partnership with your mom and dad.

Speaker 9 Well, what I'm talking about one-on-one partnership called marriage, which is we are in this thing called.

Speaker 1 Well, I know you share marriage. I'm asking what marriage is.

Speaker 9 We share the things that people tend to pair together and merge when they're married.

Speaker 1 But what is that? That's all very vague. What is the marriage?

Speaker 4 To honor her story, you're like, oh, yeah, absolutely. That's built in.
We do that.

Speaker 4 But then when you start with the language of debt and obligation, what you actually have to do, though, is get to know the person in front of you that you're in a relationship with and understand what they need.

Speaker 4 And the debt and obligation language creates a really unhelpful framework, which actually creates a framework where you're not entering into connection to actually find out what they need.

Speaker 4 Instead, you're thinking about what I deserve, that I deserve something.

Speaker 1 No, but you would owe it to your spouse.

Speaker 4 My goal was

Speaker 4 that men need sex. When you were talking, the quote that I'm referring to, you said, men need sex and women owe their husbands sex.
And vice versa.

Speaker 4 But that is the purity culture framework, that men need sex and women.

Speaker 4 This is what marriage is objects.

Speaker 1 Sex object. Who ever said anything like that? Wow.
How long do you have? All of history?

Speaker 4 Yeah, literally.

Speaker 4 Even just today, like Megan Kelly, for instance, speaking about the female victims and refusing, actually reframing it and saying, well, maybe Epstein and if Trump is implicated, they're not pedophiles because these girls were 15.

Speaker 4 As sexualizing these girls and saying that's not pedophilia because they're actually teenagers.

Speaker 1 I think we're kind of far afield off the topic, which is

Speaker 1 does marriage involve sex?

Speaker 4 The sexualization of girls and women and seeing them as objects is absolutely a part of this conversation, that men need sex and women are sex objects. Okay.
And that is.

Speaker 1 All right. I don't really know how Jeffrey Epstein fits into this, but I guess do we have any more questions? Do you want to talk about him?

Speaker 13 If you're arguing the premise that marriage, that there's no obligation for sex within marriage, I'll give you a little bit of a setup here.

Speaker 13 Myself personally, I live with my soon-to-be wife, and I also live with my best friend and his soon-to-be wife. Okay.

Speaker 13 So.

Speaker 13 If there's no obligation to sex within the marriage, how would you distinct, how would you make the classification between the relationship I have with my fiancé and the relationship that I have with my best friend?

Speaker 13 Especially considering we both live under the same roof.

Speaker 9 Oh, that's easy.

Speaker 9 Are you married?

Speaker 1 But what is he's asking,

Speaker 1 what does marriage mean? And you're saying, it's marriage. And he's saying, what does that mean to you?

Speaker 4 So if you believe that

Speaker 4 sex is an obligation, that means you can demand it from her.

Speaker 13 It is a voluntary obligation that you both sign up for when you get it.

Speaker 1 But if she doesn't want to do it, then you are going to make her do it?

Speaker 4 What's your plan here, bro? No, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 It's going back to the point Michael was making earlier. What's the plan?

Speaker 13 That it's not an anytime sort of thing. But there is an agreement that it will happen at some point in time.

Speaker 4 Okay, so you just want her to live under that looming pressure that she's supposed to?

Speaker 1 It's not a looming pressure. It's voluntary.
If you didn't discuss the voluntary, then take out the obligation language.

Speaker 4 It's not helping you. It's not serving you.

Speaker 1 Why did she get married in the first place? Because you love each other, Michael.

Speaker 4 Because you want to.

Speaker 1 Well, why do you consummate that language?

Speaker 9 Marriage is making a public declaration that you're going to share life together. and whatever you do in your marriage is your f ⁇ ing business.

Speaker 1 Listen, if you're not going to be able to do that,

Speaker 1 fellas, we're sharing life together right now, but we're not doing it.

Speaker 9 I am not declaring to the world that I'm making a public partnership for life with you.

Speaker 1 I've been discussing what we do together.

Speaker 9 That's not where I'm going at all with you.

Speaker 4 1 Corinthians 7, the passage that you read earlier, is absolutely about mutuality in relationships.

Speaker 4 It was actually quite revolutionary in a patriarchal society where women were often viewed as property to men. That passage talks about a mutual relationship where you both...

Speaker 1 Do you agree with the passage?

Speaker 4 In what sense? Do you agree with what St.

Speaker 1 Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, 3 through 7?

Speaker 4 You'd have to be more specific, though.

Speaker 1 This passage you just cited. I agree with that.
Do you agree with the thing you mentioned?

Speaker 4 It's a mutual relationship.

Speaker 1 All right, all right, I guess.

Speaker 1 Because that passage says you owe it.

Speaker 1 Nothing at all. All right, okay.
Now, two questions. Two questions.
Who up here won the round? We turn first to Brian.

Speaker 1 Hold up the blue paddle for Brian.

Speaker 4 I'll take you.

Speaker 1 We turn. Ryan was a little quieter in that round, but Ryan.

Speaker 9 I've never had sex with the woman, so I don't have much to add.

Speaker 1 Oh, but they owe you sex.

Speaker 4 You should be demanding it.

Speaker 1 You know what? I'm good. They don't owe Ryan sex.
I'm firmly behind that. And who thinks I won the round? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's kind of, that's almost like 50-50. I don't, what do we, Mr.
Davies, do we have an answer on that? Who won it? I think you won that round. I won it.
I think I did win it too.

Speaker 1 But it was a good one. I think they pay him to say that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He is on stage.
I think I pay him to say that, actually. Okay, now much more important question.
Do we have a thought on who won, which of the questioners? Well, I mean,

Speaker 1 the late. I think the lady, I would say.
Yeah, I would say the lady. Okay.
And that's not a talking vote, like for real. That was good.
Yeah, it was probably the

Speaker 1 only heartfelt, substantive conversation of this entire night. We've had this.

Speaker 1 It was great. So you're at the VIP table.
Okay, round three, gentlemen.

Speaker 1 What's your topic? All right.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're going to get to a lot more. But first, go to bravebooks.com/slash Knowles.
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Sure, that's a big part of it.

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Speaker 4 All right, thanks to the Republicans gutting the ACA subsidy. Oh, thank you for that.

Speaker 9 You ought to work on your timing.

Speaker 1 I didn't.

Speaker 1 know the most important part of comedy? Timing.

Speaker 1 Timing.

Speaker 1 Talk about it.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 4 So thanks to the Republicans gutting the Affordable Care Act subsidies, healthcare is on the brink of being unaffordable for millions of Americans.

Speaker 4 It's time that the richest country in the history of the world guaranteed health care for its citizens.

Speaker 4 I mean, the next seven million. Yeah, the rest of you are not interested in health care.
That's fine. All right, I get it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 9 You know, ironically, healthcare per person costs more here than it does in all those other countries that are our peer nations that guarantee it.

Speaker 1 Cost is cost. All right, what's your topic?

Speaker 9 Red states need to stop mooching off of blue states and make your own damn money. Woo!

Speaker 1 Woo!

Speaker 1 Mine is. Sorry, I just drank you.
Mine is that Trump broke the Democrat Party. He broke it completely.

Speaker 1 Mr. Davies? It's tight.
This is a tight round. I don't know if I get that a lot.

Speaker 3 I don't think I'm going to get the decimal reader or what, but I think Brian won.

Speaker 1 I might be happy to get it. I actually think he won.
won't.

Speaker 1 I don't like how this is turned out. I'm so glad I can talk about it.
I'm supposed to win everything. Yeah, okay.
All right. You're still welcome.
Okay, look. So,

Speaker 9 fun fact. I grew up in this state.
I now live in California. Californians receive per capita 80 cents of benefit for every federal dollar paid in taxes.

Speaker 9 Tennesseans get roughly $1.50 for every dollar spent in federal taxes. In other words,

Speaker 9 California underwrites the cost of running Tennessee and keeping its citizens safe, healthy, and all that stuff. So all I'm saying is y'all per capita need more Medicare than we do.

Speaker 14 We make more money than you do. Maybe we should try and equal that out.

Speaker 1 That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 9 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 Okay, so California gives more money to the federal government than it takes in. And that's a big blue state.

Speaker 9 Yes, and the in-verse is true for Tennessee.

Speaker 1 Okay, now let's look at the other big blue state, New York. Does New York give more money to the federal government than it takes or the opposite? I believe it does.
It does. It could be wrong.

Speaker 1 It does not. The Rockefeller Institute just found that

Speaker 1 New York is in. I was so much fun in in high school.

Speaker 1 I was. I was.
I was. New York receives $1.06 for every dollar that it gives.

Speaker 1 It's a net receiver. And

Speaker 1 it is true generally that, depending on which statistics you look at, the red states, now we're talking, thank you, sir.

Speaker 1 It is true generally that the red states do tend to take more than the blue states, just as states. It's not a huge gap.
It's like a seven percentage point gap, but it's still noticeable at least.

Speaker 1 The problem is, though, that disappears when you you look not just at the states, because the blue states are much more densely populated, it's when you hone in per capita.

Speaker 1 That's where the numbers start to get a little squirrely.

Speaker 1 Because when you start looking in at federal entitlements like Medicaid, for instance, education entitlements, Head Start, when you look at defense contracts, which disproportionately go to the blue states, all of a sudden you start to see that the red states per capita are actually contributing more than the blue states.

Speaker 1 Now, it's not totally...

Speaker 9 That's really complicated, but it's acknowledging finding a way to get there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's yeah.

Speaker 1 No, well, obviously per capita matters because you can't just have a state with like the most people, the biggest, most densely populated one, and compare it to something that's incompetent.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, the data stands what I said per capita. I mean, the aggregate outcome is that red states in aggregate receive more than they pay.

Speaker 1 Depending on what you count, and not when, I guess not when you don't count one of the biggest blue states in the country, New York.

Speaker 9 I mean, look, I'm not saying aggregate includes all of them.

Speaker 9 I'm just saying in aggregate.

Speaker 1 Well, aggregate does include all of them.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 9 I'm saying it's in there, but it's still aggregate for blue.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying. But one of the ways that you arrive at that number is by not counting certain federal subsidies.
So, like defense contracts, for instance.

Speaker 1 Is that federal welfare? Not exactly, but it obviously greatly benefits the states that it goes to. It benefits their employment, and it largely goes to blue states.

Speaker 1 It depends on which entitlements exactly you're counting. So, if you're only counting, say, Medicare and Social Security, that gives you one number.

Speaker 1 If you look at Medicaid, if you look at education, if you look at early child care, you get different numbers.

Speaker 9 Are we looking at roads and hospital hospital health infrastructure? Sure, yeah.

Speaker 1 If you only look at that, then yes, you'll find that the red standard is a lot of money.

Speaker 9 The computer is we're finding in a like we're trying to find the one fine line.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's not one fine line. Medicaid is a big program.
I don't know. Let's shift through all the hay here.

Speaker 4 The needle. There you go.

Speaker 9 You got it. We found a way to distinguish.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just saying, when you count everything, the situation is a lot more complicated.

Speaker 1 It's uncommon. And it's unclear.

Speaker 9 And you're so good at making one-liners out of it, which is how you have all this money in this show.

Speaker 1 Well, tough.

Speaker 1 I grew up to be just like that. So am I a net donor to the federal government? There you go.
That's pretty good.

Speaker 1 There you have it. Okay.

Speaker 4 And if you have nothing to contribute to this, really, I don't really care about this.

Speaker 1 The tables have turned.

Speaker 4 I just feel like today we found out that, you know, Trump is in the Epstein files 1,500 times, and those are just the emails that were released. I don't know if you guys read that.

Speaker 4 It's hard for me to really care about this other thing. I got to be honest.

Speaker 1 All right,

Speaker 1 I kind of like that you don't care about Ryan's topic.

Speaker 4 Well, no, sorry.

Speaker 1 I just, it's not a thing.

Speaker 9 I look at a spreadsheet and other people yawn.

Speaker 1 I love this for us.

Speaker 4 I think we should tax billionaires more. I mean, that's my thing.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Can we talk about how much

Speaker 4 with the whole subsidies? I think we have enough. And I actually support, I actually think it's fine that we subsidize each other.
I'm not against that. So yeah,

Speaker 4 if the blue states are subsidizing the red states, cool. If some blue states are being subsidized by red states, great.

Speaker 4 If some people's health care is being subsidized by people who have a lot, great. Like, how about we build a society that cares for each other? How about we have more than enough?

Speaker 4 What we have is a distribution problem because there is enough for everybody.

Speaker 4 We have so much abundance, but the fact that we have more hungry children than most other developed countries, even though we are the most wealthy country in the history of the world, that to me is a problem.

Speaker 4 That's on us. And so that is on us.
We have distribution problems. The fact that we almost cut snap for people heading into the holidays.

Speaker 1 Democrats cut snap. It wasn't Republicans.
It's Democrats.

Speaker 1 Democrats did not. Literally, the Republicans were holding those children hostage.

Speaker 4 It was a choice between children being fed for the holidays or people's health.

Speaker 1 I agree. It was terrible when Democrats did that.
I'm glad that they conceded after receiving nothing in return. I agree.

Speaker 9 There's an emergency fund that could be available.

Speaker 4 I actually with you to Democrats cave 10 quite pathetically. So if we wanted, we could take a round and just trash Democrats together.
I love that idea.

Speaker 1 That sounds great. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Literally, absolutely.

Speaker 4 Well, we need to need totally limp wristed, just absolute, just completely pathetically folded, no ability to negotiate. Chuck Sh.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm going to vote for you to win this round.
That was really great. I agree with 93% of what you just said.

Speaker 4 But what I will say was that government shutdown was absolutely because Trump was trying to delay the release of the Epstein files. They did not want.

Speaker 1 They did not.

Speaker 1 It's so fun to sit here and watch your faces. It's so good.

Speaker 4 Grijalva's appointment was being delayed. That's true.
And

Speaker 4 as soon as the government reopened, she was sworn in, and they immediately voted. And then we got a thousand emails, just like that.

Speaker 1 And that is absolutely why the government was shut down but but the look i'm i'm open to the theory but it was only democrats who voted to shut the government down

Speaker 1 well yeah because they looked at the government

Speaker 4 saying that 24 million americans are not going to afford their health care

Speaker 4 going into this year hello is anybody else on the affordable care act in the room is it just me that's not going to be able to insure my kids that's just me Nobody else?

Speaker 1 I agree. The Affordable Care Act is terrible, too.
I agree. Literally nobody on Obamacare.

Speaker 4 Almost 30 30 million Americans are going to lose their health care subsidies.

Speaker 4 And we're already, by the way, we have more uninsured people in this country than any other country, even though we spend more on health care than any other country.

Speaker 1 Wait, but I thought the Affordable Care Act was going to solve health care once and for all and guarantee

Speaker 1 America is affordable.

Speaker 1 Even though premiums went up 95% 15 years ago.

Speaker 4 The Affordable Care Act was a sloppy compromise only because conservatives, in any other country, you know, in Canada,

Speaker 1 he could blame Obamacare on conservatives. That's amazing.
That's amazing. That's a compromise.
Oh, yeah. A half measure is what we could get.
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Any other developed country has universal health care, Michael. Everybody has to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what's the matter with you? Do you want everyone to have homemade?

Speaker 4 Ironically, do you want everyone to have health care or not? I certainly do.

Speaker 1 Luckily, Barack Obama promised me that every American has good, quality, affordable health care. So I'm sure you're not able to.
Your way will not get us there.

Speaker 4 It will never get us there. Every country that has universal health care has it the same way.

Speaker 9 You know what's

Speaker 4 the only weird ones? Did you know that the conservatives in Canada are not trying to back away from their government-run health care?

Speaker 1 Do you know that 5% of Canadians who die each year are killed by their government or encouraged to commit suicide by their health care costs?

Speaker 1 I will compare our outreach to Canada. We spend way more than 10 years.

Speaker 4 Do you guys know that we spend way more on health care than Canada and they have higher life expectancies than us and they have more people insured?

Speaker 1 They have completely different. Guys,

Speaker 1 I'm glad that we brought this to Canada and to health care because it's much more interesting than that stupid topic that Ben just picked.

Speaker 1 But if we're really going to compare these things, we should point out that right now in Canada, as in the UK, which both have socialist health care, one in 10 citizens is waiting for a medical procedure.

Speaker 1 30 million uninsured Americans.

Speaker 1 And in Canada, they're being killed by the government.

Speaker 9 If I require a system that doesn't insure everybody in order to not wait for something, I'm the bad guy.

Speaker 1 But I was told by your party that we insure everybody. And we actually do offer compared to everybody.
Okay, hold on. The bell rang.
You can get your point in during the questions. Here we go.

Speaker 15 Super happy to be here. I've seen a lot of videos of people asking questions, so I'm super happy that I'm here today.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Love it.

Speaker 1 Absolutely love it. Get it.

Speaker 1 Can I talk about

Speaker 1 what you're talking about? Are you Canadian?

Speaker 9 What's that? You said talk about. Are you Canadian?

Speaker 1 I'm from Minnesota. Oh, so close.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. The Canada of America.
I'm the problem. Oh, gee.
Yeah. So talk a little bit about New York and how

Speaker 15 I prepare taxes and how about I think after this new tax bill, I think half the country will not pay federal income tax.

Speaker 1 Talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 15 About half the country of people who file tax returns in this country do not contribute.

Speaker 1 They do not pay any federal income tax.

Speaker 9 Yeah, the top 50% pay less.

Speaker 1 It's true. No, actually,

Speaker 9 I defy you to go look at the effective tax rate of

Speaker 4 the richest working class.

Speaker 1 Do you guys know what

Speaker 4 Forbes 400? They did it. The Forbes 400, do you know what their effective income tax rate is? Do you know what they're paying? The 400 richest people in America.
Somebody guess.

Speaker 4 8.2%.

Speaker 4 Do you know what the Walton family paid in 2024? I wrote it down. 3.8%.

Speaker 1 That should radicalize.

Speaker 1 What's the corporate tax, he asked? That's radicalizing. What's the corporate tax?

Speaker 4 The Walton family has more wealth than 40% of the country.

Speaker 1 Right, but it's all tied up in the Walmart corporation. That's his point.

Speaker 1 But no one's answering his question.

Speaker 4 They can buy anything they want with that money.

Speaker 1 But no one's answering it. Yeah, the Waltons are very rich.
But his question was,

Speaker 1 how come 50% of Americans don't pay any taxes?

Speaker 9 I think we have a really complicated tax system for sure, and that's a problem.

Speaker 1 That's a problem.

Speaker 3 I just think that we should distribute the tax burden more fairly.

Speaker 1 So, what? So, 60% don't pay any taxes, 70% don't pay any taxes?

Speaker 9 I don't think those correlate, but we can play with it. Let's go.

Speaker 1 What would be more of it? Okay, all right.

Speaker 15 One more thing on the Forbes 400. I'm happy you brought that up.
If we took all, if we confiscated all the money of the Forbes 400, we would run the government for less than one year.

Speaker 1 We do not

Speaker 1 have a we do not have an income problem, we have a spending problem. The actuarial, well, wait for it.
This is important.

Speaker 9 This is a really good point.

Speaker 4 If you take the actuarial, here's my buzzword.

Speaker 9 Actuarial evaluation of the federal government in a year's term is not a useful measure. The federal government's finances really need to be looked at over decades at a time.

Speaker 9 It's not as if, snap your finger, all these people's money for one year can't run the government. That's not how financing the most complicated organization in the history of Earth works.

Speaker 9 It's just, it's a good soundbite, but it doesn't match how complicated the situation is.

Speaker 1 It's very complicated.

Speaker 1 That's why he wants to be a little bit more.

Speaker 4 Above me,

Speaker 4 if we start anywhere, we should start with the $160 billion in taxes that the top 1% already owes that they haven't even paid.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's fun.

Speaker 4 We should absolutely get those.

Speaker 9 Most of the people at the IRS who got fired by Doge are the people who deal with the complicated rich people tax problems where they dodge taxes.

Speaker 9 We didn't get rid of the people who audit everyday people. We got rid of the people who deal with wealth taxes.

Speaker 1 $160 billion, which would pay for, I think, what, $115.

Speaker 1 That'd be great.

Speaker 4 SNAP was $120 billion, and people were complaining that that was too expensive. If we just defunded it.

Speaker 1 The only people who shut down SNAP were the Democrats. I just want to keep reminding you.

Speaker 9 Look, the executive has, the President has a discretionary fund, an emergency fund that could have filled the entire responsibility of SNAP for the month in question.

Speaker 1 The Democrats' government shutdown was the longest in history. She went so long that they had to go get private funding to pay the United States military.

Speaker 1 There was not discretionary money sitting around. The Democrats could have reopened it whenever they wanted, and they finally did it.

Speaker 4 But the courts were telling him to fund it, and he was literally arguing with the people. He literally said no, hold those children.

Speaker 1 The shutdown occurred in Congress, not in the executive.

Speaker 9 But you're talking about SNAP specifically.

Speaker 9 Government spending this big, SNAP this big, there was this much and then some money available he could have put to it. He just didn't.

Speaker 1 That's just a fact.

Speaker 1 He's not a king or a dictator, as you guys like to say that he is.

Speaker 1 He actually has to listen to Congress on government funding.

Speaker 9 And they gave him an emergency fund for things like this, which he could have used and he didn't.

Speaker 1 Yes, after 41 days of a government shutdown, it's difficult to make the money out of thin air. But I'm glad that eight Democrats came to their senses, gave SNAP benefits back to their constituents.

Speaker 1 Do we agree with that?

Speaker 4 I'm glad that 30 million Americans are going to lose their health insurance.

Speaker 1 I agree. Obamacare has been a disaster.
I thought you said that you wanted everybody to have health insurance. I can relate to this.

Speaker 9 My emergency funds are not going to be available.

Speaker 1 People are going to die. Hold on, gentlemen.

Speaker 4 I know that people are going to die, right?

Speaker 4 They estimate that about 50,000 people will die.

Speaker 1 I'm going to die against Obama. I hated that stupid health care law.
I still hate it today. Keep going.
That's just statistics. Okay, so you guys brought up health care.

Speaker 15 I'm going to go down that route.

Speaker 1 I've lived in a country, but I was American, of course, that had affordable health care. Do you know how long you have to wait? for affordable health care to actually

Speaker 1 go through.

Speaker 4 I'm just curious, where were you?

Speaker 1 I was in Germany. Okay.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not saying that universal health care is flawless, but I'm also saying our system isn't flawless.

Speaker 1 People die on

Speaker 1 the screen. No, no, let me be clear.
Sure, I would be

Speaker 1 thrilled.

Speaker 9 I would be thrilled if we could get out a spreadsheet and compare the outcomes.

Speaker 9 Outcomes of healthcare in Germany versus the U.S.

Speaker 1 They live longer there. Spoiler alert.
They live longer there.

Speaker 1 That's true. They live longer.
That's true. We can look at them.

Speaker 9 They're a spin less true person and overall they have better outcomes.

Speaker 1 They live longer.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but other people are glad they're alive. So thank you for your sacrifice that you had to wait.

Speaker 9 And you know what also doesn't happen in Germany is nobody ever goes bankrupt because of their medical truth.

Speaker 1 What about Canada or the other countries in

Speaker 1 Europe that you have that affordable health care?

Speaker 1 What's the question?

Speaker 1 What about places like Canada that have that affordable health care that you're talking about that are also, I forgot a while ago, are looking into suicidal options for people because they don't want to pay for your health care?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a, that's a...

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 1 That's a fear check. That's again, I tell you what he's referring to.

Speaker 1 No, they do have physician-assisted suicide.

Speaker 9 Is that what you're talking about?

Speaker 1 It certainly is.

Speaker 4 No, it's the death panels thing where it's the fear mongering.

Speaker 1 No, no, it's not physician-assisted suicide. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, they're going to encourage you to kill yourself.

Speaker 4 They do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the medical.

Speaker 1 That is fear-mongering. That is an absolute sense.
They literally.

Speaker 9 You know what sucks about that lie is that it kind of trivializes real mental health shit by making it a topic.

Speaker 1 Do you not know?

Speaker 4 Juno-provided health care. It works great.
People love Medicare. It's very popular.

Speaker 1 Don't change this up. It's very efficient.

Speaker 1 We're talking about physician-assisted suicide in Canada. That's the question that he brought up.
We're talking about that one. That's what he brought.
He's mentioned it. It's not a thing.

Speaker 1 The questioner who we're supposed to be responding to. But you don't want to respond to it because what is happening in Canada right now.

Speaker 1 It's not a myth. 4.7% of Canadians.

Speaker 1 4.7% of Canadians who die are killed by physician-assisted suicide. By the way, it's not just the elderly, though we shouldn't be killing them either.
But in Canada, because of socialist medicine,

Speaker 1 women who are over the age of 80, 60% of them, for instance, who have breast cancer and need surgeries, do not get the surgeries. 90% of the women who are 50 and under do get the surgeries.

Speaker 1 Let me finish my point. They do get the surgeries because the government is necessarily rationing care.
And they say, give it to the younger women, let the older women die.

Speaker 1 They've now taken this to an extreme where they encourage physician-assisted suicide.

Speaker 1 And by the way, that's not just for the elderly, because 40 to 50% of it is for people who are under 75, people who suffer depression, anxiety.

Speaker 1 Instead of treating them with compassion, the government goes in and says what you're doing.

Speaker 4 Michael, you are not either aware that this is an absolute fear tactic myth that conservatives peddle out in order to fearmonger about socialist health care.

Speaker 1 You can look up all those numbers.

Speaker 4 I've had socialist health care and anybody who has served this country has had it. Anybody been on TRICARE before?

Speaker 1 Uh-rah.

Speaker 4 I was a Marine, and when I, oh, it was incredible. What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 You are crazy.

Speaker 4 Everything was fully credited.

Speaker 1 Do the military vets in the room like the VA? Is the VA the model of healthcare?

Speaker 9 When I lost Blue Shield over TRICARE,

Speaker 4 you are absolutely insane.

Speaker 4 My healthcare was incredible when I was in.

Speaker 9 I won't disagree with anybody who feels like our system is flawed, okay? It's definitely flawed. That's not a disagreement I have with you.
It is.

Speaker 9 I'm just saying it's flawed everywhere.

Speaker 1 The difference is more of us are

Speaker 1 covered.

Speaker 4 What I would also like to say is that if we're talking about Canada, it should be done.

Speaker 4 Any of these countries that have universal health care, Canada, UK, Germany, the conservatives in those countries are not trying to get rid of it. It's very popular.

Speaker 1 They're just coming to America for their medical procedures. I'm trying to iterate.
What's the next question?

Speaker 4 In our country, what is seen as a left position in any other country would be a very moderate position.

Speaker 14 Yeah, so to say that our health care system is flawed is such an understatement.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 14 Have you seen a freaking commercial about drugs lately?

Speaker 1 How in the hell am I,

Speaker 14 as a self-employed man, supposed to get insurance for me and my family when it's $400 for a f ⁇ ing aspirin at a hospital?

Speaker 1 I agree. We're the only country in the world.
When the insurance companies and the medical community are so tied up, up.

Speaker 14 It's all about big governments.

Speaker 1 It's all about the money.

Speaker 9 We are the first, we are the only first world country where the pharmaceutical companies take the lead on pricing drugs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we also provide the most efficient care. Look, I acknowledge the system in America is terrible because let's not forget we are currently operating under the Barack Obama healthcare system,

Speaker 1 which is passed into the United States.

Speaker 1 But it's still, I'll give one thing to Obama. It is still better than these other countries because in America, it's very difficult to find the numbers.

Speaker 1 But according to the Commonwealth Survey, you think it's proper

Speaker 1 I think it's definitely better than the best of the best.

Speaker 4 Other countries don't even know what medical debt is, by the way. When you bring it up to them, they'll look at you like you got a penis coming out of your forehead.

Speaker 4 They're like, what's wrong with you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, look at me like that for other reasons.

Speaker 1 Medical debt is very bad, and our current Obamacare system is very bad. But I do think it's better than dying while waiting on waiting lists, like in the social media.

Speaker 4 People are dying for lack of health care. Yeah, it's easy.

Speaker 9 It is easier to take a camera and find somebody who has a complaint about how long they waited for something.

Speaker 1 Hold on, I'm going to let you know I'm done. But

Speaker 9 there are so many more,

Speaker 9 this is raw numbers, there are so many more Americans who wouldn't even find that camera because they never got health care.

Speaker 9 You can go find somebody in Canada who complains about the weight, but there are proportionately way more Americans who never even get health care.

Speaker 1 So that is a group. There's a number actually that we can look to, and it's the Commonwealth Survey, which looks at Canada, the UK, Norway, and the United States.

Speaker 1 And it found that in the United States, only 4% of people have to wait for extensive periods of time. A fraction of a fraction of most of these other guys are not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to be there at all because they don't have insurance, Michael.

Speaker 9 That's rigging the numbers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's not going to be a long time. I thought Barack Obama gave us universality.

Speaker 9 It's easy to rig those numbers.

Speaker 1 There's not going to be a longer wait. Hold on, you're saying that the Commonwealth surveys rig numbers?

Speaker 9 No, I'm saying your general statement, which is that somehow...

Speaker 1 I'm just citing a survey. You're saying that.

Speaker 9 Right, and the point you're trying to make is that the wait is longer, therefore bad. What I'm saying is not

Speaker 1 many more people. The main difference in

Speaker 9 not for many more people. That's the wrong.

Speaker 1 That's what it is. That's what I said.

Speaker 9 I'm telling you, you're wrong.

Speaker 1 Right, but I'm just citing the Commonwealth Service.

Speaker 9 You are a society where the choice is everybody's insured who waits. We are a society where a portion of society gets to get in line and the other portion doesn't at all.

Speaker 1 So would you say that's apples and oranges? Would you say that in the United States today, if you want health care, you cannot receive it?

Speaker 9 I would, no. Actually, no, if you go.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 I'm happy to answer the question. No, no, no, no, I'm happy to follow the math to the question.

Speaker 9 Actually, pretty much every hospital in America is required to treat anybody who comes in regardless of ability to pay.

Speaker 15 Per emergency.

Speaker 4 But here's the thing. Here's the thing about that.

Speaker 9 That dynamic specifically is why we as Americans pay more per capita for health care because a person is more expensive for their emergency treatment that the government later has to cover than if we had just given them insurance in the first

Speaker 9 place.

Speaker 4 They could go to the doctor.

Speaker 4 Listen, the main difference between our health care and other countries is that in our country, there's a middleman called health insurance companies that rake in $71 billion in profits and all they do they don't provide health care they deny health care they are a middleman that extracts making it more complicated they stand between us and the doctors no other country deals with that that's our broken system

Speaker 1 i feel like i'm back in 2009 before we were supposed to have fixed all of that okay no you didn't let the conservatives stop that the only we made barack obama

Speaker 1 for

Speaker 1 okay all right that's fine yes hey there uh

Speaker 3 Super happy to have this debate with you guys. I actually missed this about our country, just having spirited debate.

Speaker 9 Meet it to me and have fun.

Speaker 3 I found myself...

Speaker 8 I'm wasted.

Speaker 3 I'm a Republican.

Speaker 1 I found myself agreeing with some of the points you guys made.

Speaker 3 So thank you for being here. My question is around raising the corporate tax rate.
That's a common Democrat talking point. When we look at the Kamala campaign, a microcosmic example of...

Speaker 3 government overspending, right?

Speaker 1 You give her a billion dollars.

Speaker 3 She goes $20 million in debt. How can you defend the idea idea of giving politicians, non-business operators, more and more money, and somehow that'll solve the government's problems?

Speaker 9 Well, I'm not saying that the government is perfect at money spending. I think what we're talking about here is that every other First World nation gets more tax out of their corporations than we do.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 all I'm saying is the revenues are higher here, and we somehow get less of it.

Speaker 1 That's all. That's all.
Next question. I don't have much to say.

Speaker 9 And if we were getting as much out of our corporations here as they are in Ireland, you would have a better funded government.

Speaker 1 I always turn to our friend at the VIP table. To me, he is more reliable than the belt.

Speaker 9 I would love for you to interject with a non-sequitur.

Speaker 1 All right, that's the end of round three now, folks.

Speaker 1 We need to know who won. I don't even know what that round was about.
I don't. I don't mean either.
Mr. Davies picked some stupid talk.

Speaker 1 And then we ended up talking about healthcare, Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 1 I just want to agree that we're talking about it.

Speaker 4 We haven't talked about Epstein enough, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 We haven't talked about him nearly enough.

Speaker 4 Who wants to talk about Epstein more?

Speaker 1 Maybe the next round.

Speaker 9 Everybody line up who has a thought about Epstein.

Speaker 1 Okay, now there's a question. Who won that round? Whatever that round was? Was it Ryan?

Speaker 4 This guy.

Speaker 1 Was it...

Speaker 1 Technically, it was Ryan's topic. Was it Ryan?

Speaker 1 Was it me?

Speaker 1 It's like 30, 33, 33, 34.

Speaker 1 What do we think? I've actually got the recounting. What do you think, everybody? I think Michael Knowles got the round.
What a shock. Hold on.
Who thinks it was Pat? Hold on. I want a recount.

Speaker 1 I don't want it to seem like it was the 2020 election and completely rigged. I want to know: was

Speaker 1 it?

Speaker 1 Who here thinks it was Brian?

Speaker 9 See, that's...

Speaker 1 Well.

Speaker 1 Who here thinks it was Ryan?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 9 you guys, go on.

Speaker 1 Who here thinks it was me?

Speaker 1 I kind of want to give it to Ryan just because, but what do you think? Let's do it just cuz. All right, Ryan got it.
Ryan got it.

Speaker 9 I've always wanted to win on a technicality.

Speaker 1 Okay. That's great.
Okay, now a much more important decision. Who won the VIP? There was no one.
Who were there, Ryan? I don't know. There's no clear winner to me.
They were all interesting.

Speaker 4 The guy with the beard, he had a lot of...

Speaker 1 The older men, the older gentleman.

Speaker 1 Oh, the older gentleman. Yes, where was the...

Speaker 1 From Minnesota. Oh, the Minnesota gentlemen.
Wait, no, hold on. Wait, where was the older gentleman?

Speaker 10 I feel like you should get it just because of his accent.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was good. How about that? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 Well, he won there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You are going to the

Speaker 1 embarrassment VIP for you there.

Speaker 1 Hey, mine. Thanks, man.

Speaker 4 What's up, bro? Okay.

Speaker 9 I hope it's okay that I'm standing now. This chair and I don't get away.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. Hold on.
Wait, don't you start standing?

Speaker 9 It was already weird, and then somehow it just got lower. I feel like it's my last relationship.

Speaker 1 Now, since you're at the VIP table, my dear friends who are over there,

Speaker 1 did we solve the world's problems, or is there something else that we need to hash out before we turn the music back on and all go get another drink?

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 I'm hesitant to say this because I feel that it's going to elicit a big bellow of booze.

Speaker 1 A bellow of booze.

Speaker 1 I, in fact, do want a big bellow of booze.

Speaker 2 I am astonished.

Speaker 2 I don't want to be like clipped into whatever, so honestly, I don't really want to be sitting at the table.

Speaker 1 Too late. It's too late.

Speaker 9 This is the wrong show.

Speaker 2 But I am astonished at the amount of booze around,

Speaker 2 or considering the Epstein thing being considered a deflection point when I think that like even in my walk over here so many of you who have been booing at the Epstein things also shook my hand and thanked me for sharing my story of surviving trafficking.

Speaker 2 And I also feel that

Speaker 2 this current administration and the platform ran so much on exposing the Epstein files and saying that really anybody that was suppressing the files probably had something to gain from suppressing them.

Speaker 2 So my thought is I don't feel that's been fully addressed. I feel that it's it's like a lot of this is a lot of deflection from the Epstein files.

Speaker 4 Let's just ask Michael. Michael, do you think Trump should release the Epstein files?

Speaker 4 And do you think that everybody exposed has a pedophile in those files should be imprisoned, potentially impeached?

Speaker 1 Yes, sir. Democrat or Republican.
Yeah, I think, look, I'm obviously... Yes or no? I'm all for maximal transparency that doesn't like, you know, compromise national security.

Speaker 1 No, obviously you can't like you can't just release it. No, I'm so I'm all for a lot of transparency, especially on that issue.

Speaker 15 We always say national security, though, right?

Speaker 11 Like every time it's like, let's get transparency then it's like national security and so you you know that that's always the card every single time the military industrial

Speaker 1 every time national security so

Speaker 1 yeah it's a great point so i'm all for uh you know releasing uh especially because it's an uh issue of public interest we have already released like a ton of of the epstein files but i'm all for getting more so long as it doesn't incriminate innocent people uh which you know can be unfortunate like there were there were accusations that were made by some of the supposed epstein victims that were later retracted by those supposed victims so you can't you can't have the greatest.

Speaker 9 It's an enticing topic to go over victim claims, though. That's dangerous.

Speaker 1 No, but in the case of Virginia Jufrey, she personally retracted some of her claims against people. So in that case, you wouldn't want people to be defamed when even the

Speaker 1 accuser is retracting people.

Speaker 4 And people are getting killed and death threats are going out. That makes sense.
But multiple victims have accused Trump.

Speaker 1 I just think

Speaker 9 that they campaigned on it like it wasn't a problem for him.

Speaker 1 they invited that attention. The Trump thing's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 If Trump were seriously implicated in the Epstein files, I promise you, the party that was in power that tried to prosecute him four times, that tried to kick him off the ballot, that raided his roll, and that justified killing him, would have released the information.

Speaker 1 I promise you. You don't think he knew what was going on?

Speaker 1 I promise.

Speaker 1 They justified you. Have you read what came out today?

Speaker 4 Have you read what came out today?

Speaker 1 I haven't read all of the dossier things. I feel like, just as a political analyst,

Speaker 3 it looks bad to be hiding it now.

Speaker 9 I'm not saying he's guilty of anything. I'm just saying it's a party foul

Speaker 9 politically to have this thing I'm not giving you all the information about.

Speaker 1 It looks bad. The whole admin campaigned on releasing all the files.
And they did release a ton of files. And we have it in San As we mentioned.
Some were released today.

Speaker 1 So obviously they did do that. I guess my

Speaker 1 released a ton of files. Okay, that's all.
Pambondi handed out my reserve.

Speaker 9 Literally, the slogan is release all the files.

Speaker 4 And he has not released some emails today.

Speaker 1 Right, but I guess.

Speaker 4 Emails, by by the way, said that Trump knew about the girl.

Speaker 1 I guess then, my question, though, is: if you were to release accusations that are unsubstantiated, that haven't been followed up with prosecutions, some of which have been retracted, certainly that would be massive prosecutorial misconduct.

Speaker 1 No party would do that.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I agree with that generally, but I think if you're the president, if you're the leader of the free world and you've made a thing about it, and then

Speaker 1 you defame innocent people. I don't know.
That's good. I feel like I'm all agreeing.
I think there's a lot more transparency being getting.

Speaker 4 Stacey Williams said that Trump and Epstein gropped her while smiling at each other like a twisted game. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 This one over here with the bell.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 Shut up. It's time to go.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 do we do a, I don't even, do we do a who won that round? I don't even know. Was that a round?

Speaker 1 Does that count? I don't know if that counts. All right.

Speaker 1 But he's voting for me anyway. Thank you.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 And so is the guy behind him.

Speaker 1 Now, folks, in my opinion, nobody wins a bar fight. There are only losers.
So we're not going to vote for the winner, okay? We're going to vote for who lost.

Speaker 4 Wow. This is going to be audience vote.

Speaker 1 I want to go home. It's an audience vote.
Not before the vote.

Speaker 1 First off, who here thinks that Brian lost?

Speaker 9 What's the inverse of a sympathy vote?

Speaker 1 An antipathy vote.

Speaker 1 Who here thinks that Ryan lost?

Speaker 1 I don't think so. Do you think he lost more than Brian? Maybe.
Who are you, my? Who here thinks that I lost? My mother. Woo!

Speaker 1 It was kind of even. I don't know, dude.
I don't know. Who do we think it was?

Speaker 1 Should we try it again? Who here thinks that our hippie friend won?

Speaker 1 Yay!

Speaker 1 Yeah, nobody knows what happened, but you talked. All right.
Thank you so much for being here. It's absolutely wonderful.
And I say that our hippie friend buys the next round.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for being here. We'll see you next time.

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