A Hill to Die On w/ Adam Mockler

0:36 Good morning, dust bunnies.

0:38 Hi, friends.

0:38 We have a super special episode of today's a hill to die

0:41 on because Amanda is on vacation today and you all better leave her alone.

0:45 I know she's probably going to be still

0:46 on threads and whatnot because there was such craziness

0:49 that went on in the special elections yesterday and Brian

0:51 will be stopping by to tell us about it.

0:52 But stepping in for Amanda is a guy that we love

0:56 to watch on CNN and now has made his MS now debut,

0:59 constant winner of debates, coolest student all of Gen Z, Adam Makler.

1:03 What's going on, dude?

1:04 How you doing?

1:04 Thank you for having me.

1:05 I'm excited for this.

1:06 We're going to have a great conversation.

1:08 Yeah, I'm excited for this.

1:09 So, tell folks just a little bit about you because we see you on TV,

1:13 but like how did you get to this place at just 23 years old?

1:17 Let me run you through the story that I that I generally tell.

1:20 So, I run a YouTube channel with a few million followers

1:23 and I created this YouTube channel when I was 9 years old.

1:26 When I was 9.

1:27 Yeah, when I was 9 years old I created this channel.

1:28 When I created it, I used to make like

1:30 Minecraft videos or Call of Duty videos after school,

1:34 but I would sit there and just edit for hours and hours and hours.

1:37 I really enjoyed the editing creative process of it

1:40 and the video creation and being on camera and everything.

1:43 Obviously, it never really went anywhere.

1:44 I got like a few hundred views per video if that.

1:47 I remember in sixth grade I got kicked out

1:48 of class for debating my teacher on gay marriage.

1:51 It was like fifth or sixth grade.

1:52 I got in big trouble because the Supreme Court was going to, you know,

1:55 federally legalize gay marriage and I got kicked

1:58 out of class because I was being disruptive.

1:59 I was probably being a bit of an[ __] It's kind of like what's happening now.

2:02 You know, the older people are like,

2:03 "Please don't ask these questions or challenge this."

2:05 I know.

2:06 And then I got into high school, and I stopped making Minecraft videos.

2:09 I wanted to get girls.

2:10 I didn't want to be the Call of Duty Minecraft guy.

2:12 So, I privately I privated my channel entirely.

2:15 And um, I still loved politics.

2:16 I would like I'm getting into fights at parties, not fist fights,

2:19 but I remember my I would be arguing with my MAGA friends back in Indiana.

2:23 Wasn't that where you grew up, Indiana?

2:25 Yeah, in uh, Northwest Indiana in Valparaiso.

2:28 And it's a it's a really great place.

2:30 I love it.

2:31 It's not like the cornfields of Indiana, which uh,

2:33 are totally beautiful as well, but it's more of like a, you know, urban.

2:37 It's just an hour away from Chicago.

2:39 So, after I graduated high school,

2:42 I just really didn't like the structure of college,

2:43 even though I was going in Northwest Indiana at um, IU Northwest Gary.

2:49 Mhm.

2:48 I really didn't like structure of college, but I took this film class that sort

2:53 of reinvigorated my love for editing and filmmaking.

2:57 And I had this idea I was kicking around

2:58 of going to Trump rallies and talking to Trump supporters.

3:01 So, I assembled this team in my class,

3:03 and I made this skit called Fear and Loathing on college campus.

3:06 And it was us acting like we were doing like acid and weed and all that.

3:10 Like, we were like smoking weed, taking acid.

3:12 We had a salt shaker full of cocaine, Rick and Morty blotter acid.

3:16 My teacher hated it.

3:16 I can't tell why.

3:17 But, Yeah.

3:18 I don't know why.

3:19 But, but we basically made this skit,

3:22 and I used that as a jumping off point to then have

3:24 the confidence to send a bunch of emails to cameramen in Iowa.

3:27 This was during the Iowa caucuses, right?

3:29 So, this was one or two states over from Indiana at the time.

3:32 Two states over.

3:33 And I sent a bunch of emails out, like 30 cameramen.

3:36 One guy responded and said, "This is my only free weekend.

3:38 Let's try to go to the Trump rally." He's like,

3:40 "You don't have much content on your page, but we can try this." Yeah.

3:43 And we went.

3:45 Now, two and a half years later,

3:46 that guy is like my main camera guy who's flying in next week helping me.

3:49 So, through a series of events that happened over the course of like a decade,

3:54 but also over the course of a swift, quick,

3:58 building of a team led to me getting picked up by first Occupy Democrats,

4:02 then I upgraded to Midas Touch,

4:04 and I built my own entire apparatus of Muckler Media,

4:09 and through Midas Touch I was able to get CNN.

4:12 Had something I'm really passionate about is debate and the exchange of ideas,

4:16 and being able to flex that muscle,

4:17 especially as somebody who's young and able to get into these spaces,

4:21 I'm just very grateful.

4:22 I think I There's a lot of gratitude that I feel

4:25 when I think of the people I've met along the way,

4:28 when I think of the family that's helped me get here,

4:30 the operators who have, you know,

4:33 just for one day helped hold the lighting somewhere.

4:35 It's all just absolutely amazing, and I'm very grateful for everyone.

4:39 It's so crazy to [laughter] go to go

4:40 from Minecraft videos to where you're at now.

4:43 Was this something that like your family was

4:45 really into, or this is something you did independently?

4:48 You just sort of got into this by yourself.

4:50 I got into this by myself.

4:51 I built it by myself.

4:52 Now, my family is also into it.

4:54 Like my grandpa loves CNN.

4:56 We actually we're trying to detox him.

4:57 You got lucky with a CNN grandpa.

4:59 Some of us got Fox grandpas, and that was a little bit [laughter] harder.

5:02 No, that is a great way to frame it.

5:05 It's great perspective, because we always try to calm down my CNN grandpa.

5:08 He's always raging about like the last thing.

5:10 We're like, "Dude, go on a walk, chill out.

5:13 We get it." But, he's also turned into a pretty good coach,

5:16 because he's so good at CNN.

5:17 So, I'll call He used to coach me in like basketball and all this random stuff.

5:20 He coached your family, but I hated basketball.

5:23 You know, it's really quickly.

5:24 I've never really told this part.

5:25 My entire family was super athletic and into sports,

5:27 and they played basketball and soccer.

5:28 I hated all the sports, and I was only competitive in like online spheres stuff.

5:33 So, it didn't really feel right throughout high school.

5:36 None of it really clicked, but now it's definitely clicking,

5:39 and my grandpa is able to coach me before some of my hits and be like,

5:42 "Hey, I watched this guy last night.

5:43 He gets really aggressive." or or So, it's a really good dynamic there, and uh

5:48 I love that your way of rebelling was to not

5:50 be athletic and instead be like super smart guy.

5:53 You're like, "Listen, everybody can play sports,

5:56 but nobody can game Scott Jennings like I can.

5:58 You just[ __] wait for this to go down." It wasn't even in high school.

6:01 I wasn't even that I mean, I was smart.

6:03 I was in honors classes, but I was getting bad grades because I

6:05 was just I didn't like the structure of it.

6:09 Yeah.

6:08 For some reason from middle school to high school, I stopped caring about work.

6:12 The teachers weren't really conducive to I don't know.

6:16 Something about school is pretty messed up.

6:17 The teachers are there and like often times a man I don't know.

6:22 It's it's hard to describe, but I just didn't click with it.

6:24 I had a difficult time in high school, too, because much like you,

6:27 I was very good at knowing the difference between right and wrong,

6:30 but the textbook doesn't always leave room for interpretation.

6:34 So, there was a time when I was in eighth grade

6:36 and they gave us a a thing where it was like, "Well,

6:39 you can write an essay for this essay

6:41 contest either from the perspective of a black

6:43 slave owner or from the perspective of a black slave." I grew up in Connecticut.

6:47 There were only four black children in my whole school.

6:50 This was a very inappropriate request, whichever way you cut it,

6:55 but the textbooks that they were giving us to write from were like,

6:58 "This is something that you could have never like but you have to try

7:00 and empathetically put yourself in either side."

7:03 And I threw an absolute fit about this.

7:05 My mom had to come to the school about it.

7:07 So, I wrote mine from the perspective of an enslaved person,

7:11 which as a 12-year-old white girl was really just out of[ __] line.

7:17 And the teacher rewrote over it because it was written well,

7:20 but he wanted it written the other way for the essay contest.

7:22 And this was like one of my first times beefing with an old man.

7:27 Exactly.

7:27 go on like that forever because while you know what's right and wrong

7:31 and you want to explore kind of like what the boundaries of that are,

7:34 often times school is like, "Hey,

7:36 but we need you to pass this test, okay?" And the test says

7:40 It's rigid.

7:40 The rigidity didn't didn't let me like it's college was more

7:44 flexible and now what I do every day is more flexible.

7:47 I dictate my schedule which I absolutely love.

7:50 And you know what's interesting during high school I could never wake

7:53 up as like I would I could never wake up on time.

7:56 I would wake up and I would always be late to school.

7:58 Dude, my tardies were so bad.

8:00 I was [laughter] the worst student ever.

8:03 My teachers hated me.

8:04 I I made music in high school and I performed

8:07 at my homecoming and sorry just dropped a bunch of lore on you.

8:10 No, this is a lore dropping space.

8:12 This is what we want to know from you.

8:14 I used to make songs in high school and I used

8:16 to rap and like play guitar and it was actually pretty good.

8:18 It was it was decent stuff.

8:19 It wasn't as like cringe as it sounds, right?

8:21 And my school liked it.

8:22 So I was performing at the homecoming but they told me that I

8:24 have to submit a clean version of the song the week before.

8:28 So I made a new version and I

8:30 censored myself and changed the lyrics and I submitted

8:33 it but then they told me when I come the night of I have to bring the USB.

8:36 So I swapped out the really dirty version of [laughter] the song

8:39 and I performed it in front of my whole school and then

8:41 my principal screamed at me in front of the whole school

8:44 and there is a video of me being walked out of it.

8:48 Um

8:49 You got to do that stuff though.

8:50 It's character building.

8:52 You have to rebel against the machine.

8:54 It's just School was hard for me in college like it was better.

8:57 I went to a liberal arts college on Staten Island.

8:59 I went for theater so that was really helpful

9:01 and I think it's like helped me in the world

9:02 that I'm in now because it's about active

9:03 listening and reacting and not and anything is possible.

9:07 Did you end up staying in school or did you end

9:09 up being like I I'm going to do my own thing?

9:12 Yeah, so I went to Indiana University

9:14 Northwest for like two semesters maybe a year

9:18 and then I moved to Chicago and went

9:20 to DePaul which they're on like a quarter system.

9:23 So I was there for one quarter and then I

9:25 dropped out entirely and I will I can never look back.

9:29 I do not want to go back to college.

9:31 I love the freedom I have now and what I'm building

9:34 and there's more upward mobility and there's more power to it.

9:36 listen, like I think they say college is actually very, very useful.

9:40 It's good to build a till a skill.

9:43 It's good to go into refine and sharpen whatever

9:46 skill you want to then make a career off of.

9:49 It gives you upward mobility,

9:50 but I think I've been able to craft something with the skill

9:53 set I have where I don't need college at this point.

9:55 Um I agree.

9:57 I think that's that's sort of the thing that I wonder with So,

10:00 as a millennial, right?

10:01 Our whole thing was you have to go to college or you won't get a job.

10:04 You can't even apply for a job without a degree.

10:06 And now that millennials have gotten into power and into the place

10:10 where they're the hiring managers a lot of the time, they're like, "Dude,

10:12 college was great for me to grow up

10:14 and for me to learn certain things and discover myself,

10:16 but it's it's not really shouldn't be a ticket

10:19 to entry for the rest of your life.

10:21 If you want If you have to go to college because you want

10:22 to be a doctor or a lawyer

10:23 or something that requires like some high-level credential,

10:26 then like great, do that.

10:27 But so many people in your generation are kind of entrepreneurial

10:31 in figuring it out separate from the um university system.

10:36 Do you think that that's just a cultural shift or is it because

10:39 it's so expensive and that paper doesn't really get you what it used to?

10:43 Yeah, this the system isn't working as it was supposed to anymore.

10:47 There's an interesting stat that young men who go

10:49 to college and who go to for 4 years

10:52 and who graduate are now finding jobs at the exact

10:56 same rate as young men who don't go to college.

10:59 Right.

10:59 Which is absurd.

10:59 That means after 4 years and getting in all this debt,

11:02 it doesn't even give you an edge anymore.

11:03 And it's the same thing with young women, too.

11:05 Having a lot of trouble entering the job market.

11:08 Um I have a lot of friends who graduated college

11:10 and they're still looking for a job a year after.

11:13 It is tough out there for young folks to grab a I get a job,

11:16 accumulate capital in any meaningful way.

11:19 And when you can't accumulate capital in any meaningful way,

11:21 of course you're going to think the system is against you.

11:23 And when Republicans are like, "Oh,

11:25 look at all these young communists voting in Zohran Mamdani." No,

11:29 it's not that simple.

11:30 It's not that, you know, one fact I it's not that infantile.

11:33 It's just the fact that a lot of young people don't feel

11:35 servitude to a system that hasn't helped them in the first place.

11:39 So, in particular with college,

11:41 I just think a lot of young people don't see the edge in it.

11:44 And we live in a new era where a lot of the young people

11:48 online who are like the role models kind of built something on their own.

11:52 Like there's all these streamers, some of the biggest in my generation,

11:55 of course, you know, Adin Ross or like IShowSpeed or all of these people yeah.

12:01 who who command these massive audiences and think

12:04 that there's not there's non-traditional structures you can follow.

12:07 And honestly, that's the beauty of America in my opinion.

12:11 I think obviously America has a lot of problems

12:13 with wealth inequality and a lot of historical problems,

12:15 but one of the beauties of America is that you know,

12:18 people can coexist in a harmonious manner among institutions

12:21 and pursue our own interests and still have optimal outcomes.

12:25 In a lot of countries, you don't have the freedom to do that.

12:27 Yeah.

12:27 I'm really inspired by what Gen Z is up to now,

12:29 the entrepreneurial mindset, because for us it was so like, no,

12:33 we we still were under kind of like the boomer

12:34 ideal with that they grew up in, which was like,

12:36 well, you get a job, you stay there for 40 years, and everything works out.

12:39 And for us it was like, you get a job,

12:41 the financial collapse happens, you go work at a restaurant,

12:44 you try to figure it out, you try to figure it out,

12:46 and at 37 years old you become a YouTuber.

12:47 At least that's my my path so far.

12:50 But it it's cool to see people value education

12:54 and conversation without needing the rigidity of the school,

12:57 and I think that's something that's so unique to Gen

12:59 Z is that y'all really do a lot of talking,

13:02 a lot more talking about serious things than I

13:04 would say I was worried about at your age.

13:06 Where do you think that comes from?

13:09 The accessibility to the serious issues, maybe.

13:12 I mean, we have these magic boxes in our hand

13:14 that can beam the news right into our eyes at any moment.

13:18 Sometimes it can be overwhelming, sometimes it can be a huge edge.

13:22 And ah, [sighs] you know, I think it's also

13:24 the formative experiences that young people go through.

13:26 So, when you pointed to the 2008 crisis,

13:28 I'm sure that was incredibly formative for you

13:31 and the people around you and everything.

13:33 I think something that you can analog to Gen Z would be COVID.

13:37 Yeah.

13:36 But, it's obviously a bit different

13:37 in the way that it played out and everything,

13:39 but I think COVID also had this effect.

13:41 And I talk about this a lot.

13:42 COVID had this effect on young people um on everybody of all ages.

13:46 Like I I'm not even just trying to take it down on young people,

13:49 but I'm speaking from my experience and my friends.

13:50 It had this effect on people where,

13:52 you know, you put a a bubble around yourself.

13:54 You start to kind of recede.

13:55 You start to not be as social.

13:56 I absolutely toned down how social I was during COVID.

14:00 And then I had to make an intentional effort

14:02 to tear that bubble down and start dating again,

14:04 start hanging out with friends again.

14:05 I was a bit antisocial at the tail end of COVID.

14:08 I think many people were.

14:09 Some people never tore that bubble down

14:11 and continued to spiral down into these algorithms online.

14:15 Someone who I talk about a lot is like Actually,

14:17 I don't talk about him a lot, but an example I use a lot is Tyler Robinson.

14:20 Oh, yeah.

14:21 who killed Charlie Kirk, right?

14:23 Right.

14:23 Allegedly.

14:24 Yeah, allegedly.

14:25 So, there's a photo of him when he's 9 years old, actually.

14:28 And it his mom posted it on Facebook.

14:31 And he's on this laptop, right?

14:33 He's typing on this laptop.

14:34 And his mom is like, "You know, I just got my son this laptop.

14:37 He's having so much fun playing these games." And I sent that to my mom,

14:40 and she was like, "Dude, that was basically you.

14:42 Like, you were also 9 years old on your laptop,

14:44 but we took incredibly different paths.

14:47 He probably got sucked down into this antisocial, algorithmic, radical thing,

14:51 and he's on Elon Musk's Twitter, which incentivizes the most radical behavior.

14:56 He's got a bubble up around himself,

14:58 not really socializing or humanizing other people.

15:01 And that leads to rather radical, disgusting, insane actions.

15:05 And he committed an act of political violence.

15:08 He publicly executed somebody because he got radicalized.

15:10 So, I just think that there's a lot of problems with young people in general,

15:16 but young men you see commit these acts of terror over and over and over.

15:20 Right after the Charlie Kirk thing, a young dude shot into an ICE van.

15:24 Do you remember this?

15:25 He killed two immigrants in ICE detention.

15:26 It was another 29-year-old, a white dude.

15:29 Over and over, you see people getting radicalized like this.

15:33 And a lot of it's due to algorithms.

15:35 A lot of it's due to antisocial behavior.

15:37 A lot of it's due to bad faith actors

15:39 who are incentivized to push this type of hatred.

15:42 How much does Russia salivate at the mouth

15:44 when they see less social cohesion in America?

15:47 How much does Iran salivate at the mouth?

15:49 And then on top of all of that, we have Elon Musk who created,

15:53 who turned Twitter into a platform that boosts the most radical,

15:58 wild[ __] So, how are people supposed

15:59 to keep their head on straight during all this?

16:01 It's a lot.

16:02 It's a lot.

16:03 This is a good time to bring up my favorite part of the manosphere,

16:07 which is of course Clavicular.

16:09 I I would love to know from your perspective, this is a peer of yours.

16:13 He's of your age, your group, of your same growing up and sort of time.

16:17 What happened to this man?

16:19 Like, where how does this happen to a person?

16:21 And why do so many people subscribe

16:24 to his channel and to his looks maxing thing?

16:28 So, a little bit of lore about Clavicular.

16:30 You can find stuff from him on messaging boards,

16:33 looks maxing messaging boards from years and years back,

16:36 from like 2019, which like 2020, which would make him rather young at the time.

16:40 We we would all have been, I don't know, 15, 16.

16:42 So, he's been in these online circles for a while.

16:46 And it kind of feeds perfectly back into what I was saying,

16:48 where you get access to the internet at a young age,

16:51 and you start to go down these interesting pathways.

16:54 I don't want to speculate,

16:55 but his team has talked to the public before

16:57 about how he may have a form of autism.

17:00 I know his publicist, and I've been told the same thing.

17:02 Um like a slight form of autism.

17:03 It seems like he's got a slight obsession with looks maxing.

17:08 There's probably insecurity wrapped in there,

17:10 and he uses it as this superficial way to, I don't know, try to be masculine.

17:16 I think that the appeal to him just honestly, to be as candid as possible,

17:21 I I I want to be able to How can I

17:23 talk about the appeal of these people without seeming sympathetic to them?

17:26 Because there's an appeal to Nick Fuentes that I can describe, too.

17:29 There's an appeal to Clavicular,

17:30 and I want to go through it right now and just be Yeah, let's do it.

17:33 Let's talk about the appeal of these

17:34 Cuz I often think that I could fix Clavicular.

17:36 So, you're not you're not in bad company.

17:38 I look at him and I'm like,

17:38 he's a symptom of a of a a rooted sickness that there is on the internet.

17:44 I understand that he's done a lot

17:45 of controversial things like the Heil Hitler stuff.

17:47 I would never ever downplay that or try to say that it's inexcusable, of course,

17:52 but there is a like a a dude in there who's young

17:55 that we can analyze and have empathy for to some degree, right?

17:58 Um the appeal to him is that number one, he is good-looking.

18:02 Like he's a good-looking guy, he's young,

18:04 and he's just kind of comical in the situations that he finds himself in.

18:07 So, you find these clips of this dude, and you can't tell like is he smart?

18:10 Is he dumb?

18:11 And he's standing there, and he's just saying random stuff uh that you're

18:14 really not supposed to say, very out of pocket,

18:17 and he's all doing it to push this idea that if you look good in society,

18:20 you get these certain benefits.

18:22 And in some ways, his success in the viral

18:24 mainstream has a kind of proven that he's looks maxing,

18:27 and it's like bringing him some success.

18:29 So, I I think it's this almost self um

18:33 it's a self-perpetuating loop where people post some absurd thing.

18:37 He spikes the cortisol of some five of catchy phrases.

18:44 [laughter]

18:43 so funny, and it kind of catches on, and then it reinforces that loop,

18:46 and it goes more viral, and then it kind of turns into something

18:50 where you're not really it's a guilty pleasure.

18:52 Like I'm not really supposed to be enjoying

18:53 this or like it kind of feels like slop.

18:55 The kid was singing Heil Hitler, but it also uh also,

19:00 you know what I've seen him say, too, and this needs to be pointed out.

19:02 There's clips where he's gotten asked,

19:03 "Do you not care that your publicist is gay?" And Clavicular goes, "Honestly,

19:07 if you care about that stuff, you're kind of a loser." He starts saying,

19:10 he's like, "You're honestly kind of a loser.

19:11 Like who cares about that?

19:12 Who cares if someone's trans?

19:13 You can do whatever you want." So,

19:15 he does also represent this sort of laissez-faire

19:17 view that a lot of young people do hold.

19:19 I don't think it's worth entirely shouting people like Cliveden down.

19:22 Now, when it comes to Nick Fuentes, obviously Nazi piece of[ __] We shouldn't

19:25 be accepting him in any sort of manner.

19:27 But, the appeal there is that he's actually rather funny in these clips.

19:31 Don't mistake this with me being sympathetic with his views, of course.

19:33 But, he posts all of these clips and the distribution system he's

19:37 built in with his fans allows these clips to be across all platforms.

19:40 I've seen them on Twitter, on Instagram.

19:43 And it again gives this guilty pleasure sort of vibe.

19:46 So, you're a young dude in society.

19:48 And the Democratic Party, just imagine for a second,

19:49 you're a young dude and the Democratic Party is kind

19:51 of wagging their finger in your face saying, "Don't do this.

19:53 Don't do that.

19:54 You really shouldn't do this.

19:55 And if you do, then you're you're[ __] We're not going to accept you." Right.

19:59 And then you have this Nick Fuentes guy who's saying all of this vile stuff.

20:03 It's like the craziest episode of Family Guy.

20:05 Like, you're not supposed to say or show any of that.

20:07 You're not supposed to be saying this stuff.

20:09 Because it's[ __] vile.

20:10 It's awful.

20:11 And it's wrong.

20:11 Yeah.

20:11 It's wrong, of course.

20:13 But, then that goes viral because then people are watching this and saying,

20:16 "Holy[ __] Like, this is my guilty pleasure.

20:19 Or this is my This is my dopamine hit." He's getting away with it.

20:23 How is he getting away with this?

20:25 to be watching this.

20:25 My mom would be so mad if they knew I was watching this.

20:27 So, all these young guys do it in rebellion.

20:30 They like the edge.

20:31 He's he's edgy.

20:33 But, I think that's where we need counter voices coming in.

20:37 People who can stand up for firm liberal values.

20:41 Mhm.

20:40 Um you know, it's interesting.

20:41 I have a lot of the same critiques

20:43 of the current war with Iran that Nick Fuentes does.

20:47 But, I don't lace it in anti-Semitic uh bigotry.

20:50 I don't lace it in conspiracy theories

20:53 about Jewish people or about black people.

20:54 I don't lace it in that.

20:55 I lace it in the idea that uh sovereignty matters.

20:59 That constitutional law matters.

21:01 And that institutions in the United States matter.

21:04 I lace it in the idea that when people are free,

21:06 they're able to do extraordinary things.

21:08 Whether it's the Iranian people who should

21:10 be free or the American people who should be able to coexist in institutions

21:14 in a harmonious manner without hating each other, right?

21:16 So like I want to push these firm

21:18 liberal values and that's why I'm trying to build, not to go on a side tangent,

21:21 that's why I'm trying to build my own

21:23 clipping and distribution distribution infrastructure to be

21:27 able to push back against these vile ideas coming from people like Nick Fuentes.

21:32 To even push back on some of the narrative

21:34 control that Clavicular has at certain moments.

21:36 Like maybe eventually I'll appear on stream with him.

21:38 I would hope I think I think it would work.

21:40 I mean I've seen Clav on like the Adam Friedland

21:43 show and different things and when he's talking to men

21:46 who he seems to sort of be a chameleon where

21:49 when he's talking to Adam Friedland he's like more like that.

21:53 When he's maybe getting texts from Peter Thiel he's more like that.

21:56 It's like just constantly seeking approval in a world where everything moves

22:01 so quickly that there's no consequences for the last thing he did

22:04 cuz he's already done something else and I that's going to lead

22:06 to burnout for a generation of anybody who's chasing after that similar thing.

22:10 Yeah, and it takes me to some advice I got from Michael Avenatti.

22:14 [laughter]

22:14 Did you see that?

22:14 Oh boy, yes.

22:17 Um you know so for the people who haven't seen this tweet,

22:20 Michael Avenatti just randomly out of the blue after not posting

22:24 like [laughter] ever just tags me in a tweet and says

22:27 @AdamMuhklarris you can throw what I'm about to say in the garbage

22:29 or chalk it up to the words of convicted felon.

22:32 Or you can listen because I have walked this walk.

22:34 You need to dial it back two clicks.

22:36 You're flying far too close to the sun but you

22:37 can't see it because you're blinded by the adulation.

22:40 Be smart and play the long game.

22:41 Don't count on any of the people

22:43 in the media or politics who presently claim to adore

22:45 you so much to be there to protect you if[ __] hits the fan because they won't.

22:49 Now I've got a few thoughts on this.

22:50 Okay.

22:50 [laughter] He was just like I have to reach out to my boy.

22:54 I have to I have to mentor this young man, me Michael Avenatti.

22:58 We must I must bring him.

23:00 Thank you for throwing that up.

23:02 It's funny because people were like why

23:04 would you ever take advice from Michael Avenatti?

23:06 But also it's like he might be the best person to give this advice.

23:10 He might be.

23:11 Somebody told me that he was CNN's sweetheart for a few

23:13 years and then he crashed and burned very very hard.

23:16 And listen, so what reminded me of this is that you

23:18 said Clavicular is rather young and he has the risk of crashing

23:22 and burning and I'm not like him in that manner but it

23:25 kind of does remind me of the way that I was,

23:26 you know, sending out a bunch of provocative

23:28 posts and being provocative doing all this stuff.

23:32 Yeah.

23:31 I think that we live in an environment that incentivizes via a feedback loop

23:36 this type of outrage and I kind of think that's what Michael was going for.

23:39 He's like don't lose your long-term

23:41 vision reputation due to this short-term outrage.

23:44 And people in the replies were absolutely dogging

23:47 on Michael Avenatti but just to be honest

23:49 despite his insane sins of course actually found

23:53 some grain of really good advice in this.

23:55 My mom the night before kind of told me the same thing in different words.

23:58 She was like hey make sure throughout all

24:00 of this you kind of slow down and zoom out sometimes.

24:02 So to then see Michael Avenatti tweet that at me at first I

24:05 was like dude what the hell but then I was like wait a minute.

24:07 I think there's actually a grain of advice

24:09 I can gain from the idea that the same

24:11 people who count on me now will turn on me the moment[ __] hits the fan.

24:15 Now[ __] hitting the fan for Michael Avenatti

24:17 was very different than what I imagine you're going to come up

24:19 with or at least I hope you're going to come up with.

24:22 Very different yes.

24:23 Very it interesting when you're at CNN this is what I found when I go on TV.

24:28 You're in the green room.

24:29 Do you go on in DC or in the New York office?

24:31 New York mainly but I've been in New York mainly.

24:33 So I go on in DC and it's it's very DC and I typically get paired

24:37 with the same people like you it's always

24:39 you and Scott it's like always me and Michael.

24:43 Yeah.

24:43 Uh I find you're in the green room everybody's

24:45 chilling everybody's cool everybody's like agreeing things are going great.

24:48 You sit down and all of a sudden it's like they turn on these like

24:53 right-wing talking head machines where I'm like

24:55 you didn't say any of that before Like,

24:57 you didn't say anything like that before.

24:59 We were just talking about normal stuff.

25:01 And sometimes I don't always know the right-wing figures

25:04 because I try to like stay out of those waters.

25:07 So, I'll be on with somebody and I have no idea like how

25:09 deep in the sauce they are with like deep conspiracy or like far MAGA.

25:14 And they'll they'll just they cannot have

25:16 a conversation as a normal person anymore, but I've not caught up that we're

25:19 supposed to have turned on some other character.

25:23 Yes.

25:22 And they short out they short out and they freak out and they're like,

25:26 "Well, that's cuz all the Democrats are demons." And I'm like, "Okay, girl.

25:28 Relax."

25:31 [laughter]

25:30 And you know what really annoys me about that?

25:32 Is that right-wingers will be doing this performative talking point thing.

25:36 You know, some of the right-wingers I debate are very,

25:38 very smug constantly smug, condescending all the time.

25:43 They're not bound to any rules or decorum in debate.

25:46 They're not bound to any facts.

25:49 When it comes to the Iran war, they're not bound by any timelines.

25:52 They can claim that it's going to be over in 2 days.

25:54 They're not bound by the reality.

25:55 But then the moment I try to force an actual answer out of them,

25:58 the moment I force a question and try to make

26:00 them actually grapple with the reality of the situation,

26:03 I get treated not I'm not saying I'm the victim,

26:05 but then I get treated as if I'm some sort of yeah,

26:07 I've broken some norm in debate that I've broken decorum.

26:10 And it feels like I'm the one that gets treated

26:12 as if as if I should tone it down and chill.

26:14 That I should dial it back two clicks as Michael Avenatti said,

26:17 just for trying to force an answer to somebody who's being disingenuous.

26:22 I I'm sick of the game, honestly.

26:24 "We're trying to make a TV show here and we

26:26 all have our roles to play." And I'm like,

26:27 "I didn't get the media training you people got cuz you're

26:30 you're on a whole other level of weird." Let me play just

26:33 4 to 6 weeks ago and you said we were weeks away from it.

26:36 Now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend

26:38 the fact that this war is not going your way.

26:40 Wait, one more time.

26:40 Not going your way.

26:41 Not going your way.

26:42 Name one political concession.

26:43 Name one political concession.

26:47 What was that moment like?

26:48 Because I feel like I almost got there with the MAGA blonde woman.

26:52 Yeah, um They just they short out when they're losing.

26:56 They can't handle it.

26:57 Um I thought he was going to hit me for like half a second there.

26:59 Were you?

27:00 You were like, okay.

27:01 I was like, holy[ __] But then Brace for impact.

27:02 Yeah, yeah, holy[ __] Um Cuz you're sitting very close.

27:05 I mean, on TV it doesn't look as close,

27:07 but you're sometimes we're like close shoulder to shoulder with people.

27:10 Yeah.

27:10 And listen, I mean, I do gesticulate a lot,

27:13 but not warrant that type of response.

27:16 No, your hand was nowhere near his face,

27:17 and he's known for sticking his finger in people's faces constantly.

27:23 all the time.

27:24 I know.

27:28 of these people to dish it but not take it.

27:29 I mean, listen, when it comes to this entire interaction,

27:32 week after week after week,

27:33 I sat next to Scott on a panel, and I heard him lie about the timelines.

27:39 I heard him lo viat and sit there, and over and over and over gaslight.

27:45 Mhm.

27:45 And he gaslighted about this prior wars as well.

27:47 He gaslighted about this under the Bush administration,

27:49 which was I was pointing out.

27:51 Yep.

27:50 Week after week after week, I try to force a question,

27:53 and he gets saved by the bell or saved

27:55 by a last minute jump in from someone else.

27:57 Someone else will kind of jump in.

27:59 I love Abby.

28:00 She's amazing.

28:01 It's not even It's not even her.

28:02 Yeah, she does she referees it to a point where it doesn't go as far.

28:05 Exactly.

28:05 Yeah, yeah.

28:06 So, week after week after week, he hasn't been actually pinned down on anything.

28:10 And from the perspective of a young person,

28:13 people like you and I who have watched

28:15 these prior endless wars turn into absolutely nothing,

28:17 it's important to ask these questions.

28:20 I mean, for both of our entire lives,

28:22 we've been at war with some country in the Middle East in some manner, right?

28:25 And we've always been told it'll make us more safe, make us better off,

28:29 and every single time it ends in us being

28:32 worse safe or less safe and worse off, right?

28:36 Mhm.

28:36 So, when you were growing up,

28:37 I'm sure you saw headlines about Iraq saying Saddam Hussein has been taken out.

28:43 Oh, we were loving it.

28:43 We were tying a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree.

28:47 All of my toys were about the Gulf War

28:49 and the Persian War and Saddam and killing Osama.

28:53 It was massive propaganda in the in the late '90s for all of that kind of stuff.

28:57 reality is we did take a military victory on the battlefield in the short term,

29:02 but that then turned into a grinding

29:03 counterinsurgency for years and years and years.

29:06 It cost a trillion dollars in the case

29:08 of Iraq that led to a less stable Middle East.

29:12 Like when I said that on CNN,

29:13 they were like, "You're not grateful for our troops."

29:15 I know, which is an absurd thing to say.

29:18 But then the same thing happened with Afghanistan.

29:20 I mean, there was a victory on the battlefield.

29:22 Sure, we've got a strong military,

29:23 but that turned into a grinding counterinsurgency that turned

29:26 into battles and that one actually lasted decades.

29:28 That cost trillions of dollars as well.

29:30 So now Gen Z is going to the same thing with Iran and we're

29:33 watching the same people go on TV and lie in the same manner.

29:38 So I'm you know, in a uniquely privileged position where

29:41 I'm able to go on and actually confront these people face-to-face

29:43 and I would rather not go on these shows at all

29:46 and go on these shows and play their game where oh, now you get to move on.

29:49 That's very funny that you get to move on and deflect.

29:52 F that.

29:53 It actually makes me so mad.

29:55 It makes me mad, too, because I'm like,

29:57 are we here to talk about something real or are

29:59 we here to just sort of like have our little moments?

30:02 But this is the clip economy again and that's what,

30:05 you know, the world is running on right now.

30:06 It isn't these long form sort of fireside chat or deep academic conversations.

30:12 It's like, what can I get in 90 seconds that will go viral,

30:15 that will monetize or that will make it

30:18 seem like some of these shows I feel like

30:19 they're not even structured in the same way

30:21 to to have it be watched as a full show.

30:23 It's like, okay, if you watch the clips, that's what we want you to see.

30:26 Just these hot constant hits of dopamine or adrenaline.

30:30 That is the exact clip economy that we exist in and it's something

30:34 that I've kind of gone back and forth with my audience for a while, right?

30:37 So a lot of people in my audience would always say this thing

30:41 before Charlie Kirk passed and they still say some version of it.

30:43 They'd say, "Why do you give these people the air?

30:45 Why do you give Charlie Kirk the air?

30:47 Why do you cover Joe Rogan?

30:48 Why do you debate these freaks?" is what my audience would say.

30:52 My response would always be, "Dude, Charlie Kirk is the air right now." I mean,

30:56 about a year ago, the dude was pulling

30:57 like half a billion views a month, probably more.

30:59 He They had all of Congress, they still do.

31:02 The presidency, the Supreme Court under their thumb.

31:05 MAGA won the election, fair and square.

31:07 They won it.

31:08 I mean, Elon Musk obviously manipu- lated a bunch of online[ __] like that.

31:12 But, they won the election because they were in the air.

31:14 MAGA was in the air.

31:15 So, the idea that I shouldn't be playing on this battlefield,

31:18 in my opinion, is ill-advised.

31:21 And to take it a step further,

31:22 I'm going to play on the exact battlefield that exists.

31:25 Don't play Don't hate the player, hate the game.

31:27 That's the thing.

31:28 Right now, the president of the United States has driven

31:32 the narrative for the past decade based off of rage-baiting,

31:35 posting insane stuff, trying to go viral,

31:38 and trying to control the narrative in his own direction.

31:42 So, I want to play that game as well.

31:44 If that's the game that we're playing where Elon

31:46 Musk pulls 100 million views on Twitter a day,

31:48 like if you scroll through that guy's Twitter feed right now,

31:50 it's tweet after tweet about immigration and trans people,

31:53 and they all have 9 million views.

31:54 He has so much narrative control.

31:56 So, yeah, I'm going to go on Twitter and I'm going to roast people.

31:59 I'm going to be a bit of an[ __] on Twitter

32:00 as long as I keep giving good performances on air,

32:03 and I'm going to make sure that I use this to drive a narrative in some way.

32:06 Do I wish that me getting clips on Jubilee

32:09 was the optimal way to do these debates?

32:11 Probably not.

32:12 There's probably a better way to do it, but I'm not going to turn down.

32:15 I got some emails saying I should have turned down the Jubilee opportunity.

32:18 Oh, what if they then

32:19 People People love hate Jubilee, but it is a really powerful platform.

32:24 What if I would have turned that down,

32:25 and they would have passed like tossed it to Ben Shapiro?

32:27 Would that have been effective at that point?

32:28 Do I want to cede that type of ground?

32:30 So, I think it's important that I'm out there having these conversations.

32:34 And also, it's a skill set that I've built as well, like the ability to do this.

32:39 I think it's a good moment for me to be pushing these clips out and ripping it.

32:43 Yeah.

32:43 Well, that's what we've had to learn is that the show is good,

32:45 but clipping is where it's at.

32:47 And so now we've had to make a pivot off of also into trying to clip it out.

32:50 We've got um So, it's time for we have a a little doorbell for our guest.

32:57 Brian Derrick is here.

32:58 Speaking of the battleground, uh Brian's going to give us a quick

33:01 update on how we did in special elections yesterday.

33:04 Brian, do you know Adam?

33:05 Yeah.

33:06 Hey Adam, how's it going?

33:07 How you doing, Brian?

33:08 I'm I'm ready for the update.

33:11 I can't wait.

33:12 Good.

33:12 It's mostly good stuff.

33:13 Uh we had primaries yesterday in Ohio and Indiana,

33:17 and there was a special election in Michigan.

33:20 And uh of course, Democrats over performed as expected.

33:26 Continuing sort of the the momentum and the threat for this year,

33:29 which is Democrats showing up in force.

33:32 There was pretty solid turnout.

33:34 Uh almost half of the number of votes

33:36 in that Michigan special as we had in 2024.

33:40 And we won by 20 points,

33:42 which was a much much bigger margin

33:45 of victory than we were anticipating at oath.

33:48 So, super exciting.

33:49 And means that Democrats keep control of the state Senate.

33:52 We'll take it.

33:53 We'll take that.

33:55 Yeah.

33:55 you think What do you think were some of the lessons from last night?

33:57 Are we seeing this this Trump decline thing?

34:00 Are we seeing Democrats still be really motivated to get out there?

34:03 I think that overall, still continuing the narrative around

34:06 Democrats being more motivated than Republicans.

34:11 Mhm.

34:10 Maybe the big takeaway was from Indiana,

34:13 where Trump had obviously gotten involved in a bunch of state

34:17 ledge races because Indiana Republicans had dared to defy him,

34:21 and they refused to gerrymander in December.

34:25 And what that's telling me,

34:28 so so there were 10 of them that were up for re-election.

34:32 Only eight of them decided to run again, and six of the eight have lost.

34:36 One right now is within a margin of three votes.

34:39 It's unclear whether they're going to win or lose.

34:41 And so, going against Trump is still sort of a uh

34:46 uh death sentence for your political career as a If you're a Republican, right.

34:51 Okay.

34:52 And what that tells us is that Republicans in the South who are

34:59 considering how aggressively to gerrymander after

35:02 the Kolbe decision from the Supreme Court, calamitous decision, obviously,

35:06 um are going to see that and and want to save

35:09 their own skin and are going to be really aggressive in their gerrymanders.

35:13 I think we should anticipate Louisiana being really aggressive,

35:16 potentially going after both districts.

35:18 Um and Indiana, of course,

35:20 is is much more likely to redistrict or gerrymander before 2028.

35:25 It's too late for them for '26, but um

35:28 Well, it's not Kathy Hochul is out here being like, "Bitch,

35:30 New York will be straight blue if you keep it up.

35:33 So, I do love the Hoch." Yeah.

35:36 I mean, if they want to go tit for tat,

35:38 we can do New York, Colorado,

35:41 Washington, Oregon, Illinois, [clears throat] Maryland.

35:44 And then, once we win California again,

35:47 once we win trifectas, we can do Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota.

35:52 We have a lot.

35:53 There's There's almost 20 states where Democrats could

35:57 uh gerrymander if that's what Republicans want to do.

36:00 And I think that Democrats, for the most part,

36:03 are on board that the only solution is going

36:05 to be fire with fire until we ban gerrymandering federally.

36:09 Yeah, Adam, what do you think about that?

36:10 It's simple game theory.

36:12 It's tit for tat.

36:12 You have to go tit for tat.

36:15 I wish it wasn't this way.

36:16 The same thing as I was saying, like, I wish this wasn't a battlefield.

36:18 It seems like a race to the bottom

36:20 that is very scary and corrosive to democracy,

36:22 but we're not the people that started it, and we're going to finish it.

36:25 What does Eloise Lucas say?

36:26 You started it.

36:27 We[ __] finished it.

36:28 Do you remember when she sent that tweet?

36:29 It was so funny.

36:31 Yes.

36:30 But, um, I also think that section two

36:33 of the VRA getting essentially gutted by the Supreme

36:36 Court only vindicated why we need section two

36:39 of the VRA because right after that happened,

36:41 you saw a slew of different states or cities move

36:45 to gerrymander the hell out of black citizens in that state.

36:49 So, in Memphis, they're taking a I think it's

36:51 like a 60 to 70% black population and they're diluting

36:55 the vote in such a surgical manner where that black

36:58 population will now be split up into three separate districts.

37:01 Those three separate districts will dilute the black Americans' votes and then

37:05 they won't have the representation or the seat that they once had.

37:09 That is despicable, anti-democratic,

37:10 and it's happening in so many different states.

37:13 It perfectly vindicates why section two of the VRA

37:15 existed and Republicans want to play this game, I say we keep playing, but, um,

37:22 at some point we're going to need to pull back from the brink.

37:24 We need to pass a national ban

37:25 on gerrymandering ASAP and I hate when Republicans

37:28 try to act above the fray on this or like they have any moral high ground.

37:32 Dog, they're in power right now.

37:33 They have the

37:35 [laughter] power to pass a national gerryman- gerrymandering ban.

37:37 What they're doing instead is dragging us down to the depths of hell.

37:41 Mhm.

37:41 100% agree.

37:43 I mean, 2029 too, cuz I'm like, why do I want to like

37:46 make life better for people and now I have to like

37:49 play this shitty little sandbox game with you folks who

37:52 are just going to flip the board at the end anyway.

37:55 Right.

37:55 I think 2029 after we retake all three, the House in '26,

38:01 the Senate hopefully in '26, but at least in in '28,

38:05 and the White House in '28, I think a a ban on gerrymandering,

38:09 but also to your point, Adam, we need a new Voting Rights Act.

38:13 And that could be the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

38:16 Uh, it could be a new piece of legislation that our incoming president uh works

38:20 on, but we need a fully new VRA to meet the challenge of the times

38:25 because it's not 1965 anymore and it looks different the tools that people are

38:31 using that Republicans are using to gerrymander

38:33 are different and we need modern solutions.

38:37 So it's it's within reach but we do have to fight fire with fire to get there.

38:41 It's also funny Republicans have been

38:43 complaining about activist judges for years now.

38:45 Trump dressed call out activist judges but I want to point out the VRA

38:49 has been upheld by a rather conservative Supreme Court for 55 years now.

38:54 It's been upheld by Reagan.

38:56 It was then reaffirmed.

38:57 It was renewed by Bush.

38:59 It was upheld by multiple multiple cases and now they struck it down.

39:04 It's just absurd to me that it was rather set in stone.

39:08 Reagan and Bush and a bunch of conservatives

39:10 were saying that this is fine but yeah.

39:14 I want to go back to Indiana for a quick

39:16 second cuz we have a question from the chat.

39:18 Folks are saying yes the Republicans who went against Trump were ousted

39:23 by loyalist Republicans but they've got

39:25 a record number of Democrats running in Indiana.

39:27 When it comes to outside of this primary,

39:30 what does it look like for Indiana

39:32 in a in the real election in the final election?

39:35 Is there a chance for Democrats to pick up?

39:37 Are either of you following Beau Bi?

39:39 Yes.

39:39 Yes.

39:41 Okay.

39:40 Yes, he's running for the Secretary of State, right?

39:43 Yeah, Secretary of State candidate in Indiana

39:45 has been generating a lot of energy.

39:47 He's like young really a fresh face for what

39:52 a sort of Midwestern Democrat can look like.

39:54 He's handsome which I think these days they're like run more hot people.

39:59 Yeah, me and Brian are only voting for hot people.

40:03 [laughter]

40:03 So I I think that that's bringing a lot of energy to a relatively

40:08 speaking to to Indiana cuz Democrats have

40:09 been ignored there for a really long time.

40:12 There's also similarly some really great down ballot candidates and areas.

40:18 Look at that jawline.

40:19 Yeah.

40:19 I mean, looks maxing.

40:21 It's all there.

40:22 He's mugging.

40:24 A vehicular confirm he's a theory confirmed.

40:29 Yep.

40:30 [laughter] Uh there are some good ones in in Ohio as well.

40:32 We had competitive congressional primaries that we now have some awesome

40:38 candidates including some blue-collar like labor

40:42 folks like Brian Poindexter number one.

40:46 Um

40:46 who should be able to appeal to voters that feel burned by Trump,

40:49 that have not been spoken to directly by the Democratic Party in a long time.

40:53 So Indiana and Ohio both are good

40:56 expand the map opportunities for Dems this year.

41:00 So it's great to see Indiana running so many.

41:02 I just DM'd Bo.

41:04 I said let's come on my camera my show.

41:06 Love it.

41:07 Um I'm not going to tell him that.

41:09 "Oh my god, Adam, you have his number?" Yeah, [laughter] yeah.

41:12 Can you imagine?

41:14 Come on my show and you're cutie.

41:16 Right?

41:17 [laughter]

41:16 How do you feel about the Ohio governor situation right now?

41:19 I can't believe Vivek is even in here.

41:22 I know.

41:22 It's so[ __] disgusting.

41:24 I'm from Ohio.

41:26 Um so this has like such a special place in my heart.

41:30 Amy Acton is our nominee here on the left.

41:33 She was my professor.

41:35 She was one of my advisers at Ohio State.

41:38 So I know her personally.

41:40 It's a competitive race.

41:42 We have not been able to win statewide in Ohio in a long time.

41:45 Trump moved the state of Ohio more than the the median of the country.

41:51 But this is the first time where it feels like there is a shot.

41:55 It's an uphill battle for sure.

41:56 We still rate this as leaning towards Republicans,

41:59 but this is a competitive race and people should get involved

42:02 if they live in Ohio or have a connection for sure.

42:06 Fantastic.

42:06 I can't believe Vivek is out there like this and even has a chance.

42:09 He's such a nightmare person.

42:11 Not cute.

42:14 [laughter] I actually followed him on the campaign

42:16 trail back in 2023 during the Iowa caucuses.

42:19 As I said, I actually grew up in Indiana,

42:21 so I I've been following the whole thing a lot,

42:23 and I would drive over two states every

42:25 week and go cover some of the caucus races.

42:27 It was Nikki Haley, Trump, all of these characters,

42:30 and Vivek was somebody who I took an I I took

42:32 a unique interest in because something about it was very slimy,

42:36 snake oil salesman-y.

42:37 Like he was just saying all the right MAGA lines,

42:40 but I could tell he didn't believe a single thing he was saying.

42:42 I could read it.

42:43 I could read it in his body language.

42:45 He did not believe what he was saying.

42:47 He had these like 10 tenets of truth that he truth that he was running on.

42:50 His whole thing was truth.

42:51 And um I actually have one of his hats

42:53 somewhere deep in my closet that he gave me personally.

42:55 He saw me at the campaign show,

42:57 and I would raise my hand and ask him really hard

42:58 questions that I at the time wanted to debate him on.

43:01 But um his 10 core tenets of truth were like there are two genders.

43:06 Like non-binary is fake.

43:07 It's like, "Dog, what are you even running on here?" Now he's

43:10 kind of pivoted and tried to maybe be more true to his beliefs,

43:13 but still you can tell he's struggling in this Republican

43:15 primary due to the base that he has to cater to.

43:18 And as you guys are saying,

43:19 it's just bizarre that he has a spot in American politics.

43:22 I think it's actually more indicative of the state

43:24 of our politics than it is of him as a person,

43:26 the fact that someone like this can kind of slime their way up to the top.

43:29 It gives me James Fishback vibes as well,

43:31 these disingenuous operators who should not be taken Yes, exactly.

43:35 Thank you.

43:36 True.

43:37 God is real.

43:38 There are two genders.

43:39 This is like the most slap thing in the world.

43:42 this for sure, bro.

43:43 Reverse racism is racism.

43:45 Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.

43:47 An open border is no border.

43:49 Parents determine the education of their children.

43:51 The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.

43:54 Capitalism lifts people from poverty.

43:57 There are three branches of the US government, not four.

44:00 And that's probably an attack at the fourth estate, right?

44:02 At the press.

44:04 Yeah.

44:03 And the US Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

44:07 These are his 10 truths.

44:09 10 truths.

44:09 Who First of all, thank you to the producer.

44:11 Whoever's back there is so fast and so good at this.

44:13 Just It's literally me.

44:16 [laughter] Yeah, it's me, Atlanta.

44:17 Atlanta Atlanta watches the time and I pull up the clips.

44:20 We're on a budget over here, baby.

44:22 We're working on it.

44:23 clicking really hard.

44:24 I mean, he um he was the the that's just AI slop.

44:28 He's like, "Hey, give me 10 conservative points." Yeah.

44:31 Do Are people buying it though?

44:33 Like, where are we at with MAGA now?

44:34 Because I I I'm I've a friendship with Tiffany Cianci,

44:37 who is very much was in the MAGA world.

44:40 She was like an RFK Jr.

44:41 supporter.

44:42 She's uh a lot of times on conservative radio.

44:44 Um she's a nice lady though.

44:46 She's a nice lady and she's got some good ideas when it comes to private equity.

44:49 We agree on like the destruction of private equity and whatnot.

44:52 And she was saying that MAGA is very much at odds with RFK Jr.

44:56 right now and with the MAGA movement

44:58 at large because the promises that they were

45:00 made are absolutely not coming true and are

45:02 continuing to get pushed to the side.

45:04 Things like RFK Jr.

45:05 prioritizing bringing back flavored vapes is not exactly what they were

45:10 hoping was going to be some of the legislation he got through.

45:13 I feel like MAGA is especially potent in places

45:16 like Ohio that moved culturally before they moved politically.

45:22 She's in Maryland, which I think is an interesting place too for some MAGA.

45:26 For sure.

45:28 Mhm.

45:27 That's actually very interesting considering sort

45:30 of the the dynamics of Maryland right now.

45:32 But um yeah, I I feel like we're so tribal

45:38 at the moment that my concern is without huge ruptures in MAGA,

45:46 there is no path for for a Democrat in in Ohio.

45:52 Mhm.

45:51 Um Iran feels like it'll play a a bigger factor in many ways.

45:55 I mean, Adam, you've talked about this, but uh

45:58 the the places where Trump has so directly betrayed his base

46:02 and what he said he was going to be

46:04 about feels like the entire message in places like that.

46:08 I think that the Democratic message nationally

46:10 has to be different especially in swingier places,

46:13 but I think you go so so hard on wedge issues for Maga

46:20 in places like Ohio if you want any any shot at it.

46:23 Is it really going to come down to gas prices, guys?

46:26 Like now he's saying we're escorting ships, now we're not escorting ships.

46:29 Gas up here is five bucks a gallon, which is rare.

46:32 It's usually like around like 2.99, three, so it's significant, almost double.

46:36 Um folks can't afford that.

46:38 Is this going to Is this going to be, you know, the gas prices election?

46:42 According to Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy,

46:44 Americans have collectively spent 23 billion dollars.

46:47 This is actually a stat from two days ago,

46:49 so it's probably like 25 billion dollars now

46:50 since the beginning of this war on gas.

46:53 That is all of us collectively spending that money on gas rather than,

46:56 I don't know, health care or even like Food.

47:00 food Or make kids can't play a sport.

47:03 This is the stuff I hear these stories where they're like,

47:04 "Look, I wish I could sign my kid up for soccer,

47:06 but I don't have that extra $300 right

47:09 now because of this problem that we've got."

47:11 And this is much more in your face as a problem than some

47:13 of the other things Democrats have tried to get Trump on over the past decade.

47:17 Like January 6th will always, for the rest of my life,

47:21 be this insane image in my mind of a destruction of American democracy,

47:24 but for the average American,

47:25 the fake elector scheme and John Eastman's illegal schemes,

47:30 it doesn't really translate into the day-to-day life.

47:35 Mhm.

47:34 But when it comes to gas prices, I mean, that is in your face and it is

47:38 very real and it's a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

47:40 He hoisted himself by his own petard.

47:42 I learned that quote of quote from Larry David

47:45 in like Curb Your Enthusiasm and now I always use it,

47:47 but he literally cooked himself in the in Uh Joe Biden,

47:53 his inflation was due to extrinsic factors.

47:55 His inflation was due to, you know,

47:56 supply chain disruptions, uh COVID, all this stuff.

47:59 Trump was like, "I'm not going to be steady-handed with the economy.

48:02 I'm going to double down in being a dumb ass." All right.

48:06 Yeah, I don't think that anyone has ever taken

48:08 more direct blame for this type of economic crisis before.

48:14 Every voter, no matter whether you watch the news or not,

48:17 knows that Donald Trump started a war

48:21 and that is why you're paying six bucks a gallon.

48:25 And they Republicans are saying it's going to keep going up.

48:27 Like, we're not at the end tail end here, even if close.

48:32 comes up with some one-pager, which is I guess is the new plan with with Iran.

48:36 Um Yeah, folks are saying coffee up 40% fertilizer is the next issue.

48:41 Make real good friends with your local CSA for sure.

48:44 But it's just the price of everything is outrageous

48:46 and then there's no one really pushing for, okay,

48:48 let's try work from home again since people can't afford gas or like anything.

48:55 Yeah.

48:56 Tricky.

48:56 If if those [snorts] people stay home because they feel betrayed by Trump and we

49:01 show up because we feel outraged

49:03 by the federal government executing citizens in the streets,

49:07 like that's that's how Democrats win in really,

49:10 really tough places this November.

49:12 Trump made two core promises.

49:13 He made a few, but these two core ones were

49:15 to end inflation on day one and to start no new wars.

49:20 Also, he promised to close the border,

49:21 but even on immigration he's underwater due to ICE and everything.

49:24 It's like Obama being underwater on healthcare after passing the ACA.

49:27 You can't be underwater on your biggest issue and expect to be okay.

49:32 Right.

49:31 Um and then regarding the war and the inflation,

49:35 I think that's really going to stick in the minds of the American people.

49:38 And it's also worth pointing out that it doesn't

49:39 mean that people automatically turn and trust the Democrats.

49:43 Mhm.

49:43 Democrats have a massive trust problem.

49:45 And what Trump has done is basically recreate that trust problem in his own way.

49:48 But I think the average voter in America

49:50 views Democrats as having lied about Joe Biden's age.

49:54 And this is going to be a huge topic come the primaries.

49:57 All these candidates, Newsom, they're going to be asked about what they

49:59 said during the last few months of Biden's term,

50:02 and it's going to be a huge, huge topic.

50:03 So, that erosion of trust is now translating over to Trump like tenfold.

50:07 Like, everything that he promised he's doing the opposite of.

50:12 He's doing a 180 on, which is absurd.

50:14 And Democrats need to be messaging about where this money could have gone.

50:17 I was I had this clip the other day on MSNBC now where I laid out

50:20 the cost of some of the programs Democrats are

50:23 putting into place versus the cost of this war.

50:25 So, even if we take their $50 estimate, which is probably more.

50:28 It's probably like $100.

50:30 Um but even if we took that $50,

50:32 and we put it against what New Mexico is doing with free college,

50:36 that cost $1.5 billion a year.

50:38 We could do that like 50 times over in different states.

50:42 Mhm.

50:40 We could look at Connecticut, which did uh paid family leave.

50:47 Mhm.

50:46 That cost $400 million.

50:47 New York just did uh free childcare, right?

50:51 And that cost it was like $550 million according to my notes, right?

50:55 Put that against the $50 that we're spending on this war,

50:59 I think there's better investments that we could be making here at home.

51:01 Now, that doesn't mean we should be super isolationist.

51:04 I still think we should be funding Ukraine, and we should be we should be

51:06 choosing these situations wisely, but this one, no.

51:10 Hell no.

51:11 Funding Ukraine is important for the fact

51:13 that Ukraine is the breadbasket of the world, also.

51:15 I mean, like there are there are great benefits we

51:17 get from funding Ukraine and from pushing back against Russia.

51:21 We need it for the ballroom, guys.

51:23 it for the ballroom.

51:24 We need it for the ballroom.

51:25 Did you see the new billion-dollar price tag?

51:29 Billion dollars, and they're going to put and the American

51:31 taxpayer is going to pay for it, apparently.

51:32 I thought he was getting all this corporate sponsorship,

51:34 but it was only going to be $23 million.

51:36 Now, it's going to be a billion dollars.

51:37 One wall was not enough of a lie.

51:40 Now, it's a Now, it's four walls.

51:42 The four walls of his ballroom.

51:44 He's a mess.

51:45 And we're all paying for it.

51:46 how long this can go on for.

51:47 I do find like a little bit of solace

51:49 in some of the ways that they are just so dumb.

51:53 Like J.D.

51:54 Vance not being able to read his speech yesterday.

51:56 He couldn't find his place in his speech and he is floundering.

51:59 Or Kash Patel being just an absolute mess.

52:02 Hegseth being an absolute mess.

52:04 I'm like there has to come a time where this ends and when it ends,

52:07 how will we be prepared for it?

52:08 I wonder what the topic Switching totally.

52:11 What do you guys think of them going after Ken Martin right now?

52:15 Do you think that Ken Martin is actually the problem with the DNC?

52:18 Because I'm worried that when I see

52:20 Democratic strategists and consultants want Ken Martin out,

52:23 that makes me want Ken Martin in because I'm very anti-consultant.

52:28 But I'm wondering like what exactly is going

52:31 on over there cuz when I met with him,

52:32 I felt like he was doing better than the last guy.

52:35 There's certainly room for improvement,

52:37 but I didn't think he was so so atrocious.

52:39 Uh I think you go for it, Brian.

52:42 No.

52:42 All you.

52:43 Okay.

52:43 Yeah, I I'll take this one real quick.

52:45 I like Ken Martin uh personally.

52:47 I mean, he's a nice guy.

52:48 It's he's we've all met him.

52:50 He's a nice guy.

52:51 I think the real criticism people have right now

52:53 is in relation to the autopsy not being released.

52:56 And if you watch to put that out.

52:58 He has to.

52:58 And the worst part about it all is that he

53:01 explicitly promised like a year ago not to hide the autopsy.

53:05 He in fact was[ __] on them for in 2016 saying I can't believe that autopsy

53:10 Yeah.

53:10 He said I can't believe Now, listen, I'm I'm very charitable to Ken Martin.

53:13 I'm where you are, Bri.

53:14 I'm very charitable to him.

53:15 I'm not even trying to shut him down.

53:16 job nobody wants and nobody can do really that well.

53:18 So I'm like, all right, man.

53:20 Now, the problem with the autopsy is everyone

53:22 is now extrapolating their own views on it.

53:25 So people who want Gaza to be the main

53:27 issue are saying the autopsy is all about Gaza.

53:30 I think a plausible theory that I heard is that the autopsy is about

53:34 a lot of social issues and it paints Democrats in a very bad light.

53:38 And in releasing it, it it like we're trying to throw certain like groups under

53:42 the bus when in reality Democrats have no intention of doing that.

53:46 So it could actually backfire and confirm Republican beliefs um in some way.

53:51 There's a few different realities, but it doesn't help us hiding this.

53:54 Now, he's got an unenviable job of raising money for the DNC

53:58 and in fact he's he's probably doing a pretty decent job at that.

54:01 I don't know the exact numbers of the books.

54:02 Like this dude is working hard.

54:04 He's doing what he needs to, but at the same

54:06 time to say that you're going to release the autopsy

54:08 autopsy then to not do it then to give an interview

54:11 where he was kind of throwing shade at Jon Favreau.

54:13 It was a little bit of condescension where he was like, you know,

54:15 some people may not understand this, but we have to look forward.

54:18 I hate when they say you don't understand.

54:20 I'm like, I do understand.

54:22 Yeah, but overall You read this report and we're like, oops,

54:25 and you're you don't have the humility to be like,

54:28 look, here's where we[ __] up and this is

54:29 what we learned from it and here's where we're going.

54:31 Simple as that, man.

54:32 Overall we're all in the ship together.

54:33 We all stick together.

54:35 We uh we we we help him, we give him grace.

54:37 We should all be pushing in a unified direction.

54:39 We can also criticize Ken Martin, but we're all pushing the ship together if we

54:42 want to beat the current fascists in power, so.

54:45 I feel that the people are saying Ken's fundraising

54:47 is really bad and I'm saying I don't know, man.

54:49 There's a There's a lot of factors to that because money is being donated,

54:54 but it's not going to the DNC as it

54:57 used to, but there are still people giving to ActBlue,

54:59 there are still people giving to Oath That Vote which is where my money goes

55:01 because I like that Brian's program will tell me if I'm going to give $100,

55:06 where is that going to go the furthest as opposed to just dropping it

55:09 into the DNC and maybe like letting somebody else decide um or you know,

55:14 counting on the leadership currently that everybody's kind of disappointed in.

55:17 Um kind of disappointed in.

55:21 Yeah.

55:21 that's that's kind of it, right?

55:22 The and it's what Adam was saying earlier

55:24 that there's this huge trust deficit that the party has.

55:28 People use Ken Martin as sort of the face of all Democrats and they

55:32 want him to solve all problems and the brand problem and he can't.

55:36 You don't have the power to do that as the chair of the DNC.

55:39 Your main responsibilities revolve around fundraising and data.

55:44 That like you own the voter file, you own all the data operation,

55:47 making sure the campaigns have the data that that they need,

55:50 and making sure that we're bringing in money.

55:53 The money is I think a a problem right now,

55:56 but it is tied to, as you're saying, the problem with leadership overall.

56:02 And there's Yeah.

56:03 what OATH we talk about as this silver ceiling,

56:06 that as long as we keep rolling out Chuck Schumer

56:09 and the same faces as the face of the Democratic Party,

56:13 there will be a limit on what Democrats can achieve,

56:15 because we need like a true shake-up drama.

56:20 We need a true shake-up of of what

56:22 people think about when they think about Democrats.

56:25 Mhm.

56:25 And I don't think that you can do

56:26 that until there's like meaningful changes in leadership.

56:29 And you just look at how many Democrats over 70 are running again.

56:33 You look at how many of our committee chairs

56:35 and people in leadership positions and uh majority uh whip positions,

56:40 like things like that, that are old and that are not

56:45 like new media-savvy or communications-trained in ways that that help the brand,

56:52 and it it puts a cap on on what we're going to be able to achieve.

56:56 And we can still have a big year, we can still have a blue wave.

57:00 I do a lot of work with the Working Families Party, which is my crew right here,

57:03 and I think this is, you know,

57:04 a a more progressive side of the Democratic Party, but they are raising money.

57:08 They are in the streets.

57:09 They are getting new people to sign

57:11 up and run for office and making endorsements.

57:13 They're expanding to new states.

57:14 They're hosting community events.

57:16 They've got, if you sign up to be with the Working Families Party,

57:19 there is every week a little webinar where

57:22 you can be feel welcomed in and like understand.

57:24 I think those are the things I think where people maybe want to blame

57:28 Ken Martin for everything is that's the[ __] we wish that the DNC was doing,

57:32 but it's not necessarily their total function

57:34 to be like the grassroots little guy.

57:35 There are so many pockets of good around

57:38 the left right now that give me, like Adam said,

57:41 this this sort of like fortitude to continue forward and feel

57:44 like things are going to go well despite legacy leadership.

57:48 Often times a lot of these wins would have been attributed to Hakeem

57:51 Jeffries and Schumer and they're happening in spite of them in many cases.

57:54 Yeah, and it's not like it was the RNC

57:56 on the Republican side that was really reshaping the party.

57:59 It was kind of Trump just being

58:00 boisterous and completely reshaping the media environment.

58:03 It was Russia, Adam.

58:04 It was Russia and Israel and Hungarian

58:07 money funding CPAC and the billionaire donors.

58:10 And unfortunately, we don't have that on this side, but

58:12 On our side, what we can do is have sort of, like you were saying,

58:15 decentralized pockets of really powerful figures.

58:18 James Talarico is fundraising like hell right now.

58:22 Like he is raising tens of millions,

58:24 I believe, and he's way out pacing his opponents.

58:27 So, we can have these pockets of hope.

58:30 We can have the Talaricos.

58:32 We can have Rob Sand in Iowa.

58:34 We can have the Zorans.

58:36 We can have Andy Beshear.

58:37 I think there's a a tent of progressive ideals

58:41 that can all exist and push in the same direction,

58:44 even if Zoran style of politics is a little bit different than Andy Beshear.

58:47 There's a place for each person to continue to push in our manner.

58:50 And it's not all on Ken Martin to like unify that, but I

58:54 think that uh the hypocrisy on the autopsy is just crazy.

58:58 It is crazy.

58:59 I'm like, "Show me who you want to put in though, okay?

59:01 Before I go kicking old Ken to the curb.

59:03 I need to know who your backup is."

59:04 This is what I feel about the presidential election.

59:06 I don't want to just know who's running for president.

59:08 I need you to show me the cabinet, which I know is Exactly.

59:11 unusual, but I think would be a winning strategy to say, "Look,

59:14 I would have Pete Buttigieg as the Department

59:17 of Defense." Or I would have whoever.

59:18 Like these are the This is the roster I'm bringing.

59:20 It makes it more easy for people to understand.

59:23 And to be fair, all of that being said about the autopsy,

59:25 I don't really think about it much.

59:26 I am moving forward.

59:27 I'm doing exactly what he was saying.

59:28 Every single day I'm pushing on the next messaging for the party.

59:31 So I get what he's saying about that, but it's just yeah.

59:35 Well Brian, thank you for being with us and sharing with us.

59:37 We'll see you next week and next time we have an update on specials.

59:40 Adam, stick around.

59:41 I have two more questions for you and then we will

59:44 release you to the wild to fight the boomers on CNN.

59:47 Yes.

59:47 Yes.

59:47 [laughter] Bye Brian.

59:49 See you Brian.

59:50 I'm going to Brian is so awesome.

59:52 Yeah, that was great.

59:52 That was really really good analysis and I really appreciate you coming on.

59:56 Really great.

59:57 Um so tell me [laughter]

59:59 there are two questions I have remaining for Gen Z men right now.

1:00:02 One is why don't you guys want kids?

1:00:06 The Christians are freaking out.

1:00:07 Apparently a new report came out from like Christian.com saying

1:00:11 that a third of Gen Z men feel that they don't need children.

1:00:14 They could live perfectly fulfilling lives without kids.

1:00:16 And I agree.

1:00:17 I've lived 43 years of fulfillment without

1:00:20 a child and and that's been pretty cool.

1:00:22 What do you think it is about Gen Z that's saying we

1:00:25 need to consider a world without that traditional North Star of like family?

1:00:30 If I had to guess, it's probably a few things and I'm sure there are studies

1:00:33 about this that I should really dig into so I can have a very very solid answer,

1:00:36 but if I had to sense it, it's a few things.

1:00:39 An increase in antisocial behavior, lack of socialization due to COVID,

1:00:44 due to a lot of things that we talked about,

1:00:46 due to social media, phones always being in your hand, due to all of that.

1:00:50 As somebody just said right there, Gen Z also can't afford a family.

1:00:54 We're currently living in an environment in a system where people

1:00:58 don't see the light at the end of the tunnel for them.

1:01:00 So when you can't accumulate capital in any meaningful way as I said earlier,

1:01:04 a lot of young people are negative capital.

1:01:06 A lot of young people are in debt for college or in some

1:01:09 sort of sort of credit card debt or can barely even pay rent,

1:01:14 then the thing that you're not thinking of is you know,

1:01:17 how am I going to reproduce or how am I going to have a kid?

1:01:19 There was a time when it was a lot more we were socialized into it.

1:01:25 People were socialized into thinking that at ages 20 to 30,

1:01:29 that is when you need to have a child,

1:01:30 you need to buy a home, and you need to get married,

1:01:33 and you need to play by the rules.

1:01:34 Well, when the rules don't really work anymore,

1:01:37 people are going to start to flip over the rulebook

1:01:39 and find a map on the other side that says,

1:01:41 you know, I'm going to do this or that.

1:01:43 I'm not going to go up and go to college and get married

1:01:45 and have a kid at 24 if I can't even buy the home part,

1:01:48 if I can't even afford rent.

1:01:50 So, I think there's a conflict between

1:01:52 what was normally happening due to socialization,

1:01:55 due to what compared to what's happening now.

1:01:58 And it's all just amplified by algorithms,

1:02:00 by social media making us less social, obviously the COVID pandemic.

1:02:05 I don't even think it's some intentional decision on behalf of many

1:02:07 Gen Z'ers where they wake up in the morning and they're thinking very,

1:02:09 very deeply about when they want to have kids,

1:02:12 where they want to have it, in what context, in what stage of life.

1:02:14 I think it's more of this innate, intuitive feeling where it's like,

1:02:18 I'm I'm struggling day-to-day to get by, to push,

1:02:20 and to figure out what I'm going to do with this next phase.

1:02:23 Kids are the last thing I'm thinking of right now for a lot of people.

1:02:26 Right.

1:02:26 I think you make such an interesting point about

1:02:29 the the difficulty in dating and being able to get

1:02:32 married and and have children and thinking about like

1:02:35 what it's going to be like in the end, how this is going to shake out.

1:02:38 Um it's it's not any easier for millennials, either.

1:02:42 It's this idea of like, well,

1:02:43 what am I going to bring them into the what kind of world am I

1:02:46 going to bring them into and how would that look and what is the neighborhood,

1:02:49 where is the village?

1:02:50 There are so many of my friends who have kids who are like,

1:02:52 it's it's really hard and it could be lonely

1:02:54 and in a world where people are already kind of lonely,

1:02:56 it seems like even more difficult.

1:02:58 It freaks me out why they're trying to attack birth control and everything else

1:03:01 to try and force people to have children in a way that it's like,

1:03:04 okay, if you notice that people aren't having children,

1:03:07 then why not make it easier for them to have them?

1:03:09 Why not create the economic conditions that would

1:03:12 allow people to feel very safe in doing that?

1:03:16 The the steadiness of public school.

1:03:18 They're attacking schools.

1:03:19 It's like, what would I bring them into the world for?

1:03:21 What will they have?

1:03:22 I have a better idea.

1:03:22 We can just ban abortion.

1:03:24 Yeah, there we go.

1:03:25 Sucks that as well.

1:03:27 Yeah.

1:03:27 Can we also ban contraceptives?

1:03:28 So, people are forced to have families when they're not actually Yeah.

1:03:32 And the And the children can work in the mines continuing

1:03:35 to provide the fossil fuels that we need to run our world.

1:03:41 To run our data centers.

1:03:42 We can weaken labor laws.

1:03:43 I mean, we joke, but this is actually the conservative worldview.

1:03:46 They'll be like, "Listen,

1:03:47 we're going to ban abortion because we don't want people to be having,

1:03:50 you know, abortions.

1:03:52 But, the actual real preventative mechanism, which is sex education,

1:03:56 they also want to ban." I remember they were moving to ban it

1:03:58 in Indiana when I was in like middle school and they were talking about this.

1:04:01 It's all incredibly contradictory.

1:04:02 You can't create environments that are suboptimal

1:04:04 for families and then expect people to have families.

1:04:08 Yeah.

1:04:09 And my last question to you here is the betting on everything.

1:04:14 Polymarket lets you bet on everything.

1:04:16 Betting on politics.

1:04:17 Like, how how is this showing up in your day-to-day life?

1:04:21 This isn't something that shows up for me that much,

1:04:23 but it seems very prevalent for Gen Z as like a major thing.

1:04:27 It's like a cultural staple for Gen Z'ers.

1:04:29 Sending each other memes about this.

1:04:30 Like, oh, uh we should make this a Polymarket market or a Kalshi market.

1:04:35 It's become sort of like a social meme or whatever.

1:04:38 I think that sports gambling was where the real problem started to start.

1:04:42 The accessibility of sports gambling on all of these different

1:04:45 apps you can download means you don't actually

1:04:47 have to look like a someone in the face

1:04:49 when you're handing them your money at the casino.

1:04:51 You can just do it online.

1:04:53 I'm not even inherently against gambling as a thing.

1:04:55 I'm just I I think that um some of the insider

1:04:58 trading practices that are seen on Polymarket are absurd.

1:05:01 I think Polymarket was right for turning

1:05:03 in the guy who bet on the Venezuela capture.

1:05:06 I I'm glad they did that.

1:05:07 But, there needs to be regulation around this stuff.

1:05:09 The ads are kind of relentless in the sense that Polymarket will just post

1:05:13 some crazy tweets like half false get

1:05:15 3 million views and there's no repercussions.

1:05:19 Right.

1:05:18 So it's just all a grand marketing scheme.

1:05:22 I think that I mean we've got Polymarket's in here predicting

1:05:26 the 2028 winner between JD Vance and Gavin Newsom neither

1:05:29 of which has been selected yet and there's already like

1:05:33 millions of dollars in here for this kind of stuff.

1:05:35 That's insane.

1:05:36 Yeah.

1:05:37 Isn't that crazy?

1:05:37 It's just so interesting to me.

1:05:38 Part of me was like oh it's kind of cool that people are

1:05:41 interested in it and then I'm like oh wait this seems wildly toxic.

1:05:45 Will Elon Musk win a case against Sam Altman?

1:05:48 A lot of it centers around Elon.

1:05:50 Gambling addictions are very real for young men.

1:05:52 I think it's a very real thing people are going to have to grapple with someday.

1:05:56 It kind of fits back perfectly into the framework.

1:05:59 This lack of socialization,

1:06:00 always being online has led people to not have a sort of off

1:06:05 switch for some of this stuff whether it's curricular and his looks maxing,

1:06:09 whether it's Nick Fuentes and his racism,

1:06:12 whether it's these Polymarket markets that young people seem to be addicted to.

1:06:17 I mean even me I fell into the loop of just

1:06:19 like tweeting a bunch of[ __] at people or raging stuff.

1:06:22 It's fun it gets a lot of views and it works.

1:06:24 It drove attention to my narrative.

1:06:26 like blowing off steam right?

1:06:27 Like we used to go to the bar and have

1:06:28 a beer and talk about it and now we tweet about it.

1:06:30 I would do it again too.

1:06:31 It was totally fun.

1:06:33 I would get CC chair when he was saying

1:06:35 stuff but that's what I would attribute it to.

1:06:37 I mean they're taking bets on when cabinet members will

1:06:39 be out for 37 cents you can make a bet.

1:06:42 It's just such low barrier to entry and so

1:06:45 incredibly addictive and and yeah disruptive to the world.

1:06:49 when he gets the word that he's out he's

1:06:51 going to immediately No Cash that's Cash Patel probably.

1:06:53 Cash Patel's immediately going to place a bet

1:06:54 on himself as the next cabinet member to catch.

1:06:56 Oh he'll have to to fund whatever girlfriend he's going to try and keep.

1:06:59 I mean she's and yeah.

1:07:01 [laughter] He's wild.

1:07:03 True.

1:07:03 Well Adam is there anything we didn't get to talk about

1:07:05 that you hope folks know about right now or looking at?

1:07:08 I'm glad that we didn't dig into the Alberta stuff

1:07:10 cuz I did some research this morning and I was like,

1:07:11 "I'm just not very briefed on that." I mean, I understand it.

1:07:14 I over prepare for these and this is actually

1:07:16 my least amount of prep I've ever done because um okay,

1:07:20 transparently my wife bought me a new smoker because I used to have

1:07:22 a culinary career before I did this and when I stress out,

1:07:25 I like rage cook and so I had to get up at like 5:00 a.m.

1:07:27 to start my barbecue and then I fell

1:07:29 asleep and so we were under prepared for today.

1:07:31 But, we were going to talk about how Alberta is trying

1:07:35 to like leave Canada to come to America and I'm like,

1:07:38 "Baby, one, I don't think it's going to happen and two, poor Canada." But,

1:07:42 my friend gave me a framework on this because I asked him.

1:07:44 He's a genius in foreign policy and I said,

1:07:46 "Hey, I'm going to be talking about this.

1:07:47 Can you give me a bit of a better understanding?" And he said,

1:07:48 "Listen, I basically have no idea, but here's my understanding.

1:07:52 It's a pro-American, generally right-wing movement and it's about people

1:07:55 trying to keep their own oil wealth.

1:07:57 Alberta produces a lot of oil.

1:07:59 They don't want to pay taxes to Ottawa to subsidize everybody else.

1:08:03 So, the separatists would rather create

1:08:04 their own independent movement in some customs union

1:08:07 with the US or like join the US as some state or something like like thing.

1:08:11 Some ideal thing.

1:08:12 And it's just a minority who support it, but a growing minority.

1:08:15 Um Yeah.

1:08:17 Uh he said that it's a it should be an internal Canadian matter.

1:08:20 The US should not get involved.

1:08:22 We shouldn't certainly not encourage separatism amongst

1:08:24 a close NATO ally and a long-time friend.

1:08:28 Totally.

1:08:28 And it's all about this oil wealth.

1:08:29 Oh, well, that makes sense.

1:08:30 The oil wealth thing makes sense, but I'm like those people are kooky up there.

1:08:33 These are the same ones who were doing

1:08:34 like the MAGA Canada trucker rallies and stuff.

1:08:38 They just they have a fantasy about what it's like to be American and I

1:08:42 assure you it it will not pan out to what you've got in Canada right now,

1:08:46 but the oil wealth thing makes sense.

1:08:47 That's awesome.

1:08:48 Adam, folks loved having you on today.

1:08:51 We love watching you on CNN and MS

1:08:53 now and subscribing to your Substack and your YouTube.

1:08:55 I love your reaction videos.

1:08:56 I learn so much from you and you give me so much hope for the fact

1:09:00 that for all the[ __] that young people take and they do always, right?

1:09:03 Generation upon generation is always the one that they're like, "You'll save us.

1:09:07 No, you're all idiots." You really are leading

1:09:10 this this possibility model for other young men to see

1:09:13 that you can be smart and interesting online without being

1:09:16 hella toxic or dangerous and I appreciate that so much.

1:09:19 smashing my jaw with a hammer

1:09:21 or have good conversations with respectable commentators.

1:09:23 Likewise back at you.

1:09:25 I really respect the work that you do.

1:09:26 I look up to you a lot and I learn a lot from your content under the desk.

1:09:30 So, thank you.

1:09:31 Thanks so much, Adam.

1:09:32 I appreciate you guys.

1:09:32 We'll be back again tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.

1:09:35 with mixed bag.

1:09:36 Tomorrow is our first episode where we're doing some climate reporting.

1:09:39 We'll be talking to Hank Green and Griffin Maxwell Books and Laura,

1:09:44 who is a a one of these new sort

1:09:47 of green influencers but not a green wash influencer.

1:09:50 She does like very very cool content.

1:09:52 So, I'm excited to get to chat with her tomorrow.

1:09:54 We'll see y'all tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.

1:09:55 Thank you.

1:09:57 Peace out.

1:09:57 Thank you.