I won't be silent about THIS!!

0:00 Hey everybody, Adam Mockler here.

0:01 After 5 days in DC and then 5 days in New York, I'm finally back in Chicago,

0:06 back in the studio, investing all of my time

0:08 into YouTube and building more and more debate formats.

0:12 So, I want to bring you guys an interview I did just yesterday

0:15 with Jim Acosta where we talk a little bit about how I built this channel.

0:19 We talk about the Iran war and the sort

0:21 of intergenerational divide that has been forming where a lot

0:24 of older folks on the right in particular are

0:27 trying to tell me not to talk about this war,

0:30 not to ask questions about this war, are trying to silence me in different ways.

0:34 We talk about some interesting stuff here.

0:35 So, drop a like.

0:36 Make sure you watch until the very end.

0:38 Subscribe and peace out.

0:40 Donald Trump's freak out over the upcoming midterms facing a barrage

0:44 of poll numbers that show he's about as popular as Jeffrey Epstein.

0:47 Trump blinked in the standoff with Iran in his war of choice

0:51 in the Middle East or at least he has uh for this week.

0:53 Uh let's discuss that and much more with Adam Mockler.

0:55 He is a slayer of middle-aged MAGA men on cable news.

1:01 Adam, great to see you.

1:02 Thank you for having me on.

1:03 Thank you for paving the way.

1:05 Thank you for, you know, being so good at what you do as well.

1:08 It's going to be a great conversation.

1:09 I'm glad we finally got to do it.

1:11 I'm so glad, too.

1:12 I And I um I'm a I'm a big admirer of yours

1:15 and I love seeing uh the young folks doing these things these days.

1:20 I remember when I I I think I read you're 23.

1:22 If I'm wrong, please correct me as you do with other middle-aged men,

1:26 but um you're 23 and I remember when I was 23,

1:30 I was good at like beer pong and that's basically it.

1:33 That was That was the extent of what I was good at at 23 years old.

1:37 Um I I guess what you know,

1:39 we should dive into a lot of this stuff, but I guess first of all,

1:43 what do you make of the the political mess that Trump

1:46 is in right now and like folks in your age bracket,

1:51 I know you don't speak for everybody in Is

1:53 it I guess it would be Gen Z or whatever, but like why is he tanking so badly?

1:58 Is it just that he's nuts?

1:59 I mean I think he's nuts and that's why he's tanking so badly.

2:01 Is it Is it Iran?

2:03 What do you think it is?

2:04 It's right now it is Iran and the downstream effects

2:08 of this war backfiring and it's due to his terrible

2:13 terrible instincts on this and the bad advice

2:15 that he got from the people around him like Netanyahu.

2:17 Donald Trump thought this would be a carbon copy of Venezuela where you

2:21 chop off the head and the rest of the body falls in line.

2:24 Meaning you take out the leader and the rest

2:26 of the regime will sort of be strung along.

2:28 It kind of worked in Venezuela.

2:29 It got quiet after Maduro was captured and the rest of the body fell in line.

2:33 With Venice with Iran, it's much much different.

2:36 The IRGC is deeply embedded in Iran.

2:40 A lot of people that work in the banks, the institutions, the political scenes,

2:44 they're former IRGC members who are incentivized to keep the regime going.

2:48 They have their claws deep in Iran.

2:51 So they're not really budging.

2:52 They're kind of holding out and it's asymmetrical warfare at this point.

2:56 So due to that, Donald Trump's 4 to 6 week timeline got blown through.

3:00 We're now in week 10.

3:02 Is that right?

3:02 Week 9 or 10 of this war?

3:04 We are way past the timeline

3:06 and we've gotten zero political concessions from Iran,

3:08 which is what I've been hammering home on all of these shows.

3:11 There's quite literally nothing we can show for it.

3:13 And talking about people my age.

3:16 Yeah.

3:17 We have grown up always seeing headlines of military successes

3:21 in the Middle East in the sense that, you know,

3:22 millennials saw Saddam Hussein was killed in Iraq.

3:25 And then we saw that in Afghanistan,

3:27 I'm Gen Z but the millennials then saw in Afghanistan we got a military success.

3:32 But then that turned into a grind counterinsurgency, right?

3:35 The military success of killing Saddam Hussein turned into an incredibly

3:39 expensive trillion-dollar catastrophe where we

3:43 didn't make any progress whatsoever.

3:45 And then we left Afghanistan at least

3:47 20 years after trillions of dollars in debt.

3:49 So young people have been primed to realize, wait a minute,

3:52 just because we sink the navy of another country,

3:54 just because we sink the air force of another country,

3:57 doesn't directly mean it affects or helps us at home.

4:00 In fact, we've seen the opposite.

4:01 So, now we see the same exact people who

4:04 have been on air defending the first two wars,

4:06 saying those first two wars were going to work out,

4:08 defending this war, and telling us not to ask questions about this war.

4:12 That's that's my rant.

4:13 Yeah.

4:13 That's the long and the short of it, and that's why, you know,

4:16 you were able to own Scott Jennings the way he he was owned,

4:19 because he worked in the Bush administration.

4:22 And, I mean, just to, you know,

4:23 to to play off of what you were saying a few moments ago,

4:26 I remember being out on the campaign trail with Donald

4:29 Trump in 2016 when he would savage George W.

4:31 Bush for getting the US into a quagmire

4:34 in the Middle East that resulted in, uh, you know,

4:37 just a a a a total catastrophe from a foreign policy standpoint,

4:41 emboldening Iran, by the way, creating ISIS, and and all sorts of things.

4:46 And, you know, I I just it's it's shocking

4:49 to me that Trump went back on his word.

4:51 And I think that's a big part of why Gen Z'ers are pissed off,

4:55 too, because they sort of they bought into this in 2024.

4:58 They were kind of a big voting block

5:00 that helped Trump get back in the White House.

5:02 I think that's oversold a little bit as to how much

5:04 they played a role in that, but they were a factor.

5:06 And, I mean, he just completely obliterated that that promise.

5:10 Yeah, I mean, listen, for a lot of Gen Z'ers' most formative years,

5:14 we didn't fully A lot of people weren't fully paying attention

5:16 throughout middle school and high school to what Donald Trump was doing.

5:20 Throughout COVID, it was just a blur where people were socially isolated,

5:24 and both sides were battling it out during the 2020

5:26 election in in a lot of young people's minds.

5:29 So, Trump was able to game that and regain the trust

5:32 of some younger people who didn't fully remember his first, uh, term.

5:38 And he he pulled the rug again in even worse manner.

5:41 He made the promises that he would end inflation on day one.

5:44 He actually said that.

5:45 And that there'd would no new wars.

5:46 Now he started a new war that has backfired so badly that inflation is spiking.

5:51 I mean, give me a break.

5:52 It's crazy.

5:53 Yeah, you can't make it up.

5:54 And that leads us to this confrontation that you had with Scott Jennings.

5:58 I don't play many CNN clips on my show because, you know,

6:00 I don't want folks to think, "Oh, Jimmy's he's you know,

6:03 he's bitter about CNN and so he goes off on CNN."

6:06 I I I I I love many of the people there.

6:09 I had a great experience there.

6:10 I love what I do now.

6:11 I love it even more.

6:12 But, from time to time we have to talk about

6:14 what's happening in corporate media as I call it, legacy media.

6:17 And and and there's just a lot that's going wrong.

6:20 And one of the things that is going wrong in corporate media is Scott Jennings.

6:24 And it's because he's basically paid to to lie and be a mega,

6:29 you know, caring, you know, water-carrying spokesperson for Donald Trump.

6:34 And it and it blows up in his face on a lot of different occasions.

6:38 Let's play that clip of you guys.

6:39 I know you've watched the clip and listened to this clip a thousand times.

6:42 You're probably hearing it in your sleep.

6:43 But, let's watch it with the viewers here

6:45 and then talk about it on the other side.

6:48 It's been at war with us for 46

6:50 We all know that Scott Jennings is more than happy

6:52 to defend a war with a country that starts with letters

6:54 IRA that we are currently [laughter] failing that is going

6:57 to put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt.

6:59 I was only a few years old while

7:00 you were in the administration defending prior endless wars.

7:03 Now, this war is failing.

7:05 Eight weeks is endless to you?

7:06 Okay, you said it was going to be 4 to 6 weeks.

7:08 Do you have span of a nat?

7:09 I debated you on TV 4 to 6 weeks ago and you said we were weeks away from it.

7:13 Now, you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend

7:15 the fact that this war is not going your way.

7:16 Wait, one more time.

7:17 Not going?

7:18 Not going your way?

7:19 wait, name one political concession.

7:20 Name one political concession.

7:22 Honestly, I'm not I'm not going to have this, guys.

7:25 Yeah, I mean, I just every time I hear that an angel gets its wings.

7:28 I I maybe that's just me, but but Adam, what was happening there?

7:34 Were you surprised that he blew up like that?

7:36 I'm not surprised cuz I used to work with with Scott and he

7:39 had kind of a a temper I thought when I worked with him.

7:41 But, what did you think of that?

7:43 I mean, there was some clear angst building due to the failing

7:46 of this Iran war for weeks and weeks and weeks.

7:50 There were a lot of repetitious talking points being used

7:52 by Scott Jennings in the sense that he would constantly say,

7:55 "We destroyed their navy.

7:56 We destroyed their air force.

7:58 We might be able to get their nukes." Time and time again,

8:00 he would run the same three lines.

8:02 And time and time again, I would try to force an answer,

8:04 but the show moves on rather quickly to the next segment.

8:07 So, I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to be

8:10 debating people on panels who aren't bound to any sense of facts,

8:14 any sense of uh timelines, he'll just he'll make predictions and blow

8:18 past the timelines and make more predictions,

8:20 not even bound to any sense of decorum,

8:23 that I can also sort of break the rules a bit.

8:25 Not even that I broke the rules.

8:26 I was kind of just trying to force a question

8:28 in the way that not many other people do, and he snapped on me.

8:31 I also want to point out something that really, you know,

8:34 what really I think was the most offensive part,

8:35 not even that moment in particular, but him saying afterwards,

8:39 "You know, I think a little more civil debate would be good." That's

8:41 a quote from him [laughter] the other day on O'Connor and Company or something.

8:46 "I think a little more civil debate would be good." Are we joking here?

8:50 You have built your entire mainstream media career

8:52 over the past few years off of being, you know, the condescending on television.

8:56 And I don't even think that's a stretch for me to say.

8:58 I don't think that's something that he would disagree with either.

9:01 His entire stick is, you know, what I was flung into 6 months ago.

9:06 And you know who I learned some

9:08 of this aggressive technique from is Scott Jennings himself.

9:11 I'm 23 years old, so I'm a little bit of a sponge at this point in my career.

9:15 I learn from the people around me,

9:16 whether it's Michael Avenatti for some reason,

9:18 or whether it's the people I'm on panels with.

9:21 You know what?

9:21 I learned something interesting.

9:21 The first time I was on with Scott Jennings,

9:23 I learned from some of his body language.

9:25 You know, he's he sits in a confident posture, and I picked that up.

9:28 And I realized the way that he plays this game.

9:30 He plays this game in an asymmetric way and is constantly condescending.

9:33 So, I said, "F any of the rules that people want to bind me to.

9:37 I'm learning how to play this game as well.

9:39 So, we can't live in an information environment where the president

9:42 of the United States is constantly flinging at the wall,

9:45 making fun of people's deaths, being combative in interviews on camera.

9:49 You know a lot about that, of course.

9:51 Of course.

9:52 And then me for me to try to force

9:54 a question and people tell me to shut the hell up.

9:56 I'm like, I'm sorry.

9:57 Yes, I'll I'll beef with some people on Twitter after and and make my point.

10:02 It's very important to drive this narrative.

10:04 No, and I I mean, I you know, one of the things is couple things.

10:07 I think Scott what Scott does is what

10:09 a lot of right-wing opponents do these days.

10:12 They get the talking points and they literally

10:14 do get the talking points from the White House,

10:15 the White House political people, the RNC.

10:18 I I know this for a fact from my days anchoring on CNN

10:21 is that a lot of these in the in the pundits tell me this.

10:24 A lot of these talking points that they spout on TV

10:27 are provided to them by the White House and the RNC.

10:30 They're emailed out or blasted out and they're like,

10:32 here are today's talking points.

10:33 And sometimes it's literally a document because they're there

10:35 were times when I would report on these talking points.

10:38 I'd obtain them from friends of mine who were pundits and say,

10:40 these are the talking points that they're putting out.

10:42 So, Scott is just he's just literally just doing what

10:46 they want him to do over at the White House.

10:48 That's the first thing.

10:49 The second thing is that he is he he is a hot-tempered,

10:52 you know, sort of short-fused guy.

10:54 I remember one time I had him on for a panel

10:57 and I fact-checked him and he didn't like it.

10:58 After the the segment was over,

11:00 we went to commercial break and he kind of looked at me like this.

11:04 Kind of give me one of these things and he walked away and I was like,

11:07 I was like, [laughter] who who is this guy?

11:09 You know, it's like, give me a break.

11:11 You come on, if you if you spew talking points that aren't true,

11:14 you're going to get fact-checked.

11:15 And I don't know how to me the Iran war is indefensible.

11:18 There's just no way you can't defend it.

11:20 There's no way to and that's why they get so pissed.

11:22 That's why Trump gets so pissed.

11:23 I'm so sick of also the asymmetric media environment in which

11:26 people can lie over and over and dodge and obfuscate questions,

11:30 but the moment that you try to force an answer out of them,

11:33 apparently, you're the one breaking the decorum of debate.

11:36 There was a clip of Medhi Hasan that just went

11:38 viral of him forcing an answer out of Michael Knowles,

11:40 and by the end of the clip, Michael will not answer, and the moderator is like,

11:43 "Medhi, Medhi." Nothing against that particular moderator,

11:46 but Medhi wasn't the one that was breaking debate decorum there.

11:49 So, yeah, I sent out a tweet the other

11:51 day about how as you enter more and more spaces,

11:53 this this tweet wasn't meant to be like saying I know better than anybody.

11:57 I was saying, "As you enter more and more spaces,

11:59 you begin to realize how human the people in these spaces are,

12:02 and that a lot of the things I've experienced in high school recently,

12:05 like this type of insecurity or fragility,

12:08 still translates into the grown-up world that I'm very rapidly,

12:11 you know, getting integrated into.

12:14 And it's interesting to see the real Scott Jennings.

12:16 You know that Scott Jennings that crosses his arms and sips the mug?

12:20 That's not the real Scott Jennings.

12:21 The real Scott Jennings showed us who he was in that very moment, you know?

12:26 Yeah, he really did, and you did not have your hand in his face or finger.

12:29 100%.

12:30 I mean, I'm you look at the clip, and it's like,

12:32 I don't know, why is he so pissed off?

12:33 I think he just had like no way to get out of that situation,

12:36 and so he started flipping out.

12:38 And I I noticed that you you've also been

12:41 getting some some advice from some very interesting corners.

12:45 Apparently, Michael Avenatti, uh Stormy Daniels' former attorney,

12:49 uh has put out a tweet saying, "Adam,

12:51 you can throw what I am about to say in the garbage

12:54 or chalk it up to the words of a convicted felon,

12:56 or you can listen because I've walked this walk.

12:58 You need to dial it back to close.

13:00 You are flying far too close to the sun,

13:01 but you can't see it because you're blinded by the adulation.

13:04 Be smart and play the long game.

13:06 I'm not sure these are great." Oh, and then he goes on to say,

13:09 "Don't count on any of the people in the media

13:10 or politics who presently claim to adore you,

13:13 like me, so much to be there to protect

13:15 you if the hits the fan because they won't." Now, Michael, you know, I mean,

13:18 I the thing I would say and maybe I don't know,

13:20 maybe I should try to reach out to him and have him on or something,

13:22 but I don't know why Michael says

13:23 that the the people in the media aren't supposed to be,

13:26 you know, walking away from you when you go to prison,

13:28 but that is kind of what happens.

13:30 But But Adam, your thoughts on that.

13:33 I First of all, I thought it was rather random.

13:38 Yeah.

13:38 Second of all, I actually took some of the advice and, you know,

13:43 I internalized it over the next few hours.

13:45 Listen, I was able to separate the messenger

13:48 from the advice that he was giving and in that advice,

13:51 there was something that reflected what my mom told me the night before.

13:54 When I was still in New York,

13:55 I was on the phone with her and she was telling me, you know,

13:57 while everything is moving fast and while you have a lot of adrenaline,

14:00 make sure you zoom out, you slow down, you keep the larger picture in mind.

14:04 You keep building that infrastructure essentially.

14:06 And that's something that I was thinking about,

14:07 you know, in the moment I didn't fully internalize it,

14:09 but then seeing this random tweet that from somebody who has

14:13 seen the highs and seen the lows and seen everything in between, True.

14:17 you know, made me realize he's maybe not the worst person like

14:21 people were saying he's the worst person to give you this advice,

14:24 but I was thinking maybe he's the best person to give me this advice.

14:27 He has seen the highs and the lows.

14:29 There was some stat apparently he had like a hundred CNN hits

14:32 in like 60 days or so or like some like six months.

14:34 I don't know.

14:35 He was a We all had his phone number.

14:36 I I will say we all had his phone number.

14:38 And he was, I mean, he was at the center of major firestorm there because

14:42 he was representing Stormy Daniels and that was

14:45 that feels like a million years ago now.

14:47 And I will say there there aspects of Michael

14:49 that I like and I think he's an okay guy

14:51 and I don't care if people on Fox will on me

14:53 for saying that, but I think he's an okay guy.

14:55 I don't know I don't know the circumstances

14:57 of why things ended up the way they did, but it is it is incredible how this is

15:02 how much your moment with Jennings penetrated Adam.

15:05 I think that's the long and the short of it and it makes me wonder because,

15:09 you know, for a 23-year-old man, you've got some incredible political instincts.

15:13 What do you see happening coming the midterms this fall?

15:17 There was a Michigan State Senate race last

15:20 night where this guy in this, you know,

15:22 fairly Trumpy uh district uh won handily.

15:26 Uh Chedrick Green, 50 almost 59% to 40%.

15:31 And I think this is a district my producer Sam was

15:33 telling me that Trump won by one uh last time around.

15:37 And, you know, that's I that is not a that's a that's

15:40 a pretty bad canary in the coal mine for Donald Trump.

15:42 Although, he was able in Indiana to punish uh some

15:46 Republican state lawmakers there who went against him on the redistricting.

15:50 So, I mean, it says to me maybe that Trump still has a hold on the party,

15:53 but man is he losing the country.

15:56 Yeah, I think that the Republicans are in for a brutal midterms,

16:00 but the Democrats need to understand that is backlash

16:03 to the Republicans and not love for the Democrats quite yet.

16:06 Democrats still need to build out their own

16:08 affirmative message and vision for the country,

16:10 but even without that, I think we're going to have

16:12 a pretty good midterms due to a few things.

16:14 I mean, just very clearly the compounding of tariffs on liberation day,

16:19 which cost the average American family $1,000 plus

16:22 the cutting of benefits for Americans that help many,

16:25 many people, tens of millions, plus the Iran war,

16:28 which is now catapulting prices and diesel prices and prices of a lot of goods.

16:32 It's hurting the average person.

16:34 As much as I wish the fake elector scheme or January 6th was the one that did

16:38 him in, I really do think this series of economic events is looking bad for him.

16:43 And like it's not even some crazy prediction that I'm making right now.

16:46 Most polling markets show you that Republicans are in for a brutal midterms.

16:49 That is very common for a president to have, you know,

16:53 a backlash 2 years into his term when the midterms come.

16:55 It's normal, but this is going to be unique because of the unique lies

17:00 that Donald Trump told on the campaign trail and the unique 180 that he did.

17:04 So, I think that uh it's it's definitely going to be an interesting one.

17:07 It's going to be quite brutal for Republicans and I will add that is

17:11 why they are desperate to rig it in any way that they can.

17:14 I mean, nothing vindicates section two of the VRA more than watching it

17:18 effectively get gutted and then watch all of these different cities and states,

17:22 mainly red city reds or sorry,

17:25 blue cities and red states like Memphis getting voter diluted to hell.

17:30 It's like a 60% majority black city and they're diluting it into three

17:33 different districts so the black people don't have any vote or say there.

17:36 Wow.

17:37 This is incredible.

17:37 And then just today,

17:39 apparently the FBI raided the home of Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas,

17:44 who was one of the big you know,

17:46 forces behind the redistricting fight in Virginia,

17:50 which the the Democrats in Virginia won,

17:52 which of course we should note they did as a as a as a response

17:56 to what Donald Trump has been doing in Texas and everywhere else.

17:59 It's redistricting for me but not for thee.

18:01 And then if you try to do it, we're we're going to sic the FBI on you.

18:04 Now, according to some reports that I see out there,

18:07 that there are sources that say

18:09 that this this investigation started during the Biden administration.

18:12 I would love to know more about what

18:13 those sources have to say and who the sources are.

18:15 Is the source Kash Patel?

18:17 I don't know.

18:18 But I mean, that that kind of stuff infuriates people, too.

18:22 And this this whole notion of the weaponization of the Justice Department,

18:26 I'm going to talk about with Frank Figliuzzi in a moment.

18:28 Um Adam, I think your generation in particular

18:33 um should be greatly concerned about this because

18:35 we have not been doing this in this country like this uh up until this point.

18:40 Donald Trump is the person is the first person to really

18:43 start doing this whole hog and it's I think it's very disturbing.

18:46 You know, I'm going to keep sounding the alarm

18:48 on this exact thing because I will never for the rest

18:52 of my life forget the Truth Social post that Donald

18:54 Trump sent out to Pam Bondi where he goes,

18:56 "Pam, I need you to target these three people." And it was Letitia James,

19:01 Adam Schiff and James Comey, right?

19:03 A very specific call to action.

19:06 Two Two out of three of those people ended up getting indicted and then

19:09 it they ended up getting thrown out because Lindsey Halligan was a clown,

19:12 Donald Trump was a clown,

19:13 but the point is that type of weaponization is so sickening and I've had

19:17 this very debate on CNN before where I try to force an answer on this.

19:21 I say, "Can you draw me any parallel to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris

19:25 directing Merrick Garland to do something because

19:28 they claim weaponization all the time?" Guess what?

19:30 Not a They have nothing whatsoever.

19:34 Their their best one is that like Joe Biden

19:36 privately expressed concerns about some topic about January 6th

19:41 to his close advisers and those private concerns are like

19:43 the same as Donald Trump directing Pam Bondi to do this.

19:47 So, I really want to keep sounding the alarm on that.

19:50 The reality is I've been to a lot of Trump rallies.

19:52 I've had a lot of these conversations with young voters.

19:55 Things like this just don't penetrate as much as gas

19:58 prices being up and it's very obvious It's obvious

20:00 why gas price signs are there on the way

20:02 to work for everybody when they drive home or to work.

20:06 January 6th is kind of an abstract

20:08 concept that most people don't fully understand.

20:10 Most people don't fully understand why free and fair elections,

20:13 you know, allow a fruitful harmonious society in the first place.

20:17 So, I think that we just need to reinforce a lot of these core

20:19 concepts and then people will understand why an independent DOJ is important.

20:23 Yeah.

20:24 And Adam, before you go, I I have to ask you this because I

20:26 was a young political junkie growing up and I have

20:29 to say I think I would trace my roots in being

20:33 a political junkie to growing up in the Washington D.C.

20:35 area.

20:35 I think you're in Chicago.

20:36 Are you from Chicago?

20:38 Is that how you got interested?

20:39 What's that?

20:40 Grew up in Indiana, so a red state.

20:43 Interesting.

20:44 When I grew up in Indiana,

20:45 I had a lot of formative experiences for a few reasons.

20:49 My dad and his side of the family are Muslim.

20:52 My grandpa immigrated from Syria in the early '80s and they

20:55 always wanted to be They wanted me to be Muslim.

20:57 I used to go to Friday prayer with them.

20:59 And then the other side of my family,

21:00 my mom's side, they're more like Christian, atheistic.

21:03 My uncle sat me down when I was maybe 10 and he

21:06 told me that I can kind of decide what I want to do.

21:08 My mom and my uncle were telling me, "Listen,

21:10 you can decide which religion you want to explore.

21:12 You don't have to be locked into going to the mosque

21:14 every single Friday for the rest of your life, and you don't have to be locked

21:17 into Christianity." That diversity of view combined

21:20 with growing up in Indiana and having

21:22 debates with like my teachers and my friends,

21:24 and I remember like pushing back on my friends' parents

21:26 because they were saying that like I remember this vividly.

21:29 I was about 10 years old, and I had a friend's parents who were saying

21:32 that black people should be more grateful for our institutions.

21:36 You've probably heard some argument like this.

21:37 A lot of Americans think this.

21:39 I was struck.

21:40 I'd never heard anything like that in the moment, and I was like, "Whoa,

21:42 that feels wrong to say like great Whoa." I remember pushing back,

21:46 talking about slavery, but I didn't fully have the argument formed.

21:49 All of this kind of combined to then me going to Trump

21:52 rallies when I was 21 years old with my own cameraman,

21:55 my own apparatus, and having conversations and building from the ground up.

21:59 Wow.

22:00 Which is very cool.

22:01 Yeah, no, I think that's terrific,

22:02 and I I I kind of did some of the same stuff when I was your age.

22:05 I I got into community access television.

22:07 We didn't have this stuff.

22:08 We didn't have um you know,

22:10 the ability to go online and do and do these kinds of streaming shows,

22:12 but you had community access TV.

22:14 And so, I went out with my own photographer, you know,

22:17 who was basically a guy who was trying to make it like me,

22:19 and we would shoot these little stories and about news in Fairfax County,

22:23 and I parlayed that into a reporting gig in Knoxville,

22:26 Tennessee, and I went through local television to the place where I am today,

22:30 but I, you know, growing up in DC,

22:31 I was a major political junkie, but that is a very fascinating background,

22:35 Adam, that I didn't know about you.

22:36 That's very cool.

22:37 Yeah, I appreciate that, and that's

22:39 a really interesting background with you as well.

22:40 It's interesting how you can just build something if

22:43 you concentrate and take the risk and execute on it,

22:47 it can sometimes take you to wild places.

22:50 It really can.

22:51 Yeah, and for folks who and if you

22:52 don't know what community access television is at Yeah, watch Wayne's World.

22:56 That is community access television when Wayne and Garth

22:58 are doing a a show in their basement.

23:00 That's basically what that is.

23:01 Is it like those phones where you have to spin I It's like a rotary phone.

23:06 I'm just joking.

23:06 I'm just kidding.

23:07 Yes.

23:07 That's okay.

23:08 No, I know.

23:08 I know you're teasing me.

23:09 But uh you keep on slaying those middle-aged maga dudes.

23:13 And I don't know why Geraldo was giving you such a hard time.

23:15 I kind of thought Geraldo was a good guy, but I don't know.

23:18 Maybe he was like he needed a cookie or something.

23:21 I have no idea, but I To to an older person who's 82,

23:25 I probably present obnoxious if you're sitting [laughter] on there.

23:28 And I'm I mean, listen, like I can step in his shoes and uh uh