Speaker 1: Meaning a light Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing big down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
Speaker 1: you nobody seen, nobody else.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: You don't need to know. Man, like you followed another
Speaker 1: story and you got back and that I was still win.
Speaker 1: Man go black to dag on the Panama. Man, you
Speaker 1: don't matter, man, I know anyway.
Speaker 2: All right, Buck Johnson, welcome back to the Jay Burdon Show.
Speaker 2: How you doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm good, sir, good. Uh, I'm glad to be back.
Speaker 1: It's good to be back. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, It's it's always one of those things where
Speaker 2: time on the Internet moves so quickly that you know,
Speaker 2: I go back. I'm like, I should talk to x
Speaker 2: y Z again, and my guy hasn't been that long.
Speaker 2: I look at it, it's been almost a year since
Speaker 2: you and I spoke. So really glad to have you
Speaker 2: back on. It's actually funny. I just recorded earlier today
Speaker 2: with Top Lobster and the Nephelin Death Squad guys.
Speaker 1: Those guys, Yeah, they're fun.
Speaker 2: That they are fun. That is a show I've I've
Speaker 2: never heard anything like it. I love it, but it
Speaker 2: is a it is a very unique mix. What point
Speaker 2: is those guys had good things to say about you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's both sounds so surprised. Fuck but uh, in all seriousness,
Speaker 2: go ahead, sorry, go ahead, in all seriousness. Uh, I'm
Speaker 2: primarily interested in talking with you about about spiritual warfare
Speaker 2: and kind of the changing face of Christianity in America
Speaker 2: because they're kind of two things that happened over the
Speaker 2: last couple of weeks, and I think we're more significant
Speaker 2: than initially appeared. The first is this sort of you know,
Speaker 2: chensy Ai generated image of you know, Trump as Jesus.
Speaker 2: Kind of maybe he said he was trying to look
Speaker 2: like a doctor, but it looks like, you know, Jesus
Speaker 2: healing the sick, where he's you know, reaching down on
Speaker 2: you know, a sick man. There's sort of a bizarre
Speaker 2: supernatural figures in the clouds behind him, you know, golden light,
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And then somewhat later, a picture of
Speaker 2: an IDF soldier in Lebanon the sledgehammer smashing the head
Speaker 2: of a desecrated statue of Jesus on the cross right,
Speaker 2: And obviously both of these were sort of strikes against
Speaker 2: the American Christian community and they reacted very very negatively,
Speaker 2: and Trump in the Iran War, which is very much
Speaker 2: tied to him and his image, have been coming less
Speaker 2: and popular. And I thought it was interesting because in
Speaker 2: the American evangelical world, Trump is very very popular and
Speaker 2: remains more popular than most other presidents. But these two
Speaker 2: instances back to back produced to see change. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of people who were very very unhappy with
Speaker 2: them and cited those as their exit moment, like I'm done,
Speaker 2: I can't go past things. And you could look at
Speaker 2: that cynically and say, those are people looking for an
Speaker 2: excuse that may or may not have been true. But
Speaker 2: I do think it's interesting that this comes after, you know,
Speaker 2: feuding with the Pope. Neither you were, I as Catholic,
Speaker 2: but still the kind of antipathy building between you know,
Speaker 2: the president and the Christian community, and so buck all
Speaker 2: of that preamble aside. I'm kind of curious to get
Speaker 2: your perspective on this because this has been a live issue,
Speaker 2: particularly with the nomination of you know, Paula White as
Speaker 2: the She's the White House Faith something I can't remember.
Speaker 1: What her as is basically his spiritual guide if you will.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And for those who aren't aware she is one,
Speaker 2: she twos this kind of, you know, egregious example of
Speaker 2: an extremely charismatic televangelist, you know, flopping and rolling and
Speaker 2: taking lots of money from her. I was gonna say parishioners,
Speaker 2: but that's definitely not the right word whatever whatever institution
Speaker 2: she runs. But you know what I'm saying. And so
Speaker 2: with all of that out of the way, Buck, I'm
Speaker 2: really curious, like, what are you seeing in this? Do
Speaker 2: you think that there's some kind of breakdown between America's
Speaker 2: religious community as broad as that could be defined as
Speaker 2: and then Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: I think so. So I can only go by sort
Speaker 1: of circles that I run in and then sort of
Speaker 1: content concentrically from there. I can include my parents, their
Speaker 1: hardcore evangelicals, and they still love him. I've not discussed
Speaker 1: what their thoughts would be on the images that he
Speaker 1: put out, nor we we haven't discussed yet on Easter,
Speaker 1: American Easter Sunday, the message that he put out with
Speaker 1: the F bombs and praise to Allah, how He's going
Speaker 1: to destroy rand that was that was the morning of
Speaker 1: American Easter. Not coincidentally, I would say. The image of
Speaker 1: him that he put out the following week was of
Speaker 1: course Orthodox Easter, so he managed to hit both Easters
Speaker 1: with something basically taboo. I would say anti Christian to
Speaker 1: say the least. And so it seems to me the Boomers,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know many of them, so the
Speaker 1: ones I do know still seem to like him. I'd
Speaker 1: love to enter a conversation with them and what their
Speaker 1: exact thoughts on what happened there where. My mom said
Speaker 1: via text, Honey, I think at least he's a intellectual Christian,
Speaker 1: which was one of the most Protestant phrases I've ever
Speaker 1: heard in my life. Thought, what is that? Isn't that
Speaker 1: what you are? But anyway, and then of course the
Speaker 1: younger people your age up to my age and a
Speaker 1: little bit older, i'd say zoomers through gen X, who
Speaker 1: are on the right politically and have some sort of
Speaker 1: Christian foundation, we seem to be the ones that were
Speaker 1: more like, Okay, this is enough. And the war, the
Speaker 1: backdrop of the war certainly makes that easier for us
Speaker 1: to see. And the control that I feel that he
Speaker 1: that Net and Yahoo has over him, I think that
Speaker 1: he's scared of Net and Yahoo, and so I think
Speaker 1: that sort of tips the things in the in a
Speaker 1: direction that people like us don't like. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: that he would have Paula White as his spiritual advisor,
Speaker 1: if you will. I don't think he particularly cares about
Speaker 1: Christianity at all. And he's a showman. What does he
Speaker 1: do for his spiritual advisor? Hires a show woman? You know,
Speaker 1: that's basically what she is, flopping on stage and being
Speaker 1: over the top loud, and it, you know, seems fake obviously,
Speaker 1: and so tied up in all of this. If you're
Speaker 1: an actual Christian watching this all happen, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it starts to turn you off. And except for the
Speaker 1: people I know, there's some that are, well, no, you
Speaker 1: don't really know what he's doing. It's X Y Z
Speaker 1: over here something something city of London or some insurance
Speaker 1: thing that he's trying to figure out. But those people
Speaker 1: never address the actual control by Israel and the war
Speaker 1: and then his slight against Christ and I've not seen
Speaker 1: that from that camp yet. And so yeah, we're left
Speaker 1: with this now infamous civil war on the riot. And
Speaker 1: of course it's funny when like the mainstream right calls
Speaker 1: people like Tucker Carlson woke, right or something like this. Odd.
Speaker 1: You know, they're inverting they're inverting reality there because there's
Speaker 1: one being woke. We all see that. So it's just
Speaker 1: a funny hodgepodge of all these things happening, and all
Speaker 1: within a year. Like when he was elected, I was
Speaker 1: pretty all in. I was excited. I thought sort of
Speaker 1: the people that he was bringing in with him, the
Speaker 1: people that supported him, Tucker Carlson, Telsea Gabbert, RFK, sort
Speaker 1: of an interesting mix of people, and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is actually going to be something positive. I've never
Speaker 1: seen this in my life. Well, first of all, no
Speaker 1: one I've ever voted for one before, so that was
Speaker 1: kind of a unique experience for me. And then this happens,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I guess why did I get my
Speaker 1: hopes up like this? When this was, on one hand,
Speaker 1: somewhat predictable, or at least if you were skeptical of
Speaker 1: Trump movement, you could think, well, this, it could go
Speaker 1: this direction. I'm worried about that, and here we are.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's odd.
Speaker 2: In a way. I almost think that the initial support
Speaker 2: of Donald Trump by the religious community was technically a
Speaker 2: positive development because for a long time, religious people in
Speaker 2: America kind of got the short end of the stick,
Speaker 2: and it was always, well, you know, he goes to
Speaker 2: church just like you, so you should vote for him.
Speaker 2: You don't actually get anything out of it, right, Like,
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's technically a Catholic, despite the fact that he is,
Speaker 2: by his own admission, a member of the Masons, which
Speaker 2: again I'm not Catholic, but I've been reliably informed that's
Speaker 2: a problem.
Speaker 1: As it would be as same an orthodoxy. By the way,
Speaker 1: you cannot be baptized if you if you're still claimed
Speaker 1: to be a Mason, you have to denounce that.
Speaker 2: And so the reason I bring that up, of course,
Speaker 2: is not that I actually particularly care about Joe Biden,
Speaker 2: but that was kind of a typical model. Right. Were
Speaker 2: promised you were going to get family values, you were
Speaker 2: going to get what you care about, and what that
Speaker 2: largely meant is you got nothing, right, you got absolutely nothing.
Speaker 2: And so with Trump you had a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: think pieces from truly my least favorite people in America,
Speaker 2: which are the kind of liberal, kind of Christian intelligensia.
Speaker 2: You know, the David French is the kind of Christianity
Speaker 2: today subset. We're saying things like, how don't these people
Speaker 2: know that Donald Trump has committed adultery, that he said
Speaker 2: something about when you're rich women, let you build the
Speaker 2: phrase out, and and I actually think that that support
Speaker 2: was rational, right, basically saying like, look, none of these
Speaker 2: guys in politics actually have any alignment with my values whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So if that's off the table, I might as well
Speaker 2: get something. And to be fair, but Christian America did
Speaker 2: get some wins. We got ro versus Wight overturned, which right,
Speaker 2: fair enough, it's much better that I think either you
Speaker 2: or I ever would have expected. So I get that,
Speaker 2: and I think that almost nobody except for the most
Speaker 2: kind of diehard Trump fans, ever thought he was particularly devout. Right, Like, sure,
Speaker 2: he said he was a Presbyterian. Now I think he
Speaker 2: says he's non denominational. But like, come on, guys, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be rude to a man I've
Speaker 2: never met, but he doesn't strike me as someone who's
Speaker 2: particularly devout. And so you could look at that, and
Speaker 2: many did and say, oh, that's hypocrisy. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think that's sort of rational self interest. But it
Speaker 2: was always predicated on well getting something out of it, right,
Speaker 2: getting something for your support, where it's like, okay, we've
Speaker 2: given up the kind of you know, professed piety, we've
Speaker 2: given up the picture of the wife and kids in
Speaker 2: front of a beautiful church. But at least we got something.
Speaker 2: But once that went away, once you're not really getting
Speaker 2: anything for it, it's sort of like, well, what's the
Speaker 2: point of this exercise? And I think that the And
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought up the timing, because had actually forgotten.
Speaker 2: Both of those happened on Easter in a vacuum. Again,
Speaker 2: I don't think those would be particularly notable. I would
Speaker 2: object to them, You would object to them, but in
Speaker 2: the grand scheme of things, those are relatively minor events.
Speaker 2: But forming this sort of pattern where it feels as if,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, the ostensible majority faith in America is
Speaker 2: consistently being demeaned and disrespected by again, ostensibly the party
Speaker 2: of Christianity, the one supported by the most religious you know, Catholics,
Speaker 2: Protestants and Orthodox You know why why you're not is
Speaker 2: there not even that fig leaf of respect? And the war,
Speaker 2: this kind of image of the war of this idf soldier,
Speaker 2: you know, smashing this this picture of Christ was incredibly
Speaker 2: evocative because growing up in rural America. I know you're
Speaker 2: from you know, from Texas, I'm from the American South.
Speaker 2: Everything was sort of sold to you in terms of
Speaker 2: Islam is the enemy, right, that we have to go
Speaker 2: over there because they hate Christians, they want to blow
Speaker 2: up churches, and look, I don't like Muslims. I don't
Speaker 2: want them in my country. But if that's the claim,
Speaker 2: if that's the justification, if that's the reason why many
Speaker 2: people in my family feel this allegiance to the state
Speaker 2: of Israel, it's because they're helping us in this fight
Speaker 2: against our eternal enemy, or Israel is a safe place
Speaker 2: for Christians. And then you see this image of an
Speaker 2: IDF soldier triumphantly smashing, you know, an image of Christ,
Speaker 2: and you're like, wait a minute, I thought you guys
Speaker 2: were fighting Muslims. I thought that was the problem. And okay,
Speaker 2: you know what, I understand wars or chaotic things. There's
Speaker 2: certainly been American soldiers who've done bad things. But when
Speaker 2: the immediate response is one it's real and you're like, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I guess you guys are just admitting that that's I'll
Speaker 2: be honest, more honesty than I expect, but okay, credit
Speaker 2: where credits due. But then you see this sort of
Speaker 2: full court press from the kind of owned Zionist influencers.
Speaker 2: You're saying like, oh, we've repaired it, We've replaced it.
Speaker 2: And then this image of across and then even the
Speaker 2: most minor amount of digging into this, you're like, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, this is a picture of a cross, but
Speaker 2: it's not where the old one was. This is just
Speaker 2: in someone's backyard. And then somewhat later, Italian peacekeepers actually
Speaker 2: do replace right, and you look at it and you're like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute. I thought you said that this was
Speaker 2: something you took seriously, cared about this, that the guy
Speaker 2: was being punished, and that you had replaced it. When
Speaker 2: it turns out that that's not true. What you were
Speaker 2: really concerned about was the media backlash, that this was
Speaker 2: not apparently a real problem for you, It was only
Speaker 2: a pr problem You couldn't You're like, well, I thought
Speaker 2: you were our greatest ally. I thought that we were
Speaker 2: co belligerents. And when I say that, Buck, I don't
Speaker 2: literally mean me right, But you know that was the
Speaker 2: sort of common understanding of it. And so when it
Speaker 2: comes at the tale of this kind of series of
Speaker 2: slights and insults and all of this political capital, all
Speaker 2: of this actual capital, is being used to fund this war.
Speaker 2: And apparently, even during a ceasefire when apparently we had
Speaker 2: this deal where weren't going to fight anymore, Christians are
Speaker 2: still being oppressed in Lebanon. It's like we look man like,
Speaker 2: I thought you were our guy. I thought that was
Speaker 2: what was happening here. And so I think that that
Speaker 2: disillusion is much much more than simply you know, Trump
Speaker 2: said the F word, or Trump doesn't go to church, right,
Speaker 2: it's kind of this wider disillusionment. But anyway, Buck, I've
Speaker 2: been talking for a while throw back to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, those are all great points. See, it's
Speaker 1: the disillusionment with I think I heard from from evangelicals
Speaker 1: that love Trump or still do that. Yeah. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: not a hardcore church goer if you will, but he's
Speaker 1: protecting Christians. He's he has our best interests at heart,
Speaker 1: and he has said that. He's also said, of course,
Speaker 1: on a famous interview from the plane, that he thinks
Speaker 1: he's going to Hell, and which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: It's it's rare to hear a president say.
Speaker 2: That expressed minorly differently. That would be a fundamental statement
Speaker 2: of piety, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yeah, it could be. Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: taken as a very humble, not a bragging sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But he was saying it so flippantly, like he probably
Speaker 1: does believe that, And then it just starts to get
Speaker 1: as you sort of alluded to, harder and harder to
Speaker 1: take and to swallow. It's almost like his comment early
Speaker 1: on in his political career if he could stand on
Speaker 1: some cross streets in New York City and shoot so
Speaker 1: on and his supporters would still support him. That's probably
Speaker 1: true to some extent. But these things, when you're touching
Speaker 1: on issues of faith, it's the most important thing in
Speaker 1: the entire existence that we have is our faith in Christ.
Speaker 1: And now you're sort of insulting that if you will,
Speaker 1: and doing it sort of out and like he does everything,
Speaker 1: he's not hiding it, and so yeah, you just start
Speaker 1: to wander. I do start to go. Okay, it goes
Speaker 1: from Okay, don't like this. I think he's lying about this.
Speaker 1: Now I feel a little bit duped on this too. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: I can't support this. This has been a line. And
Speaker 1: I actually did a message of repentance on my episode
Speaker 1: with there at the beginning, because if you endorse someone,
Speaker 1: even implicitly on a public platform, which I did, and
Speaker 1: it was never like, hey, guys, vote for Trump, but
Speaker 1: it was obvious what I preferred, and I did political
Speaker 1: episodes and I at least implicitly softly endorsed him. Well,
Speaker 1: now he's doing all these things, and I can't have
Speaker 1: someone going well, I thought you were Orthodox, and look
Speaker 1: who you support it. And that's not really the reason
Speaker 1: I did it. I did it because I wanted repentance
Speaker 1: in my own heart, because I started thinking, well, you
Speaker 1: are Orthodox, and look what he's doing. Do you want
Speaker 1: your reputation or your belief system or you sort of
Speaker 1: tie to these actions? And the answer is no, I
Speaker 1: can't do that, and so I did put a message
Speaker 1: of repentance out on that episode. And I've heard some
Speaker 1: people too, knocking people like Tucker or or those like
Speaker 1: myself that well, oh, now you're saying you don't like him,
Speaker 1: and it's like, right, yeah, because I've seen things that
Speaker 1: he's done and I'm changing my mind based on current actions.
Speaker 1: I applaud Tucker, you would have never seen you never
Speaker 1: have seen let's say, during the Bush years. Could you
Speaker 1: imagine if Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly came out and said,
Speaker 1: all right, I can't do this anymore Bush has over
Speaker 1: stepped over, Or during the Obama years, if let's say
Speaker 1: Morning Joe or Rachel Maddow, all right, Obama's bombing all
Speaker 1: these countries. This is not hope and change. I'm out.
Speaker 1: No one does that. And so it's interesting now that
Speaker 1: people with principles are doing it. With Donald Trump, you
Speaker 1: get this like, oh, now you don't like him. It's like, yeah, correct,
Speaker 1: now I don't because I've seen what he's doing, what
Speaker 1: he's saying who is controlled by and he's spitting in
Speaker 1: the face of Christianity while doing other things geopolitically that
Speaker 1: I'm also against, and having people like Mike Huckabee go
Speaker 1: on The Tucker Carlson Show and basically promote Christian Zionism,
Speaker 1: which is heretical obviously, and so these all line up that.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, Paula White like we mentioned, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a mess. I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 1: Who's in control of who if someone's making there's some
Speaker 1: of these things that Trump does, and certainly members of
Speaker 1: his cabinet, it feels like they're hostage videos. And so
Speaker 1: you know, there's always people above the people that you
Speaker 1: think it's. Maybe it's not net and Yahoo, but it's
Speaker 1: something above him. And then at some point it's all spiritual,
Speaker 1: like you're saying in the Spiritual Warfare, it's powers and
Speaker 1: principalities as we know it says in Ephesian six twelve
Speaker 1: and six thirteen. So yeah, that's when people like myself
Speaker 1: and yourself and many of us under sixty start to go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not being fooled by this anymore, and I think
Speaker 1: I'm out.
Speaker 2: And it was interesting because one of the other instances
Speaker 2: that happened in the middle of this was sort of
Speaker 2: chimp out with the Pope. I've buck I made a
Speaker 2: grave mistake, which is on a show about the Crusades,
Speaker 2: I tried to briefly and succinctly summarize the great Schism,
Speaker 2: and ool, boy, did I make people real mad solely
Speaker 2: learning from that. I will not to explain what Catholics
Speaker 2: think about the Pope, suffice it to say they think
Speaker 2: some things about him that's I think safe to say.
Speaker 2: But point is, what happened is that the Pope, I
Speaker 2: think about two three weeks ago, puts out this kind
Speaker 2: of statement about war, shouldn't do wars, which, all right,
Speaker 2: you or I might disagree with, but relatively in offensive position.
Speaker 2: You know, might be naive, we might disagree with it,
Speaker 2: but whatever, you know, the Pope has done it before.
Speaker 2: You know, even back in the Inquisition, you know they're
Speaker 2: burning people in the Catholic heart is like, hey, don't
Speaker 2: do that, Okay, maybe they whatever. Point is a long
Speaker 2: tradition of asking for mercy, asking for clemency, whatever. So
Speaker 2: of course Trump goes into a rage, starts fighting with
Speaker 2: the Pope on Twitter or on sorry tooth social which
Speaker 2: is kind of a funny thing. And I just want
Speaker 2: to clarify, I'm not I don't have this sort of
Speaker 2: moral revulsion to Trump saying crazy stuff that a lot
Speaker 2: of people do, Like it doesn't really bother me, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I'm not morally offended by that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me is sort of what happened in
Speaker 2: the Maga commentariat afterwards, right, the sort of plan Truster types,
Speaker 2: which is immediately we have this sort of reversion back
Speaker 2: to eighteen ninety where it's all of this sort of
Speaker 2: like build the Butcher stuff about like, oh, you Catholics,
Speaker 2: you have divided loyalties to Rome, and I'm not Catholic,
Speaker 2: I have no loyalties to Roam in particular. But as
Speaker 2: someone who does take their faith seriously, it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we all do. From that perspective. We may
Speaker 2: well be right wing, we may well be supporters or
Speaker 2: you know, in opposition to President Trump and his administration,
Speaker 2: but fundamentally that is a secondary concern too, relationship to God.
Speaker 2: That's sort of how it works. And when that comes
Speaker 2: through the kind of commentariat again, it's like, well, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, I thought you were x y Z. I
Speaker 2: thought that was something that you cared about. And look,
Speaker 2: I understand, like we've all gotten caught up in politics.
Speaker 2: It's my job, it's your job to like it happens.
Speaker 2: I get that, and I'm not trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: hang anyone individually out to dry. But again it's this
Speaker 2: attitude repeated over and over again that you owe me this,
Speaker 2: you owe me your undying support forever, and fundamentally, like
Speaker 2: politics is a quid pro quo, and I took a
Speaker 2: lot of heat very early for saying something that I
Speaker 2: think was true, which is that I had extended a
Speaker 2: certain amount of loyalty to Trump four row versus weight.
Speaker 2: I felt as if you know what, this was a
Speaker 2: big give and on the back end, fair enough, like
Speaker 2: I'll there's some loyalty in that, and that's more than
Speaker 2: any nominal Republican has given me basically my entire life.
Speaker 2: And so there was some capital there. There was some
Speaker 2: money to burn down. And you know what if it
Speaker 2: had been one or two things, you know, maybe dinged
Speaker 2: me from a you know, if I had you know,
Speaker 2: ten dollars of political currency back down to an eight
Speaker 2: or a five, fair enough. But at a certain point, right,
Speaker 2: those those debits start piling up there. I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about accounting, right, those negative balances start piling up,
Speaker 2: and it's like, look, man, like we're not married, right.
Speaker 2: I didn't sign. I didn't sign a document that said
Speaker 2: like till death to his part. This was conditional. And
Speaker 2: so for any political figure, there is a point at
Speaker 2: which it's like I'm done. And that doesn't mean I
Speaker 2: automatically endorse, you know, Kamala Harris or I automatically endorse
Speaker 2: the Ayatola probably wouldn't like him much anyway. I've been
Speaker 2: reliably informed that he's gay, at least according to the
Speaker 2: Free Press. And so it's like this this extremely black
Speaker 2: or white thinking, which I think is used tactically, Yes,
Speaker 2: it just doesn't it doesn't work at least on me
Speaker 2: and I think on the audience, because it's like, look
Speaker 2: like we saw this before, we saw this kind of
Speaker 2: like extreme black or white. You know, if you're not
Speaker 2: with us, you're against us, literally in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and then again through kind of the pandemic and through
Speaker 2: all of that. And the reason I'm walking away, so
Speaker 2: to speak, is not because I've gotten soft. It's not
Speaker 2: because I think, wait, actually, we do need race riots
Speaker 2: every four years, we do need trans kids. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: I cared about that more than you. In particular, I
Speaker 2: cared about that more than anyone politician. And so look
Speaker 2: like the idea that you know, it's sort of an
Speaker 2: eternally binding contract that there's nothing that can be done
Speaker 2: that you know, straine that relationship is just not true.
Speaker 2: Clearly it's not true. And I think a lot of
Speaker 2: the narrative around that like, oh, it's you know, you traders.
Speaker 2: You you are the ones that are responsible for whatever
Speaker 2: the current political setback is. I think is really really
Speaker 2: insidious because it is insulating the people making decisions for
Speaker 2: any consequences. It's not that I made a bad choice
Speaker 2: and I was punished for it, people stayed home or
Speaker 2: people didn't do it. It's that you didn't love me enough.
Speaker 2: That's what you need to do to fix this, not
Speaker 2: that I need to earn it. And look, politicians they
Speaker 2: do that. I'm not, you know, expecting them to ask differently,
Speaker 2: but also like, sorry, Bud, you know, I'm not Charlie Brown.
Speaker 2: The third time you pull the football, maybe I'm not
Speaker 2: going to run up on it again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they'll use that. That was brilliant what you said that.
Speaker 1: Tactically you can they're going to use this, this to
Speaker 1: their advantage. If there's everyone, just as it's Team A
Speaker 1: or Team B, you have to have the balls, the
Speaker 1: guts to say no, I'm out now, and then they
Speaker 1: get to change when they realize that's what's happening. It's
Speaker 1: almost like there's been moments where I think is someone
Speaker 1: trying to purposefully sink jd Vance's chances at being the
Speaker 1: next man up here because they're putting him in a
Speaker 1: really strange situation and a lot of the you know,
Speaker 1: then they come out with the podcasters their second third rate,
Speaker 1: they're low IQ and all of these things. Well, then
Speaker 1: why do you go on all of these shows leading
Speaker 1: up to the election because you knew that's where a
Speaker 1: large voting block that would support you where we're at.
Speaker 1: And now once they win these excuse me, once they
Speaker 1: lose these mid terms, I mean, I can't help but
Speaker 1: think that the people like the Laura Lomers and the
Speaker 1: Mark Levinz, the Dan Bongino's are gonna come out and
Speaker 1: say this was default of Tucker, Alex Jones, Megan Kelly,
Speaker 1: Candice Owens. And it's like, well, I thought that those
Speaker 1: people weren't important. Now they're going to be the cause
Speaker 1: of what causes this collapse rather than it's really not conservative.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're running on a philosophy of personal
Speaker 1: responsibility and liberty and religious freedom and these things, well
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't look at someone doing bad and go
Speaker 1: you've got to support that no matter what, because where's
Speaker 1: your personal responsibility at at that point? It doesn't there's
Speaker 1: nothing conservative about I'm backing a person no matter what
Speaker 1: he does to me, no matter how many it's like
Speaker 1: the battered wife syndrome, Like, don't arrest him. He's got
Speaker 1: he loves me sometimes while she's got black eyes. No,
Speaker 1: people don't do that anymore. Enough of them are not
Speaker 1: going to do that where I think it's going to
Speaker 1: sink them in the midterms. Doesn't seem like he cares
Speaker 1: about that almost. It's almost like a self destruction, self
Speaker 1: imposed destruction coming out. And yeah, Nixon used that, and
Speaker 1: when he was winning the vote in the South, he
Speaker 1: knew he was going to get the conservative vote in
Speaker 1: the South, so they didn't have to focus on any
Speaker 1: of the concerns that those men and women had because, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to get their vote no matter what. And
Speaker 1: I think we're sort of in an era beyond that.
Speaker 1: I think obviously the decentralization of media helps that a
Speaker 1: lot too, And we don't have just three voices giving
Speaker 1: us the narrative of the day. Now we can go
Speaker 1: find it anywhere, and you can find alternatives, of course,
Speaker 1: and people are listening to those, and this sort of
Speaker 1: old school, antiquated mentality of listening to Mark Levin or
Speaker 1: listen and a Sean Hannity and just go with whatever
Speaker 1: they say. That's out that's out the window now. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's a it's a failure on the
Speaker 1: end of the administration to sort of realize that. But
Speaker 1: I think there's such a hubris and sort of narcissistic
Speaker 1: positions they're taking in the administration that it's like they
Speaker 1: can't see it. The ones at the very top. I think.
Speaker 1: I do think people like JD. Vans are like, crap,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to go well, but what are you
Speaker 1: going to do?
Speaker 2: So forgive me, Buck, if you will, a little gloating
Speaker 2: because you mentioned the woke right earlier. And I've been
Speaker 2: on this beat for a long time, and I wrote
Speaker 2: an article about six seven months ago called the GOP
Speaker 2: Samson Option, or I basically made the argument that the
Speaker 2: the neo cons were making a run for power, that
Speaker 2: they had secured a certain amount of access to the
Speaker 2: president and that effectively what they we're going to do
Speaker 2: is use setbacks. And this was before the war started,
Speaker 2: so we didn't really know what those setbacks were going
Speaker 2: to come from. As an opportunity to go after the
Speaker 2: woke right, the woke right, which is just the same
Speaker 2: as you know, the woke left. Of course right, it
Speaker 2: says the same word in it. And what's the matter
Speaker 2: with the woke right, Well, they're too right right, they
Speaker 2: care too much about abortion, they care too much about
Speaker 2: you know, Christianity, they're they're too mean, they're too racist.
Speaker 2: And what their line will be is that those people
Speaker 2: have you know, made the right wing toxic. They've they've
Speaker 2: driven off people. And so what we need to do
Speaker 2: is we need another Mitt Romney. We need to track
Speaker 2: back to center. We need to do the things we
Speaker 2: used to do and effectively fold MAGA right back into
Speaker 2: the two thousand and six GOP. And I was completely
Speaker 2: and totally right this obsession with podcasters right, which is
Speaker 2: oddly this sort of mirror image of what we saw
Speaker 2: during the Biden era, when you know, Joe Rogan was
Speaker 2: the big kind of like hate figure. Is what it
Speaker 2: really is is that decentralization. It's the people are allowed
Speaker 2: to say things we don't like in a way we
Speaker 2: can't directly control. And so what we need to poison that, well,
Speaker 2: we need to say those are the reason that you're losing,
Speaker 2: you're losing, not because we can't fulfill our promises, not
Speaker 2: because we're ineffectual, not because we're doing things that are
Speaker 2: just plain stupid ideas, but it's because you want too much,
Speaker 2: you're asking for too much. You need to accept nothing,
Speaker 2: or else you're going to keep losing and also get nothing, which,
Speaker 2: when you phrase it like that, isn't the best pitch line,
Speaker 2: but it's the one they're going with, and that's been
Speaker 2: in my mind completely and totally vindicated. The Samson option,
Speaker 2: of course, is the idea that effectively it's sort of
Speaker 2: a mutual suicide packed, right, they will blow themselves up
Speaker 2: in effect to keep there from being any chance of
Speaker 2: a non Zionist right in power, which I think has
Speaker 2: basically just happened. And the thing that's so just completely
Speaker 2: and totally aggravating about this is that all of this
Speaker 2: political power has been squandered, wasted, right, this golden opportunity,
Speaker 2: both after the assassination of Kirk the attempted assassination of Trump,
Speaker 2: and it's been frittered away into, to be honest, stupid policies,
Speaker 2: right foreign wars the like which we just barely got
Speaker 2: out of that didn't get us anything. Sure, they may
Speaker 2: have made a certain pundits, certain you know, you know
Speaker 2: consultants in Arlington, very wealthy, but fundamentally they didn't work,
Speaker 2: they didn't accomplish anything. And so when you have an
Speaker 2: opportunity this movement that was largely birthed in opposition to
Speaker 2: stupid foreign wars, to this kind of insane you know, Zionism,
Speaker 2: and to see it folded back in so quickly, I
Speaker 2: sent I think I said this to Scott Horton. I
Speaker 2: basically was like, I'm pretty sure time is a flat circle, right,
Speaker 2: that we're right back in two thousand and six all
Speaker 2: over again, that nothing has changed, And of course I
Speaker 2: was being glib. A lot has changed, like look at
Speaker 2: the as you mentioned, the media landscape, but it is
Speaker 2: one of those things where it's like, I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna let you morally blackmail me for refusing to
Speaker 2: sign off on that, because look, I'm not morally opposed
Speaker 2: to war. Like I didn't really have any problems with
Speaker 2: going to get Maduro, even if the reason was stupid.
Speaker 2: It's like whatever, it's how, it's how countries do things. Okay,
Speaker 2: sure I don't think he is literally sponsoring narco terrorism,
Speaker 2: but like whatever. It's how politics is a game of
Speaker 2: you know, red tooth and claw. It's it's not a
Speaker 2: pleasant thing. I get that. But when you run as
Speaker 2: a nativist, you run saying like this is America first,
Speaker 2: it's for you. When you say like, we're going to
Speaker 2: take care of these like long running, festering issues, whether
Speaker 2: it's you know, the transition of children, the you know,
Speaker 2: wave of anti Christian violence we saw after the Dobbs decision,
Speaker 2: where I mean my pastor had his tires slashed and
Speaker 2: mirrors broken off his car. You're like, okay, Like fair enough,
Speaker 2: let's do that. That's the promise. And I understand, you know,
Speaker 2: men are corrupt. Politics doesn't work how it's supposed to.
Speaker 2: But to see all of that burned for the sake
Speaker 2: of Israel and then have those same people lecture you
Speaker 2: for your lack of loyalty, I guess is to be honest,
Speaker 2: it's kind of insulting. And on the generational side, this
Speaker 2: is something you and I have spoken about a couple times.
Speaker 2: There have been a couple interesting reversals right, which is one,
Speaker 2: Trump is now unpopular with white, non college educated voters
Speaker 2: for the first time ever, unpopular with men under thirty.
Speaker 2: And the other interesting thing is that Israel is extremely
Speaker 2: unpopular with even Republicans under I think was the breakpoint
Speaker 2: on that particular one. There was an interesting moment in
Speaker 2: an episode called I Believe It's called Can New York
Speaker 2: City Survive Mumdani's Policies? By Ben Shapiro, where he, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a bit of an aggravating fellow, magnificent eyebrows. I'll
Speaker 2: give him that, yeah, but the in all seriousness, right,
Speaker 2: he basically says, so coming from him, fifty three percent
Speaker 2: of Republicans under fifty are Holocaust deniers. WHOA, Okay, that's strong.
Speaker 2: Where he got that number, Who knows, I believe for
Speaker 2: the Manhattan Institute. Take whatever his definition of that term is,
Speaker 2: and also whatever definition the Manhattan Institute is. So I
Speaker 2: don't literally think that's true, but it's an interesting directional,
Speaker 2: directional signal. So if we can take disapproval of Israel's
Speaker 2: basically a proxy for disapproval of the US government, because
Speaker 2: let's be honest, that's kind of the same thing, right,
Speaker 2: Just we see this this growing mass of people who
Speaker 2: are incredibly disillusioned, incredibly upset with the way things are going,
Speaker 2: and apparently there's no way for them to resolve those issues.
Speaker 2: They got their guy in, nothing happened. They try to
Speaker 2: get a job at Heritage, they get fired for not
Speaker 2: going to ship at dinner. The purge that we've seen
Speaker 2: through all of conservative media, whether it's you know, Heritage,
Speaker 2: other institutions, the young Republicans, I don't know where that
Speaker 2: energy goes. Like it seems like there's this incredible from
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's decentralized media or just the fact
Speaker 2: that it's become harder and harder to kind of cover
Speaker 2: these things up. I don't understand where that that anger
Speaker 2: goes towards, Where that unhappiness goes towards. And we've seen
Speaker 2: men doing things.
Speaker 1: That are.
Speaker 2: Breaking with culture. You know, we've mentioned before in our
Speaker 2: conversations that for like basically the first time in four
Speaker 2: hundred years, there are more men than women in churches,
Speaker 2: predominantly young. I see it at my place of worship.
Speaker 2: I've been to an Orthodox church before, I and everyone
Speaker 2: I have it's a whole lot of young guys. But
Speaker 2: I don't understand where that energy goes. Do you see
Speaker 2: what I'm getting at Buck? It just feels as if
Speaker 2: there's some there's this sort of mass of anger and
Speaker 2: disillusion with no acceptable I guess kind of you know,
Speaker 2: release valve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's going to go somewhere, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't go away. And the irony of some of
Speaker 1: this is that, let's use some sort of generic terms now,
Speaker 1: but there's more people red pilled than there were ten
Speaker 1: years ago, right, certain the irony of some of this
Speaker 1: is that that's because partially of Donald Trump. And I
Speaker 1: saw it even with Boomers that I know, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, until the last six months, they
Speaker 1: were anti neocon. My father got is so heavily on
Speaker 1: the Trump train. A couple of years ago, he got
Speaker 1: an offer in the mail for what was that main
Speaker 1: neocon magazine. I cannot think of it off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, but the biggest one that we all know,
Speaker 1: Nation National Review. It was that, and he said he
Speaker 1: wrote he instead of just throwing the offer away, he
Speaker 1: writes on it, I'm a Trumper America first man, I
Speaker 1: don't want your Neocon trash and mailed it back to them.
Speaker 1: And so that's something that never would have happened without
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And that was a large wave of people
Speaker 1: and then, of course the COVID stuff woke a lot
Speaker 1: of people up the fact that media has been so decentralized.
Speaker 1: There's guys everyone on my fire crew at work, they're
Speaker 1: all thirty two, one girl and three guys. People that
Speaker 1: were not political at all now are coming and to
Speaker 1: me because they know sort of what I do outside
Speaker 1: of work. Hey, did you hear about this conspiracy? And
Speaker 1: then the Epstein stuff and then Pizzagate stuff, And then
Speaker 1: what do you think Israel is so powerful for? Doesn't
Speaker 1: it seem like they control our government? These are people
Speaker 1: that had no interest in politics. They're again thirty two
Speaker 1: years old, and now all of a sudden, that's that's
Speaker 1: a very common Those are very common discussion points at
Speaker 1: my fire station, which is just way different. And of
Speaker 1: course the vaccine and mask and the COVID years, this
Speaker 1: is all like out in the open with people that
Speaker 1: are in their thirties now and certainly in the gen
Speaker 1: X category that I run with too. And you can't
Speaker 1: it's too late. You can't put the toothpaste back in
Speaker 1: the tube. And so when they start to default these
Speaker 1: the people in charge starts a default to this sort
Speaker 1: of antiquated zionistic generically Republican way of governing. Well, it's
Speaker 1: too late to do that anymore. And it's just it's
Speaker 1: funny that Trump's doing it, and he can't really do
Speaker 1: it with public support because of people like himself woke
Speaker 1: too many people up. And so you can go anytime
Speaker 1: you see posts on X from Lumer or Shapiro or
Speaker 1: or Ted Cruz, goodness, just go look under there. And
Speaker 1: I can. I've made this sort of habit of writing.
Speaker 1: I don't even have to read the comments to know
Speaker 1: you're not going to do well because Mark Levin go
Speaker 1: look under his You know everything they write. They're so
Speaker 1: largely and grossly unpopular, and it's like they're trying to
Speaker 1: seek Donald Trump's administration or something like that, Like there's
Speaker 1: some other nefarious underlying reason like that. They're all like,
Speaker 1: we love you Donald. Don't listen to Alex Jones and
Speaker 1: Candice Owens. And it's funny too. There's like moments in time,
Speaker 1: I think where people are placed in certain positions because
Speaker 1: they're needed. I do think despite what Jordan Peterson's subsequent become,
Speaker 1: he was a very important figure to wake a lot
Speaker 1: of young men up to certain things. A lot of
Speaker 1: them woke up to Christianity because of him, and then
Speaker 1: he sort of was like an entry point, and now
Speaker 1: we've moved beyond him. Donald Trump was the same sort
Speaker 1: of figure. He woke a lot of people up, a
Speaker 1: lot of people on the right that were older, said oh,
Speaker 1: I can be against these wars that have been destroying
Speaker 1: the economy and things in America and certainly over the
Speaker 1: countries overseas, and I can sound like I'm tough and
Speaker 1: not like a whiny liberal. And so he was placed
Speaker 1: in a moment in time he was necessary, certainly to
Speaker 1: push back against what would have been the devil herself
Speaker 1: in Hillary Clinton winning something. And now it feels like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you were important for a moment of time. We've moved
Speaker 1: on and now on to next. I don't know what
Speaker 1: next is going to be, because that energies you can't
Speaker 1: go It doesn't go away. My priest once told me
Speaker 1: I was asking him about what we call the passions Orthodoxy.
Speaker 1: Catholics might call it the deadly sins or something, when
Speaker 1: someone's struggling with something and you counsel them, How do
Speaker 1: you like stamp that out? And he said, we don't
Speaker 1: stamp it out. We redirect the energy into something else.
Speaker 1: The energy is going to be there no matter what.
Speaker 1: It will find an outlet. We don't want the outlet
Speaker 1: outlet to be x y, you know, pornography or alcoholism
Speaker 1: or you know, prostitution or something. So we redirect the
Speaker 1: energy into something virtuous and within the church. That's sort
Speaker 1: of what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Again, I don't know where this out energy is going
Speaker 1: to find its outlet. This anger you're saying, but it's
Speaker 1: not going away, like you said. The polls, I've never
Speaker 1: seen support for a foreign country swing so far in
Speaker 1: the other direction. It was like a few years ago
Speaker 1: for Israel, it was like plus, it was a lot,
Speaker 1: and now it's minus, and then it's in the minus
Speaker 1: category just in a few years. If you would have said,
Speaker 1: you know, four years ago, hey, national support for Israel's
Speaker 1: going to swing from plus fifty to negative something, I think,
Speaker 1: what happened? What's going to happen in the next few years,
Speaker 1: because that's drastic. Yet here we are. It's such a
Speaker 1: wild time to be alive, such a wild timeline. I
Speaker 1: also predict whoever wants to win, maybe in the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: but certainly in the Republican Party national offices or big offices.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to denounce Israel. You're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to be sort of in the middle
Speaker 1: on it, because we don't trust you. If you're in
Speaker 1: the middle on it, you're going to have to specifically
Speaker 1: come out explicitly against Israel if you want to win. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I don't think you've got a shot.
Speaker 2: So our mutual friend Pete Kenyona is Darryl Cooper and
Speaker 2: one other guy whose name I can't remember, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: did a really interesting episode a while back on American
Speaker 2: physicist and philosopher Thomas Kohn, who coined the phrase paradigm
Speaker 2: shift like that's how it entered the American lexicon, And
Speaker 2: what he argues in that book is effectively that the
Speaker 2: paradigm sets what is considered to be quote unquote scientific right.
Speaker 2: We can imagine this is sort of the Overton window
Speaker 2: what's allowable, And he basically makes the argument that this is,
Speaker 2: to be honest, a slightly biological function, that effectively a
Speaker 2: paradigm exists, it answers questions at the time, and then
Speaker 2: it sort of decays for years afterwards until such a
Speaker 2: point where it becomes untenable, the people who believed in
Speaker 2: it were raised and it sort of die and a
Speaker 2: new paradigm exists. And I think that people mistakenly viewed
Speaker 2: Trump as a new paradigm instead of, in my mind,
Speaker 2: the kind of final gasps of one, because fundamentally, like
Speaker 2: I look at Trump and he's kind of just like
Speaker 2: w E. Bill Clinton functionally, you know, like he's outrageous,
Speaker 2: he says crazy stuff. You know, he's got the big hair,
Speaker 2: the big personality, but any individual issue isn't really that
Speaker 2: crazy that outside of what is normal. And both on
Speaker 2: the right and the left, you're seeing a rejection of
Speaker 2: the current paradigm, whether you want to call it the
Speaker 2: neo conservative, neoliberal, whatever, the post sixty four version of
Speaker 2: America is. I realize those terms don't necessarily apply in
Speaker 2: that entire time span, but give me some leway on this.
Speaker 2: I'm cooking, as the kids saying so. On the left,
Speaker 2: of course, we saw this early with socialism. Right, that
Speaker 2: went from being a scary bad word you couldn't talk
Speaker 2: about to you is something you can get on well
Speaker 2: designed merchandise from the zor on Mamdani merch star. It's
Speaker 2: something that for people under a certain age carries no
Speaker 2: weight whatsoever. I think I was eating with, you know,
Speaker 2: one of my wife's friends, who's probably fifty something, you
Speaker 2: know kids our age. Husband's actually a wild a wild firefighter,
Speaker 2: which is weird coincidence. But the point is when he's
Speaker 2: off somewhere, she's home and we, you know, invite her
Speaker 2: over for dinner. She hasn't got monels to do, and
Speaker 2: we're talking to her, and she's a very smart woman,
Speaker 2: very well read, and she couldn't wrap her head around
Speaker 2: the fact that socialism had entered common parlance. Again, it
Speaker 2: wasn't scary because when she grew up that was synonymous
Speaker 2: with the devil. It was totally beyond the pale where look,
Speaker 2: I don't like socialism, you know, I went through the
Speaker 2: same Austrian phace that a lot of guys did. But
Speaker 2: like if I met a socialist, I wouldn't feel like
Speaker 2: I met a child molester. You know. It's not like
Speaker 2: I had to wash my hand after shaking it, and
Speaker 2: I might because socialists don't shower much, but you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. And so I think they were first
Speaker 2: to the punch with that kind of full not full,
Speaker 2: but partial kind of dispensing of a previous set of values,
Speaker 2: and I think what we're seeing on the right is
Speaker 2: a very similar thing. You see this generationally as well.
Speaker 2: There's been a huge uproar, primarily in the UK because
Speaker 2: the UK got hit by feminism in the same way
Speaker 2: that we did by racism, if that makes sense. Like
Speaker 2: it's sort of a similarly psychral concept on both sides
Speaker 2: of the Atlantic. But you see all of these horrific
Speaker 2: or horrified excuse me, think pieces about the rise of
Speaker 2: Andrew Tate, the rise of the tradwife, new worrying statistics
Speaker 2: that a higher percentage of women ever think they should
Speaker 2: obey their husbands. And of course these are relatively minor changes.
Speaker 2: Sixteen percent of women saying they should always obey their
Speaker 2: husband is not a majority by any means, but it
Speaker 2: is three times the rate of baby boomer women who
Speaker 2: say the same thing. They're like, okay, that's a paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: It's a radically different way of thinking, and on both
Speaker 2: the right and the left. The right we don't really
Speaker 2: need to talk about because it's what you and I
Speaker 2: are doing, Buck, It's all of our friends, all of
Speaker 2: our associates, a bunch of other people we don't even like,
Speaker 2: but are similarly rejecting. I guess you could say, like
Speaker 2: the right wing paradigm of Ronald Reagan, the mold that
Speaker 2: every politician has sort of existed in.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: I think there's a general sense that whatever this paradigm is,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, it is coming to
Speaker 2: an end. No longer has a way to explain why
Speaker 2: things are happening. The carrots and sticks associated the rewards
Speaker 2: and then the punishments, those are kind of falling apart,
Speaker 2: and so there's not much left in it right. That
Speaker 2: box can't contain what needs to happen. And so in
Speaker 2: my mind, what's really seeing is sort of an organization
Speaker 2: for the next round of the game, right, who are
Speaker 2: going to be, what are the sides going to be?
Speaker 2: Who's going to set the next paradigm? Because I think
Speaker 2: your point about Donald Trump being the man for the moment,
Speaker 2: not the man for this moment, I think is quite accurate,
Speaker 2: and I think there were chances where he could have.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a version of January sixth that's very,
Speaker 2: very different. There's a version of Butler Pa. There's a
Speaker 2: version of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which are very different,
Speaker 2: and maybe he could have made that transition and become
Speaker 2: the man who set the rules for a new era.
Speaker 2: But seemingly whatever this round is is coming to a close.
Speaker 2: Paradigm is dying, and clearly like at the point where
Speaker 2: you have the most popular podcaster, by extension of the
Speaker 2: most popular media figure in America saying things that you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago would have gotten you completely and totally
Speaker 2: deplatformed about I don't know, a certain nation in the
Speaker 2: Middle East. You're like, Okay, something is shifted, something has moved,
Speaker 2: This is moving out of it's moving into the realm
Speaker 2: of the scientific right to kind of crib a line
Speaker 2: from Kun there. And so to me, that's what I
Speaker 2: sort of feel like we're seeing, we're seeing the emergence
Speaker 2: of a new political framework. And look, there's entirely possible that,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever our side is, we don't win this
Speaker 2: and we just get like Brazilian communism for sixty years,
Speaker 2: which sounds really really awful. That's a possibility. But I
Speaker 2: think that this kind of like gay neoliberal globalism, whether
Speaker 2: right or left flavored, and my mind is dead like
Speaker 2: on the on the front of globalism, is just physically
Speaker 2: not going to be possible anymore. Right, the straight up
Speaker 2: hooror moves is closed, whether we want it to be
Speaker 2: or not. Like that that changes the state of play.
Speaker 2: And so I don't know, maybe that's an overly theoretical
Speaker 2: way to look at it, but it does feel like
Speaker 2: we actually are going through a real paradigm shift, and
Speaker 2: what we're seeing with this generational divide is simply who
Speaker 2: will be left with a decaying sort of model of
Speaker 2: the world and who moves on. And look, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that people in an old paradigm don't still have
Speaker 2: lots of money, don't still have lots of power, But
Speaker 2: I think that it will be sort of like you know,
Speaker 2: the the old right after FDRs in power, where like
Speaker 2: you look at tafts like presidential priorities, and like who
Speaker 2: cares about this at all? It's not relevant to how
Speaker 2: the system is. It becomes something completely and totally past
Speaker 2: itself by date. And so that sort of feels like
Speaker 2: what we're going through now. At the same time, as
Speaker 2: I said earlier, there's an immense amount of polarization. You know,
Speaker 2: there is both a far left and a far right,
Speaker 2: but there seems to be no life left in really
Speaker 2: the kind of like old model of politics. And ironically enough,
Speaker 2: these insane Zionists are making that problem worse by kicking
Speaker 2: out anyone under thirty. You know, has happened to heritage,
Speaker 2: that happened at you know, the young Republicans, College Republicans.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Sorry, it's been a long diatribe for me,
Speaker 2: but I'm curious to get your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Buck, Yeah, that makes sense. It reminds me. Paul Gottfried
Speaker 1: has talked about this countless times. I believe he wrote
Speaker 1: a book about it. But the purge that happened back
Speaker 1: sort of when the neo cons took over, you had
Speaker 1: people like Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan to an extent, although
Speaker 1: he managed to keep somewhat of a high profile. But yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly Paul Gottfried and you know, we ended up I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of the fellow that was going to
Speaker 1: be in the Ronald Reagan administration and they had sort
Speaker 1: of a coup against him because he liked the South
Speaker 1: or something like this, and we ended up with Bill Bennett,
Speaker 1: who was a lifelong just turd in the punch bowl basically,
Speaker 1: And so they tried that back then, and it worked
Speaker 1: because again everything was more centralized as far as media outlets,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of gatekeepers, and that sort
Speaker 1: of time is gone, and so this seemed more like
Speaker 1: a cartoon version of that the purge when Trump fires
Speaker 1: out that truth social post about the podcasters and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can't kick those people out. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can kick him out of the administration. I suppose heritage,
Speaker 1: but like again, Tucker's audience is Tucker's audience. Candice, Alex,
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan to some extent, Theo Vaughn to some extent,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who's listeners were carrying the MAGA
Speaker 1: movement to for a short period of time. They don't
Speaker 1: just go away. And so it does feel like there's
Speaker 1: this new paradigm shift. And it's interesting. I think you
Speaker 1: were saying how Trump could have done such and such
Speaker 1: and could have. I guess in theory he still could.
Speaker 1: There's two more years, but it seemed like the next
Speaker 1: man up to actually challenge this sort of neo conservative,
Speaker 1: neoliberal paradigm could have been Charlie Kirk. And I would
Speaker 1: have never thought that I wasn't a hater by any means,
Speaker 1: but I just wasn't. I didn't follow him particularly, I
Speaker 1: just knew who he was and sort of knew his stick.
Speaker 1: Then you start hearing things post death on Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 1: the text that he was sending people like Candas and
Speaker 1: Tucker's story about how after he went to this retreat
Speaker 1: where all the Zionists were basically threatening him, he goes
Speaker 1: to Tucker's cabin or whatever in Maine and sort of
Speaker 1: events and says like these guys are scaring me, and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, and then he dies. Now, I won't
Speaker 1: paint a conspiracy. I don't know who did what, who
Speaker 1: controlled what. I'm not going to get canvass Olwen's on
Speaker 1: us here and start trotting out theories, but sure is
Speaker 1: weird coincidence. It's like, I'm not going to come out
Speaker 1: and say that something other than the mainstream story is
Speaker 1: what we've been told is has happened. But it's if
Speaker 1: you were to paint it as line up some facts,
Speaker 1: and you certainly could draw a picture that looked like
Speaker 1: something other than what they're telling has happened happened. Same
Speaker 1: thing with Butler pa even why is it shut down
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like you don't want to dig
Speaker 1: any further into that. If you're the head of the
Speaker 1: government and the assassination, the temp was on you, No,
Speaker 1: that's you know, wash our hands of that. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: But yet the guy that shot Adam over the weekend
Speaker 1: in the press Corps event, like we know everything about
Speaker 1: him in a day, and we've got his manifest and
Speaker 1: where he went to school. All these things come out.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Why can't we find that about Charlie Kirk's person.
Speaker 1: Why can't we find that about the Butler Pa person,
Speaker 1: even the guy and down in Florida that made the attempt.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things. When you leave things unanswered,
Speaker 1: you create room for conspiracy theories, and then the conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories come out and then we all get shouted down
Speaker 1: like we're insane or something. And it's like these wouldn't
Speaker 1: exist if you would just come out with pictures, factual
Speaker 1: evidence of everything and tell us what went down. So
Speaker 1: that's been troubling. But yeah, it feels like they've tried
Speaker 1: this new purge and it's just again, the toothpaste is
Speaker 1: out of the tube. You can't put this stuff back in.
Speaker 1: The anger is still there, the angst the energy bubbling
Speaker 1: right there under the surface on the right, and it
Speaker 1: feels like Israel also knew this is our last sort
Speaker 1: of chance to do this greater Israel pride that's been
Speaker 1: being pushed for decades now. And I was a General
Speaker 1: Wesley Clark that came out where he said that he
Speaker 1: saw the list of the seven countries or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: now it's taken much longer than the timeline that they
Speaker 1: were he was giving us initially. But it's like, finally,
Speaker 1: it's our last chance we can do this. And that's
Speaker 1: sort of what's going on now. And I don't know
Speaker 1: again if they're threatening Trump or what they've gone on him,
Speaker 1: what's happening there. It appears something's happening. And I would
Speaker 1: almost give him grace. If the threats are on his
Speaker 1: family and he's doing this, maybe I have empathy for that.
Speaker 1: If they're on him and he's doing this, not as
Speaker 1: much empathy. You know, be a man, be a martyr.
Speaker 1: You're eighty years old, stand up for what's right and
Speaker 1: make it your last gasp to save the union that
Speaker 1: you so lovingly speak about and we're supposed to put first.
Speaker 1: And now it's just a big mess and again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I'm curious to see where things happen so fast.
Speaker 1: You alluded to this early. I probably can't even fathom
Speaker 1: what things are going to be like by twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Who knows what will have happened, how many more attempts
Speaker 1: on people's lives or have well, how many major media
Speaker 1: figures will have a lot of attempts on their lives.
Speaker 1: I don't know where we're going to be at financially,
Speaker 1: as far as the economy goes, What Israel's going to
Speaker 1: look like, what Iran's going to look like, what Lebanon
Speaker 1: is going to look like. I can't even imagine it,
Speaker 1: but I suspect it will be quite different than where
Speaker 1: we're speaking at on things right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those things where any there's been
Speaker 2: so much infighting, and I kind of understand it, right,
Speaker 2: there's a lull, people are kind of unsure of where
Speaker 2: they stand. But one of the things that I've kind
Speaker 2: of committed on is that at a certain point, it
Speaker 2: feels like the are in the air, right, we don't
Speaker 2: quite know where things are falling, and so it's like, well,
Speaker 2: just dude, don't take yourself out, all right? We don't
Speaker 2: really know where this goes. We don't really know where
Speaker 2: this develops, and so to to sort of neutralize yourself
Speaker 2: before you even see the next hand of cards, in
Speaker 2: my mind is is short sighted. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 2: I was joking about, you know, the fact that the
Speaker 2: last twenty years, if just one giant loop, you know
Speaker 2: that we're back, you know, war in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Their country music is back on the radio and they've
Speaker 2: got you know, white kids from Alabama and recruiting ads,
Speaker 2: and Okay, on a certain superficial cynical level, that's true,
Speaker 2: but it does feel like first as tragedy, then as farce,
Speaker 2: where it's like the tenor in the tone has shifted
Speaker 2: so dramatically. This war is so unpopular. And you were
Speaker 2: talking about your you know, your co work, right, the
Speaker 2: guys on your team, And I think about this like,
Speaker 2: I'll invite people over a couple times a month, whatever,
Speaker 2: if there's a decent UFC fight on nothing major, just
Speaker 2: a few guys sitting around in my basement. And the
Speaker 2: amount of what some would say casual anti Semitism that's
Speaker 2: passed around as jokes where it's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: some guys you know, didn't send in the Venmo request
Speaker 2: for the beer run, and it's oh, Rabbi blank and oh,
Speaker 2: you know, do you need to give that to BB?
Speaker 2: And these are guys who aren't I don't know what
Speaker 2: I do, or they might know what I do. They
Speaker 2: don't care. There's normal guys. And I don't understand how
Speaker 2: this system as it exists. It can bend on a
Speaker 2: lot of things, it can absorb a lot of things,
Speaker 2: but that commitment is so close to the center of
Speaker 2: what the purpose of this government is. I don't think
Speaker 2: it can absorb that, and so seemingly according to you know,
Speaker 2: Republican officials all across you know, the US, they're going
Speaker 2: to try and make it illegal. Right, we have sweeping
Speaker 2: anti semitism laws. And we understand, right when we say
Speaker 2: anti Semitism, we don't mean crystal knocked. We mean not
Speaker 2: particularly liking one bb Netanya who sends one of his
Speaker 2: soldiers to desecrate a statue of Jesus. Right, we understand
Speaker 2: what we mean when you say that. I don't understand
Speaker 2: how the system folds that sentiment in because they clearly
Speaker 2: made an attempt at the raw raw America. You know,
Speaker 2: here's here's a kill cam of us blowing up an
Speaker 2: unarmed Iranian ship. And I'll be honest, man, Personally, I
Speaker 2: don't care about Iranian shipping. It doesn't keep me up
Speaker 2: at night. But it's clear that that isn't for me.
Speaker 2: It's clear that whatever this thing is, this paradigm doesn't
Speaker 2: work for me or guys like me. And so it's
Speaker 2: not out of some you know, blind loyalty to the Ayahtola.
Speaker 2: I'm not getting paid by the Chai cooms. I'm not
Speaker 2: getting paid by Katar, although if any parties I have
Speaker 2: named are interested, gotta link in the description, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to it. But in all seriousness, right,
Speaker 2: the ability to spin a narrative is completely and totally broken.
Speaker 2: And in my mind, the ability to spin a narrative
Speaker 2: really broke during the Biden advent. You know, when we're
Speaker 2: the infamous you know speech where he's you know, flanked
Speaker 2: with marines, the red light, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, threatening bombing Americans. It's like it felt like
Speaker 2: that was a definitive off the rails moment, where the
Speaker 2: idea that we were going to go back to normal
Speaker 2: Obama or normal Bill Clinton or normal. It was just
Speaker 2: not on the table. And yeah, I don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: things are going to be particularly pleasant by certain metrics,
Speaker 2: but it is interesting and if nothing else, I'm quite
Speaker 2: convinced that this paradigm, this Overton window is rapidly breaking down,
Speaker 2: if for no other reason than the fact that our
Speaker 2: country is more is less and less American, and quite
Speaker 2: simply Somali's do not care about any of this stuff.
Speaker 2: And in another deep irony, right, it does seem as
Speaker 2: if they've sort of done this to themselves that if
Speaker 2: they had been willing to just let certain things slide
Speaker 2: define day however you will, that it would have been,
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of we could have kept politics
Speaker 2: running on that eternal narrow band of you know, the
Speaker 2: five by eight index card of allowable opinions, as one
Speaker 2: guy once said, But they wanted more, they wanted more quick,
Speaker 2: and that ended up breaking the whole thing down. Buck,
Speaker 2: this has been a ton of fun, man, We've got
Speaker 2: to talk more often. It's been too long.
Speaker 1: I know, the people find fast. They can find me
Speaker 1: anywhere you find podcasts counterflow with Buck Johnson. I have
Speaker 1: a new substack that I always forget to advertise. Buck
Speaker 1: Johnson dot substack dot com where I actually write pieces,
Speaker 1: and then of course I put most clips of episodes
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And that's Oh. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter or x at buck Rebel b U c k
Speaker 1: R E b E L.
Speaker 2: Well, after we wrap up, be sure to link that
Speaker 2: because you can do this weird thing where I basically
Speaker 2: make you a co author, so everyone who sees it
Speaker 2: on substack just clicks a link and they're at your stuff. Yes,
Speaker 2: got it, so send me that. It's very professional to
Speaker 2: talk about that live on air, so to speak. As
Speaker 2: far as my stuff, Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 2: anywhere you listen to podcasts, what the episodes early in
Speaker 2: ad free. I know the ads are annoying, but you
Speaker 2: boys got to pay a mortgage somehow, Well you do
Speaker 2: so on Patreon, substack or gum road youso check out
Speaker 2: our sponsor, Fox and Son's Coffee. I was really mad
Speaker 2: because I thought I was out of coffee, but it
Speaker 2: turns out no, I had just misplaced my Fox and
Speaker 2: Sons coffee in the fridge. And let me tell you,
Speaker 2: it's pretty good. I was glad to have found it. Buck,
Speaker 2: as I'm sure you're aware. It feels like the real
Speaker 2: dividing line of if you were an adult or not
Speaker 2: is if you have a giant freezer. Like that's the
Speaker 2: point where it's like kind of like you made it.
Speaker 2: You know, you made it, and I got one yes
Speaker 2: buying in bulk, you know, yes, yeah yeah. But point
Speaker 2: is I did lose my coffee in there under like
Speaker 2: a pile of millet flour or whatever my wife had
Speaker 2: in there. So the point is highly recommend it. It's
Speaker 2: good stuff. You should check it out again. Buck, It's
Speaker 2: great speaking to you and everyone at home. Keep your
Speaker 2: head up. Well, I can't last forever. Good Night,