Iran: Trump Vows Revenge for 4 Soldiers KIA, Tom's Backyard Data Center, And Vance x Barron

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. I'm comically stuffed up right now, so if you don't recognize my voice, like, you're not supposed to get colds in the summer, and I'm blaming Canada. I think the air quality came down to me. It's prolonged this problem. I don't want to hear a word about environmentalism from Canada after allowing these massive...

Fires that are messing with me now, causing hazy sunsets. Anyway, grievance list off the table. Happy to be here with Erika and Josh, and another good Wednesday show. And all of you who listen to the LOOPcast, it's going to be a great show. Just doing the rundown here, we have Iran war update. Pray for the poses of souls. We had four soldiers killed in action. We had some casualty numbers released. President Trump is set to attend a dignified transfer on Wednesday.

All of that kind of adding to a lot of pressure. The Senate right now is... What is the proper term? I was going to say interview, but they have Dan Cain on the hill, they have Pete Hegseth on the hill right now facing a lot of tough questions, and a lot of questions remain as to where we go from here, 11th straight day of... bombing, but we'll get into all of that. The next question here being J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance on the press tour.

Many of you may have, so it was literally right after we finished recording Wednesday, his Rogan episode drops. Now, he's on the Bishop Barron show. He's releasing a book. He's on a very interestingly timed press tour. And many are talking about, I think I saw a number, 70% of Trump's time in office is over at this point, 90% if you consider him a lame duck president coming up here pretty soon. A lot of people are seeing maybe the tryout for the future of what the MAGA movement is, who gets to inherit the RNC, Gears of Power.

Very interesting question. Curious to get Erika and Josh's perspective on some of the clips and the conversation. Of course, we have good news and Twilight Zone. We are also going to be hitting AI data centers today. There was a lot of movement. There is a Chinese open source AI program, Kimi3, that has...

Just been a lightning rod in the conversation. Just completely caught up, it seems like. You get Jensen Huang's perspective on that. And then we were talking about it this morning. I actually, yesterday, drove by a 1,500-acre data center campus right by me in Indiana. It is in the Leap District. It is going to be a one-gigawatt campus.

To say it shocked the eyes was an understatement. I mean, it was like I drove into a new city development, and I was looking for signs. What is this? What is this? And sure enough, it's a data center. Obviously, you got a lot of people in the podcast circuit talking about what these data centers are, frustration about the way they're being approved. I actually went and did the research, in particular, on the Indiana site. It's in Lebanon.

And so, I can give my two cents along with some other AI news. And Josh is only really showing up today. He really heroically decided to show up because he was supposed to not be here, but he heard that there might be time to talk about Richard Nixon, and therefore he's here. Is that an accurate portrayal of your position?

Look, you know, yes, that's a react. I was supposed to go, I mean, what's more important, this conference or talking about Dick Nixon? He was sitting in the airport. He literally saw me drop Nixon into the channel, and he was like, I'm out of here. He left the airport. He drove home. He's like, I got to be there for this episode. It's that or, you know, colossal thunderstorms in D.C. I like my story better. I think Zeal should get in the documentary game, and I think it's time for a Josh documentary on Nixon, man.

I think we could easily get you on a couple hours of talk. Write up a little script. We've got some talented people in house, you know, from your lips to Zeal's ears here. But before we get into the show, of course, we got to talk about my favorite sponsor, the OG sponsor, Charity Mobile. Okay, now more than ever, it's important to do business with companies that stand with you and your beliefs. Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company that serves pro-life customers and supports pro-life, pro-family causes.

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Okay. Pause, and I say we get back into it. War's back on. We discussed a little bit last show. There's been developments over the weekend. In particular, we're looking at updates as of this morning. It is the 11th night of strikes on Iran. The U.S. military insisted that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, but Iran continues attacking ships in the Strait, as well as Gulf states, while the Houthi allies threaten Middle East's other shipping gateway, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, fueling sharp rise in oil prices over the last two weeks.

As I said, President Trump is set to attend a dignified transfer Wednesday for U.S. service members killed in Iranian strikes in recent days. It is not clear which service members will be a part of the dignified transfer at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base. The Pentagon has now identified four U.S. soldiers killed in action between Friday and Sunday, including a third killed in an Iranian attack on an airbase in Jordan and a soldier killed in Iraq during the destruction of a downed drone.

In total, we are now at 18 U.S. service members that have been killed since the start of the war. We quickly get. This was earlier on Monday. A Trump truth. Every time Iran kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over. This directive has been passed on to the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Cain, and every leader in the military, President Donald J. Trump. That is from his truth account.

Now, we have the identity, and I will show them briefly, if we could just take a moment to pray for the repose of their souls and protection for all of our soldiers right now. It's really scaring me. I definitely know people over there who are about to be deployed, so if we could pray for Private Isabella Gonzalez, she's 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Iwa Beach, Hawaii. Now, this video looks like it's at 2x speed, so it's a little sped up.

Very, very frightening. This would be footage of the strike on the barracks in Jordan. That probably led to the death of these two soldiers. So, becoming quite an intense situation in all of our bases in the Middle East, in particular Jordan, is now seemingly a new target.

In regards to the targeting of ships in the Strait of Hormuz as well, I have video of a Saudi commercial vessel on fire in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran's IRGC struck it while it attempted to transmit through the Omani side.

This comes about an hour after the Houthis announced a full naval blockade in Saudi Arabia, so it is very, very hot right now. A good way for, I've actually been using this to track, but there's a, I'll send the link to it, UKMTO.

It has a live tracker where you can report incidences of places being hit, and it actually has a filter feature, so you can see what's going on. I see 32 reports as of recent, starting around that July 20th, but you see the U.S. saying that this is open, but there's a lot of incidences being reported by maritime ships saying that they were struck by a drone or a missile of some capacity, so traffic has been very, very slowed.

We also get the release. It looks like the White House is somewhat withholding this, but dozens of U.S. military injured. I think we're at over 100. And, you know, before I go on, Josh, you've made this point a lot, and I feel like brass tacks is a good point. For perspective, I guess, but Trump just truthed different death toll numbers for wars he seemingly pulled out. They're not really in order, but Afghanistan war, 20 years, 2,000 dead. Iraq war, nine years, 4,600 dead.

Vietnam war, 19 years and five months, 58,220 dead. Korean war, three years and one month, 36,574 dead. Venezuela war, one day, zero dead. Iran military conflict, four months, 18 dead. I see that as a part of the argument. I don't love that coming from the president that chose to go in this war, especially after we just find out the identities of people he lost. He is going to receive them in Delaware, but not a very convincing argument for me. The question is, would he do that argument if the mainstream media had a more rational way of looking at it?

But, like, the fact is that... Because the mainstream media does not like this president, that anyone who dies in this war gets the full carpet treatment, tons of coverage, when they didn't do that for Biden, when they didn't do that for Obama. And so, I think that's what Trump is like. I mean, he's going to be there and honor the peaceful transfer, but it's like he's trying to, as much as he can, without being a jack wagon, push him back at a mainstream media that's like...

Loses, you know, it completely goes into histronics when a few members die, yes, but like... Where were they when all these guys were dying under Obama and Biden? But you can't say it exactly as like I am, so he's doing it in sort of like, actually, for Trump, give him credit, a more dignified, polite way of pushing back at, I think, a media narrative that is disordered, because I think the media is disordered. The mainstream media loved George W. Bush and Biden and Trump going, I mean, not Biden, Biden, Obama, and Bush.

They loved them when they went into the war, until the war became unpopular for Bush. They attacked him for it, but they still like the war. This mainstream media is usually like war because it gets clicks, but this case, maybe they're mad that he's not doing a full-blown war like the other presidents, and they're attacking him the other way. I don't know. I can't make any heads or tails with this, but again, do I think the mainstream media has a proper...

Do you have a balanced perspective based on their treatment of previous presidents when it comes to war? Absolutely not. That is a fair point on the treatment. And, Erika, before I get your perspective, what is being talked about now is going forward. It just seems like we have had 11 days. It is heated back up. I will give the two perspectives from Axios. Barack Ravid put something out. But it seems like now the conversation has moved to Israel believes that Iran moved nuclear centrifuges into this place, Pickaxe Mountain.

Now, you know, someone has just kind of been. Consuming through clips. I saw that Hugh Hewitt kind of mentioned this almost out of nowhere about a week ago, and he was on with President Trump, and Hugh Hewitt, he's a conservative commentator, very much a hawk, and he works for Salem Network. Salem Network is...

Partially, I believe it is their VP is paid by Israel, like registered under FARA, so take that for what you want. Well, and it is also known as being an evangelical Christian media outlet, so a lot of the Christian media conservatives tend to be neocon type. Right, and they also receive, I mean, if your vice president of programming is receiving money from Israel, that so much skews your coverage. But the weird thing about this is, Pickaxe Mountain was like not talked about at all, and then about a week ago, with the call of President Trump, he ended it with...

Go get them at Pickaxe Mountain. So, it kind of felt like we were being presented with the new frontier, the new target. He's been shown the Israeli assessment. President Trump has threatened now to attack the site on true social, even though, interestingly, at this point, Finance Minister Smotrich, this is of Israel. After the lengthy security discussion last night, the state of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States. The current situation is the best one for us.

So, they are not fighting as of now. My guess, and I'll show the Axios reporting here, seems like two options are being presented. Option one, pursue a new 10-day ceasefire aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz. That's been presented by other Gulf allies, and then option two would be... Launch a massive joint military campaign with Israel to force Tehran's capitulation.

That is being pushed hard by Israel right now. So, kind of sitting it out to see, you know, how hard are we going to go? And I guess I'll make the point that you kind of made, Josh. You know, we've only, and you know, pray for the reposers of souls and protection of our soldiers over the now, had 18 soldiers die. Over 100s injured, you know, we've lost a lot of capability of our bases. Obviously, not a good thing, but in perspective, you know, not the same as these other wars.

We've choosed to prosecute this very much through the air or the sea. So, we have not put boots on the ground. I'm yet to see a successful air campaign actually change a regime. It usually requires boots on the ground.

And so, we are at somewhat of a crossroads. Well, that maybe isn't the goal, to change the regime, to be frank, though. To defeat Iran, that looks like. No, I think the Trump administration thing is to make them have no nuclear capacity.

I don't think they're necessarily trying to change. They have not indicated to me that they, you know, that's their main goal. Officials have said it at different times, for sure. Yeah, but not directly from Donald Trump. I think he's right. So, I think a couple of things here.

The fact is, we have a few more ways to escalate, right, left in the pocket, before actually having to get troops on the ground, and I think one of them, Trump, in the truth social that you pointed to, is what he's talking about, because up until this round of strikes starting 11 days ago, we had pretty much focused on military targets. Obviously, there were misfires, and there were mistakes made, like we hit the school back in the early days, which was Terrible.

But for the most part, the targets have been military, like we destroyed their Navy, we destroyed everything that Pete Hegseth has talked about up until now. And then in the last 10 days, so in this newest round, when the MOU fell apart.

So, we've upset to include power plants. We've been hitting some bridges, which are more like dual use, right? So, these are things that both the military and the civilian population will use. And, of course, Iran has been targeting civilian use only. I mean, the desalination plants that they're going after in Bahrain and Qatar.

I think Trump is signaling that we still can escalate this. I think that there's a little farther we can go before we actually commit boots on the ground, but the question is... Will we do that? I mean, he had an opportunity to, in May, to escalate this as far as it goes, and I think there was reporting on Hegseth and Dan Raisin-Kane urging him to take that moment and to go in boots on the ground or seize the Karg Island, and he chose not to.

In the hopes that negotiations could maybe get us to a place. Maybe we'd bombed them enough that now we could actually have some rational negotiations. But at this point, those have fallen apart. And so, yeah, I mean, I think escalation or backing off.

Basically, what was it all for, if you don't push it to its extreme at this point, which is a frightening place to be. It's frightening because that's just some cost fallacy. What was it all for? You don't have the courage to actually get out to prevent further tragedy. That's not a good... Strategy to pursue. I mean, so I see a tweet, you know, US intelligence reports offer pessimistic view of new rounds of US military strikes against Iran. They're unlikely to have a significant impact on Iran or soften its negotiating position.

Even with this 10-day proposed ceasefire, just trying to understand the enemy, I don't see it as really in their interest at this point. Um, because it just allows people to reload and come back after them. The way that they've been attacking, I just personally have been shocked at how little coverage is received that our bases in the Middle East are getting hammered. Not just, you know. uh outside of it or we defended it with interceptors i mean that that missile hitting the barracks was a shocker and i looked into it and it appears that iran has got rid of their old stockpile at the start of the war and they've started to use some of their updated missiles now to be able to do something like this and then if you look at our interceptor stockpiles we don't have the actual number that you know only the president does but based on some of the research i've seen it seems to be getting lower and lower and lower so we're not going to have the capability to defend ourselves in this way If we do go boots on the ground, one, politically, I think this is the most unpopular war in polling history, to do that is extreme, and then the second would be, if Iran is able to touch, at this point of the war, our military bases in the region so significantly, what makes us think that if we try to take Karg Island, if we try to take Pickaxe Mountain or whatever, that they won't be able to hit us just as hard in those places with drones or things that are really cheap that we're unable to defend?

I just, it really seems like... We keep getting here with this conversation, right? I want to get you up to date on what is going on, but it seems like we are just in this trap. We cannot escape. Maybe that is just how it feels to me. I do not know how you guys feel. Yeah, and I think the hearings on the Hill the last couple of days with Pete Hegseth, the senators, and senators, are we in the House? I forget.

Josh, correct me. But the senators have asked him repeatedly, like, why would we? Why would we continue to fund this, what seems to be a war of choice? And obviously, a lot of them have malicious intent behind this, a lot of them very hostile to the administration for other reasons besides just this sort of like noble cause, if that exists at all. But Pete Hegseth kind of comes back with the, we didn't start this war, Iran started this war 47 years ago.

Yeah, like technically, I mean, you can make the argument historically, we've been at war with Iran, but I think to the American people, it feels like this was an unforced, it was a war of choice. And then on the flip side, though, we do know that, you know, 90% of American people polled in February said, we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And then the same 90% of the American people polled in February were like, we do not want war with Iran.

And so, The administration is kind of caught in this very strange position of Americans want a certain outcome, but we don't want to do what they see as necessary to get there. Internally, we were talking about that poll on communism, or was it the poll on socialism?

People like free stuff. Basically, the poll came out, and they said they're in favor of socialism, but then the same poll said the majority of people were in favor of free markets. Yes. So, it's kind of shocking if you tell people good outcome could be achieved. Would you like that? Yeah, I'd love for Iran not to have a nuclear bomb. I also don't like socialism. I like free stuff, too, but I also like free markets. The polling is funny in that way, where you could do a little wish casting.

Yeah, I like all these things. But, of course, it depends on capability. Sorry to interrupt. It was just funny. We were talking about that. No, it was good. I was trying to remember, there was one other thing Pete Hegseth said that, oh, the other thing he pointed out, though, that I did think was a good point. It's kind of along the lines of Trump putting up all the casualty lists and the duration of war lists to expose something, but he did point out to the senators who were questioning him that, you know, why is it that we were so eager to fund the Ukraine five times over, but now you're not willing?

To give another, you know, $30 billion to American troops who are over there. And, of course, it just goes round and round. But I thought it was a good point, that maybe there's something going on. It's a debate point. Wait, wait, Josh, did you unplug your mic? Sorry. I just got a bunch of background noise.

Sorry. Oh, it's all good. Just swap back to the mic. Technical difficulties, as always. Do I sound better now? Gosh, you sound wonderful now, yeah. Oh, wow, the dulcet tones of Josh Mercer. Good word. All right, Josh, what you got for us? I mean, I think Hex has won a debate point there, but of course, I don't support what's going on in Ukraine.

Yeah, right, exactly. I was like, can I take neither? He was responding to his answering Senate Democrats. No, that's sure. I mean, hey, you sound like a hypocrite. You're in favor of Ukraine, but not this. Yeah, that's ultimately a good question. I mean, the concern would be, well... Well, I don't want to be involved in Iran, because it could escalate into something bigger, as if, you know, a proxy war against Russia couldn't go worse. I mean, it could, yeah. I totally agree with that.

Ultimately, you know, I think, I just feel like, you know, so long as oil is continued to get out of the Persian Gulf. Then, Donald Trump has time to wait this out. That is the big thing. People are saying no sound. Oh, refresh worked. Okay.

Okay. Are we back? Yeah, Celine, could you go on the YouTube and confirm that? Sorry, I guess we will just keep going. Sorry to interrupt. Well, just maybe it was a delay. Okay. Whatever, but I do not know. But anyway, so my point is, I do not think, you know, Trump has faced a difficult trap here, maybe, but I just feel like so long as oil is able to get out of the Persian Gulf, not as much as if there wasn't a problem going on, but so long as actual oil is getting out, and there are some ships that are like, yeah, we're going to go for it, then we're not in a complete...

Energy pinch, because, of course, 25% of the world's energy comes out of the Persian Gulf, so it does matter a ton, because we all need energy, and it would be catastrophic. Now, elevated gas prices, you know, right now are frustrating, and they're obviously, because of this, there is additional risk.

But the fact of the matter is, I don't believe that, you know, Trump is like forced now to do something. Like, okay, he's got to escalate it with a ground war? Like, not necessarily. I mean, there's definitely hardliners in Iran that want to keep pressing this and to see if the United States will fold. But Trump's, I think his logic right now, I listened to what the Vice President said on, you know, Rogan show. It's like, I'm just going to, you know, we're going to.

Just, you know, deal with this as we can. We're going to try to negotiate them if we, you know, if that makes sense. And there's a lot of people attacking, a lot of neocons and hawks that want to escalate a war who are attacking the vice president. And, you know, why are you negotiating with these people? As opposed to what? To completely blow an entire country to smithereens? Like, that doesn't seem like maybe the answer either. So, I much prefer.

You know, it feels like a pregnant pause, like, well, why don't, we're just kind of like doing this little dance. Well, that sure as hell beats like, you know, rolling tanks into there, like, and I don't want that, so I would much prefer, you know, this kind of, I don't know, song and dance or whatever, as long as we can get oil out of there, as long as we're not sending ground troops in there.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's this thirst for some kind of resolution, and the reality is that when you get into a very messy situation like this, there might just not be, like, a VE day, right? We all want to relive VE day. We all want to have the photos in Times Square again, and that's just not the reality. What's VE day? Victory in Europe day. Oh, gosh. My dude.

VE day. Okay. I wasn't alive for that. How about VJ Day? Can you tell me what that one was? Oh, no. What's VJ Day? That sounds like a slur. This is just an ongoing education for all of us, which is why I love doing this. By the way, none of us were alive at the end of the show. I still don't know what this is. What are you talking about? It's like VE Day. Is that like a subject in school? Like PE Day?

I did PE Day. That was the... Okay, but briefly on the VE Day moment. Now, I think you could also understand that, especially considering what he ran, I was just going to the old Donald Trump Jr. tweet of like, could you imagine? Like, do they think that Trump's going to get it? I'd have to even pull up. It was so outrageous, like in 2024.

You mean the one that recirculated the internet yesterday? Going back around, yeah. Like Donald Trump Jr. basically being like, could you imagine Kamala's going to get us in this war in Iran? It's like, come on. Now, here's the thing. The reason people feel this way, and you're like, oh, they thirst for some resolution to something. It's to a problem that they feel like they were not promised and never needed to happen, and now it's like we're in the situation in which we're in a situation in which we're in a situation We want it resolved because we never wanted it in the first place.

We, I guess, being 70% of the country, the Republican base still feels very strongly that this is good action, and I'll be the first to say it. But based on what he ran on, this is just a huge departure from all the promises and everything. So, it's almost like people are just kind of knock-on mad at this point. Like, they were mad to start because of all the rumbling. They felt betrayed. And now we're in a quagmire that felt like never needed to happen, so there's almost no answer good enough to give someone that feels that way, and it might be worth just thinking about.

You're just not going to make people happy that this was a mistake from the beginning. There's no resolution in which you're like, this is going to be good. But what you said about polling, I thought was pretty instructive, okay? Because the idea, you know, I think a lot of times pollsters can do tricky things, you know, with their questions. And so your point about the socialism survey was like... Would you be in favor of socialism if it meant free Medicaid for all?

Would you be in favor of socialism if it meant free college education for all? And people are like, yeah, that sounds great. So, they're not asking actually informed questions. They're not really giving you the alternatives here. And what's going on right now with socialism is that we don't really have A true free market. We've had so much government intervention and subsidizing of education and healthcare that those markets are totally mucked up. I completely agree with that. Culturally, we've just, you know, people are imprisoned to this idea that you have to go to four years, so there's a whole lot of stuff.

It's really socialism right now versus what we have right now, which is a lot of bureaucracy in those markets, so it's not really a good market. But, to that point, what you're saying about the polling, I would say that's also the case with war. Now, the fact of the matter is, It's actually really easy to get tinkering with the numbers on that, too.

You might say that what was it like, I don't know the exact number, but like 70% of the people before we were, you know, when the rumors were started that we might do this action with Iran, and it was like something like 70% of the American people were like, yeah, dude, no. Which actually is, by the way, a very good, normal, and healthy response. Yeah. The nation for people should be. Yeah. Let's just not drop bombs. Given what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, yeah, no thanks.

But even in that, when you really want to know the percentages of things, how strong is that percentage? How persuadable is that percentage? Based on facts on the ground and circumstances, right? So, I don't have a poll handy at my fingertips, but if you looked at a polling of the Iraq war in 2006 and asked American people what they thought about it, it was probably about 70%, but it was a more passionate, deep 70% against it. And I know, because the Republicans got murdered at the polls, and deservedly so.

They totally screwed up. So, that 70% opposition to the war in Iraq, after three years of absolute blunder, blunder, blunder, blunder, blunder, was much more deep-seated, much more entrenched than a hypothetical, should we go to war with Iran before we started? Now, as the war continues, some intensity will grow. But it is still, it is not a ground war. So, the percentage of people are like, okay, well, it seems like there is like this song and dance or game of high-stakes game of bluff or chicken, whatever you want to call it, between Trump and Iran, but I would say the intensity level of opposition to the war is not like it was with Iraq 20 years ago.

I guarantee you. I know that to be true. So, paint for me best case scenario going into the midterms for Trump with regards to the war. Paint for me, do Trump candidates winning in November, does that require some form of resolution and we're out and we won moment, like mission accomplished moment for the base? Or would it be sufficient for other concerns to kind of paper over the fact that we're still? You know, tit for tat, kind of quagmire, maybe, is sort of the negative way of putting it.

I mean, if you just look at, if you look at what the attitudes of American people, you know, you ask them about the Warren A. Randall, like, I wasn't really a big fan of it, not too thrilled about it. Thankfully, it hasn't gone completely sideways. I hope it ends soon. That's kind of like the consensus, you know, majority opinion of Americans, right?

There's even a minority of Republicans that think that, too. But if you look at the polling and the attention span that's paid to it by the American people, it's an issue, but it's not the dominant issue. Fair or not, just from a political analysis standpoint, it's not costing the Republicans at this point in a significant manner. Now, could that change? Could the war get, you know, obviously war is one of those things that most, there's the greatest chance of making major news one way or another, you know, so I think, I don't want to pronounce four months out like, oh, but I mean, like, you know, at this point, if the election were held today, it would.

It would not have played really a major significant factor, statistically speaking, based on what everything that the polling is saying right now. Yeah, I did think. I have insiders in the No Kings protest movement, and it was funny to me. This is obviously not the base, but this is like the opposite of the base, but the fact that the No Kings, they're doing another nationwide protest this weekend, and the Iran war is not even one of the issues. I think the three issues are ICE.

Data centers, and I wrote down the other one. Oh, and voter suppression, because Trump is taking the vote away from married women. So, like, an anti-SAVE Act. So, they're getting no traction on Iran. This isn't like 1969. I have seen some. I drive by the little protests every once in a while. I do see some Iran stuff, but again, kind of used as a, yeah, used as like it's on the sign or whatever.

Where do you see that in Indy? Yeah, oh yeah. They got a little, you know, not Indianapolis, I guess it's like Northside, but, so, question, I guess, then, for both of you, because you're like, okay, you know, the left's going to use that, they're going to use it as ammunition, do they actually care about it? I don't know, they're just, you know, they were never going to vote for Trump anyway. But I think it's more for the people, you know, like, for example, the way that this war has been prosecuted, just consider my perspective, and maybe it's not the majority one.

You know, there's no, first off, there's promises that it would not happen, that Kamala would do it. And then they're like, well, we solved the problem. We bombed Florida. We got rid of the nukes. And then they come back and say, no, no, no, no, actually, we need to go do this full-scale war because another country said we're going to do it without you, and they're going to hit your bases, so we need to do it together. And now we're at this point where the war's been prosecuted seemingly through market periods.

So, like, Trump has said we've won this war. What? In the 20s of times at this point, and ceasefires always seem to come on Mondays, or Fridays happen. Just someone that is paying attention. On Wednesdays, we wear pink, and on Monday, we have a ceasefire. To the point where it is almost hard not to tune out whatever Trump is saying, because he is so rambling and nonsensical on it. You cannot trust what he says, because this is how he has chosen to go about presenting this to the American people.

After not really pitching to the American people why this needs to happen, and then I go check my gas pump, and I am like, oh, gas is over $4 right now. Now, we have not had a true Economic crisis at this point. It's not at six or seven or eight or whatever. There's no lines to the gas pump. It could happen, as you said, but I'm there. The other thing that I'll say, too, and I'm curious your thoughts on this. Trump gave that big primetime address, and he said, I'm going to reveal some crazy stuff about the 2020 election.

It's going to be awesome. I watched it. My personal perspective. The mic was super hot, the visual was weird, and he didn't deliver on anything that he said he was going to deliver. It felt like he had people read over it before, so that he didn't actually go too far. Like, I know he probably wants to go say the 2020 election was stolen. He didn't say that. He was very particular about what he said. All of this also kind of like...

And just for the people, summarize what he said. For people who didn't stay up till nine o'clock last Wednesday. You're kind of proving my point here. You're kind of proving my point. He came out and said there was going to be this, you know, this big intelligence dump of specific instances of voter fraud in 2020.

Basically, what we got was, you know, some weird stuff in Venezuela with the machines, and it kind of weaved over to, like, China. Yeah, like, it was really bizarre. So, first off, the first thing that came out to me. And China took all our files, which we kind of knew already. Actually, the bigger thing on the election stuff wasn't Trump's speech and what he detailed last Thursday. It was New Jersey Governor. Mickey Sherrill is like, oh yeah, my bad, 6,000 people.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, but what I'm getting at is, like, Trump used to hold, and maybe we get into this with J.D. Vance in the future, like, I went back and watched Trump's nomination speech from 2016 after he won the Republican nomination, and it's like watching a different person.

Now, 10 years ago is a long time, like, he's an old man, he's gone through a lot at this point, but the best line in that was, like, I am your voice. I am your voice. And what we've heard now from MAGA is, I am MAGA. If you don't support what I'm doing, I don't want you. And it's almost hard for my ears to hear that, because I would have never heard that out of Trump in 2016, and I was not the voice of his first term.

So, it almost feels like there's this irrelevancy problem now with Trump, and maybe it's not like technical lame duck, but that type of thing is the president. You'd be like, oh, this is going to be big news, and it's going to move markets. People barely blinked at it, because it was weird, and it didn't really land, or whatever. So, do you feel like there's this kind of irrelevancy problem that maybe didn't exist with Trump before? I mean, he is still the president, but in terms of attention-grabbing and moving the needle.

Well, first of all, I mean, like, there's different people in the coalition that come to, that supported Trump for different reasons, and I think you represent a lot of voters who were extremely frustrated with foreign war stuff. That's like, maybe not your number one issue, but it's up there, top three for sure. And so, precisely that thing that animates a lot, you and a lot of other voters, he's, it looks It definitely looks like a betrayal. My only point is, it's so far not too bad, but we'll see.

It could get bad, and I'm not supportive of this thing. I'm not trying to sell you on it. Um, but in terms of, he's definitely not irrelevant. I mean, the thing is with the election speech, like, I was like, a little nervous. A lot of people were. Yeah, I mean, because it's like, you know, if you just say stolen, stolen, stolen, and say, why are you bringing this up? Right now, Republicans in the polling are actually doing a lot better than they should in a midterm election, and so if people think that you're just going to relitigate an election that was six years ago, that could be very disastrous.

But he just got out there and he said a few things. And it felt like it was done in a day, and thankfully, not a whole, you did not add a fuel to a lot of your opponents. In terms of, does that mean he is irrelevant? No. No, definitely not. This is technically, it is the sixth year of the eight years he is president, but it is different because he had that four years in between where it was Biden. So, it is almost like it is a second first term.

He's definitely still relevant. I mean, people are climbing over themselves here in Michigan. Oh, I'm the guy who Trump wants. No, Trump endorsed me. His endorsement doesn't matter so much. Well, it wasn't Andy Biggs in Arizona, the Trump guy. He was an election guy, too. He was big. I think he tried to, I don't know what they did with the delegates, or he was involved in all that.

Yeah, so, I mean, he remains relevant. I think he's going to be less of a lame duck than most, you know, Republicans and most presidents are in their seventh, eighth year. I think he's still going to matter a lot. I mean, you know, we think of lame duck and stuff like that, but like, you know, Reagan remained very, you know, relatively still pretty dang popular as he was leaving out, going out the door. And, you know, George H. Bush definitely wanted him to speak at the convention, even though he's the guy in charge of the party now.

So, you know, J.D. Vance is not going to turn down Trump for speaking at the convention if he's the nominee. Like, absolutely, he's going to want him there. He is still going to matter, and the thing is, because Donald Trump really, I mean, again, when you have a two-party system. Like, we do. Like, over in England, you know, the conservatives have ossified and just gone, they're a complete clown show, and so you're having to have people start new political parties. Yeah, the reform, yep.

Yeah, and the restore and all that kind of stuff. But in this, because we have first-past-the-post in our system, which I actually like a two-party system, by the way. Three cheers for it, thank you. Nixon and the two-party system. I love the two-party system. But what it means is that if you want to transform American...

Political life in a significant way, you have to take over one of the two parties, you know, because the only time it's ever really worked to replace a party was when you had a civil war, basically. I mean, you know, the Republican Party is the original third party. Let's not do that. What about the Bull Moose Party, Josh?

There is a reason there aren't any bowlers. Oh, that makes me so sad. I mean, I like, I do like Teddy Roosevelt. He is a goat. But if he could have accidentally slipped on something and died in 1912 and not given us Woodrow Wilson, that would have been a great thing. If he would have taken the Amazon River trip that he did eventually take after losing before.

Yeah. Yeah, although, are you a big Taft guy? I guess you are more anti-Wilson than you would be pro-Taft, right? I am absolutely anti-Wilson. Never Wilson. No, so, I mean. You know, Donald Trump's relevance is, in my mind, absolutely no question. He is an extremely powerful president, and he will be even into this, you know, lame duck thing. And precisely because when, you know, it's because his right hand is the presumptive leader in 2028. Even if I liked Rubio more, I do like Vance more, I like them both.

But there's a lot of wish casting. Oh, maybe it won't be Vance, huh? Maybe it'll be Rubio instead. Have you seen the comps, Josh? The cops should make you smile. Vance is being compared to Richard Nixon. Very intelligent. Doesn't really have the sauce. And then the second would be, Rubio would be Kissinger. Ruthlessly effective. Neocon.

I did see the tweet on that. Everyone was discussing it. It was like, there's probably some similarities there. But hey, Erika, let's get into that now. I mean, the J.D. Vance question is like, you know, kitchen table fodder at this point. You know, is he a palantir plant? Is he the future? Is he actually Catholic? What's going on with this weird? He has the greatest PR person of all time. I've never seen someone on more podcasts in my life. Yeah, seriously.

Well, if you're sitting vice president, you're going to get interviews. Well, if you want it. Yes. Kamala got the view. JD's got Rogan, I guess. JD also has the view. Let's start that conversation now. Kamala could have been on Rogan, but she never, you know, and JD went on the view, to be fair. Yep, she couldn't, she cannot hang. Okay, so first of all, before we get into that little brain break, little timeline cleanse, as the kids say, congratulations to the Vance family, because something that vice presidents do not always do is have babies in office.

In fact, it has been 170 years. And now we have this sweet little newborn infant in the Vice President's residence. So, welcome to Alec Vance, and congratulations mostly to Usha, who did most of the work, but also to JD. Can I ask a fun question? Indispensable. Where does one have a child if you're the Vice President? Like, this looks like it's in a hospital. Walter Reed. This wasn't a hospital. Yep, they did. Walter Reed. Walter Reed, and many thanks to all those.

And yeah, so anyway, congratulations to the Vance family. Very excited for you, and just really cool. Pro-natalism at work in the VP residence. So, yes, but to get back to the book tour here, so up until the birth, Vance has been out and about, as we've alluded to, the question being. What are we auditioning for? We are auditioning for Being Anointed, the Heir Apparent.

I was joshing around, no pun intended, with Tom yesterday about, are we going to get rival Rubio, Vance, Rogan episodes? What's going to happen in the next couple of years? I would like to see that happen. Very interesting, but we'll start with the Joe Rogan experience, and this is, again, biggest podcast in America.

Probably played some role in the 2024 win for the Trump, you know, that big tent conservatism that won Trump the White House for round two. Certainly. They covered a lot of ground, as you can imagine. Some of it felt kind of cringe, I will not lie.

The opening salvos on UFC fighting, Rogan's just like into it, and like UFC fighting, and he said Michelle Obama's a man, and like it was... Rogan didn't say that. Oh, Van said that? No, Rogan was talking about the UFC fighter. No, no, no. Okay, sorry. It was unclear. That's what I intended. He brought it up, though. He brought it up. Vance kind of chuckled uncomfortably.

Well, no, he brought it up because The View asked him about it. Like, that was the relevance of it, so. Yeah, like, what are these? Are you white knighting J.D. Vance right now? Yeah. You're going to let Eric talk? Okay, but it was a little cringe because J.D. clearly is not, like, fluent in the lingo of the UFC. Oh, Josh, I love you, man. He is, he's really good at hanging with people who he's not in their milieu all the time, and he's really talented at this.

So, Josh, Joe obviously brings up the question about, well, you were in charge of the MOU. The MOU with Iran seems to have fallen apart. What's going on with the Iran war? And this is the response that everyone is talking about. And did J.D. Vance just...

Throw Israel under the bus. Oh, here we go. ...paid, and there was a Times story that came out yesterday that basically there are certain influencers in America who are being paid in order to attack the deal. I think some of it, it's just pure political ideology, right? It's foreign policy perspectives that are much different from mine. They think that America should just, that we can basically, you can wave a magic wand with the military and accomplish whatever you want.

You know, it's not that simple. You actually have to have a very clear objective. Military power can accomplish a clear objective, but you've got to have that clear objective. You can't just say, we're going to bomb until something good happens. That never works. The United States has tried that before. So, I think it's a combination of things, but I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal.

And, you know, there was, again, there's this Time article that came out yesterday. A friend sent it to me. It's like worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government. And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set for the country.

What is their position? Like, are they attacking you? How? Oh, it's social media posts. It's, you know, they're leaking to reporters. They're attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely, and that is their explicit. And coming after me saying that, you know, people have come after me and say that I'm influenced by Qatar, that I'm influenced by foreign governments, that, you know, I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson, and there's just so much bullshit out there, when what I'm actually trying to do is accomplish what the President of the United States told me to accomplish, which is a settlement of this that accomplishes our objectives.

Okay, there's a lot going on. Here's the end quote, I represent Americans first. That's it. All right, so there is a lot going on here, and I really would love to get Josh's take on this because I've now watched this clip like four times, and I find it hard to, it seems like what he's, it's from my perspective, but it seems like what, he is in a very difficult position because on the one hand, he, there's this sort of impression that has been put out that he was the dove in the war room.

When Trump was making the decision to go to war, and I don't see any reason to disbelieve that, but as Vice President of the United States, as he says in that clip we just watched, it is his job to prosecute the will of the President.

But then, instead of talking about how maybe the MOU fell apart because the IRGC is crazy, Iranians can't be trusted, instead of blaming the obvious, he pulls in the foreign influence question, unprompted by Joe at this point. He was not prompted. So, of course, what is going on here? Like, is he just trying to, like, win Tom Pagasic back? Is that what this was?

Sort of. What's the political game, Mercer? Yeah, I think it's not. Translate. Well, I mean, you know, both things are an op. I mean, the thing is, you know, just because something is an op doesn't mean that there isn't some truth behind it or whatever.

Is he trying to go to a friendly audience and try to paint the current situation in a narrative that is extremely positive towards his view? Yeah, good. We need that. You should be an effective salesman, because if you are not, get the hell out.

But no, I do think, we have all witnessed this over the last couple of weeks, where all the neocons, like Mark Levens in Fox News, have been going... This deal's terrible. We need a bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. And it's like, I don't know. I mean, I would hope a negotiated settlement, that would be preferable than escalation of war, wouldn't it? But you get the feeling that there's some people that are big neocons that actually, no, they'd rather actually have full-throated war.

Ground troops against Iran, and that apparently is not on the table, thankfully. So, every time the last two, three weeks, attack, attack, attack on J.D. Vance, and then Rubio, who is not necessarily showing. A different view than Trump. Anytime he says something, it is like, oh, he is like the white knight, and they elevate his voice all the time. It is very clear that there is an operation going on here, an op going on amongst the hawks in the Republican Party to elevate Rubio and to attack Vance, and they are doing it because they know attacking Trump straight up.

That would be disastrous, and that actually, again, points to my point that the President of the United States is not waning in power. He is still very much, very powerful, and to the extent that, you know, if you are attacking the administration for not being hawkish enough, you are not going to attack Trump. You are going to attack, you know, Vance for saying, you know, being the dove. So, there are two possibilities here. Because we didn't even talk about this, but bizarre Epstein segue, in which he was like, you know, I'm kind of a conspiracy.

Okay, we'll play that, and then we'll get into my points. I hope it's the one you're thinking of. Well, most people think he was Mossad. Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country. Or both.

You know, look, he clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence. This was not the one, although he is the highest ranking person. And then he goes on to say that the Trump administration, like. Completely screwed up, I believe, was the direct quote. The rollout of the Epstein file. We bungled it. If you got to say we bungled it, guilty. And then he's like, you know, I'm kind of a conspiracy theorist.

I've gone down it myself. But Trump was completely innocent. But, you know, like I've gone into all this and I'm like, all right, here's two possibilities here. One, Vance himself is an op. We're in bed with all the same people to try to reel back the Tom Pogacics out there that are like, you're not some random commentator. You're the Vice President of the United States. You have access to all of this stuff. You can't come on and be kind of like, ah, you know, this is going on.

And then also, by unprompted throwing a bone to the people that are just witnessing the obvious, that there's an obvious paid campaign going on to discredit J.D. Vance or people that consider themselves America first. Um... So, volunteering that out of nowhere, either he genuinely believes that and is trying to position himself to be the heir apparent that's more America first, or he's on the team with all the other people, and he's like, hey, guess what? I'm going to go out and be the guy that kind of throws the bone to the people that are witnessing these obvious things, and I don't have to take too hard of a stance on it.

I can just, well, you know, I'm just pointing it out, just pointing out that this is going on to kind of reel people back in to be like, well, there is someone on the inside that's kind of our guy. And that would be evidenced also by the fact that we're learning about all this from, it seems to me, like pre-planned leaks, like the Maggie Haberman book of regime change, where he was the one that said, we're really handling upstream bad, and that it was Susie Wiles or all these other people.

And that could be true, but also could be a plant. And then the second would be that he was kind of the dove on Iran saying, this isn't going to go well. So, it's like, there's two possibilities. One, he actually does believe this. And he's trying everything possible to also be in the position of vice president and try to get out the fact that he believes it to be ahead of the curve, or he's on the same team with all these people and trying to reel back in the people that are frustrated with obvious betrayals.

I don't know which of the two it is. J.D. Vance is the closest to articulating. My position on politics and thoughtful Catholicism in politics right now. He's clearly very talented. He's clearly very intelligent. The question is, you know, how genuine it is. It's hard to say at this point. I'm happy that someone's articulating it, but I need to see action. It's like the whole problem with this administration is we're going to put out a base tweet on Twitter of like, you know, we're native, like deport everyone, and then, you know, not actually deport people.

Not actually finish the wall. You know, I'm the candidate of peace, Kamala's so bad, you go to war. It's like, I care more about what actually is done. I'm just burned out on all the kind of social media gaming and the PR freshness of the Trump administration at this point. So, him going on Rogan, him going on Barron, it's almost hard for me to take it seriously because you're putting yourself in the worst possible position. I would almost rather you not go on Rogan and work your butt off behind the scenes.

Or if you do go on Rogan, you're putting yourself in the worst possible position. You're not free to actually say something interesting to me, because you're not free to give your actual opinion as the Vice President, clearly the way he's handling it. He can't actually say, yeah, Trump's wrong here, because his job, he said it out loud, is to support the President. So, what are you telling me that's new? On that interview, though, he said, I'm not attacking Pam Bondi, per se, but I think she...

She bungled it. She completely bungled it. Good intentions gone bad. He said, ultimately, I think if there had been a lot of this evidence, it was probably all destroyed after the deal with Acosta in Miami in 07 or 08 or whatever. So, that is actually something that I have said on this program, too. I feel like it is not like these files are sitting around for 20 years. Here is the thing. Conspiracy theories on this haven't really answered, I think, to my satisfaction.

If we believe that powerful people are willing to get in there and kill the guy, then you're telling me they don't have enough people in these agencies where they can't destroy files that would, you know, incriminate them? So, I think any files that incriminated them have been long gone. Then why not release what they had?

Why do you have to go through Congress? It's not there. Josh, what was released during the Epstein Files Transparency Act? Fun facts? Those are files. That's what we wanted. I'm saying, like, the... But... When those files are released, there are people saying, where's the smoking gun? Where's the real, real bad stuff? There's a belief that there's more stuff there that's hidden, and my point is, it's not hidden. If it had existed, it was destroyed long ago. Great, then why not be transparent?

And then with regards to the Iraq War, Iran War, I hate that the country names are so similar. I know. Vance said, everyone knows I was, you know. Kind of skeptical on this, and even quoted what the president said publicly about how Vance was maybe, you know, would have seen it differently or whatever, however, whatever the exact word. And so, he's being upfront and honest about and transparent about both of these matters, maybe not necessarily to your satisfaction or whatever.

Yes, I actually appreciate the fact that behind the scenes, he was trying to, you know, put the ice on action against Iran, but now he's trying to make the best possible outcome. So, I listened to his interview with Rogan, and I was very satisfied.

Okay. That's totally fair. I think the big question is yet. He criticizes all the same people with his stated policy on economics and over-financialization and the overburden on labor, whatever. That fueled his political rise. Like, Peter Thiel fueled his political rise. He picked him out of the lineup. He put him at the venture capital firm. He didn't do any venture capital work. He wrote a book. That book is what eventually set his politics in motion and then funded his campaign in Ohio.

Well, I don't know if he's done no venture capital work, but he probably got outside. Non-traditional, yes. He was It's probably our size. I'll give you that. Okay. I mean, I've read up on it. I've actually read up on this because I'm interested. I know. I'm just trying to keep it from going too exaggerated.

That's not an exaggeration. People can look it up. He has your own best interest in heart to him. Now, there are the people, you know, like the Orban experiment in Hungary, who I believe he was a Soros fellow before kicking George Soros out of the country. And, you know, you saw how the Soros thing went. I would say largely the experiment was kind of a failure. But there is examples of people using, you know, the current levers of power. To get to that level of power, and then actually serving based on the interests of their people, it's rare.

I hate to say, I'm pretty cynical on, you know, like, you're giving people kickbacks. The reason we're in war with Iran right now, largely, I hate to make it too simple, Miriam Adelson gave him, he was his largest donor to his campaign. Like, it's no secret he's friends with a lot of Israeli billionaires that gave him a lot of money. That could be the simplest and easiest explanation for why we're at war right now. You know, that's just how politics work.

Of all the things that, you know, the critiques you have, I think that one is actually largely possible, that Miriam, you know, she gave like a hundred million, shocking amount, a billion, you know, just a ton of money, and she's, you know, it's not like she gets to order. I want a ground war with Iran and regime change, but she's like, I don't want them to have nukes, and Trump's like, yeah, you know what, I don't either, and sounds good to me.

I just don't, you know, I mean, again. So the muscle memory here from what happened with the war in Iraq, and then what happened with our 20 years in Afghanistan, is there's a lot of people who are like, oh my gosh, why on earth would you ever be involved in another war in this region of the world? My goodness. And so that inclination is actually, I would say, very healthy. It is good and healthy, but ultimately, we could, I've said this from the beginning, I didn't like it, but it could end up being.

Oh, okay. That was not the worst scenario, and a lot, you know, okay. Not the worst, is it? I don't trust Teal. He's a libertine homosexual. That is the most accurate way to describe it. I read a bio on Peter Thiel's Strange Cat.

Yeah, Peter Thiel's had like two long articles in First Things Magazine in the last year all about the Antichrist and the Pope, and very, very interesting editorial choices there. Rusty Reno, I'm here to sit down with you to talk about that anytime, but I did want to touch on his other big interview because I think it's very close to the hearts of all of us here at LOOPcast and the LOOPcast family. We went from aliens, UFOs, and Epstein. To St. Augustine, St.

Thomas Aquinas, and Rerum Novarum, when Vance appeared on Bishop Barron Presents, and we got some really neat clips out of this interview, of course, Vance being a convert to Catholicism. His new book, Communion, available in stores everywhere. No, I'm not paid to say that. I'm halfway through reading it myself. He's promoting this book, so Bishop Barron has him on, and they are in the Vice President's residence. The Naval Observatory, I think it's called. Josh can correct me. That's correct. We got some good clips, so let's just throw one out there.

Go for it. This is on worship and abortion. You will hear politicians on the other side say things like, well, abortion is really good because if you didn't have abortion, then you'd have way too many women who weren't able to join the workforce. Wait a second. If that's our argument here, our argument is that it's good because it allows people to join the workforce, then we've made an idol. Out of the American corporation, we've made an idol out of economic growth.

And again, that is what I think is a deeply anti-Christian idea, because the economy exists to serve the human person. We don't order our society so that we have a line on a chart go up, and if you do, then it leads to a lot of absurd outcomes.

Basically, I agree with Navarro right there. Listen, man. I mean. I love it. I agree. That is what I am saying. He says all this stuff. He says all this stuff. I do not know if I am there yet. Yeah, go ahead.

I mean, just, you know, my thought is we live in a very sick culture, a very sick society, and if we are looking for somebody who is going to be completely immaculate. Well, it is going to be tough, but someone who gets that kind of stuff, I am very interested. Yeah, we certainly did not have this kind of commentary from our other Catholic Vice President, Joe Biden, so this is, I mean, you just want to...

What? I almost forgot about that. I'm here to remind you. There are much worse scenarios going on here. The Hunter Biden influencer arc has been fun to watch, too. Yeah, yeah. J.D. and Usha Vance have a baby boy during their term as vice president, and Joe Biden marries two dudes at the White House. Remember that when he was vice president? I mean, that's what I'm saying, like all of the problems, all of the problems that Republicans have now are so fixable, and maybe the fundamental point is there's no.

The Democrat Party, Josh, you'll love this. Even if I agree with them on certain policy positions, they cannot help themselves when it comes to the Marxist, oppressive versus oppressed, applying to every single aspect of society. That's why you get the trans stuff. That's why you get the men versus women stuff. That's why you get the anti-white stuff, and they're just never going to welcome someone like me into that party. They can't help it. They literally cannot help it, even if they are good on the social economic stuff.

Even if they have more populist economic ideas, they're never going to welcome me. So, that, but, that being said, that is not a dumb excuse for Republicans to rest on their laurels and stay addicted to foreign wars and selling out the American people in terms of dumb international trade stuff and data centers and all the things that people actually care about. So, throw me a bone, Republicans. It's not hard. We did. We did. No, we're not doing it now. The fight should be in the primary, you know, in the House, and then once the primary is over.

You go to the General, unite it, and win the election, because you can't let the savages at the door come in the gate. Great. Show me deportation numbers. Hold on a second. Stop trying to give a trillion dollars to the military. What do we do? It's so simple. We got rid of John Corden, Mr. Amnesty, out of Texas. Like, we're making progress here.

He's a pro-Amnesty neocon. What they did to Massey was ridiculous. It really was ridiculous, and I think you know it. Okay, here's a question for you, then. Sure. If you had a choice, door number one, Tom Massey gets re-elected and John Cornyn gets re-elected as a twofer, or door number two, Cornyn is defeated and Massey is defeated, which do you take? I would take both, get elected. That is the status quo.

Massey is the only one. There is a million John Cornens in Congress right now. There is one Tom Massey. He was actually principled. He actually lived a healthy personal life. He voted against these dumb omnibus bills, which you say you don't like, Josh. You say you don't like that we ran around all day. So, he actually is a good counterweight force that we don't have now, and so now, who's the next Tom Assez that's actually going to keep principled on war, on spending, on the farm bill stuff?

It doesn't exist, so that's why I would take both, because there's a lot of John Cornens. There's not a lot of Tom Asses. I don't think Tom Asses is even 1% as effective as you think. Right, but at least... Getting rid of an amnesty vote in the Senate, beautiful. Josh, Republicans are proposing amnesty right now in the Farm Bank. Do you know that? I know. They're all John Cornyns. That's what I'm saying. They're all John Cornyns. Why would you... Tom, Massey never voted for amnesty.

Okay, so if you'll remember, it was like, I think, 2014. Well, remember that there's that picture of the young guns, right? Oh, yeah. Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy. Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Eric Cantor. These are the young guns that are going to be the new leaders of the Republican Party moving forward. Now, what is ironic about it is what? Paul Ryan is out of power. Kevin McCarthy, he quit. But Eric Cantor, what happened to him? Do you remember?

He got defeated in a primary by a college professor who's like, you suck on immigration. I hate your amnesty stuff. It was the shock of the world. It was like, wait, what? And that was enough to convince enough Republicans like, yikes, I'm going to pull Black away from the ledge. That was massive. This is like the thing that tells people like, hmm.

Conservative voters are really upset about amnesty. So, yes, there's a push right now on this ag bill, and we'll see how it goes, but the fact of the matter is the Republican base is super against it, and we've been betrayed by too many people like John Cornyn, and he just got booted out of his primary. So, on the margins, as this bill progresses, there's going to be a lot of Republicans who go, wait a minute now.

Eric Cantor, John Cornyn, there is a list of skulls, political skulls, graveyard here of Republicans who lost their elections because they did something stupid on this. Now, you know, Maria Salazar out of Southern Florida, that she is for it? Yeah, of course. She is in favor of every amnesty thing, but we will see if this thing gets traction. We got to fight it. But, yeah, no, the defeat of John Corden was huge. I think you were mentioning, like, order of importance of issues to voters right now.

Like, immigration is number one. It's probably the number one reason he got elected in 24. Number one to you. The immigration was the number one reason why Donald Trump got elected in 2024. But to you personally, would it be? No, no. What's your top? Economics? Okay, it might be also mine, but I'm trying to tell you, it's not because I think it's the number one issue, and therefore, I'm going to claim that he is. Like, Mark Levin's like, oh, the number one issue is Hawk, and that's why Trump.

Yeah, right, right, right. No, no, no, no. So, indisputably, you can ask political analysis, what is the issue that Donald Trump rode to power in 2024? It is really not in dispute. It was immigration that got him elected in 2024.

So, I mean, are they going as fast as I would like? No. Are they having to rely more on self-deportation than actual deportations? Yeah, but it is working. I mean, you are seeing not as fast as I want, but like that. It is directionally correct.

Yeah, but here is the thing, even on the directional thing, like, if we get this happening, you know, and then we get two terms advanced, like, it is a whole other, like, it is our country is back. Okay. Someone make a quote graphic. If we get this done in two terms advanced, we are back. We are in the right direction, baby. It takes up momentum. I really hope that is true. The first year is the toughest.

The first year of... The whole turning this thing around, the deportation stuff. The first year and a half, this is the hardest stuff to do. Yeah, they've slowed down after the first year. Right. So, yeah, I would like to pick that back up. Let's go good news now. Erika, what do you got? This is a personal triumph for me, or personal good news for me, because you might have noticed that I am constantly drinking the bean of the coffee throughout these episodes of LOOPcast, and the Wall Street Journal this week has told us...

False news. You don't have to limit your caffeine intake as much as you thought. Up to five cups of coffee a day are safe for most adults, and not only that, may even have benefits for heart and health. This was a new scientific statement from the American Health Association. It says, downing between three to five eight-ounce cups of Joe daily, which is exactly my sweet spot, or around 400 milligrams of caffeine. Is linked to lower risk of heart disease, heart failure, stroke, and type 2 diabetes, and I'm just really excited about this because it means I do not need to beat myself over the head for lacking in the virtue of temperance, and I can keep swigging my coffee.

So, good news to all of you out there. Just wanted to share that. Wait, and that's the average, and I'm definitely above average. You're way above average. You're above average. Of every metric, Josh, you are above average. You're off the charts. Including your caffeine consumption. Off the charts. Yeah, your heart is the healthiest, right? Is that how that works?

Sure. Anyway, pretty pumped about that. Wall Street Journal was having a week, man. I was in there a lot. All right. Wall Street Journal. Well, my good news is just that, you know, an amendment by Nancy Mace is not... 100 horrible thankfully uh to the ndaa would prohibit yeah that's uh yeah i understand it would prohibit male participation in female sports at k-12 schools for children of military families and defense department personnel actually got five democrats to vote uh our way on this one that was good and i matched that with My favorite WNBA player.

How many games have I watched? Zero. She's still my favorite, though. A lot of fandom, a lot of care for Sophie Cunningham. Indiana Fever's own. I mean, Kelsey knows her basketball because she played for Notre Dame. She knows her stuff. Oh, really?

She said, Caitlin Clark is the greatest. Female basketball player of all time. Like, she's like Michael Jordan transcending of the sport good, and I think, you know, the way, you know, men and women react differently to competition, and women get catty, and I can't believe the refs in WNBA allow basically everyone to assault her and, like, throw elbows at her. But Sophie Cunningham is brought onto the team to be like the defender and to protect Caitlin Clark, and she's done awesome, and she just came out yesterday in favor of, you know, no, she said girl sports should be for girls, and boys should not be girl sports, so gosh, that's awesome, and she's a Christian, too, and, you know.

So, do you know how I know that the WNBA is never going to take off? So, there was a moment, I believe, after she started a fight, after Kaitlyn Clark got hit, and she pointed her finger. Oh, that's the meme that goes around the world. It's the meme that goes around. And so, isn't that the dream if you're an upstart sports league to have a meme of what you're doing? Right that way. They're not allowing her to monetize, because people made it into a silhouette, and people are, you know, just like people get...

Fired up about sports, they get those, like, I remember, like, Amnur Asim Brown had a touchdown and, like, flipped on his head, and so you see that everywhere. Like, it's good for the league, right? Like, you see, so it says she couldn't monetize it because it doesn't, the league doesn't allow you to monetize inter, like, action, so, like, inter-sport beefs, basically. Like, because she did that against another player. Oh, my gosh. Right, you can't do that. And I'm like.

This sport is just doomed to fail. Like, there's no way. Who is responsible for the marketing of the WNBA? Because that's what everyone... That's my demographic. I think back to, like, Josh, I don't know if you were a big hockey guy, but, like, some of the Red Wings teams back in the day, like, the 90s, there was just monster, this monster, was it Prost? Robert Prost?

Only purpose on the team was to just beat the crap out of someone that came near our best player. It was awesome. Like, it just... You start playing, so Ty Dolby. And the advertising, they show these guys with missing teeth, like the whole thing. The best. Wait, what does not having teeth mean? Are you better at this game? No, it means you beat the crap out of the other guy. Objectively awesome. Yeah. And like anyone who's ever played basketball or any sport knows, there's unwritten rules, especially if the referees are not properly litigating the game, to be like, to protect your players.

If you know that they're going to get hammered and nothing's going to be done about it, you need to send a message back to let them know, hey. Yeah, it's not going to be tolerated. I've had many personal experiences with this, like in basketball, which is a good reason why the state should always be just and properly, because vigilante justice is sometimes dangerous. Sometimes you've got to pull out in sports. I don't lash out at vigilante justice. I consider that to be that the state has failed in its duty.

And so, when you have vigilante justice on the basketball court, it's because the state, in this case the rest, have not intervened to create a just order. And so, when people, it is such an easy, oh, vigilante, it is bad, it is bad. It is a normal response to unhealthy situations. They should read the Virginian. Well, okay, interesting. Now, to get back to what you said, though, about the NMBA. Wait, wait, wait, I want to get your perspective on something that is hot in the streets, especially because you are talking about vigilante justice.

Are you familiar with flock cameras? Oh, yeah. I've heard of them. Yeah, they're like everywhere now. They are everywhere, and if you go on a website called D-Flock, you can see exactly where they are, and I did in my area, and they're literally everywhere. So, D-Flock owns these cameras, and they essentially rent a subscription service to the police departments of wherever, and it's all under the guise of public safety, but they have all the feeds, and I just saw an example recently of Someone, like a high up person in Flock logged in, and they looked at one camera and then logged out, and that one camera was pointed at a children's gymnastics center, and then got out.

And because Flock has access to all of these, it's not like the individual police departments put them up. So people are, there are instances now of people claiming rights under the Fourth Amendment and destroying these Flock cameras, and going and saying, you know what, this is violating my civil liberties. I'm going to cooperate, but this is why I'm doing it, and they're making it somewhat of a protest. How do you feel about that?

Love it. Love it. I mean, it is kind of crazy that we all just put up with this, like that anyone signed off, and a lot of it is like local. The whole thing is that this is not in the common good. Like, if a city decides it wants to have security cameras in certain very public areas to ensure that there is peace and justice, and that in case there is crimes, we can prosecute the appropriate people, then... Then you can do that.

I am not a big fan of it, but then it is not like you are renting it, you know, doing it to a third party, because, you know, like the shareholders for this corporation and people who are the executives who have access to it can do these kind of abuses. Like, that is not cool. Now, you can still have those abuses on the government level, but at least you have the ability to kick, you know, both the people out. But there are people in that town like, wait a minute, who is creeping on our kids at this school?

Like, where is the... So, I think it is a gross violation of the common good. I am not a big fan, and I should tell people. So, they have these things, like Alexa in your house. Why do you have this stuff? People in the 60s were so worried that the man was coming at you. I know it is with your phones. And then they have, oh, I'm going to have a ring so I can see who's out the front door, but I would never have a camera inside my house.

People are like, oh, I want a kid cam so I can see what's going on. Dude, then anyone can get in. What are you talking about? Why would you allow that? It's crazy. Yeah, I would highly. And the cool thing on the streets is kind of going analog. Maybe that's my good news. I've even seen people go as far as DVDs are getting more popular again. And I'll say personally, for my children, we got a very cheap. A DVD player that just plays whatever DVD you put in it for a couple of nights, because we travel a lot, and if you hand them a phone or a tablet, they have the ability to change and whatever else.

So, it is like, great, we are going to go to the library, we are going to rent. It is a little bit of an event. It is like, hey, what movie do you want to rent? Then we know which movie they get, and then, you know, when we go on a long car ride, it is like, okay, you need a little bit of a break. That gives me nostalgia. Yeah, it is cool, actually. I kind of, and anyone can do it.

I did this even not that long ago. I had a little stand, and I had a TV, VCR, you know. Yep. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the VCR tape. I get them for like a quarter. I'm like, this is great, dude. VCRs are back. Film photography, I can say from personal experience, like film is hot in the streets. It's so expensive now. But it's because Hollywood, which is very much opposed to us duplicating things, right? And they say it's because of intellectual property.

Like, we're spending millions of dollars to produce this artwork, and then we'll let you buy it, but then you can't go duplicate it and give it to your neighbor so that they get out of paying for it. Okay, I respect that, but then... Then, wait a minute. If I buy a digital copy of a movie, I own it, but then I don't really own it, because you could actually change the movie from underneath. Like, wait a minute. I bought the movie where Han shot first, and now, all of a sudden, he's not shooting first.

Like, this is stupid. Yeah, it's true. They can change stuff. Now, Jabba's walking. Like, this is dumb. I hate this. Another crazy thing, too, is, so, like, my childhood, I got a GameCube, which I still hold up as one of the best game consoles ever created. And the GameCube games, they actually, because Nintendo never went digital with them, so the original games are not reproduced, and so they're going for like 200 bucks, like a little, they're like little circular DVDs, because you can't get them anyway.

And even the approach to making games, I saw recently, are you guys familiar with Backyard Baseball? No. Or Backyard Sports? This is what I, you know, screw all the Iran stuff. This is actually really what I want to talk about. Backyard Sports, I want to say it was like early 2000s, and I played them. Yes, it's a video game, and you get it on a little DVD, and you put it into your huge computer, because back then, you only had one family computer, and it was a huge column you had to put it in, and all my brothers and I would share time playing Backyard Sports, and the cool thing about it was how they used to make video games were they gave you a completed product.

Like, we spent a ton of time on this, and the only way for us to make money off of it is either selling you the game when you buy it, or, you know, memorabilia, or extra, maybe a sequel, and now with video games, they basically sell you a half-baked product for a lot more expensive, and then they promise additional development, so they're going to have updates, and then they also literally have lottery machines available in the game for you to get, like, in-game credits or gear or whatever else, and it's just, everything just sucked more money off of you, the product's gotten worse.

And when I go back to those old games... And they go for addiction rather than actual game fulfillment. 100%. And so, Backyard Sports made one of the most interesting comebacks I've seen, where basically the rights to Backyard Sports were just kind of out there, and she used to be a teacher, and she bought the rights to Backyard Sports.

And so, she actually brought back Backyard Baseball, which is super nostalgic to me, awesome game, loved it. Pablo Sanchez, if anyone's played. And she's basically reverting the model of like... We're going back to making a completed game. I've heard stories of people playing this game and saying, I want to now go play catch with my dad. You know, we have no microtransactions. You're going to own it. It's going to be awesome. And so, I think that might just be a good example of, you know, capitalism kind of swinging a little bit too far one side, and now we have these opportunities for people that really respect the players and respect the time or respect whatever else.

I don't play video games anymore, but when I was a kid, like... That's, yeah, I don't have time, bro. Like, what are we talking about? But anyway, I just thought that was kind of a cool development. Maybe that's kind of- That is good. I like that. Some of my good news. All right, I'll give a quick, quick hitter good news. So, the Treasury Department is done paying dead people.

You know what? I will say I have many critiques of members of the administration. Scott Besant is really not one of them. Treasury Department stops nearly $100 million in payments to dead people. This is what I signed up for.

The Bureau of Fiscal Services found that money was being sent to ghosts after reviewing 885 million payments totaling $2.7 trillion. Since March 2025, the Trump administration's screening of funds has reportedly uncovered more than 4,900 payments worth about $999 million that were associated with dead payees.

Yeah, I think it was time for that one, and then I will just say another really good news. I had a wonderful time over the weekend. Basically, we had a situation where Two people wanted to get married, and they had to go through annulment processes on both ends because they're in their 60s, and it was painful, it was arduous, but one's a widower, one had been divorced, and it looked like for a time it wasn't going to happen, and it was going to be really sad because they both kind of re-embraced their faith, and they really genuinely wanted to get married.

The fact that they wanted to get married in their 60s is pretty awesome. And so, my family and I prayed a rosary novena for them. Like, we were kind of distraught about the situation, because we are faithful Catholics, and, you know, what we can and can't attend is, like, pretty serious to it. Like, what we believe about the sacrament of marriage isn't just made up. Like, it has dogma and magisterium. Like, we respect that. We're obedient to the church. And so, we prayed this rosary novena.

Really, it was not looking good at a couple different points. And sure enough, you know, we get the annulment just in time. We're able to attend this wedding. It was beautiful, sacramental, had a wonderful time. So, I just want to put that out there as some personal good news in the power of prayer, and I will say the way that that kind of united me and my wife and my parents. So, if you have these situations, I'm not the first person to say it, but a rosary novena.

It contains more power than I think we actually know, and obviously, if it wouldn't have worked out, you know, that would have been God's will, but go pray a rosary at Novena. If you got in irretractable situations, or you just want to start praying, I highly recommend a rosary at Novena, and I'd just like to give thanks to God, and to the two that got married. It was really beautiful. So, okay. Yeah, I think we got time for data centers. Erika, what do you got going on in New York?

Yeah, so this week, New York Governor, our favorite, Kathy Hochul, she became the first governor to approve a statewide moratorium on new data center projects. So, the pause that the people who crafted this policy are saying, they're going to give more policymakers the time that they need to address all these concerns, right, over the electrical grid, over water consumption.

Over building too near where people are living, etc., etc. So, she touted this as a common sense win for data centers. Bernie Sanders over in Vermont was very excited, of course. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she is also very excited about all this. And so, we were digging into just the general feeling on data centers, and we covered this in a deep episode. Maybe we can throw that in the chat, Celine. If you want to go deeper.

There's a new poll out that found 41% of Americans would oppose a data center being built within three miles of where they live, up from 28% in the January survey, which we did cover back in January. So, that's an additional 30% increase there. The number supporting those projects has dropped during the same period from 37%, saying, yes, you can build a data center near me, down to 24%. So, public opinion is definitely moving and shifting, and especially among people who say they voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.

Then, we got this story to kind of add to the AI story. So, we have data centers as one piece of the puzzle. We also have this development coming out of China in the last week that everyone's talking about with AI. There's a new model that was released, and that was just demolishing American models on every front. But no fear, nothing to worry about, because NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Wang… He did an interview with Axios saying, America has nothing to fear from China's open-source AI models, and everything to fear from the growing campaign to ban them, or to regulate them heavily from the government side of things.

Huang said, these Chinese models are excellent. Open-source models that are excellent should be used, so go ahead and use the Chinese models if you want to. And just a brief distinction point, open source means that you can open the hood, so you can see, anyone can go and see exactly how the model is trained or how it works.

Anyone who can understand it. Right, exactly. Can go in and look at it. The engine is easily accessible. Yes, exactly. So, a lot of things brewing on the AI front. With the data center issue. The public support to build these massive centers, which are necessary for the AI super wave that we're all told to expect right now, that infrastructure is definitely becoming like the big bad swamp monster in the American public's mind. It seems that that's the direction that the winds are blowing is against them.

Of course, people who are... Pro-AI development, and they're like, we cannot slow down on these data centers because the fear is that China, which has no qualms about building data centers as big and as bad as they want anywhere, will then overtake us in the AI race.

So, Tom, you did a little on the ground. I did. I did. You drove by an actual data center. Yeah, so maybe I'm having the experience that maybe people that are at these, you know, town board meetings that are frustrated just had, because I think this is one of those things that. Even though there are hundreds, if not thousands, of these all over the country, it is a little bit out of sight, out of mind. Yeah, and it kind of got on the radar of people when they're being built so close to where people live or in places that are naturally beautiful.

In this case, like, so I drove by, we were out in the country, and all of a sudden I hit just... You know, it seemed like it went on for miles. I mean, it was just so much construction equipment. I've never seen this much construction equipment in one place, and it turns out it is the Lebanon Meta Data Center project. It is a roughly one gigawatt, 1,500-acre data center campus in Lebanon's LEAP Innovation District. Now, I think what's a little bit different about this instance is the LEAP District was already So, the other place that currently is being built there is an Eli Lilly facility.

It is going to be a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical manufacturing complex, and then now we are seeing Meta is building their hyperscale AI center there as well. So, it was already set. So, it is in Boone County. LEAP stands for Limitless Exploration Advanced Pace, developed by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation as a master planned hub. So, it's already kind of set. They're saying that the current plan is approximately 4 million square feet investment exceeding $10 billion, and it will have about 4,000 construction jobs at peak, but only roughly 300 permanent operational jobs.

So, construction has now begun. I just saw it. It's very early stages. There's multiple phases. Operations are expected to start around late 2027 or early 2028. Now, I mean, you can do the math on that per investment for 300 operational jobs. That is what sticks out to everyone, because even with the Eli Lilly campus, that's going to bring in, I think, over 1,000 jobs to work there, and they're high-paying jobs. 300 for that level of space, and what was previously there was farmland.

It was pleasant to look at, and all of the water constraints and everything are kind of frustrating to people. But I went back to see the approval process. And I think that's what people are really frustrated with, is it feels like they're being kind of ramrodded behind their backs, like they're making board members sign NDAs. They're not being transparent with who they are or what they're doing until the last second, until it's kind of too late. So, I went and found the actual process of what happened with this data center.

So, again, I said the LEAP district was already prepared, so they were ready to bring on some type of manufacturing, but negotiations occurred privately with the state under what they called Project Domino. So, they negotiated, Lebanon and state economic development officials negotiated with Meta for nearly two years, while the company operated through a subsidiary, Orla LLC, and the codename Project Domino. Meta's identity and many project details were kept confidential during much of that process, which officials said was required by corporate site selection negotiations.

And then, Lebanon approved the incentives in November 2024. The Lebanon City Council unanimously approved the project's local incentive package, including approximately $800 million at the first phase, with as many as six phases possible. This is arguably the most consequential local financial vote because it established the favorable tax treatment before the full campus development plan was publicly reviewed, and then you get the Lebanon Utilities approved an initial water reservation because it requires so much water to do. It was a board vote, four to one.

One member voted against it, saying that the owner behind Orla LLC had not been publicly identified. The board knew little about the project. The water and electricity requirements were enormous. He could not determine whether the company would be a suitable community partner, and the meeting minutes stated that there was no public comment at that meeting. So, they still didn't know what it was for. It was just Project Domino. It's going to require a ton of water and electricity, but they did not know it would be a data center.

Then you get the detailed campus plan. So, at this point, through Orla LLC, they submitted a formal development plan for approximately 1,500 acres, which, when I was there in person, like, I've never seen factories this big. I mean, it's really the craziest size I've ever seen. Maybe I'm just, you know, I'm not familiar with plants or factories or whatever, but I've never seen anything this big. 1,500 acres was shocking. And then the plan commission gets approved by the development plan. That's August 18, 2025.

The Lebanon Plan Commission held a... We lost Tom. There we go. All right. So, going back into the Lebanon Plan Commission and the process here, hopefully we get Tom back, because I really would like sort of his boots on the ground reporting what people are thinking here. I don't know. Oh, there's Tom. Are you back? Yeah, let's see. Come on.

I'm stuck. Can you see me? You're stuck. You're frozen. What the heck? It's been quite the day. But Josh, I think that, you know, a big part of... I'm back. Oh, he's back. No, you're still frozen. I'm back. You're not back.

Well, why don't you continue, Erika? I am going to continue, because I have sort of a bigger question about the data center thing. So, it seems to me that whenever we go through some kind of industrial revolution, right, you think of in England, in the 1700s, America, like 1800s with the mills and the mill towns.

The environmental question of what it takes to sort of like bring a huge segment of society into the next, I don't know, iteration of our technology and technological process is devastating, right? I mean, we think of like the... The writings of Tolkien and Chesterton and how much they hated the factories that are belching out black smoke. And people, I think there's an analogy to be drawn with data centers. You drive by these. I drove by a bunch when I was going out towards Cape Cod earlier this year, and they are jarringly huge and ugly.

And they look inhuman and kind of dystopian, but on the other hand, I can understand the argument that if we're going to You know, continue to compete as a global superpower and economic power. We have to embrace these huge monstrosities in order to keep that going, and I don't really know what to think about that, because I feel like I don't have enough information. Well, it's a new thing, and so it gets, you know, and we share it on social media, like, what is this new thing?

Yeah. Like, what if, you know, like, you know, if you go through a standard large city's industrial park, A lot of it looks kind of… Blah. Yeah. You know, I'm not just talking about like the plate, you know, the smokestacks or the, you know, like an oil refinery, they're belching out smoke. That also, if that were a new thing, we're just starting as a society. Yeah. How would social media treat this new thing? Like, this is terrible. I don't want this in my backyard.

Well, okay, let's put it outside. Let's put it in certain cities, you know. But then just your regular industrial park, like these large warehouses that like just feel impersonal and inhuman on a... On a normal human scale, like those also, like if we had a national conversation on warehouses, I'd be like, this seems so inhuman. So, I mean, so some of that same stuff applies.

On this argument, and I guess I am sort of resistant to that argument. Now, they make a certain hum, like these data centers, or whatever. So, I would not want it in a residential neighborhood, for sure. And the questions of its energy and water use are of concern that should be talked about. I think we should have that discussion.

I do find artificial intelligence not necessarily a super scary thing. I mean, every movie is like, oh my gosh, here's this, you know, and it's a great thriller. It's because it's, it is kind of like the unknown. Now, you know, it goes all the way back to the Terminator, right? I get that. But there are some ways in which it's just, it is sort of like the next iteration. It's pattern recognition. It's computers that are able to Answer calculations rapidly. It is pretty amazing, some of the stuff that is able to do, but it is just ultimately pattern recognition.

So, like these people, it cracks me up. You get like some of these liberals on social media, it's like, well, you know. I asked ChatGBT a bunch of questions, and it gave me answers that were, you know, the answers to the questions that end up all being liberal answers. Like, yeah, okay. Yeah. Garbage in, garbage out. I mean, you know, that is what it is on X. It gives more conservative answers. That does not necessarily mean that that is like the right answer.

It just means that they are doing what they are told. They are doing what they are programmed. But, you know, so. I do think, as I've said, I'm a little skeptical that this is just going to wipe out so many jobs, and then we're all just going to be unemployed. I do think that all these data centers I'm seeing, it's amazing how much of these are powered by solar energy. Negative. It's actual real electricity. There is a need for real electricity.

We need nuclear. Yeah, 100, yeah, no, totally. If this pushes us back toward nuclear, that would be great. Oh, now, actually, Tom's moving now. Yeah, I'm back. Mark Zuckerberg texted me and said he wasn't happy. He pulled the plug, yeah.

It happens. It happens here. I don't know what's going on here. Yeah, you're totally, like, frozen again. Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Zuckerberg was not thrilled. Yeah, dude, I don't know what's going on. Okay, I understand you made the point about... Energy? I would say, upon research, and maybe this is uniform across because people are fighting over these, but Lebanon, the county, approved a 10-year 50% real property tax abatement, 35-year 100% personal property tax abatement.

And also, the state sales tax exemption is up to 25 years for projects below $750 million, up to 50 years when an investment exceeds $750 million. I think I saw like $10 billion for an investment. So, you're saying it's a sweetheart deal where they got half their property taxes removed, and they got a good deal on sales tax, you're saying? 50, dude, 50 years. Like, the problem that I see with this. 50%? No, 50 years when investment exceeds $700. That's two different levels.

There's the Lebanon level, and then there's the Indiana level. Indiana is completely exempting from tax when investment exceeds $750 million. So, for 50 years, Meta is not going to pay any taxes on that facility. Now, they are saying that they're doing some community investment in the millions of dollars, but if you were to actually go... We should get to the write-off on the taxes. That's fine. Yeah, but I... Okay, you might be fine with that, but... No, no, no. I'm just kidding.

It was a snide remark. Snide remark. I'm mad about this. Because I feel like that's just not... You know, Meta, I understand the need for progress. I actually really don't understand the pitch for something this large dystopian, and that's going to be obsolete potentially in two years. You have to keep updating. If you want to use the energy grid, if you want to use the water, at minimum, you should replace what you're using, but at maximum, you should be taking care of the grid around you.

Like, who's going to pay for the investment in the updates to the energy grid that we need now? Who's going to pay for the potential water bill or water problems caused by what's going on here in the future? Most likely, it's going to be the taxpayer. And when you exempt someone for 50 years, these people are not even going to be alive in 50 years, let alone is this going to be relevant 50 years when this facility has such little use outside of purely for data centers?

I would be able to swallow this better if they're saying, hey, We understand that there's a tax policy that everyone else has to pay in business, and we are happy to pay that because we believe that the benefits are so great, there's going to be so much productivity gains, and we're also sensitive to the fact this is only going to bring 300 jobs to your area at great sacrifice to the Hoosiers, and so we're going to pay your tax rate. Maybe you cut it a little bit, but not completely exempt it.

We're talking like $4 billion over the cost of 35 years. In terms of the taxable equipment, electricity tax, replaceable equipment. I mean, over 35 years, we are looking at a conservative estimate of $4 billion. It should come from that. Here is a bipartisan proposal that could happen in Indiana or somewhere. I don't know if Indiana, I can't remember if you guys have citizen-driven initiatives, but... I think there is a prime opportunity to have a bipartisan, some lawmakers from both parties come together and say, end of special corporate deals.

No corporation is going to be exempted from property taxes, or sales taxes, or income taxes, whether it's a data center, or it's the Indianapolis Colts football team, or whatever. No special deals. Everyone gets the same rate, and you make it illegal to offer a special deal, and that would be great. I'd love to see that. 100% agree. That would solve the problem, because it's all just a fight between the states to try to bring them into your state for favorable tax status.

But, I mean, I can think of a lot that could be done with $4 billion for the state of Indiana. Yeah, I mean, this seems like a failure on the part of state and local government for sure to negotiate in the interests of the residents. And, you know, if anything, the whole data center outcry, like the fruit of this from a political perspective could be hopefully people waking up to the fact that they have to get involved in local politics. Like, you have to be involved in state.

And local elections, because, yeah, and it is. I would just point, so in our town, we just adopted the flock cameras, and we're going to have, you know, what do they call it? Like, police-free traffic stops, or like, you're going to get your speeding ticket in the mail without any policemen ever having to be on the road, and people just lost their minds, and they're like, what is going on? And like, what's going on? Is the fact that Hamden, Connecticut residents have totally abdicated their civic responsibility for the last 60 years, and we're being run by crazy people now.

May that be the wake-up call. Yeah, hopefully things like, because these are the data centers coming to coastal America, I mean, the flock cameras, and hopefully these sort of crisis moments can be. An instigation for people to clue back in. But yeah, you got a raw deal, Tom.

I think many people did. I'm not against data centers per se. I mean, the thing is, in that circumstance, it just opens the doors for... Backroom dealing, corruption, you know. So, you throw some money at some lawmakers, and then you get this tax break for 50 years. It's like, well, wait a minute. Where's the tax break for, you know, the local hardware store? Yeah, seriously. Where's the tax break for the daycare? So, it's just another, and the thing is, like, but hey, we're not giving them money.

We're just not taxing them. We're just giving them a tax cut. It's baloney. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. Yeah, I appreciate your perspective, too, because, you know, the funny thing. I saw both Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders are proposing that there should be somewhat of a public ownership in these AI companies because they're taking advantage of public resources in terms of water or land. Public meaning government. Public meaning government, yeah, in that there would be some type of kickback.

Because the other... Core issue with all of this is, there hasn't been a good enough explanation as to, we have data centers now. Why do we need 1,500 acre data centers for a capability that we don't even know what's possible? I don't understand the argument for, we're going to do this, it's going to be obsolete soon, it's going to take up a huge part that you're never going to get back, and best case scenario, it takes your job. You're obsolete. You're obsolete.

This is making you obsolete. So, I agree with you, Josh. There should not be any lowering of tax rates for anyone, period, so you can stop doing the race to the bottom thing. And I think it is really... Or utility rates for water and electricity, you know. And another thing, too, is the anonymity and the kind of legal jujitsu of not putting your name forward.

Unfortunately, all the time. I know it happens, but it's corrupt. You know how that started, by the way? One of the biggest ways that started is that... So, Walt Disney announced they were going to do a theme park in Anaheim, California, and so all the places bought up the area around it, and now they're like, ugh! And so then it got really expensive. And so Walt Disney's like, hmm. So they formed like an LLC. We're going to do one in Florida.

They didn't tell anyone. It was like such and such LLC, and they bought up way more land. There was no Orlando. 70 years ago, they bought a ton of land, and then they announced, hey, we're doing this Walt Disney World right in the middle, and then they sold the land around it for exorbitant rates, because they knew it was going to be. So, that's why they do that. You know, it happened in my town. LLC opened up, and they're like, oh, it was just like some address, like 1284th Street.

Turns out it was, you know, porn shop. Like, oh. Yeah, of course. I didn't even know that. So, they do these kind of things. I hate that. Here's a historical perspective, and to me, this just. It feels like… handing wins to your opponent as well because the only response to all of these very valid and legitimate criticisms from the people who are pushing the tech stuff is like oh you're anti-progress or you don't be rich you don't want to win against china you instead of just saying hey your concerns are legitimate the people that run these company are robber baron rich they're probably richer than any robber baron ever all the other the meta people elon musk is all these people They are outrageously wealthy.

Now, you can say, at least with the robber barons, they built nice libraries, or they built nice things for the community. And actually, funny, I think that is something to learn from here. If you do not want to be reviled and hated as aliens and people taking advantage of public resources that are causing noise pollution and going to replace jobs or whatever, put up. Say, you know what, I will pay the tax rate, or you know what, I am going to invest so much money to make your schools amazing or whatever else.

Like, you've got to throw people a bone, or you're going to get the Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon, or taking part of your company. I 100% agree with you on that one. You know, like, that's an easy solution, and it would be easy for Trump.

You know what? Trump should go. Trump has the power to be like, listen, put up the money, or I'm revoking your permits, or we're putting a national moratorium. You know, at least put some pressure on them to try to get some money back for the people here, or at least kind of like, because I think the worst case scenario here is. Um, there's actually some type of vigilante terrorism going. I actually, I've said that before, and I do think that it's potentially possible because I've seen some of these AI people be like, you know, we have these cameras set up because we want to defend against drones of people potentially bombing them.

I'm like, if you're even talking about that, like, what are we doing here? Like, I've never, I've never heard of that for a factor of any kind. I guess we've seen with the Luddites, when they burned the, right, like, there is historical precedent for something like that happening. So, I don't think it has to be such a doomed conversation. It's like all of the shadiest backroom tactics to bring up a very obvious eyesore is igniting people locally, and it's not a left or right issue.

This feels very non-partisan. That's why I think Pope Leo's cyclical is really good. It's got to be centered on the common good. Yeah. So, I'd love to see, you know, put up some money. And it's serious money, too, not just like, here's a little breadcrumbs. We're going to throw you a couple million dollars. When we're talking about $4 billion, it's like, you can handle it. Okay, let's go. Good news now, we ran a little bit over there. Odyssey, Erika, you saw the Odyssey?

I did. I did see the Odyssey very quick. I have my review drops tomorrow. There was massive controversy within the LOOPcast ecosystem here. Simon loved it. I had a little bit harsher take on it, but make sure you check out The Deep tomorrow to have the full story. Audiences so far have loved it. Odyssey, no surprise. Christopher Nolan has debuted. I mean, I'm just not sure you voted for Camelot, so that doesn't tell me. Hey, hey, listen, I'm going to see Nolan guy.

I'm going to see Nolan guy. I haven't watched it yet. I plan on it, though. And producer of this podcast loved it, so it's polarizing. Well, and my thing is, you should go see it. It's a fun summer movie, but it's not. Homer. Spoiler alert. Not that anyone's surprised. I have no interest. No. Sorry. You don't want to see Cyclops? You don't want to see the big monster stuck in the head? Josh actually would rather watch Sophie Cunningham in the WNBA.

Yeah, there's your choice. That is true. Would you rather watch a WNBA game? WNBA game? Or would you watch The Odyssey? I don't have to pay for The Odyssey, and the WNBA, I can have it on TV and I fall asleep. Okay, what about this one? The Odyssey or the World Cup Final?

I'd still, I'd watch the World Cup Final. Are you serious? Wow. Yeah, that's a no, doc. We watched the 20-minute highlights, which is just the great amount of soccer. I don't know, something's going on there. Kudos to Spain. Way to go, Spain. Oh, man. Olé. Olé. Anyway.

No, I'm not paying the money to go see Odyssey. Josh, what do you got? What are we on? Good news? I did my good news. We are on Twilight Zone, Josh. Oh, well, you said good news, though, so.

All right. So, I got to find that now. We have so much now. Yeah, so much. Seven-hour LOOPcast. Okay. Bernie Sanders. We mentioned him already. He slammed Donald Trump as a threat to democracy many times, and he is actually very proud of his past work advising socialist leader Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. The guy who's on again, off again in Nicaragua. He said on Sunday, his country will no longer have elections. How about that? Now, we know Bernie Sanders cares about Nicaragua, and we know he takes threats to democracy very seriously, so let's just check his Twitter feed.

Oh, he's tweeted six times on X. He has made very high-profile visits to Michigan and Minnesota, where he has given speeches on behalf of candidates, but no comment on how his buddy Ortega is a threat to democracy. I guess he only attacks his own president and his own country's leaders for threatening democracy when someone calls off elections.

This is just absolutely crazy. Of course, this is Bernie Sanders. He is the guy who went to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon. He loves communism. He loves Fidel Castro. You know, and again, we had Hassan Piker, the socialist streamer, talking about how he loves Chairman Mao.

Don't bring on my trade. He had the Twin Towers day after, newspaper clipping up in the back of his stream. I mean, he's just like... Hey, that's my Twilight Zone. Oh, sorry, sorry. Back to Bernie. I mean, you know, again, he talks about everything, and he says nothing on Ortega. That's because, for the socialist mindset, the goal of democracy is ultimate unity. Meaning that the way democracy should work is that people argue and they have this dialectic and this back and forth until, in the end, everyone is a socialist and just agrees on the same thing, which Nicaragua, in that mindset, has actually achieved the apex of democracy.

Right, nirvana it is. We have achieved total unity, and I'm sure now many boats will be leaving southern Florida to try and get to Nicaragua so that we can live in this socialist paradise. I think Marco Rubio is on the phone right now.

Henry Kissinger? I mean, you're just inviting, you know, the Trump administration to do something about this when you say, you know, we're not going to allow elections. And the reason why he doesn't allow elections is because he's seen what's going on throughout all of Latin America now that we cut off funding from USCIA, I mean, USAID.

All these, you know, left-wing governments aren't being propped up anymore by our tax dollars, and he's like, hmm, I'm going to lose if we have a free election. So, he doesn't want free elections anymore. Erika, what do you have? All right, I'm going to do the Hassan Piker, since it kind of streamlines with Josh here. So, those of you who don't know who he is, God bless you, but Hassan Piker, highly popular streamer. I think even surpassing perhaps Nick Fuentes in terms of following at this point.

We know that in 2028, every Democratic candidate is going to be wanting to be on Hassan Piker's show. Unfortunately, very influential. So, this is the online left and Yeah, he had this to say this week about a well-known historical figure. I got stopped by a cop who thought I was making fun of Mao Zedong, which I never would and never will.

Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world, okay? A man who changed the entire universe, the entire planet. Okay. Is the context here, was he in China and got stopped? Yeah, so he was in China, and he got stopped by someone who said, oh, you made fun of our great leader, Mao Zedong. And so, Hassan comes back, and he gets on his stream, and he's like, Mao Zedong, one of the greatest men in all of history, who went and looked it up, again, just to confirm that perhaps I hadn't missed something.

But Mao Zedong, with the Cultural Revolution in China, Probably responsible for conservatively 49 million deaths. Within that period of time, and on the higher end, close to 100 million, if you count all of the deaths from famine and secondary causes that were the sort of waterfall effect from communist policies.

I mean, we're talking about a guy who, one of his, one of the most ridiculous policies was he was convinced that China, in order to enter the modern age, would have to convert all of its farmers into backyards. Steel manufacturers. So, they would have farmers all over China forcibly melt down all of their farming implements in order to have these backyard sort of smelting facilities, resulting, oh, guess what? They couldn't grow enough food. So, total famine. They also had this policy where sparrows were seen as an enemy of the people because the sparrows eat grain in the fields.

So, they had millions of Chinese out in the fields killing sparrows, who it turns out also Eat the pests that destroy wheat crops, resulting in more famine and more famine. But these are the kind of these idiotic policies, and that's even aside from the cultural revolution. Yeah, is the argument for Mao, like I'm just even trying to understand the frame of reference, would be that the great leap forward in turning China from an agrarian society to an industrial one was... Like, important for the place that China now occupies.

Of course, he did it in the probably most deadly way possible, by killing millions of people. That's the highest kill count of anyone ever. Yeah, higher than Stalin, higher than Hitler. I mean, there's no, I don't, I think that you're assigning, you're searching for linear rational argument based on evidence. Yeah, that's true. There's none to be found. I mean, this is a, this is an ideological, this is a fever dream, where you have this figure. Hasan Piker wears the Mao jacket.

He's over in China saying this is the greatest, freest society ever. It's the upside down, and the frightening thing is that this kind of rhetoric coming in the online world is being communicated to a public that has largely been ignorant of history, and we have not been taught the history of communism. We have not been taught the history of socialism and the outcomes in our school systems.

This is so making us very vulnerable to people like Hassan Piker telling us what history was. This is why it's so important for us to re-renew, retake, and rebuild our education system. You know, nature abhors a vacuum, and we have a vacuum of historical knowledge of how these policies actually played out in human history, and that is very dangerous. As John Fogerty warned us, five-year plans and new deals are wrapped in golden chains. Yes.

But, you know, with regards to China, I mean, like, okay, so, there is no question, Chairman Mao, bloody, bloody, bloody, very evil. And I give credit, though. To Richard Nixon, for understanding that you had to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, and to try to hopefully turn Beijing into more of a market orientation. Now, we're paying some of the prices for the trade deals that we did in the 90s and in the early 2000s, which I do not support and did not support, but creating that wedge was one of the most important things, and to get them out of absolute destitute poverty.

And, you know, trying to get them out of total communism was good for the world, I do believe, even though I'm not a fan of the 90s trade. Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. Wouldn't you say that that led towards the world, letting them into the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, even if you disagree with those policies, that that was the first domino drop? No, I'm just saying, Nixon going to China in 72, I approved to try to drive a wedge between China and...

In the Soviet Union, and to prevent that, you know, those two from becoming one. That is what I support. The trade deals that came with China in the, you know, in the 90s with the most favored nation status, and then on the WTO, they were not part of NAFTA, part of WTO, and that kind of stuff, did not like that at all. And I did not like that. Yeah, those were for very different motivations than what Nixon was doing. Very different, yeah.

That was just greedy, you know, capitalists who were willing to, you know, finance the rope that hangs them. Yeah. And China is still communist today, so it didn't work. Well, they're actually, you know what, they are, but they're like, it's weird. They have the atheism of communism, right? They have the one-party control of communism. Totalitarianism. But they have like this weird, like, you know, engine, market economy-ish that's state-controlled. So, actually, we bastardize the term so much, but they are actually the textbook definition of actual fascism.

Because fascism, as understood in the 20s, but what Mussolini had done, was that the state and the corporations were united, and that the state, the most powerful industries were under the control of the state. So, when you had, for example, Venezuela taking over the petroleum industry, that is like a move of fascism that does not necessarily, now Maduro went into full socialism as well, it is a different story.

China actually more resembles like Mussolini 20s, you know, economic fascism than it does pure communism or whatever. There's not really pure communism. But, you know, so it's kind of a semantic deal. But there is a difference. You know, they're not like the Soviet Union of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Okay.

Mine is my concern of where we're heading with all these data centers. We got exit polls. Older voters in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District admit to being tricked by AI-generated ads falsely depicting Thomas Massey in a thruple with AOC and Ilhan Omar with the ads influencing their vote. That's per an exit poll.

Here was it, if you don't remember it. You've got a soundpiker on the screen. Oh, sorry. Here, I'll share it. This was the ad, if you remember it. We also saw during the World Cup, I think there was an anti-fishback ad where they AI generated. It was like, fishback, Carlson, Candace Owens.

They were, like, letting in, like, terrorists. Like, just the craziest stuff. I can only imagine how much it was to put that up during a World Cup game. You're going to see more of this. This is not the end. And you are going to see so much more of this. In Michigan, there is a state law, at least, maybe not the federal races, but you are running for governor, and you do an AI ad, you have to have a disclaimer on there, on the screen, saying this is AI content.

Sure, but it almost is too late at that point, right? No, I think it has to be visual and audible, so you have to say, this ad was created by AI content, whatever. Okay. I am just concerned about the amount of boomers that I know that have genuinely been tricked. It just hurts me sometimes to see, like, you repost it. You see, like, a repost, and you are like, oh, no, the bunnies on the trampoline. Like, that is not, those are not real bunnies on the trampoline.

It is not just boomers. Like, let us be real. It is coming. Yeah, yeah, dude. I have got to go. We have all fallen for something. My first reaction to pretty much everything now is that AI. Remember the Buffalo video? Yes. I was like, this is AI. There is no way this is real. I had to go get confirmation.

So, I mean, you flood the zone with that. I was questioning, like, the official. When the Vances put out the first picture of the new baby, I was like, is it AI? And it was so weird, because there are so many versions of it.

What about Mitch McConnell? Immediately, I was like, dude, come on, guys. This is crazy. Proof of life. And then, I am going to keep this beat going, because I think it is so stupid. Trump media is going to sell, quote, faster access to President Trump's truth social posts, which are going to let traders and investors pay for real-time feed of truth social posts. No. I just don't know how you can get more openly corrupt than this. I mean, like, Trump has said, like, the world's a casino.

But his family owns this, so all of these people that want... It's already a problem that he's prosecuted the war basically by saying, like, yep, there's a peace deal every time markets are about to open, and then, all right, we're back on on Friday when I can get away from the market, to now be like, hey, for a small price of 100K or whatever. I don't think they've announced the exact amount. I don't know how this would actually... I mean, I think you're right.

This is a horrible idea. I hate it. Right from the get-go, I do not think it should be done. I think it should be stopped, if it can be stopped. I also feel like, just fundamentally, practically, it is not going to work, because all it takes is one reporter to sign up for it. And then they'll just go on to social media and share whatever is shared. So, I mean, like, you don't have to even have a Truth Social account. I'm on Twitter all the time, and I see anytime President Trump posts on Truth Social, somebody posts it on X.

So, I see it anyway. Yeah, I think the argument is that, like, a lot of investors apply for this with other platforms, where they'll get it, like, a millisecond sooner, and they actually tie their trades automatically. So, if they see, like, they'll do code words for, you know, ceasefire or something like that. And then they'll instantly use that to go get a millisecond advantage. So, I'm not sure if it's as much of a, you know, wait for it to go on Twitter.

It's more like people that are making speculative trades immediately. We'll see. And then there's a crazy article of. I think it was Trump's teleprompter operator for years, I think back to the first term, is now under investigation because he placed like a thousands of dollar bet on him using, I can't remember the exact word, but like specific words in addresses to the public, and of course, he as the teleprompter operator knows what he's about to say, so it's like seconds before he would address, so they're dinging him, you know, they got the guy that was actually part of the Maduro raid for putting money down.

They need to go after those guys. It is so disgusting. Other people will know not to do it. It is disgusting, and I think, yeah, you need to make an example, but with the Trump administration itself is somewhat doing this by manipulating markets, by not being honest with the people, saying like, oh, no, ceasefire on. They are acting off of the amount of unusual trade volumes I have seen, and also they reimbursed all of the tariff money. So, like, we have actually reimbursed more tariff money than we have actually collected, and I know they said they are going to come out with a new 10% or 15% tariff.

Or whatever, but it's like, the money game's going on with the Trump administration. I will say, like, oh, geez. I'll speak for you for a second. Go for it. I wish it were the case that the Trump administration would be like, of course, we would never do anything like this, because it would come off as, you know, dealing, backroom dealing, and feathering thy own nest.

Unfortunately. Their hands are not super clean, actually, at all on these kind of things, and that is unfortunate. I am a big fan of President Trump. I think he has been a phenomenal leader. I am glad he came onto the stage. I voted for him, and I will continue to support the good things that he does, but these kind of things, I will not back it. I do not like it. I am saying that out of love. You can clean this up.

You know what I mean? Yeah. There's still time. You don't need more money. There's other ways to make a buck. Dude, there's other ways to make a buck, and there's, like, the personal fortune that his family has amassed over this term, as compared to the first, is, like, eye-popping shocking, and everyone sees it. We all know what's going on, and it's taking away from some of the good things that you should be getting done, or maybe are getting done, that are being distracted by being at war, and then headlines that come out like this.

Yeah, don't feed your enemies stuff like this. Yeah, this is just like... Baseline stuff. So, say it out of love. Clean it up. Good show, gang. Mark Zuckerberg got me with the text. As always, have a great week. We didn't even get into the Nixon maxing stuff. Oh, yeah. Actually, we totally baited you with that. We said we're going to talk about Nixon. That's terrible. That's the whole reason I came here. Josh, then I'll give you... Listen, man, we can go over.

I got the power of the purse over here. I got the power of the button. Why is Nixon back in the news? Why should we be... Why are we excited to come back on the show? Well, I should say a longtime friend of mine has said... And it said this in a group text to a whole bunch of people. In case it hasn't been said, Merce has been Nixon-maxing for years before it was cool, which is true. And I would just point people, you want to see a really good article, you might have to give your email address and register or whatever, you know.

But Christopher Ruffo talked about, he's been on this, he's like the leader of the Nixon-maxing, and he gets it. And the point here is, We have experienced this revolution in our country, the revolution of 1968, where the radicals are trying to undermine every institution that we have. They took over the universities, they took over the mainstream media, and they eventually took over even intelligence agencies and our military, which is like the longest standing conservative lowercase c institution that we had. And Nixon, why is Nixon so good?

Nixon understood that we needed a counter-revolution. We needed to fight back. He understood the universities are the enemy. They're the ones that are trying to undermine everything that's good about the American system of government. And it's not like Nixon is like a 1,000% libertarian that didn't believe, you know, like, no, no, no, no, no. But he understood many things.

Every once in a while, I just watch his nomination speech in 1968. It is wonderful. He goes, my friends, we live in an age of revolution in America and in the world. We see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We see sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other, fighting each other, killing each other at home. He said, But he called on what? He called on the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.

They are not racists or sick. They are not guilty of the crimes that plague the land. They are black, they are white, they are native-born, they are foreign-born. And I have this to say to you, this is the real voice of America.

And he goes, and what he said is, to find the answers to our problems, let us turn to a revolution, a revolution that will never grow old, the world's greatest continuing revolution, the American Revolution. The American Revolution was and is dedicated to progress, he said, but our founders recognized that the first requisite of progress is order. Now, there is no quarrel, he said, between progress and order, because neither can exist without the other. And to say that law and order is the code word for racism, here is a reply.

Our goal is justice, justice for every American. And so, this is a man who understood, like, he looked at the Leviathan state, and he wanted to do block grants to the states. He wanted to, you know, get the money closer to the people, get rid of these expansive, great society programs. And then, he also wanted to reform our intelligence agencies.

What had developed in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. was a fourth branch of government, this permanent state where these agencies were completely irresponsible and irresponsive to any political decision-making, and they always say that as a good thing. The left, the media, like, we want independent agencies. The Department of Justice is independent.

What they mean that is, no matter who gets elected, we stay the same. We never change. So, the American people, we the people, have no say in our own government. We are to be ruled. We are not citizens. That is what they are saying. Nixon understood that. Nixon fought back against that, and because of that, the deep state went after him. Wait, wait, wait. Are you going to out yourself as a conspiracy theorist?

Dude, Watergate was the biggest conspiracy. Wait a second. I thought all conspiracy theorists were from the devil. I thought we can't. Who said that? You have an alternative view on the official narrative? I'm saying your conspiracy theories are boring. You just go with the safe ones. Okay, you go with the safe ones that you can say. Okay, that's fine. Watergate's safe, dude? Yes, it's safe. Everyone says that that was the safe. Okay. Dude, come on. You did not grow up in the 90s.

Watergate was not safe. You have no idea what you're talking about. That's safe compared to what I'm talking about. I want to give an example. Ronald Reagan, super popular two-term president of the United States, and they come up with a TV show, a sitcom that everyone watched, and it starred the super handsome Michael J. Fox in his prime. And they set the show up as the parents are like these kind of square, but they're at heart, you know, 60s liberals, you know, and they're getting kind of older.

Now, they got kids of their own, and lo and behold, they have their son, Alex P. Keaton, who loves Ronald Reagan, and it's kind of crazy, but like he loved Nixon, too, and it was almost safer to have him love Nixon because it's like it was so outlandish and cartoonish, like no one, no reasonable 16-year-old in 1984. I would have loved Richard Nixon, because he was in disgrace for decades. Like, he was the Black Plague. Yeah, no one, and I'm like, dude, what are you talking about?

And by the way, the other clip that was so, that's been circulating the internet like crazy, is when Bill Murray, the comedian, right, the actor, he went on Joe Rogan a couple years ago, or whatever it was, and he talked about, he goes, I'm reading this book that, who's the guy, Woodward. wrote about um Watergate or is it Bernstein I forget which of the two that wrote about Woodward he wrote a he wrote a book about Belushi John Belushi and he goes yeah wait a minute now I'm reading this after five minutes I relate what this is total bs this is a man I've known Belushi half my adult life of course Belushi died in 1980, so of course, it's 40 years.

He goes, if anyone knows him, it's Bill Murray. And he goes, and I know the whole Two Sources stuff. So, what he found out is that he goes, Woodward was interviewing people way out in the outer sphere that think they kind of knew, but they didn't really know him, and he wrote this whole book on him. And if he didn't, he goes, huh.

Nixon was set up. That's the conclusion that Bill Murray came to. What a conspiracy theorist. Are we going to have to put that next to your name for the podcast now, that you're a big conspiracy guy? That's crazy. Although, the one thing I'll say about Nixon, I'll take it a step further. I heard on the tape him say, I know what happened to John, implying he knew what happened to JFK, and that he was potentially going to release it. Now, my frustration with Nixon, because I actually went and got some of his accomplishments.

He had the opportunity, and maybe the country wasn't ready for it at the time, to be Trump before Trump, in coming out with the courage to say, this is a setup, this is BS, I want the American people to know that, I made these enemies because I'm trying to rein in an out-of-control intelligence agency, deep state, if you will, and I'm not resigning, because he didn't have to. He could have fought the impeachment tooth and nail. He could have brought forward all the various connections to intel that the Watergate people run down, and he didn't.

And maybe he thought at the time that was what was best for the American people, but I mean, look what we have now. Talk about the nonsense we have going on now. Like, all the shenanigans with Trump 1 and 2, Russiagate, the assassination attempts. Yeah, I understand, but here's what I will say. I trust Richard Nixon's judgment.

On this, in 1974, over my Monday morning quarterbacking 50 years later, and the reason why is because that was the time, you know, we were in a hot war with Vietnam, you know, which is a proxy war with the Soviet Union. We still, you know, the war with, you know, the Soviet Union was still, you know, the number one threat.

The number, the amount of mainstream, like, universal consensus, like, post-World War II view of America and its institutions, like, you know, I just don't think that scenario, like, if you could run through a game scenario, I don't think it works. I think, I trust his judgment on this, that it just, even though he was, you know, I think he's ultimately going to be vindicated on this. I just don't think that it wouldn't have worked, and he would have been removed from office.

Are you saying because there wasn't the social media tool to circumvent that? Yeah, everybody watched evening news, Walter Cronkite, and all this kind of stuff. Like, the information, I mean... Again, I hate when people did this to me when I was young, so I do not mean to say this to you in a demeaning way.

Josh, condescending me? No, I mean, it's like... No, I got you, Josh. My mom, she gets her cues from the evening news today still, but she is like a very shrinking demo on this, right? I mean, there isn't going to be the evening news like we think about it 20 years from now, but everybody sat down and watched the evening news, like 70, 80% of the population, whatever. They were the drivers of this, and the alternative media was like National Review.

Think of how tame they are. National Review. They were the brave individuals. They were the brave individuals. Yeah. You have no idea. The world has changed. Brother, you have no idea. Times have changed, man. My goodness. Yeah, Nixon would not have worked if he had stuck to that. Now we can say National Review is center-left. You know, and that there's so many more voices, and we're able to do stuff. It's like, dude, come on, bro. It's crazy, the speed. Actually, that'd be an interesting video, Erika, of like...

The Overton window has moved so much. Right, because even like, okay, I'll just say, because not to do the thing right back to you, but like, for people my age, they look at, say, like, the Daily Wire as mainstream media. Like, they... Which is crazy. I'm not even kidding. Like, they run cover for Trump. They're just going to be pro-Trump. They're always going to put a spin on it. They are now, like, the entrenched. Sure. They're not the edgy... You know, where we're pushing the boundaries independent.

And, like, I don't even think people would have considered The Daily Wire to be that even a couple years ago. Oh, yeah. They were the upstart bad boys, you know, were on the block or whatever. So, the speed at which the turnover of any institution is, like, must be, like, warp speed to someone that. Free press, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Free press was kind of this darling, oh, my gosh, cancel. And now it's like, okay, now you're an Israeli front. Like, I'm telling you, that's the general thought process of someone my age.

Some of those criticisms. A little bit out there, but the greater point, though, is true. The ability for conservatives to try to mount any kind of... It was so hard to get the news out, and that is why spending on political campaigns was the only way you could really do anything, because there is no Tom Monaghan, Elon Musk billionaire that was going to buy any... Axe was huge. That was great that Musk bought it, not that he is perfect, but there was nothing like that in the 70s, 80s.

You had to have William F. Buckley on firing line on PBS. That was the only thing. I mean, like, nothing! What about if every billionaire was like Tom Monahan? Instead of, you know, skeezing your way into a data center, you could have built Ave Maria. Well, actually, there's a greater discussion to be had about this that, you know, like Mackenzie Bezos, you know, she divorced Jeff, and she's got, you know, a gazillion dollars, and she is just giving it to every left-wing organization in sight.

She just realizes that it's, you know, it's going to work, you know. But on the conservative side, people are like the ultimate misers. They're like, well, wait a minute now. I would need proof that this is going to be a great investment. Dude, sponsor. Be a patron of the conservative media and the conservative arts. But they're always like, I want to make sure this is a good investment on my dollar. This is supposed to be philanthropy. We're supposed to try to do the hard work of changing hearts and minds so that the communists don't take over.

But I don't know if this is a great investment. As conservative donors, you need to be generous and realize we are in a fight for our lives here. But isn't that a philosophy? That, to me, seems like it's never going to be solved because, philosophically speaking, conservatives are shrewd, prudent, want to see a return on their investment, typically much more focused on their local community, families, as opposed to someone that's like... I'm talking about the guys who have, like, so much money coming out of their ears.

But you know what I'm saying, though. Then find the institutions that are... Like, if I had Elon Musk money, I'd be like, Christopher Ruffo, here's $100 million. Go take over. Like, do something. He is getting big money. Well, he should. Check out the funding behind the Manhattan Institute. They're getting a lot of money. Yeah, and rightly so. Yeah, because he's effective.

Right. You know, so we need more of that. Like, the guys that are getting things done. Before we get out of here, fun Nixon facts. Ended the draft. Lowered the voting age to 18. Well, Congress did that, too. That was the amendment. Right, but he created the EPA. That is true. And then, what was the final one? It is kind of funny that some conservatives, like now, he was actually kind of liberal, like he did price controls, wage controls, or whatever.

The thing is, The problem with it was, the presidential election before, we had Barry Goldwater, which inspires a lot of conservatives, and they love it. But he got so freaking trounced at the ballot box that the Democrats had like... 60-70% of control of the entire federal government for a long stretch there, and move the politics hardcore to the left. That is why you do not nominate somebody who is toxic. Like, I am sorry. I am like, sure, yeah, but we got pummeled.

And so, 68 comes around and... Nixon was a rescue mission, and he saved us from going off the cliff. I mean, golly. Josh, I'll end with one more accomplishment from my lips to God's ears. He, after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, his administration backed negotiations that helped begin disengagement between Israel and neighboring Arab states. We can all use a little of that, Nixon. Nixon maxing. I'm a fan. That was so much fun, we went 22 minutes. My children are running feral downstairs.

Yeah, I got feral children. All right, so I'm with a prayer for our nation. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Emma. God, our Father, giver of life, we entrust the United States of America to your loving care. You are the rock on which this nation was founded. You alone are the true source of our cherished rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Reclaim this land for your glory and dwell among your people. Send your spirit to touch the hearts of our nation's leaders.

Open their minds to the great worth of human life and the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Remind your people that true happiness is rooted in seeking and doing your will. Through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, patroness of our land, grant us the courage to reject the culture of death. Lead us into a new millennium of life. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Vidalus, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Great show, gang. We'll catch you on the next one. Eric's got a great episode of The Deep coming for you tomorrow. Catch you then. Peace.