Episode 8 - Tim Pool (Ft. Sam Seder)

A duel for the ages - Sam Seder VS Tim Pool - now, with an "exclusive" inside look. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Oh no! It's Sam Cedar. What a fucking nightmare. Samuel Lincoln Cedar got a start as an actor, writer, director from hits like Who's the Caboose? And guest starring as Lou, the guy who spit his steak into the napkin on Sex in the City. A longtime Air American stalwart, Sam Cedar became the godfather of the left-wing internet in 2010 when he started the Cedar Channel, now the Majority Report, as a live talk show from a left-wing perspective. Sam quickly became known for his ability to humiliate hapless conservatives and libertarians who thought they could challenge him to debate. Now commanding over two million subscribers and almost 1.4 billion views. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar has been a cornerstone of the progressive left online. Sam's wit and depth of knowledge has set the largest conservative mouthpieces fleeing in fear. Steven Crowder called him a fucking nightmare. Tim Pool accused him of being Thanos, and Joe Rogan called him a fucking idiot in dork while fearing to utter his name. It's my honor to introduce the patriarch of the YouTube left, Sam Cedar. I'm so sorry to bring you on, Sam, to talk about one of the dumbest hacks and frauds in the entire political commentary space, Tim Pool.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

But I'll tell you something you're not gonna want to hear, and and I admit it's it's uh I'll call it dickish. Uh utilitarianism is typically the villain in most movies.

SPEAKER_07 1:23

I don't care.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Yeah, so so for instance, like Thanos was the was utilitarian, and Captain America was deontological.

unknown 1:30

I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

So Thanos willing to reduce the suffering by killing, you know, hundreds of trillions versus the you know, thousands of trillions, which would be living better off.

SPEAKER_07 2:36

In every context. In every and any context.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

I bl I believe every word of what I just said.

SPEAKER_07 2:42

Oh, well, I appreciate that. That's very, very kind.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. Um, but in all seriousness, uh, Sam, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And I want to say, you know, just for my you know, information for the audience, Sam is really the person who got so many of us involved in the political commentary space and helped build up so many other shows. Incredibly generous with your time, and I really appreciate you coming on. And you have been the person who kind of stood against the tide of right-wing slop that was all over the internet alone for many years.

SPEAKER_07 3:18

Uh well, I appreciate that. There's there was a few others, but there I'm I'm if you're saying I'm old, that's actually true. Um I I've uh I mean the really uh lonely days were back in the Air America radio era, pre-live streaming from YouTube. Um even when I launched the majority this iteration of the majority report, it started on radio, but when I launched this iteration, we were uh we were streaming with Justin TV, which ultimately became Twitch. Twitch, yeah. Uh but uh so it was uh it was uh it I had the value, I had the I guess I had the benefit of also being uh a first to market in uh some respects.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I mean there's a couple other people obviously out there doing it, but speaking of kind of Tim Poole was also kind of a pioneer a little bit, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_07 4:11

Well, Tim Poole was uh really one of the first guys. I don't know if he was the first guy, but he was one of the first guys to live stream video from Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street, and I have the extremely dubious distinction. And I would also say almost like I am apologetic for this. I was the first person to interview uh do you remember how you introduced him?

SPEAKER_03 4:40

No, it's really your fault.

SPEAKER_07 4:41

Well, I I you know at the time, I think like I think I introduced him as being like you know the guy who's been down there with a camera and live streaming.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Um you did say like my my favorite Occupy Wall Street feed.

SPEAKER_07 4:55

Did I say that?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, those were the words you said. I went back and watched it too.

SPEAKER_07 4:59

Right? Okay, yeah, yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

You have plausible deniability, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 5:03

Exactly. Well, you know, I don't know how much you guys have dug into this, but he had a partner and his name escapes me, but they had a falling out. And I have always wanted to track down that guy and find out because that guy is not involved in anything. Uh I haven't seen him involved in anything online since that time. And uh at the time there was definitely like a controversy because um I got the sense, and I don't know if this is the case, um, that the guy felt that uh Tim Pool was too mercenary. Maybe I'm just projecting uh, you know, doing some retconning to uh justify uh where he is today. But that was exactly the case. Tim Pool is a mercenary.

SPEAKER_03 5:45

Well, before we get before we get too far afield, Freda, do you want to kind of give us a little bit of a background on who the fuck Tim Pool is? If people are blessed enough to not know, the normal people.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, I read a little bit and I I was gonna try to find the name of that guy because I also read about him. I tried to find information about him, uh, Sam. I couldn't find anything as well.

SPEAKER_07 6:03

I've tried to. It's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Yeah. Um I was trying to find like what was his um his name? Because he that was the partner, because first I think um Tim was behind the camera for the most part, and then he became like an on-camera kind of like guy. So yeah, Tim, according to himself, uh did not do very good in school. Um he got a progress report with all F's because because, quote, my comprehension level was much higher than that of many of my teachers. So, you know, school made him miserable, is what he says at least. He then also claims he worked with like a bunch of nonprofits who can't document that he ever did so. And then, of course, Occupy Wall Street happened. And he went out there with a phone and started filming and started streaming on Ustream, and at one point had like 20,000 concurrent viewers. Wow. Yeah, which is like huge for back then. Like streaming wasn't like a real thing, yeah. That's huge. That'd be huge now.

SPEAKER_07 6:52

I don't think he was using a phone. I think if I remember correctly, uh you could not you could not do this, I think, on the phone. I think he had multiple repeaters of like 3G antennas, like packets, and it was around. I seem to remember it being sort of like taped on to the side of a camera. I mean, it it just wasn't done. Like I I went out there to do some some live audio streaming, and I could barely get the bandwidth to do that with my phone.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I saw some of the footage that he had, and it it sounds dreadful. It looks dreadful like visually, like it obviously the quality of the technology wasn't quite there yet.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

But yeah, I think that's really where he got his start, though, right? Because he was like the technological, he was the only person doing it, so he's the only competition in town.

SPEAKER_07 7:42

100%. In fact, my producer, Matt Leck, who also hosts Left Reckoning, Mikey, of course, you know who he is. Um, he uh he I think he told me this story. Somebody certainly told me this story that uh oh, or maybe it was uh Brendan, I can't remember, but I've known somebody who uh Tim Pool came to their classroom at either NYU or uh Columbia to talk about that. And it gave him a certain amount of like cred because he was doing this sort of like you know, citizen journalism that was, you know, at least from a technological perspective, pretty revolutionary. I think the guy he worked with i I feel like his first name was like Harry, and it was like I found it it's Henry Ferry. Henry, yes, Ferry. We are the 99%. And I've I've tried to see where that guy has come. But if you go back into like it wouldn't have been Reddit at that time, but you you can find like some talks about controversy and about bank accounts and that type of thing. But Tim Poole w because of his acclaim that he got from being that streamer, and because I think part of the reason why he had a falling out with Henry is Tim was sort of like he was uh making himself a story a little bit. And I think that was part of the follow-up. No, no, you know, he's he's a very entrepreneurial guy in that respect. And I can't remember the order, but I know then uh he was hired maybe by Vice, based upon that, because of his technology, not necessarily his ideology, although some of that at that time that would have been Gavin McGuinness.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

And yeah, 2013 he was hired, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 9:20

Yeah. And then I remember he went somewhere, where was it? I want to say Sweden, and was supposedly like looking at no go zones and apparently his very first, his very first trip was to Istanbul, Turkey. Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

There was a there was a big uh kind of like riots, civil disturbance, and this is kind of where the mystique of Tim Pool immediately starts falling apart because Weiss was expecting him to be this gonzo reporter that would go into the to the breach, you know, and go out, and he was hiding in his hotel room. Yes, talking about how, oh, I just don't have internet, you know, I don't have connections. And they had another crew there that was actually going to to the disturbances, going to uh the you know protests, going to the riots and getting all sorts of coverage. Meanwhile, Tim Poole was like sitting in his hotel room with the bathroom mirror behind him recording into his webcam.

SPEAKER_07 10:12

I I will tell you, if I was to say that if there's one theme about Tim Poole, it is a vigilant lack of effort in doing something with integrity. And I say that because after he worked at Vice, he got hired by Fusion and he got paid something like 750 grand, I think.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_07 10:39

They were like they had ABC money when they were first there, and the the whole thing is they're trying to be, you know, like of the street, you know, on some level. And I know this because I knew a couple of people who had worked with him there. And one of them went to his house when he lived in New Jersey. This was when he first basically started up doing a YouTube show. So this is years later, and he said to me, you know, this was all off the record, but I can't even remember the guy's name now. So honestly, this was so many years ago. Uh maybe um he said, I went to Tim's house, it was an amazing house, and Tim was like, I got the best job. Like, I don't have to even read anything.

SPEAKER_04 11:21

And someone described my job to my mom, dude. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

I don't have to read anything.

SPEAKER_07 11:30

Yes, and you know, it just sits there and he just he just talks. And at the end of the day, that is the sort of like core brand proposition of him is his skill set is uh talking like he's read something. And and you can catch like even today we had a clip of him where this clearly happened where like he thinks he can vamp. Like he knows where he wants to end up and he thinks he can get there, and he starts to read through an article, and it's clear the first time he's read the article. Like he read and he gets lost, and he realizes like, oh, this isn't going to the where uh the direction I wanted to.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

It's crazy that he's this dumb after this many years doing it. You think he would pick up the ability to recognize patterns or have talking points. Like, you know, events are always related to other events. You should be able to do this, you know. He just seems not very bright to me.

SPEAKER_07 12:24

No, well, the thing is that he there's an element to him where he like he he's an auto-didact, right? I mean, to the extent that he knows anything, he it is a lot of auto.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

I don't know about the didacting.

SPEAKER_07 12:37

Well, fair. That is a fair assessment. But he is a bullshitter, and he's relatively good at that, I think. Um, and I think he has some very narrow interests intellectually, and I don't and I, you know, and I I'm being generous, but they're extremely narrow, and I don't think they are really the topics that he's covering. And so I just don't think he can work up the effort to do the work.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

Yeah, he yeah, he seems like he would rather be skateboarding to me or playing, you know, 2001-era alt, you know, metal. Yeah, pop punk uh you know, uh pop punk shit. Uh you know, which kind of brings us to another topic that I wanted to try to nail down with you, Sam, which is what the fuck is Tim Pool's ideology? Because to me, it seems like it has shifted quite a bit. You know, he you know, we talked about the Occupy Wall Street stuff. One of the reasons he says he kind of went away from the left was because they were doing the progressive stack and they were, you know, doing reverse racism and the woke mob. And he kind of leans into this cultural critique of how the left has like this malignant plan for white men to oppress them and do reverse discrimination. And I gotta tell you, everybody, as someone who's been in many organizing spaces with a progressive stack, I want to assure you all white men talk a lot. There's no shortage of white men speaking their mind and having a chance to express their opinion. It's just the idea of if somebody comes from a marginalized group or a typically underrepresented group and you know, organizing spaces, you give them the opportunity to speak before people that have been around the block or who are overrepresented speak. It's not that big a deal. It's the smallest accommodation. But he has used this to kind of like blow up the idea that there's a grand conspiracy against white men in the quote woke left.

SPEAKER_07 14:28

And I would also add, uh he's never sat in one of those organizing meetings. Like, I mean, he's like it's all uh secondhand to the extent that he, you know, uh what he's talking about uh exists. He's not experienced that. I think, look, like I say, he's an entrepreneur. And I think it was Tim Bond toasted an amazing uh video just talking about like how he walks this tightrope. And so I don't think he has an ideology. I I really don't think he has an ideology. I think he's just sort of like a has a um a centrist, somewhat like libertarian right disposition.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Well, that's how he presents himself, right, Sav? He he like he presents himself as the enlightened centrist, you know.

SPEAKER_07 15:09

Well, yeah, no, but I think but by disposition, I mean like they've done research. And you know, we're talking about American uh libertarians here. They've done research that like the reason why libertarianism appeals to uh men who are age 17 is literally like that's where their brain development discovers logic, but nothing else. And so they get caught in that moment of just like these sort of logic gains without any implication for like what's the outcome of this? What uh how does this work? Like, what what if uh somebody can't afford health insurance or doesn't have money for retirement at age 65? Should they just die? Well, logic says, you know, and so I think he he is stuck there dispositionally, but doesn't have the intellect to really work out the logic. So he's got the sort of like the accoutrement, if you will, of a an American libertarian, but none of the charming dogma, as it were.

SPEAKER_04 16:12

But then what's the appeal? Like, let's imagine the typical person that is a quote unquote Tim Pool fan. What what are they like? What drives them to him? Because he is so vanilla, he is so absurdly watered down, as even as a talking head, that I find it very, very strange to imagine somebody that you know tunes in almost every day to hear Tim Pool out of so many reactionaries or alternative voices, etc. etc. Tim Pool, really.

SPEAKER_07 16:44

I have a buddy who lives in uh upstate New York, and his neighbor has a small farm and is a vet, and you know, a guy who flies the flag, but was a cop in was a cop in New York City. So he's he's not like pure rural. That's where he grew up, but it it's not it's not a like a super rural. And he said to my buddy the other day, he goes, You ever watch Tim Pool? I watch a lot of Tim Pool. And my buddy is like, oh my god, I know who he is. And uh and he's like, Yeah, no, he makes sense to me. And he my buddy's like, why do you uh watch it? He just you know, it just makes sense to me. He's sort of libertarian. And I've met this guy, and my buddy's like, you gotta talk to Sam. But I think what it is at at the heart of this type of stuff, there is a misogyny or racism. I mean, it in my experience, if you follow libertarianism or you follow non-ideological people, there is an animus towards some group of people that this stuff just provides like a like a cover or like a membrane. In in the membrane is not just for everyone else, it's for themselves on some level too. Like this guy, I've met this guy before, and he's not the type of guy who would say, like, I don't like black people. But because he doesn't want to perceive himself as racist. And so there's a construct of like common sense around things that that ultimately if you start to dig through, and the beauty about Tim Pool is he doesn't dig.

SPEAKER_05 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 18:27

He just like it's just there, and you just float in it. I mean, today we covered him covering uh the uh Virginia uh gerrymander uh referendum. Right. And he started reading about what he was trying to explain why this was different from Texas. And uh because Texas gerrymandered a year ago, and with explicit directions from Donald Trump to pick up five seats.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

In the middle of the decade as well, on unprecedented mid-decade redistricting push as well. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 19:00

There was a gerrym there's been a gerrymander war this year. I mean, people can Google right now Texas, Jerry, and it would just come up gerrymander and um you know, put the number tr say Trump, and everything you'll get will be Trump demands five new seats there. And he's reading through a an article trying to argue why what Texas did was different. And uh in the middle of the article, he realizes like I didn't read this and I don't know what it's where it's going. And then he goes, i it's an old article. Look, the bottom line is the bottom line is um uh Virginia is evil. And that was it. And he he just sort of like tried to just keep pivoting away. And I'm like, this is amazing. And then you could go back and find videos of his where they're celebrating the Republicans getting those five seats in Texas from a year ago. I think he just basically gives people the sense because he talks around the thing, but if you actually follow what he says, which I don't think he, you know, I think a lot of people don't. I think part of it is just like I like the sound of the voice. It's soothing. And he comes to the conclusion Virginia's evil, and people are like, Virginia's evil, and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

I I I think if I were to try my hand at describing it, it would be like this certain type of imagine a Redditor, and they have this affectation of being the enlightened centrist, and it's like this kind of vulgar cynicism of like both sides are corrupt, but it just so happens that I always accidentally align with the right wing because the left is always doing these excesses, right? And so I'm neutral, I am an objective, and that gives them the right to kind of adopt these right wing positions without being labeled a conservative. So that when somebody comes in and is like new to politics or is just becoming interested in it, it's natural for them to be like, okay, who's the person that doesn't have a side? Let me go listen to the fair, unbiased person and then listen and then get introduced to politics. So it's like a marketing ploy of like this affectation of enlightened centrism when in reality it is a persuasion tactic to catch the uninitiated and the unsophisticated. And like you're talking about, like, oh, Virginia is evil, and it's part of that project of like the left is doing excesses, right? He doesn't want to actually teach anyone anything.

SPEAKER_07 21:29

In fact, that's what he did. He said, I'm so sick of all these people. You want to tell me that Texas did it first? And okay, they're both fascists. And then he goes, but but uh Virginia's just a little extra fascist or evil because I mean he's been doing this shit since, as you said, Zuccotti Park.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

And I can tell you the Republicans have been gerrymandering a hell of a lot longer than just this year. This is the most recent attempt. In fact, the reason why it's backfiring so spectacularly is the Republicans have been back have been have matched. Gerrymandered the country for 20 years. So there's not a lot more juice to squeeze out of gerrymandering, whereas the Democrats have been leaving literally dozens of seats on the table by doing fair districts in New York and California and Virginia.

SPEAKER_07 22:13

This is exactly what we said today on the show. Like it was that guy Hofstead, who was the uh grandfather, the godfather of gerrymandering in 2010. Uh, they in that census year, um, they the Republicans were the first to sort of like roll out compute uh you know, uh cross-referencing uh demographics, et cetera, et cetera. And that's why you had um essentially what happened in Wisconsin uh was very much a function of that gerrymander that took place in 2010. Scott Walker really kicked off with help from like the Koch brothers and whatnot. Um Wisconsin State Assembly, uh, Democrats need to win like 65% of the votes statewide to get 51% of the representation. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

They have to win by 20 percent, yeah. Until recently, now they've like now they've won the majority of the state Supreme Court, so they got the districts thrown out, now they have to be fair. And now you're seeing Wisconsin has a bunch more Democrats in it. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Same thing happened with Pennsylvania. You know, we organized for the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court. A bunch of the Republican judges had to resign because they were caught sending bestiality porn and racist memes to each other and prosecutors. What the fuck? So three conservative judges had to resign in disgrace back in uh 2015, 2016.

SPEAKER_07 23:32

Well, those are the type of excesses like where you're like policing people's email. Yeah, you're policing people's emails.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Well, I mean, I think when you're sending-I think if you're sending Obama with a bone in his nose and an African garb to a prosecutor, ex parte, that's probably judicial misconduct, right? And they had to be they had to resign, and the Democrats won, you know, three state Supreme Court justices, and they've held the majority on the state supreme court of Pennsylvania since then. And one of the things they did with that majority is they threw out gerrymander and they drew fair districts. So that resulted in the Democrats gaining five seats. Uh and that was just from fair districts, right?

SPEAKER_07 24:09

They they had already squeezed, the Republicans had squeezed about just about all the blood you could out of that stone, and uh the Democrats had more room to go. And uh so I mean I think that we're gonna see that's gonna be one of the uh the things that contribute to a Democratic majority.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

But he obfuscates that truth. Like, and it's like and it's like what here's the question.

SPEAKER_07 24:31

I don't know if he obfuscates that truth because I don't know that he knows that truth.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, you would have to know to obfuscate, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 24:38

Like I like I think like the beauty of being Tim Pool is you don't need to lie because you don't have any interest in the truth. So you like you just create a narrative that that lands exactly where you're talking about. I am a centrist, apox on both their houses, although one of the houses is actually worse.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

There's a uh Daily Beast article by uh Robert Silverman from 2021 where they interviewed a bunch of people who worked with Timpool at like various digital companies, and some of the quotes about him are very like fitting for this. It's like, quote, a coward and a phony, or quote, a joke. Yeah, staggeringly arrogant, totally full of shit, not smart, and a bumbling doofus. Like that's how his former co-workers described him. I I mean it's it's making sense. It's making sense. It's uh yeah.

SPEAKER_07 25:29

I I think the other thing about Tim Pool to understand him is his intense desire for celebrity. I mean, I I am a little bit out of step in the sort of the online world in the sense that when I came to do AM Talk Radio, it was uh it was supposed to be a six-month thing for me. And I was gonna go back into showbiz, and I had had a uh a fairly middling acting career at that point. You could uh back then you could make a lot of money by doing a bunch of pilots, and but I was writing and directing, and I, you know, the people I knew who had acclaim and fame were like, you know, really uh some of them famous. I mean, you know, Janine Groffloe in the early aughts was extremely famous. You could not walk anywhere without, you know, people's heads turning wherever you went. Sarah Silverman. Sarah Silverman and um uh you know uh Louis C.K. and uh, you know, I like uh there was a whole generation of comedians uh that I was friends with that, you know, I uh I I had a good sense of like uh of what fame was, and I was like, I'm not interested so much in this celebrity, but radio was great because people can't see your face. And so, you know, every now and then I'd go into a bar and the bartender would say, You sound like Sam Cedar, and I would get a free beer.

SPEAKER_05 26:58

And I was excited about that.

SPEAKER_07 27:00

And you know, and it happened, you know, it maybe happened like once every six months or nine months or something, but it was like that was it was awesome, and it was and I think like so I never perceived going into YouTube as a means for celebrity. Uh and particularly, you know, when when I started doing that as you know, and I I I when I started doing YouTube, I was 45 probably, and uh 15 years ago, 16 years ago, and you know, to say to people when they're like, What are you doing? For I mean, I was actually it was a podcast uh 15 years. What are you what are you doing? Well, I'm doing a podcast. People just look at me and be like, uh like what is that? How are you supporting yourself? Like, you know, as a 45-year-old man.

SPEAKER_04 27:49

How do you live?

SPEAKER_07 27:51

Where are they now though?

SPEAKER_04 27:53

Where are they now, mother?

SPEAKER_07 27:54

Well, no, now it's a very different world, but it but at that time, and so when I meet people who are so nakedly interested in the celebrity of this world, it really strikes me.

SPEAKER_04 28:06

And it's funny. You can smell it a mile away, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 28:09

I you can smell it a mile away. And I went down to Tim Poole's compound in West Virginia. Did you see the skate park? You have to walk through the skate park.

SPEAKER_04 28:18

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 28:19

You have to walk through the skate park.

SPEAKER_04 28:20

Help me out. It's a compound compound. When you Americans say compound, I'm imagining something really, really big. Because for you guys, already a house is massive. When you say compound, I'm like, holy shit.

SPEAKER_07 28:30

So we're talking I mean, it it's a gated, it was gated. There was like a gate that would open up. It wasn't as impressive, maybe, as I thought. But if you know, you're in uh rural West Virginia. There was a couple of houses. There was a Humvee. No, not a Humvee, I'm sorry, a Tesla uh pickup truck, of course, whatever they are.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

The Cybertruck? Cybertruck, the Cybertruck.

SPEAKER_07 28:53

Oh, he has a Cybertruck. Oh, God. And you go up into what looks like from the outside, and it you know, if you've ever been in any type of rural areas, you see this all the time. Like a big two-story steel building. And you go in, and you know, this is people who have tractors, and uh it's this is a big building, though. And you walk in and it is the skate park. It is like it's the skate park. It's a skate park. That's crazy. I mean, this is his new compound, or you know, uh because Emma went to a different place, and that was like two years ago, and I went about a year ago.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

But wait, why did you go? Wait, now I'm confused. Why why why did you go to Timpool skate park? What how did that happen?

SPEAKER_07 29:32

Well, he invited me to debate him, and it was a very weird turn of events because coming out of COVID, you know, he had invited me. I think it must have been he I think I went on his show in like I want to say 2018 or 2019.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

October 2019, right before COVID.

SPEAKER_07 29:47

Right. Okay, it was 2019, right before COVID. And he invited me on, and I was like, I didn't really think of him. His show was relatively new, and I hadn't paid too much attention to it. And I'm just like, uh, I'll do it. And I think, like, honestly, like that was the attitude I had. Like, oh God, I can't believe I'm doing this. And I think you can see it on my face. At one point, I'm just like, this is just uh, I can't believe I'm subjecting myself to this.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

For the people that are interested, there was a specific moment where you were discussing, you know, the utility of like making sure that you're being practical in your political ideology and supporting like concrete advancements. And Tibbs said, Well, that's the philosophy of Thanos. That is a cult clip.

SPEAKER_07 30:28

He said, I'm really I I'm gonna tell you this, and I know it's gonna upset you, but that is uh the uh philosophy. The utilitarianism is the philosophy of uh of all the villains in the movies. That is the philosophy of Thanos, that a few have to die so more can live.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

He thought he really fucking got you there.

SPEAKER_07 30:48

And at that point, I was just like, I was so mad at myself for agreeing to do this. I just said, like, I I I don't care.

SPEAKER_03 30:59

And uh a thousand Sam Cedar Thanos edits began.

SPEAKER_07 31:04

Yes, that was that that got memed heavily. And so he and you know, it's a character flaw on my part, but I spent a lot of time making fun of him about that on my show.

SPEAKER_05 31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:15

And, you know, like half the show that we do is very policy-oriented. Uh, we'll interview authors or journalists or activists, and then the second half becomes like more like AM Talk Radio, the worst part of AM Talk Radio, and that uh, you know, that's the fun half. And we spent a lot of time on that. And after Crowder, because I had a uh situation with Steven Crowder, which I think must have happened in like Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Okay, so this is what's gonna happen. I told what did I tell you? He was gonna do anything he could to avoid Oh, oh there he is! Oh no, Sam Cedar. What a what a fucking nightmare! I had no idea this was going to happen. I thought I thought Ethan was a stand-up guy.

SPEAKER_07 31:57

I don't, I don't uh maybe maybe it was before Crowder. Tim coming out of COVID, and I should say, you know, the shutdown, Tim invited me on to his show. And I said, uh Okay, I'm I'm happy to do it. Or he made a blanket invitation and I said, I'll do it. And so he DMs me and he says, uh, I'm like, tell me the details. And he's like, we can do uh Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and uh we'll fly you down and uh do it in studio. And I'm like, um, well, A, uh I'm not sure I'm ready to go into your studio. Like, I don't have anybody in my studio, including my co-host. Like, I'm not doing that. And B, I've got a kid. Like, I can't, I'm uh a single parent over 50% of the time, and I can't travel. I got a five-day-a-week show. And right he at first was like, okay, well, I don't do in I don't do Zoom or whatever it was at that time. And I'm like, all right, well, you know, maybe uh when you know we get further out from COVID and I get a little more, you know, uh planning and I have a little more latitude. And then like three days later, something snapped in him, and he decided that I he tried to make it like I was disingenuous, and that I was now blacklisted from his show, and he wasn't I'm like, I don't really give a shit.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

But then he had Emma on and Oh, the world famous Emma Viglin debate, the sushi and hanging with the bros.

SPEAKER_07 33:29

Yes, hanging with the boys, hanging with the boys, and I know it's the boys and sushi with the boys, poker and sushi with the boys.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Thank you for correcting me.

SPEAKER_07 33:39

Well, I know this because when I went to his complex, there is a custom poker table that has a felt lining, and on the insides of the felt lining, it's a beautiful table, it says sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

No fucking way. Lord drop of the century.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

That that must be the softest as baby shit table of all time. Like I would almost be tempted as long as the buy-in was you know big enough because Tim is doesn't seem to be like a very bright poker player.

SPEAKER_07 34:13

I'm trying to find this table. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Did you take a picture of it?

SPEAKER_07 34:18

Are you fucking kidding me? Of course I took a photo of it.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

You would have to send it to us. That's gonna be the cover of today's episode, okay?

SPEAKER_07 34:25

Oh no, it's uh it just says poker with the boys.

SPEAKER_04 34:28

Okay. Okay, I got it.

SPEAKER_07 34:29

Um, I will send you this picture, but here, I'll let you look at it now. Maybe you can see it. Like I'm zooming in.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Oh, that's awesome. Wait, is he got like folding chairs surrounded as well?

SPEAKER_03 34:39

Not quite, but I can see that. Why wait, why do they have folding chairs around the wall? That's the weird thing. God, he's so getting it.

SPEAKER_07 34:49

His toilet cost more than all of that, but that's a different uh story. I busted his uh bidet.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

I busted his bidet. Is that what you brought up like bidet ads, like uh on your second appearance on his uh show? Like in 2024? That's why. That's why.

SPEAKER_07 35:08

Yes, when I was in studio, I broke his toilet. And and and I it was not my plan, but I was very happy I had done that.

SPEAKER_04 35:17

Yeah. But you do have to understand that there's no way he will ever believe you, or anyone will believe you that you did not do it intentionally. Just the the chance of it coincidentally happened.

SPEAKER_03 35:28

No, he's just a man-sized man, and then he took a shit. Like, what do you want?

SPEAKER_07 35:33

Uh yeah, I mean, I had been traveling quite a bit. I'll find out from New York. Um but here's the thing about Tim what I was talking about with a celebrity. When I came in, and Emma really humiliated him on his show. I mean, she he really did. And he was adamant that I was not going to be on. And then just like for whatever reason, right after the Russian thing, I think it was.

SPEAKER_03 35:56

Um, and and Do you want to explain what the Russian thing is?

SPEAKER_07 35:59

Well, there were um a couple of right-wing sort of like uh influencers who started a company called Tenet Media and they approached Tim and uh Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson. Those are the names that people recognize.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

So the dumbest pieces of shit in the world. Wasn't Lawrence Southern also?

SPEAKER_07 36:18

Yes, I think she was actually. And they were offered an enormous amount of money, like just an exceedingly enormous amount of money. Like Ruben, I think, was like$100,000 of video.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

No, no, that's Tim Poole, actually. Ruben was like more than that.

SPEAKER_07 36:35

Oh, maybe it was Tim Pool as well.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

Tim Pool got a hundred thousand per weekly video.

SPEAKER_07 36:40

And they, you know, supposedly did due diligence. Like, I mean, if somebody offered me that kind of money, yeah, there's something going on here, I would be like, excuse me? Like, who what is your business model here? You're gonna pay me$400,000 uh a month to do what?

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Like to make a video that at best is gonna give you two grand back.

SPEAKER_07 37:01

I mean you know, like even if each each one of their videos got like five million views, you you you wouldn't even cover like like the bank transfer fee on something like that. Like, you know, right. And I would be immediately suspicious, and they were, and they asked for uh the guy, um whatever the guy's name was, uh, what was it? The the fake name they gave, Jorge Departou is what I say, but I can't wasn't that it's a French actor. But it was and it ended up being a basically a front, a cutout for Russian uh money that was going to them to just keep talking what they're talking. Like it was, you know.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah, that didn't even like have to change their content at all. Like they were just like, yeah, we just wanted to keep going.

SPEAKER_07 37:48

Just do one of your normal videos and we just give you a lot of them.

SPEAKER_04 37:50

Lobotomizing Americans further. Why would you want to change it whatsoever?

SPEAKER_07 37:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 37:55

It was Edward Gregorian.

SPEAKER_07 37:56

Oh, yes, Edward Gregorian. And when I got there, it had just ended, uh, I think maybe a couple months before, and it was quite clear to me, and I'm very, very like conservative with my the my show's operating budget. Like, you know, yeah. I just I've been doing it for 15 years, but there's a lot of people who are like, you know, have have bigger shows because they've been they've they've looked to expand. And I I've just been I'm just slower that way. But it was so clear to me that this guy thought this money was gonna be coming forever, and that he built it in instead of like for like a couple of capital improvements, like we'll buy some new cameras. I don't even know what you do with that kind of money. But he made it into his operating budget. No way, with the assumption that it was gonna continue. He did, he did, he did, and he also built this this massive uh skate park.

SPEAKER_04 38:54

Why not just be rich? The skate park is the one that makes the most sense out of all of this. Oh my god. That's the crazy part.

SPEAKER_07 39:02

Uh yes, exactly. And so it was shortly after that, and I was just like looking around, and it was you go through the skate park, walk upstairs, and there's the studio, you know, not a huge studio, uh, but you know, well equipped. And then the other side is like sort of like the bar area where the the poker table is, and a a viewing like a glass, almost like a if you were looking in like an observational deck to watch the skateboard. Oh, okay. And when I come in there, the guy who picks me up at the airport had been like the editor, I think, of the website that had just closed down because they ran out of their operating money. He tried to expand, it didn't go well. And when I got to the the place, like I am like wondering, like, what is his plan here? Like, why am I here? Because I am completely, I wouldn't say paranoid, but I'm like, this is just so strange. They're gonna kidnap you and cut your head off.

SPEAKER_04 40:10

Buried underneath the skateboard.

SPEAKER_07 40:13

I I I honestly I was like, I'm bringing my own food, I'm bringing my own drink, like, I'm good. Like, I'll open it. If it's a soda can, I'll open it. But I'm just like, what am I doing here? Like for uh two years, he's been saying that I would never ever uh be invited onto a show. And I realized, like, oh, it he's got a tack, he's gotta change his his tact because he's lost all this money. And then I, you know, I busted his toilet, but then he comes in, he comes up, and I noticed this on the wall. I I guess I hadn't even registered to meet, but he brings in a foam-backed poster, and it's like 24 by 36, it's like a two by three poster, and it's pictures of us, me and him, like a fighting uh like like rock'em stock'em robots?

SPEAKER_04 41:12

No, like like an actual fight, like boxers, like KSI versus what the fuck was the other guy's name.

SPEAKER_07 41:19

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Hearns v. You know, whatever. And I look at the wall and there's like a half a dozen of them other there. Like, and it's you know, has the date and he asked me to sign Oh my god, political space, yeah. And I'm looking around, going like, I'm going around like I'm looking around, I'm going, what the fuck is going on? This is some type of like hidden camera thing. And they're gonna see if I'll sign it. Like, like I couldn't like I like it was all hitting me in a wave, like this guy, and he goes, like, I don't know if you remember, but we uh met uh, you know, and I'm like, I I really I I I don't remember actually meeting you in person. And and and I realized like, oh my god, this is this is a big deal for him. Like for me, it's just like an obligation. I have to do this. This is part of my job. And you know, uh, I had like if if I don't do this, they're gonna say that I'm scared and it's gonna make us look weak. It's gonna make the left look weak. Like we won't defend ourselves. And I'm just like, oh my god, this is like he's excited about this. Like, this is celebrity to him. This is like like it's like going to like a steakhouse and seeing like Well, it's also like grift or like acting.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

It's like, you know, you're pretending to be a villain and he's pretending to be a hero, and then at the end, you all he wanted to be friends, right?

SPEAKER_07 42:48

Like I realized like the whole thing where he admonished Emma for not staying to have sushi and poker with the boys, is that he was genuinely hurt. Like for him, this is like, you know, we're all in the same industry. And my attitude is like, dude, I'm not in this industry, is a mechanism for me in which to advance a political agenda.

SPEAKER_03 43:13

Well, I think actually, not to do a quick aside, I'm pretty sure like Hassan said the same thing about Charlie Kirk, by the way.

SPEAKER_07 43:20

I I mean, I think like I I debated Kirk, and I he seemed to be much more um believer. His ideology without a doubt shifted. He seemed to be a political operative rather than an ideologue.

SPEAKER_03 43:34

You should listen to our podcast on Charlie Kirk, uh, if if you're new to the show, because we talk about how he started out as like a an anti-Trump libertarian type COT party guy. You know what I mean? And then he ended up being this ultra nationalist Trumpian.

SPEAKER_07 43:48

Christian, I mean, Nick Fuentes got his start by going to TPUSA uh meetings and criticizing Charlie Kirk for embracing gay Republicans. And in Charlie Kirk used to go around TPS tourists with a young log cabin Republican and was not religious at all. But I think he found like, you know, I think as a political operative, which is what he was. Tim is not an ideologue and not a political operative. This is just the way that he found like celebrity. And I like was sitting there going like he's like a junior high kid. Like this is just like and then that's the last time he was in school. I I mean emotionally that's where he's at. And the reason why I think that set him off at one point, the last video I had done about him was a video where he talked about social security. And Mike, as you know, you know that Social Security has been my hobby horse basically because when I first got into radio, George W. Bush tried to privatize it.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

Listen, all former majority reporters have the act actuarial tables tattooed on the inside of their thigh.

SPEAKER_07 44:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

Like we know it's important to us.

SPEAKER_07 45:02

And Tim had said, like done a video, I can't remember exactly the details, about Social Security. And it was so blatantly bad. And for something like that, that is in like that is my dream segment because I use Tim Pool mocking Tim Pool to get a hundred thousand whatever views and I'm telling people about social security, which 4,000 people.

SPEAKER_03 45:30

The greatest achievement of American social democracy by far.

SPEAKER_07 45:33

Yes, but but if I was to do a video on social security, you know, when the social security trustee report comes out, four people, four people are gonna watch it. But if I can t deliver all that information with mocking Tim, then all of a sudden like 200,000 people will see it. And so when I came in, I was I was ready to litigate that. Like when I go into these situations, I prepare. I always assume like because I'm like I have a responsibility to the topic. Like I just like like I have an obligation. And you know, maybe it was because I came from like showbiz. I mean, uh, you know, as a college student, you know, I had uh worked on the the State House and I worked on the Hill and I'd done what that had been 15 years or uh later. And when I came in, I was never a journalist. And I just felt like I have to read everything. Like I I just I have this obligation to the audience. And I go in there and I have like I have really prepared. Like I am prepared to, you know, talk this social security thing. I have my computer there, I have all sorts of tabs open because I'm anticipating him saying, like, uh, what are you talking about? I never said that. And so I had like every video that I might want on a tab. So I could just say, Oh, here it is. And This is exactly what I would do. I walked into the studio and as I'm walking in, I hear Tim. It's like a conference room, it feels like, basically. I hear Tim say to his one producer who is at the the controls, or his producer saying, Yeah, they did a uh video about you talking about social security uh from a couple months ago. And I walk in and I'm like, holy fucking shit. This motherfucker didn't prepare for fucking five minutes. Like, what the fuck does he think I'm doing here? Like I got I like I am here to officiate a divorce between you and some percentage of your audience. That's what I'm here to do. Yeah, and we we had a I don't know, it was a three-hour conversation, and when I stood up, he looked at me and he goes, They're mad at me. And I'm like, Who you producers? Like, I'm sorry, I you know, like I can't shut up. Like I thought I had gone over, you know, like you know, and his producer were like, dude, we want to get home. And he goes, No, my audience. And I look at him and I go, that's great.

SPEAKER_03 48:03

Like, you've just validated my entire trip. Well, I think that's like it kind of explains Tim Poole. Like we we talked about the Russian money and and basically, you know, what are the things he declared is that Ukraine is like an enemy of the United States.

SPEAKER_07 48:19

I can tell you Peacock licensed a majority report for we were on Peacock for a year.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

It was what they gave you.

SPEAKER_07 48:26

I will tell you this. From what I read, you made more in a month than we made in a year.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

Maybe that's just bad business on your part, I guess.

SPEAKER_06 48:34

Maybe. So Or maybe it turns out that they were just a company who had metrics as opposed to like we're trying to get propaganda.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

This is psychotic. Ukraine is the enemy of this country. Ukraine is our enemy. Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we should apologize to Russia.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

Whatever you think about American foreign policy over the last 10 years, Ukraine is not an enemy of the United States. And he was adopting a position that only a member of the Russian intelligence services would reasonably, you know, assert as a way of trying to, you know, aid in their war effort. And, you know, now we have the same thing happening with Tim Pool and Benjamin Netanyahu. There's been this interesting divorce recently of the like MAGA influencers, right? Chatham House rules.

SPEAKER_07 49:31

He's not supposed to talk about that meeting he had with uh Netanyahu. He said, Chatham House rules.

SPEAKER_03 49:36

Yeah. And and so what we're seeing is like led by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, Candace Owens, there is this kind of like populist online mega right that is veering away from Trump, and they're using the Iran war in Israel as their, you know, reason. Like we are divorcing from him because we're not doing America first, we're doing Israel first. We're getting into all these forward wars. He promised us peace. And this, you know, and he's, you know, he's a Jewish supremacist, and you know, spreading all sorts of like conspiracy and anti-Semitism is really the organizing principle. But Tim is one of the few dissenters, along with Mark Levin, that is sticking with Trump.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

And Israel, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

Oh, yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. Well, they're staying with because they're Israeli agents or Israeli sympathizers or whatever. And so Benjamin Netanyahu decided to have a like, as you said, private meeting with Tim Poole and a few other like alt-right, or not alt-right, but you know, right-wing media podcaster types. And apparently Tim Poole took that meeting and directly, you know, asserted some sort of concerns about anti-Zionism to Trump, right? And it seems pretty crazy to me that if you were a legitimate state trying to assert a legitimate point that the influencer that you would select is the one who has just been discredited by associations with Russian intelligence money, and immediately Benjamin, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu is saying, oh, who's the most corruptible piece of shit in the entire American right-wing media space? That's the guy I want to glom onto. That's the guy I'm gonna use to push pro-Israel propaganda. So, what do you think that says about Tim Pool in particular? And like, what is your thoughts on that like larger divorce? Is it legitimate? What does that pretend for all right, you know, the uh the right-wing media space and Tim Pool in particular?

SPEAKER_07 51:34

Well, I would first say, like, I think it's wrong to assume that Tim is the only person who was offered that.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

No, no, there was a room full of them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 51:42

Uh there was a room full, and there may have been other rooms too. Um, it's just that for Tim, like he wanted that out there that he had met with the head of the state. He didn't really care which one it was.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Yeah, it's like I'm a big show now, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:55

Same look with you, just apply to Benjamin and Tanya. What did you do last week? I met Seb Seder and Benjamin.

SPEAKER_07 52:01

I'm with a poster. He made a poster and had him sign it so they could hang it in the poker room. So you eat sushi. I think Tim is having real trouble figuring out where his audience is. And that's why like today I thought it was really interesting where he was like a pox on both their houses. Because a month ago he was attacking Candace Owens for telling people not to vote for Republicans in the midterm. And now I think like he's I mean, again, Tim is like, you know, a centrist politician from the past. Where they are is a function of where everybody else is. Always there is no ideology. It is how do I put myself just on this line, walk this tightrope, and as you know, as the left goes one way or the right goes another, or you know, the the right splits and goes in different directions, I mean that's why he's having trouble because he can do the the one uh plane, right? And sort of locate himself on that one plane. But when his half of the plane ends up being two different planes, now he's confused and he doesn't know where his audience is. And you know, like I think for a while he tried to do like more manosphere stuff, like you know, like uh months ago, where it was more and and I just don't think that is driving the clicks. I think honestly, if you want to know where he heads, look at what videos perform for him and you will know.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Right. I have some stats on that actually, because I I know um a guy who's uh Tim Pool's biggest fucking hater, apparently, who has built a tool for tracking everything Tim Pool puts out that he's like currently yeah, he's currently working on. And I've got like early access to that. And so I've got like every single channel that Tim Pool has, like collated, I've got all the like views and everything. Like you can see that he peaked in like 2020, um, and he's always been like he's been on like a downwards trend since then across all his platforms, and then on I think he had like a small peak in uh like with the death of Charlie Kirk, and then after that it's back down again. Like he's not figuring out like w where to bring it to bring it back to what he had.

SPEAKER_03 54:13

Well, I do think there is a legitimate split that's surrounding Israel, and you're seeing it with people like Ben Shapiro as well, where anybody who kind of like is aligning themselves with Israel is basically falling off a cliff of popularity. People are falling. That's like a uh an issue that people are not ignoring.

SPEAKER_07 54:31

I will also say this is that the most interesting Tim Pool clip I've ever seen was with Milo Yanninopoulos was on on one of the times that he was there. And he started talking about we all know that on the right it's a fake it till we make it, and that Shapiro's videos were uh views were bought. This is before Charlie Kirk uh died, which is I think the predicate for the split on the right over Israel. And it was sort of well known, like you know, at one point, I can't remember when it was, when Ben Shapiro had more views on Facebook than the New York Times, and no one like stood around and said, like, wait a second. Wait a second. And he had spent like over a million dollars in advertising in Facebook. And that is basically you're buying views. And you know, the way they had done this on the right is they pump money in there and they advertise and it and it sort of like launches you and and now you're in space and you know the propulsion you need is sort of like inertia takes over. I mean, in fact, completely far afield, the whole forest thing where there were democratic influencers. I was like, why are they paying anybody directly? What they should be doing is going in and advertising all of these people so that they can build their show rather than give them short money, you know, build their show, then you don't have to have anybody sign anything. You decide what you're gonna promote because you're just going in and advertising. And, you know, if somebody uh sends you an email, Mike, and says, Hey, that video you put out, we've decided to uh buy advertising so that it'll show up on, you know, it'll do a million uh, you know, impressions. In what scenario are you gonna say no? Like, I I didn't like Donald Trump could come to me and he says, like, we're gonna promote your video. And I would be like, no, but I would be like, okay. I mean, I put it out.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

Like, don't give them any ideas, Sam. Jesus Christ. These chorus creators hate my guts. They'll be like making the mic as the should go to hell uh videos sponsored by the DNC.

SPEAKER_07 56:36

No, but my point is that they should be out there advertising, and that's what they did on the right. They would put that money in into advertising. And when that money dries up, it turns out that a lot of times they don't really have an engaged audience uh that is there. And and so I think like you know, Tim is stuck in this hard place. And I would say like in terms of the um in terms of the breakup, like the the crack up, I think to a large extent, like Charlie Kirk, I think he had a place within that world that was, I think, a lot more pivotal than people understood. Remember, when he died, he had Rush Limbaugh's old radio slot. And he had a huge show. He was credited with um uh much of the voter turnout.

SPEAKER_03 57:28

That was what, noon to three, right? Something like that.

SPEAKER_07 57:30

Yep. He was credited with this m massive turnout. The funding for his organization, you know, I debated him, I want to say, like in 2018, maybe it was 2018, I think, or maybe 2019, I don't know, somewhere around there. And I looked at his uh federal filing uh to see how much he was getting paid, and uh just brought it out on the debate with it yellowed up so that and kept kept showing it to him while I on my uh my pad. But he was you know at that time was making supposedly fifty thousand dollars a year. And I found it very, very difficult to believe. He certainly was making a lot more uh three or four years later. And um, I think when he was killed, he was like a bridge between a couple of different groups there. And without that bridge, people just went off on their own. And you know, they all have their own incentives, anyways. But um there was nobody with the the proximity to Trump, and he had very close proximity to Trump, but also the dominance in the media space that could communicate to these different parties.

SPEAKER_03 58:36

I think that's definitely true. And, you know, we have seen that the incentives for the right are you know, their online creators is in contradiction to the interests of the party for the first time. I think like Charlie Kirk was somebody who kept them in alignment. And now it's like they could all see a catastrophe coming in the midterm. So they're all trying to distance themselves from it. That's where the calls to not vote for a uh uh a Republican come from, is they can see the Democrats are gonna win a landslide. When that happens, they can claim to be like, oh yeah, we we told you not to vote for the Republicans. Look how powerful we are. And they don't have to take any of the blame for the Trumpian meltdown until they can lead a new alignment or new evolution of whatever the conservative movement is gonna be in the future, right? Probably surrounding Tucker Carlson. And he's, you know, I I you know, my biggest prediction is that Tucker Carlson is going to lead this kind of like anti-Israel reinvention of the GOP, right? Like another version of America First that's that is explicitly anti-Semitic or so close to being explicit that it's you know barely a dog whistle, uh, led by skepticism of Israel as a way of you know launching another populist attack on the on the Republican establishment. And, you know, that's what we're gonna be seeing in 2028. I don't think we're gonna see, you know, JD Vance carrying the torch, but maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:03

Yeah, I think it's hard to assess because I don't know. I haven't looked at Tucker Carlson's numbers, so I don't really know. I mean, I know Candace Owens does very well, but I feel like She bots too. I'm sure I'm sure she does, but I also get the sense that um with Candace Owens, there's like a something that is more akin to sort of Maha, like a version of like it's like girly pop fascism. Yes. Yes, because she does a lot of murder mystery stuff, and so there's a big audience for that there. And the Charlie Kirk thing has been all murder mystery, right? Like it has not been, you know, she she has always had, you know, uh, I will remind people, well before uh October 7th, um, she uh she went out when she was working for TPUSA, said, you know, Hitler had it right.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

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