Massie's Mess, Trump Victorious & Dr. Oz's War on Fraud

Summary

The Ben Shapiro Show — "Massie's Mess, Trump Victorious & Dr. Oz's War on Fraud"

Date: May 21, 2026
Host: Ben Shapiro with The Daily Wire panel
Special Guest: Dr. Oz

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the recent political downfall of Congressman Thomas Massie, the dynamics of Trump’s ongoing control of the GOP, conservative concerns about anti-Semitic rhetoric and the "horseshoe" theory linking far left and right extremism, and a revealing interview with Dr. Oz about rampant healthcare fraud. The panel engages in spirited, often humorous debate about right-wing politics, media influence, and the current state of American discourse.

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Key Discussion Points & Segments

1. The "Pine Cone Gate" & The Fall of Thomas Massie

(04:00 – 08:26)

• Laura Loomer’s Exposé: The panel discusses right-wing activist Laura Loomer breaking the story on Massie's alleged affairs and bizarre "pine cone" nickname, questioning the impact of such scandals on Kentucky voters.
  • “Did pine cone gate make a difference to the people of Kentucky?” (05:26, B)
  • Ben jokes, “If it had been cactus gate, that would have been a completely different thing.” (05:26, A)
• Political Fallout: Consensus that personal scandal mattered less than political missteps, especially antagonism to Trump and controversial anti-Israel comments.
  • “You don't run a campaign in Northern Kentucky in which your chief issue is Israel and the Jews. That's the dumbest thing you can do.” (07:39, A)
  • “He was acting like a guy who was about to lose. He was correct.” (08:26, D)

2. Trump’s Dominance & the Realignment of the GOP

(08:26 – 12:46)

• The panel discusses the decisive role Trump played in Massie's primary defeat, despite significant pro-Israel donor involvement.

  • “The reason he went down is the same reason all those other guys went down. And it's because they opposed Trump and Trump owns the party.” (08:40, D)
  • The group debates if anti-Semitic rhetoric was the cause or the symptom of Massie's downfall.

• Bachya argues:

  • “I really think it was the tonal shift, the way that he talked about Israel and it stopped being the same as the way he talked about Ukraine. …It started sounding like he was attacking American Jews.” (13:07, B)

Notable Moment:

• Massie’s Concession Speech Clip:
  • “I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede and it took a while to find Ed G in Tel Aviv.” (14:41, E)
  • Panel reacts critically, labeling the tone "gross."

3. The Libertarian Brand & New Media Influence

(15:52 – 19:50)

• Discussion on libertarian figures in politics, Massie as an obstructionist, and whether bucking the party is a political virtue.

  • “You’re a politician. It’s like Aaron Judd saying I’m not going to play baseball. You know, it just doesn’t make any sense.” (09:10, C)
  • “He started running a campaign where it was like what if I have over podcast Nazis to my house?” (09:41, A)

• Ben, summing up Massie’s media play:

  • “He was trying to steer into the dollars and cents of podcast stand and making a future for himself.” (09:53, A)

• Panel critiques the rise of conspiratorial and anti-Semitic rhetoric as a strategy to build post-politics media celebrity.

4. The "Horseshoe" Theory & Antisemitism

(21:21 – 22:58)

• Bhatia outlines distinctions between far-left and far-right anti-Semitism, praising Republicans for more aggressively expelling such extremists than the left:
  • “The right has done, in my view, an admirable job of telling these guys like Massie, this party has no place for you. … On my show, you've had congressmen, senators, members of the cabinet saying, what happened to Tucker Carlson? I would be surprised if Tucker Carlson is at the next rnc. … The left is just allowing it to metastasize.” (21:21, B)
  • Drew agrees: “Republicans have been much better about this than the [Democrats].” (22:50, C)

5. Massie’s Future & “Exit Strategy” Politics

(24:03 – 31:50)

• Speculation on whether Massie or similar "woke right" figures could run for President or establish new media careers after ouster.

  • “The avatar of the psycho woke right movement… Massie MTG ticket—that could do serious double-digit numbers.” (24:03, A)

• Panel debates whether anti-Semitic conspiracy as “exit strategy” offers influence, but fails as an “entry strategy” for rising in mainstream politics.

  • Ben notes failure of Tucker-endorsed candidates:
    • “The anti-Semitism and the conspiratorial muddiness … that's an excellent exit strategy and it's a very poor entry strategy.” (30:54, A)

• Discussion turns to the possible role of Massie’s grief and emotional state post-wife’s death in political self-destruction.

  • “He started to fall afoul of Trump and get a little bit more eccentric than usual right around the time his wife died. … Is that too much psychobabble for political analysis?” (31:50, D)
  • Mixed agreement, with Domenech: “He became unrecognizable to a lot of us who interacted with him over the years.” (32:20, F)

6. Media Influence vs. Political Reality

(33:20 – 37:43)

• Panel reflects on Twitter and podcast “echo chambers” as disconnected from political outcomes.
  • “Twitter’s not real life. Sometimes I worry about that… there’s a big chasm between the hardcore politics on the ground and the political media.” (33:20, D)
• Domenech: “If we had a functional political media that wasn't just interested in carrying water for the Democrats, the narrative after last night would be that Republicans are way more unified than Democrats…” (36:43, F)
• Unity as a political virtue:
  • “We need party unity. Not to be lemmings … but we need … to win elections.” (39:25, D)
  • Ben points out, “Unity has to be around a thing. Right now, the unity in the Republican Party is around … the Trump administration.” (39:25, A)

7. Left-Wing Radicalization and Rising Threats

(40:42 – 45:22)

• The rise of radical left candidates (DSA-backed, AOC-endorsed) is discussed as a major story being ignored by legacy media.
  • “Democratic Party is hugging him with both arms right now… the next generation of the Democratic Party is psychotic, I mean fully damned crazy.” (41:25, A)
• Growing concerns about “Russian Revolution-style” violence being normalized, including against business leaders:
  • “If you had said to me 15 years ago that there would be an assassination attempt on the President, I’d have said ... but now ... people like Jeff Bezos or … Sam Altman … have to walk around with 24/7 security ... That is a completely different thing.” (45:05, A)

8. Terrorism, Political Violence, and the State’s Role

(45:22 – 46:26)

• Comparison to anarchist bombings and violence from 100 years ago.
  • “If we don't [crack down], I fear that the problem won't resolve itself on its own.” (46:26, D)

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Feature Interview: Dr. Oz on Healthcare Fraud

(48:41 – 58:57)

1. The Scale of Fraud

• Dr. Oz describes an estimated $100 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fraud that, if eliminated, could double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund.
  • “If you just took the fraud out … that would allow us to double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund.” (48:59, E)

2. Types & Tactics of Healthcare Fraud

• Durable medical equipment scams (South Florida), fake hospices (Los Angeles), and personal care attendant abuse (New York) highlighted as rampant, often enabled by state inaction and union ties.
  • “We have twice as many of these durable medical equipment suppliers as McDonalds in South Florida...” (50:05, E)
  • “One-third of all hospices in the entire country are in Los Angeles…” (50:05, E)
  • “The number one job … in New York State is a personal care service attendant. …It's become a jobs program.” (51:12, E)

3. Political Incentives & Systemic Failure

• Fraud sustained because state politicians benefit from jobs, union dues, and government largesse, at the expense of national taxpayers.
  • “They're unionizing those workers ... that all flows back potentially for political patronage purposes to support the single dominant party...” (51:50, E)

4. Path Forward

• Dr. Oz advocates for greater federal oversight, interagency cooperation, state accountability, and public support to root out fraud.
  • “We need an all of government effort. And finally governors have to feel the pressure…” (53:51, E)
  • On politics: “When Republicans win the White House, everybody wants to be the Secretary Treasury ... a Democrat wins, they want to get control of Health and Human Services, cause that's where the big money is.” (56:35, E)

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Selected Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ben Shapiro: “You don't run a campaign in Northern Kentucky in which your chief issue is Israel and the Jews. That's the dumbest thing you can do.” (07:39)
• Bhatia Ungar-Sargon: “The right has done ... an admirable job of telling these guys like Massie, this party has no place for you. … The left is just allowing [anti-Semitism] to metastasize.” (21:21)
• Dr. Oz: “If you just took the fraud out … that would allow us to double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund.” (48:59)
• Ben Domenech: “He became unrecognizable to a lot of us who interacted with him over the years.” (32:20)
• Michael Knowles: “Twitter’s not real life. …there’s a big chasm between the hardcore politics on the ground and the political media.” (33:20)

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Memorable Moments

• Comic riffing on Massie’s "pine cone" nickname and the hypothetical "cactus gate." (05:26)
• Philosophical debate on whether anti-Semites are more a symptom of online "brain worms" or deliberate political calculation. (28:09 – 31:50)
• Bhatia’s impromptu plug: “If I may just do a short plug for my book, the Jews and the Left, they're not the same. These are not the same.” (22:38)
• Dr. Oz’s breakdown of health care fraud and the observation: “We have twice as many ... equipment suppliers as McDonalds in South Florida, it's impossible that that many people want to sell you wheelchairs.” (50:05)

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Conclusion & Final Thoughts

This episode stands out for incisive commentary on GOP realignment, the online media-political feedback loop, and the nature of modern anti-Semitism on both the far right and left. The practical, high-stakes discussion with Dr. Oz about health care fraud brings policy focus to the end of the show, while the panel’s sharp banter and heated debates provide entertaining and accessible analysis. Ultimately, the episode paints a picture of a party disciplined and purging its outliers, a left with growing radical elements, and the enduring tug-of-war over the soul of American politics.

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For listeners who missed the episode:

• You get a granular account of the Massie scandal, its context, and why it mattered;
• A robust debate about the wave of populism and anti-Semitism crossing ideological lines;
• Concrete policy discussion on health care fraud from Dr. Oz;
• And, the consistent message: Trump remains the key power center of the GOP, with both the dangers and opportunities that brings.

Transcript

[A]

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[C]

Why aren't we on the air, by the way?

[A]

What was that?

[C]

Why are we here? Why aren't we? Aren't we? Why aren't we?

[A]

We're still, we're waiting. We're waiting for Knowles. I mean, Knowles is, is like. I don't know, he's smoking a cigar. I don't know. Waiting for. Why are you asking? Claving. If you had not brought Knowles to a dinner party 15 years ago, none of this would have been a problem.

[C]

It is my fault. It just is.

[A]

Such a good 100. Your fault.

[C]

So everything, everything winds up being my fault. It's funny, you know, Whatever happens, it all comes back to me.

[A]

Yeah, that's true. Fine. Let's just do that.

[C]

I don't think it's an improvement. I think. Yeah, no, I think it raises the level of the conversation.

[A]

Okay, fine. Okay, so what are we going to talk about? We're going to start talking about pine cones or what? Like, you know what?

[C]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I hate to admit this. I don't know what the pine cone thing is about.

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna have Baya explain this to you so that I don't get in HR trouble by you. Explain the pine cone thing to Clay Van, because I, I, I, I be sued?

[B]

Well, I don't know, like, I don't want to get sued, but. All right. And also, the reason I bring this up is because are we, are we actually recording already?

[A]

And we're all recording all this, but we'll cut out anything that is unpleasant, which is to say three quarters of the show will be cut out.

[B]

No, no. So I will, I, I Want to give Laura Loomer credit because I feel like she often has great reporting and she never gets credited for it, but she will go into the gutter and get the people and find the people. And like, last night was really Laura Loomer's night. And what she. She found a woman who claims to have had an affair with Thomas Massie two months after his wife died. And the things that she claimed he asked her to do, they're perverse. I will not repeat them. But in part of her. What she sort of. What Laura got out of her was that Massie allegedly also had an affair with Lauren Boebert, and in text messages would refer to his genitals, specifically his male member, as his pine cone. And I truly wanna know. I know, I know it's horrific, but I truly wanna know. Like, I'm sure a lot of us feel that, like, the downfall of Thomas Massie was sort of of a piece with the downfall of the podcast area and the influencers with no influence. And these people who have turned rabidly anti Semitic on the right who pretend to have influence. There's that. There's the fact he really. But to me, I really do want to know, like, did pine cone gate make a difference to the people of Kentucky?

[A]

I'm going to go know that the pine cone gate really didn't make a difference. If it had been cactus gate, that would have been a completely different thing. I'm just honestly, like, what other parts of the natural world would be worse to label your member than a pine. Really? You're running into, like, see an enemy gate. Like, I don't. I don't know, Coral gate. Like, what are we talking here? And he was. And apparently he was texting with women using this. This name, right? I mean, like, I think that's where the text came from. Is in a text with a woman, he was referring, allegedly to his member as a pine cone.

[D]

And I know I am late here, but I do want to tell the audience we have the pine cone coming on, actually later in the show. So be sure to stay tuned because this is friendly fire. Friends, like these coolies. Enemies. Friends, like these coonies. Enemies.

[A]

That's pornographic.

[D]

Is that. Yeah, well, that's for behind the paywall, obviously. We, you know, you gotta subscribe for that. You don't get to put the pine cone onto YouTube.

[A]

Only pine cones.

[C]

Can I ask. I wanna ask a question about this, though. Cause the only part of this I actually heard, and maybe this is selective deafness on my part, but the Only part of this I heard was the part that he had an affair with a woman two months after his wife died, which I didn't think was so bad. I mean, what was she gonna do, come back? I mean, she died, he moved down.

[A]

Whoa.

[D]

It is interesting, you know, like, on all of the dirt that they were digging up on Massie right before the election, it is interesting that look, I mean, a lot of it was, like, raised a lot of eyebrows and probably didn't represent good judgment if it was true, but. Yeah, right. You're right, Drew. They didn't allege that he cheated on his wife. They didn't allege that kind of impropriety. So it's kind of typical political stuff. Some of it was kind of weird, like the pine cones or whatever. But all of it together, I was confident. I'd be curious to know what you all were thinking. Yesterday, I predicted Massie was gonna go down. I didn't know it was gonna be a nine point swing, but I predicted he was gonna go down. And the reason why, it wasn't just cause of the big, beautiful bill. It wasn't just cause of the pro Israel donors. It wasn't just cause of this, that, or the other thing. It was because he was acting like a guy who was about to lose. He was correct. Right?

[E]

Yeah.

[D]

All right, thanks.

[A]

Yeah, no, this is totally right. Okay, so first of all, like, you don't run a campaign in Northern Kentucky in which your chief issue is Israel and the Jews. That's the dumbest thing you can do. Because if you think that the voters in Northern Kentucky are thinking about that, you're out of your mind. His district has 780,000 people, and he has less than 500 Jews. And so if you actually want to know what happened in that election cycle, it's very easy. Watch the local TV ads. The local TV ads were Massey trying to hump Trump's leg. And then the rest of the campaign was Trump saying, get off my leg. That was the entire campaign. The entire campaign was saying. It was Ed Gallerian being like, dude, Trump doesn't like you, and you're not going to make it happen. You're trying too hard. And Massey being like, no, no, no, we're best friends. We're. We're super best friends. And Trump tweeting, I don't even like him. I want him gone. He's the worst. And so the entire race, we can't

[D]

paper over the fact that. What's kind of funny with Massie is he had a super pro Israel Billionaire donor who was backing him. But there's no doubt pro Israel donors and sort of commentators.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. But that's cause he was vulnerable.

[D]

That he was vulnerable. And the other thing is though, cuz a lot of the Massey supporters are basically trying to peg the whole thing on Jews for the reason he went down. But within the context of Brad Raffensperger going down, Bill Cassidy going down, the five state legislators in Indiana going down within that context, I think, I think you gotta say the reason he went down, even if the Israel donors played a role in the race, the reason he went down is the same reason all those other guys went down. And it's because they opposed Trump and Trump owns the party.

[A]

That's 100% annoying.

[C]

Libertarians are inherent. Libertarians are inherently annoying though because they're constantly saying I'm standing on principle, I'm not gonna play politics. And I keep thinking you're a politician. It's like Aaron Judd saying I'm not gonna play baseball. You know, it just doesn't make any sense. The guy would not compromise over anything. They're all the same. I mean Rand Paul who I kind is like this too though. They will not play the game. Part of which is getting the President's agenda done, you know. And so Michael Trump was like, you know, be gone. You know.

[A]

Yeah. Now Michael T. To your point, the reason you knew he was going to lose is because he started running a campaign where it was like what if I have over podcast Nazis to my house? And I'm not joking, there was literally people wearing sweatshirts that said American Reich on them.

[D]

Really?

[A]

He wasn't really trying to. Yeah, no that was real. That was real. And so like that is, that is not the move of a person who thinks he is long for the Congress. That is a person who is trying to steer into the dollars and cents of podcast stand and making a future for himself. And by the way, I will point out the strange new respect he is likely to receive for this campaign from MSNBC and from New York Times and from all of these clowns is demonstrative of the fact that if you want to be accepted in left wing world, what you really should do is steer into the anti Israel, anti Semitism stuff. It is not about resistance to Trump. You know who is more resistant to Trump than Thomas Massie? A guy named Bill Cassidy who voted for his actual impeachment in 2021. You think Bill Cassidy is going to be on Ms. Now anytime soon? As a resistance hero? There's no way in Hell, but Massie will. And so will mtg, and so will Joe Kent, and so will the rest of these clowns. And that is because, again, the anti Semitism of the left is. Is now baked into the cake. I mean, that is a very real thing. From Graham Platner up in Maine to this insane House Democrat down in Texas who is literally calling for me to go to an internment camp, like to be sent to an. I have to be sent to an attorney, technically. You may, too. Yeah, you may. You may be there too, Drew. It depends on her classification.

[C]

I don't know.

[A]

I don't know if your conversion was effective. So. So, you know, it all depends. But you know what that says is that Massie, at a certain point or I think when Trump came out against him, realized that he was going down and he was like, well, I'm going to launch a new movement that is. That is sort of, you know, the horseshoe right and the woke left altogether, and we will be best friends. And I think that that's. That's really what the campaign became. As far as the. The Jewish American money that came in, and it was not Israeli money. That's illegal. It was Jewish American money that came in to that race via APAC and via other super PACs. Well, yeah, the guy's wildly anti Israel, and it turns out that a lot of donors would like to see him go because he opposed things that they like. That's what happens in every race. But you'll notice that it was not until Trump actually started the process of kicking his ass out of Congress that that happened, because he won over 75% of the primary vote in 2020, 2022 and 2024. And it was only when he went up against Trump that things started to get really squirrely for him.

[D]

Yeah, no, this is the key, Ben. I think, cuz, like, I don't mean to paper over it or Gaslight. Like, obviously there were a lot of pro Israel donors who didn't like Massie. And Massey kind of earned their ire in many ways in a lot of his comments. But first of all, he's not the only congressman who voted against funding for Israel. And the hypothetical I think of here is had Massie voted for the big beautiful bill, had Massie gone along with the White House and not liked Israel, voted against funding Israel, even made comments that were anti Israel, if that were the case, I think he would still have his seat. In other words, it's not that the pro Israel donors would like him or anything like that, but it's that Trump was this sort of catacomb figure. And it was when Trump said, hey buddy, you're out. That was when all of the other political machinations really started to play out.

[B]

But did it be fair?

[C]

Massey send anybody money?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

But didn't Trump back his opponent? Massie has won before against a Trump backed opponent. I think I see this exactly the opposite as Michael Knowles. I think Americans, especially young people on the right. People on the right. People on the left are very comfortable criticizing Israel right now. But there is a line in the sand when it becomes obvious that it's not just Israel you have a problem with which, you know, Rand Paul doesn't, you know, want to fund Israel. I don't ever feel like he's being anti Semitic. There's a line where you cross that it's not just Jews and it's not just pro Israel people. The American people have very little tolerance for antisemitism. And when you start saying that the Republican Jewish coalition, just Republican Jews, are somehow undermining American interests because they're trying to whip up support against you, that reads, I think, to average Americans as really anti Semitic. And I think it's really off putting. I think the fact that the Trump piece obviously is a really big deal, but he won before against a Trump backed candidate. I really think it was the tonal shift, the way that he talked about Israel and it stopped being the same as the way he talked about Ukraine. It stopped sounding like it was a principal opposition to funding and to war and started sounding like he was attacking American Jews. And I feel like average Americans, they're not so into Israel right now, but they are very protective of their Jewish neighbors. And I think that that just came off as so gross. Like his opening to his concession speech where he said, I had to go find my opponent's phone number and he's in Tel Aviv somewhere.

[D]

I think we have the clip. Do we have the clip?

[E]

I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede and it took a while to find Ed G in Tel Aviv.

[D]

I did get the call through.

[E]

I have called and conceded. We've been honorable the whole time and we're going to stay that way.

[A]

He's been honorable the whole time. The whole time. Except for the nefarious.

[D]

You know, I wish you were right.

[C]

I wish you were right, Bach, but I don't think that's true. I don't. I mean, I, I think that people in America, people tend to be tolerant, they tend to be fairly accepting as Long as you leave them alone. But I don't think that that's what brought him down. I think, I mean, Trump stomped on the guy. It was, it was a curb stomping and it was, it was kind of unfair. I mean, I don't think Massie has actually been that bad. If you just consider him as a series of votes. I don't think he's been that bad.

[D]

He just got Trump in a lot of ways.

[C]

Yeah, no, yeah, a lot of ways he's fine. I mean, I just think he got up Trump's nose. Well, people are really sick, I think, of a Congress that cannot accomplish anything. And I think that.

[A]

I think there's something else.

[C]

Trump's way is going to be.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's something else there with Massey too. One is, yes, he is the most obstructionist Congressman on the right. I mean, there's no question he was a consistent no vote for every major agenda item that Trump was pushing, which pissed Trump off. But there is something else that we're ignoring here, which is that Massie decided to make it his chief goal in life to drag Trump through the mud with a bunch of bullshit about Jeffrey Epstein. Right. He and Ro Khanna decided that they were going to run an op going after Trump. Right. He was going to reach across the aisle and then suggest that Trump was covering for a child sex trafficking ring. And there he was, he was on video, I mean, naming people in the files who were guilty of nothing, which they then later had to admit. And he decided he was going to ramp this up. So I think that actually the anti Semitism, as always, is the symptom, not the cause. I think that, that he started thinking in very conspiratorial ways about American politics and grievance based ways about American politics. He started attributing that to weird cliquish conspiracies like the quote, unquote, Epstein class and all this stuff. And Trump read that and he's like, listen, it's one thing for you to vote against me sometimes. It's another thing for you to vote against me always. It's another thing for you to go on Ms. Now and talk about how I'm covering up child sex trafficking, the answer here is no. And it just turns out that the crossover between believing all of those former things and also believing that the Jews are deciding on your fate at their Friday night dinners, the crossover there tends to be almost 100%.

[D]

Yeah, well, indeed, if you are a

[A]

conspiratorial thinker, who does, who does grievance based politics and also opposes every element of Trump's agenda. The chances that you are going to, you know, be wandering around outside in the rain ranting about the uden is pretty high.

[D]

Yeah, no, you know, there was this clip that was going around, it was one of the last real knocks on massey, you know, 11th hour. And it was him being interviewed by a hostile journalist saying, hey, why do you oppose Trump and why have you voted against the GOP on these crucial votes, whatever. And he said, hey, hey, hey, I vote with the Republicans 91% of the time, but 9% of the time I don't vote for them cuz they're covering up for pedophiles. And I thought, okay, hold on, wait, that doesn't even make a coherent political position. So you agree with the pedos and the pedo protectors 91% of the time. I don't wanna agree with them on

[A]

any percent of the time.

[D]

And so what he represented to me, if you kinda zoom out from these individual issues or the individual donors or whatever is. He had two problems going for him. One, he voted 77, a little over 77% of the time with the GOP in Congress this term, which is way below the median GOP Congressman who voted 95% of the. This was also down from Massie last term who was voting 91% of the time GOP, which itself was down from the previous term when he voted 95% of the time GOP. So you can say, look, I hate the GOP, I'm glad he bucked the party, I like that he's independent, whatever, but that's not gonna win you support with the party. And then the other issue was, and this gets to your point, Ben, when you're palling around with Ro Khanna, one of these unctuous left wing figures who's just constantly taking shots at the right. When you're calling your colleagues and the people who are supposed to be on your team pedophiles, essentially. I mean, what you're expressing is not just independence from the party, you're expressing a kind of contempt for the party and a contempt for the leader of the party. And it just, at that point, the vice president put it very well, he said, look, if you do, look, I've gotten along with Thomas in the past, we've agreed on a lot of things. But you know, if you're gonna go against the party in such a brutal way, you can't expect the party to back you.

[A]

So I wanna get, I'm just thinking that kind of backslid possible theories. Sorry, sorry, go ahead.

[C]

No, I think that kind of backs what Ben was saying, that the, the, the Jewish issue is really part and parcel of this horseshoe where, where right meets left. I mean I, I cannot see the difference between most of the people who are spouting this stuff. I can't see the political difference. They're all, they're all seem to be on the same side and the, and the worst of the kind of hatred and the Jew hatred that comes out is in the New York Times, you know, which has always kind of been in that position. So I, I do think that there is this way that these guys, this guy just drift stream of the right which actually doesn't adhere to a lot of that stuff.

[D]

Well, you know what I like to do is drift out of consciousness so that I can go take a nice sleep on my Helix mattress.

[B]

But I think there's.

[D]

Hold on one second. Bhati.

[A]

I had a great.

[D]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. I had a great transition. I'm going to do it again. You know what I like to do is drift off to sleep on my Helix mattress. What you got to do right now is go to helixsleep.com FriendlyFire which it will feel a lot less clunky than my transition did. We love our sponsors Helix. They let you sleep really, really well. Helix has a sleep quiz that uses your preferred sleep position, firmness and other factors to match you with the right mattress for you. Which is a far more rational system than wandering around a showroom and laying on random beds. Helix is an award winning mattress brand reviewed by outlets like Forbes and Wired. Gentlemen, and maybe Bhatia, you too. I'm not sure I know you, Drew and Ben, you guys love your Helix mattresses.

[E]

We do, I do.

[C]

But I get to stay awake on it so I know it's comfortable because I never sleep. So I just lie there going, wow, what a comfortable mattress. Could sleep sometime.

[D]

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[B]

What I was gonna say is, yes, on the far right and the left, you see a similar kind of blame the Jews for everything. The Jews are all pedophiles. The Jewish state is undermining American interests, et cetera, et cetera. But I really kind of dispute this horseshoe theory because a horseshoe suggests that they're equal, but they really aren't in terms of the mainstream, which is, I think what Drew was just pointing to. The right has done, in my view, an admirable job of telling these guys like Massie, this party has no place for you. Trump kicked Tucker and Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens out of the party. Basically. They have all been excised. On my show, you've had congressmen, senators, members of the cabinet saying, what happened to Tucker Carlson? I would be surprised if Tucker Carlson is at the next rnc. And while they're doing a really good job on the right of excising this, the left is just allowing it to metastasize. They're turning the very same people into celebrities. Celebrities and really elevating their profile, campaigning with them, mainstreaming their views. So if I may just do a short plug for my book, the Jews and the Left, they're not the same. These are not the same. You've got one side that is deeply committed to saying we stand against antisemitism. You're allowed to criticize Israel, of course, but we are not gonna allow Jew hate to infiltrate and become mainstream. And the other side, which is saying, actually, no, this is the price of entry now, like the word Zionist is a full on slur.

[C]

I agree with that. I think that's true. I think the Republicans have been much better about this than the.

[A]

They definitely have.

[D]

So speaking of brutalizing the left, are we about to just take out 150-year-old communist dictator in Cuba? Has anyone been. I actually, I've been kind of adamant.

[C]

Could happen. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, they're threatening to prosecute Raul Castro. Right? I mean, that's. I think that's. So presumably that's the. The precursor to maybe we go in and kidnap him and fly him in a tracksuit. And you just hope that, you know, whoever sponsors that tracksuit has really paid top dollar for it because Nike made bank off of that Maduro tracksuit. So if we're going to do this in full capitalist fashion, we don't just go and take Raul Castro we get an endorsement deal and then we put him in a Reebok tracksuit and really make some money back for the American people on the spread it out a little bit.

[D]

Well, listen, before we get into it, even though Bhatia, I'm certain would look much better in a tracksuit and really anything else than Ben Dominic, we unfortunately have to say goodbye to Bhatia. We have to bring on Ben Domenech. I have no say over it. The producers make me do it. Batya, wonderful to see you as always. Everybody should go watch Bhatia's show and follow her all over the place.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you for having me. God bless and protect you all. Take care.

[D]

Good to see you.

[A]

So you know, we're talking about Tom Massie's future prospects. I mean one of the other things here is that if you go out in a blaze of glory shouting about how you've started a movement, maybe you run for president. Our sponsors over at Calgary are estimating like 36% odds that Thomas Massie tries a 2028 presidential run. Not totally crazy. Honestly, I think that that's, that's actually, that might be low because somebody is going to have to try and be the avatar of the, of the psycho woke right movement and it's not going to be I think Joe Kent or Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Massey MTG ticket man that could, that could do serious double digit numbers of voters. Well, there's also just, that'd be huge.

[D]

Look on the, just on the libertarian point, I mean put all the other controversy aside. If Massey is going to be Mr. Libert, there's always some guy doing that. You know, Ron Paul would run for president. Rand Paul has already signaled he does want to run and Massie would have some juice to do that. So there is that Lane, the other thing that's kind of interesting cuz Massie's now a Republican. I think he's still a Republican who's in opposition to Trump is if Trump is doing really, really well. You saw Rubio once again saying he would back J.D. trump, reasserting control over the party. If it's like J.D. rubio, if that ticket they keep floating from the White House, if that's the ticket, if Trump's doing really, really well. There you go, you got it. But if the Trump administration does collapse for whatever reason, then the Republicans who are gonna have a better shot are the ones who are not tied to the administration. So all of a sudden then the Ron DeSantis candidacy starts to look pretty interesting. Assuming he doesn't Join the admin or. I'm not saying Thomas Massie or Rand Paul are gonna be president, but all of a sudden, they actually do get a little boost to their prospects.

[C]

Yeah, but this is the place where AOC comes in. This is my nightmare, that if the Trump administration really tanks, which I don't think it's gonna do, actually, I think it's gonna come out smelling like a rose. But if it does, is the most dangerous person in the country. The woman is pretty, an idiot, and a fascist. I mean, it's an almost perfect combination to win over the left.

[D]

Mr. Dominic, you're in. And we turn back.

[F]

Why are you bringing me on? You could have kept her.

[C]

I know. She's so much nicer than you are, Ben. She's like. I mean, she's so much more pleasant to have around.

[A]

Can I. Can I make one more point about the Massey thing before we turn to Cuba? Because, frankly, I'm much more interested in the Massey thing than the Cuba thing, to be honest with you. Because nothing's happening in Cuba until it actually happens. So I want to get your guys's take on this. They're kind of. It's very weird that Thomas Massie decides that he's going to steer directly into crazy land.

[D]

He was.

[A]

He was like, hanging with Cenk Weger and Anna Kasparian the day before a Republican primary in a bright red district in Northern Kentucky, right? Which is political dumbass for the highest order.

[D]

Libertarians are like, oh, yes. They just. I mean, listen, they swing less sometimes.

[A]

Oh, no, no. They're totally psycho. I mean, this is why their convention is the best watch in tv, right? Like, every four years, their convention is some fat dude with an iron cross dancing around without a shirt, followed by some naked chick talking about how pornography is the most American thing. It's an amazing place, the Libertarian Convention. But in any case, here's. Here's the question. I had three possible theories as to why Massey did this. Theory number one is the most obvious, which is Trump decided that he was going to punch Massey as hard as he could in the face. Massie did not want to blame Trump, so he blamed the Jews, right? Which is a typical thing. You see Tucker Carlson do the same thing where he says, well, you know, it's not Trump that I'm upset with. It's his puppeteers. It's the. It's the marionette masters who are really doing it. And those marionettes, the people who are handling all the strings, that's the Jews. So a great way to Avoid hitting Trump in a race where Trump is hitting you is to say it's really not Trump is people who are being manipulated, manipulative of Trump. So that's theory number one. Theory number two is he knew he was toast, so he was going to steer directly into podcast to stand and try to make himself his next career. And again, we talked about that before. I think that's quite plausible. And then theory number three is that people like Massey spend an awful lot of time online, and you just get brainworms. And when once you get those brainworms online, it is very difficult to excise them in real life. Because, let's be real again, this was a district in Northern Kentucky in which Thomas Massie made his number one issue a small Middle Eastern state halfway around the globe, which. About which is, again, only understandable if you have brainworms or if it's on purpose, or if it's on purpose a different way. So I kind of want to know which theory of those three you buy.

[D]

I'll give a more charitable view, which is, how did it start? It could have started from a real principled opposition to wars in the Middle East. I actually think it might have started a little earlier than that, but let's say it started there. There's no doubt that a ton of pro Israel Jews really wanted to get Nassi out. And Trump, you know, again, we were talking about it earlier, but it's. I think Trump was really the factor that made the difference. But nevertheless, it could well be the case that even if Massie didn't start out, like, smacking at the Jews or, you know, he obviously had his Tel Aviv comment last night, it might just be the case that when he saw that his big opposition was gonna be coming from pro Israel Jews, it just accelerated whatever trend was going on there. You know, in other words, like, he had a problem.

[A]

So it wasn't strategic, it was emotional. He saw a bunch of Jewish money coming in.

[F]

He just went back, can I make a vote here for brain worms? Can I make a vote here for brainworms? Because I know. I know who Thomas Massie used to be. And he basically was this, like, hippie libertarian who was also somebody who would, you know, build these chicken coops and make them controlled by Bluetooth and stuff like this. He was just sort of weird and eccentric, but he really was not leaning into any of the crazy stuff that he leaned in all the way up to this. And that's why it doesn't really. It makes. It makes no sense that he would you know, steer the rocket ship directly into the sun, you know, based on prior behavior and the way that he was just kind of this, you know, this loner who would, was kind of off on the side, you know, and, and the fact that he would pair up with Ro Khanna to deal in all of this bullshit going after Trump. Look, there are four things on my mount, on my mount Rushmore of hate. It's, it's communist, it's anti Semites, it's Karens and it's hippies. And by the end of the day he was hanging out with three or four of those and, and doing it all the time. So who does that? You know, someone who was a libertarian who has any kind of, of rural libertarian principle or something like that, who has the kind of pro life record that Massey had, the kind of pro gun record that he had in the past, stuff like that. You just don't anticipate him going in that direction. And so I think the last couple of years of him, he just went crazy and he started hanging around with the worst of the crazy.

[C]

I think my vote is for a combination of the two theories that one is the brain worms that he went crazy. It was exacerbated by the fact that Jewish money was pouring into the campaign against him. But, but also people do tend to look for an exit strategy and it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever is as he started to go nuts, he started to see that little light at the end of the tunnel that ends up in podcast and making good money and with a big audience. So I think there might be a combination of the passion and the greed because he seems to lose his whole personality.

[A]

If it is the greed, I think that that does speak to kind of where the Republican Party is. In other words, the anti Semitism and the conspiratorial muddiness and sort of the Tucker wing of the, of what's going on. That is an excellent exit strategy and it's a very poor entry strategy. And I think people are mistaking an exit strategy for an entry strategy. Meaning that we've seen a bunch of candidates who are endorsed by Tucker who are getting their asses just handed to them in election after election, whether it's Casey Putsch against Vivek Ramaswamy up in Ohio. James Fishback is about to get crushed by Byron Donalds down here. You have, you have Massey, who's now lost his seat, MTG has lost her seat. You know, you're seeing this happen like over and over and over and over. And so you're seeing people exit and presumably make more money and get the strange new respect on the other end. But if you're a politician who is looking to get into sort of a position of power in the Republican Party, is your best way of doing that, like as an elected official, to steer into crazy land, or does it turn out that actually normie land is the way that you get in and crazy land is the way that you get out with money?

[D]

Now, that's a good observation. There's also one sort of emotional aspect here, because my theory is still, like, a lot of this was exacerbated emotionally and kind of understandably. But the part that we haven't talked about is he started to fall afoul of Trump and get a little bit more eccentric than usual right around the time his wife died. I mean, to what degree is this just his wife of decades died and he got kind of emotionally unmoored and it upended his political career. Is that too much psychobabble for political analysis?

[F]

I don't know him well enough to know that. I just know that he became unrecognizable to a lot of us who interacted with him over the years. He again went from being this kind of country libertarian type who was always smiling and kind of happy and knew that he was basically irrelevant to being someone who was aggressively going after the most important person in politics in America, not just in his party, and doing so in ways that repeatedly involved him lying blatantly about all these sorts of things related to the Epstein files. Ben was saying earlier. So I, I, I think that there, there is something to that, Michael. But, but, you know, I haven't had him on the, the psychoanalysis couch personally.

[D]

You're right. I just wonder, you know, a lot.

[C]

It's interesting, though, that the, that, that Tucker's lack of influence is the exact opposite of what Tucker himself predicted, and that almost everything that Tucker predicts turns out to be the opposite, which I think is, is proof that God is a gigantic, invisible Jewish man with a long white beard. I think he's just screwing with Tucker.

[F]

It is either that or it's just the demon.

[D]

I actually like looking at the way these things have shaken out here. One, there are two things that make me feel really good about it. One, even again, it's like I'm not a huge Massey hater. I think for a lot of his career he was great. It just irritated me when he was really turning away and kind of, I don't know, opposing the party and the president. But nevertheless, the two great affirmations are. One, Twitter's not real life. Sometimes I worry about that. Sometimes I think maybe Twitter is becoming real life. Or it's obviously. But no, there's a huge distinction between those things. And there's a big chasm between the hardcore politics on the ground and the political media. And so, you know, if the podcasts conducted the election, the results would all be different, but they didn't. You know, it was conducted by voters in districts around the country. And we have so many data points. We have the Indiana data point, which, again, that issue was redistricted. We have the Georgia data point. That issue was really the election of 2020. We have Bill Cassidy. We have that data point. We now have Massey. So it just. It seems to me that the guardrails hold and politics is actually a little different than the entertainment project.

[F]

If we had a political.

[C]

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[A]

I mean, I have an enormous amount of life insurance on me for very obvious reasons, like hundreds of millions of dollars of life insur. And so I definitely understand the necessity for life insurance. But even if you are just an old man living alone at the End of your life like Drew. Well, you know, even, even you need policy genius.

[C]

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[A]

get a 20 year policy for that kind of price, my goodness, that's as

[C]

long as I don't have to have a health checkup because I never bash those for some reason.

[F]

So I just wanted to add, if you made a comment about political media, I, I think that if we had a functional political media that wasn't just interested in carrying water for the Democrats, the narrative after last night would be that Republicans are way more unified than Democrats are. Over the course of the past couple of months, we've seen Democrats prevail in multiple primaries. We've seen the situation play out in Maine. We've seen the election of Mamdani, we've seen all of these different situations where the DSA backed candidate, the AOC backed candidate, it has prevailed over people that the Democrats have actually, you know, preferred or the establishment has even anointed on their side. And nobody's talking about that story in the legacy media because it's an inconvenient story and it's actually true. The fact is that they're only united about the fact that by the fact that they all loathe Trump and it's just a contest of how much they loathe him between them. And that's I think the real story of what's going on on the left today, which is far more divided than the right after everything that's played out in these primary.

[D]

And it's clear that unity really is a political virtue. You know, I think one of the real points of pride for Massey, and it's a point of pride among libertarians, is they love to point out how different they are, how they're willing to stand up to their party or how they, I don't know how special they are. They love that, you know, individualist political ideologies do that. But unity really matters. You know, it's one of the four marks of the church, per the Nicene Creed. And it's important in your home, it's important, you know, in your country, and it's certainly important in political parties. And so it's not just, look, you don't want to blindly follow the leader of a party, and the Republicans do a bunch of dumb things that we should, you know, try to fight against. But I can't help but going back to this clip that has been going viral of a journalist with an activist outside New York courthouse talking about Luigi Mangione and the killing of Brian Thompson. And this girl said, you know, his kids are better off without him. It's this guy, you know, he deserved to die. And, you know, those kids, they can enjoy the blood money. And what I keep coming back to, and we've seen this time and time again, obviously with Charlie's assassination and with the near assassination of Trump, is that the left, mainstream swaths of the left, have been telling us for over a year now, really for much longer, that they would want to kill us and will mock our kids when they have succeeded. They keep telling us that. And in the face of that, we need party unity. Not to be lemmings, not to be blind followers, not to be NPCs, but we need. We can duke it out in the primaries, but then we need to get in line, follow the leader, and win elections. And to your point, be, I think that really comes out pretty cleanly last night. There is a clear leader of the political party. There is a clear party apparatus funding, media organizing. And looking ahead to the midterms in 2028, the stakes are very, very high. And I'll take unity as a virtue.

[A]

I mean, I agree with that. But I think that what happened here and what's been happening is that there are lines drawn. Right? Unity has to be around a thing. Right now, the unity in the Republican Party is around the thing of the Trump administration. Right. And so you can say, well, you know, Massie was more of a principled conservative when it came to spending, which, by the way, I agree with. I was very praiseworthy of Massey's positions for most of his career when it came to the role of the federal government, for example. But. But the reality is that there were lines that were drawn. And then Trump is legitimately excising people from those lines. He's not just saying blanket unity, come hug me. He's saying, listen, here's where the line is, and if you're on the other side of that line, you're on the Other side of that line. The point that you're making about the Democrats is, is a good one. It also is demonstrated they have embraced the worst parts of themselves. I mean, legitimately, the worst parts of themselves. Hasan Piker talking about social murder with the New York Times about Brian Thompson. And then Hasan Piker, no shock, endorsing people like Abdul Al Sayed, the Senate Democrat would be nominee in Michigan, who's probably gonna end up with the nomination, who's like a full scale terrorism supporter. And by the way, Hassan Piker endorsing, wait for it, Thomas Massie again. So there is this, this, this horseshoe that has taken place. But I think Bhatia's earlier point is, right, the part of the right wing horseshoe that is horseshoeing is being actively excised from the party by President Trump, which is a pretty amazing thing, actually.

[C]

You know, it's always a theory of the guys furthest edge of, of the party that if they would only allow them to do their thing, they would win everything. The Democrats are going to test that theory. I mean, they've been testing it and these DSA guys are going to get out there and it's going to be interesting to see how much, you know, leverage they have because there is a move to the left left in a younger cohort of voters usually, who usually don't vote. So we've been safe from them. But they do get excited over a guy like Mamdani, I think, I think he is the only politician that I think of as actually being evil Momdani. I think he's an actual bad guy, you know, an actual.

[F]

Only one.

[D]

Well, I mean, there's a lot of

[C]

corruption, a lot of that stuff. But this guy

[A]

Platinum is legitimately evil. I mean, some of the stuff, the stuff that Platinum Democrats. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. I know what you mean by Platner is again, another guy who's being fully endorsed and legitimized by the entire Democratic Party infrastructure. You have members of the Democratic media who are out there massaging a guy who's saying on Reddit like a couple of years ago about how happy he was to watch a video of an American military member literally being killed. I mean, he is. Platner is disgusting. Disgusting. And the Democratic Party is hugging him with both arms right now. I mean, legitimately saying. I mean, there are people who are saying that he should run for Maine Senate and then he should run for President. The only saving grace of Mamdani is he wasn't born in America, so he can't run for the presidency. But Graham Platner can. And there are a bunch of people in the Democratic Party who are rising. And the next generation of the Democratic Party is psychotic. I mean, fully damned crazy. Like, they are not remotely anywhere in the neighborhood of the same. And so, you know, I get asked the question a lot, do we think that there's going to be a reversion to a sort of. Of normal politics after this? I mean, the only way that that happens, if the Democrats get absolutely shellacked. And I think that unfortunately, because of the polarized nature of the political system right now, the chances that they get totally shellacked, pretty low, actually.

[D]

Yeah, I agree.

[F]

The demonization.

[C]

They don't have to get shellack in the midterms, though. They just have to do badly.

[F]

Yeah, the demonization thing that Michael was just talking about, I think we need to really consider and take it seriously. I think people have kind of, they've joked about it's starting to turn, turn because of Luigi Magione, because of the number of attempts on Trump's life and of course, because of Charlie's assassination. But I think, like, I don't know why it hasn't gotten more attention that there have been multiple attempts on Sam Altman's life that the AI phenomenon is now creating, and the demonization of billionaires that Bernie Sanders talks about, that is echoed by so many, not just on the DSA left, but just on the left generally, that that's going to create a climate in which which these people, they're. They're not going to be able to. To live and work and have the kind of roles as captains of industry that they've had in the past without having the fear of the kind of backlash that these radical demon, Demon, demonizing elements of the left really, I think, believe in truly in their hearts. And that's something that is so evil and so atrocious in terms of American history. We've seen things like this happen in the past, and it led to bombings, it led to assassination attempts, it led to things that were absolutely terrible for our fabric. And to see this happening in the 250th anniversary of America really is depressing to me.

[A]

Well, one of the things that actually is unique, and Ben, you're pointing it out here, is that in the history of the United States, when there are assassination attempts, typically it is people who are involved directly in the business of politics. Right. It's RFK getting shot or MLK getting shot, or even even Charlie in the line of mlk. Right. Just being A political activist. And not to say they were saying the same thing. Right, anything but. But the reality is that it is now extended out to almost Russian Revolution style violence, like going after people who are just captains of industry, as you say, people who are running companies, people who are just engaged in the marketplace, like the actual marketplace. If you had said to me 15 years ago that there would be an assassination attempt on the President, I said, okay, that, that's kind of like, unfortunately a relative norm in American political life. Even if you had said to me there would be an assassination of a high level political activist like Charlie, I said that that's, that's unique and horrifying, but not totally unexpected. If you would say to me that we would be at a point where, you know, people like Jeff Bezos or a, or a Mark Zuckerberg or a Sam Altman, these are people who have to walk around with 247 security for the crime of creating products and services that people want to buy. And these are the bad guys. Now the UnitedHealthcare CEO is now considered the bad guy engaged in, quote, unquote, social murder. You're talking about true Russian Revolution style revolutionary violence directed against an entire class. And that's scary stuff. I mean, that is a completely different thing. And also these are all soft targets.

[D]

Ben. We should also point out this has happened before and we kind of forget about it in American history. But you think about the Palmer Raids, you think about the early part of the 20th century. You had anarchists and communists who were setting off bombs on Wall street, who were setting off bombs and shooting people in the Capitol. You had a Marxist professor from Harvard, 1915, of course it was Harvard, shooting up or setting off a bomb in the Capitol. You did have these kinds of anarchist bombings almost exactly 100 years ago. You're seeing them begin to crop up again. The last time that that happened, the federal government came in and curtailed civil rights and put these people in prison, deported these people, got them out of our country. Whether or not we have the ability to actually exert that kind of political authority or the desire to do so right now, I'm not so sure. But we have seen this play out before. And the only way that we were able to survive it right around the time of the Russian Revolution, when Russia did not survive it, is because we wielded federal authority in a very, very strong way. And if we don't do that now, I fear that the problem won't resolve itself on its own.

[A]

Well, we'll get to more on that in just one second. First we need to talk about how you talk. And I mean like actually talk, like on your phone. One of the weirder financial habits people have is you will spend hours comparison shopping for a plane ticket that saves you like 12 bucks bucks. And then you'll continue paying 80 or 90 bucks a month for wireless service without any question. At a certain point you have to ask yourself, why am I doing that? Especially now that companies like Pure Talk exist. PureTalk is veteran led. It's backed by 100% US based customer service and now offers unlimited high speed data for just 34.99amonth. It's a pretty major shift because unlimited high Speed data at PureTalk used to start around 55 bucks a month. But Pure Talk has continued pushing to offer more value at lower prices. So if you looked at Pure Talk before and you didn't make the switch, well, that was dumb of you. You should have done that. And now you should probably take another look. One thing people always ask is whether the service holds up compared to the massively overpriced major carriers. The answer is, I mean, it's yes, but you should try it yourself. PureTalk lets you test the service for 30 days with no contract and no cancellation fees. There's really pretty much no downside to seeing whether it works for you. Knowles, I know that you have been using PureTalk. How has your service been?

[D]

I absolutely love it. I've had my PureTalk phone for about six years now. The customer service is great because they speak English and they speak it in a normal American way. But two, it is actually the best service in the country. A lot of people hear that and they think, oh, you use similar towers, similar coverage. No, no, no. It is the same towers. It's the same coverage as the best places in the country and you can even take it overseas if you're going on vacation this summer. So it's just phenomenal. I could not possibly recommend it highly enough.

[A]

Well, take it from Knowles. It's the one issue I trust him on. The switch itself can happen in as little as 10 minutes. And again, if you need help, that US based customer service team is standing by. Head over to PureTalk.com Shapiro claim unlimited high speed data for just $34.99. Again, that's PureTalk.com Shapiro to switch to my wireless company and Knowles Wireless Company and America's wireless company PureTalk.

[D]

We're saying goodbye to you, Mr. Domenech, because you don't have a doctoral degree and we are replacing you with Dr. Oz. Good to see you, sir.

[C]

Just like all of us. Good to see you. Good to see you, man.

[D]

I'm an honorary doctor, so if anyone ever has a heart attack on an airplane, I'll say, hey, hey, hey, hey. Who needs a commencement speech? I'm here. I gotcha. I'm totally recovered. Do we have Dr. Oz with us there? We just. Dr. Oz, good to see you, sir.

[E]

Good afternoon, everybody. How are you doing?

[D]

Very, very well. I know we're all here just babbling and cackling and giggling, whereas you are not only helping to lead health in the country, but also rooting out all of that terrible fraud which we have not talked enough about.

[E]

Well, maybe I can put it in the context of affordability, because I think for a lot of Americans, it's what they're most concerned about. And if you just took the fraud out of Medicare and Medicaid, and we estimate there's probably $100 billion of fraud on the programs that the government pays for you to get better health, that would allow us to double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund. Just to put that in context, if you're working your tail off right now and watching the show and you're worried Medicare was not going to be there for you when you reach the ripe old age of 65, it's the parachute that's going to catch you and deal your health issues that's costing you an arm and a leg. So you can keep your arms and legs. Then you should be pretty much with us on this fraud issue, because by doubling the life expectancy of the program, we'll make sure it's there for you and for your grandkids. And that's the kind of discussion we need to be having in earnest with each other. Because the fraud is so large, it's so weaponized, that we have to start asking ourselves, is this really a flaw for state leadership, for governors? Or maybe there's a feature here we had not noticed before, which is why they've allowed it to go unimpeded for so many years.

[C]

Can you explain what kind of fraud is taking place exactly?

[E]

I'll give you three examples. So South Florida, where you guys have some affinity, is a state that has generally done okay on fraud, waste, and abuse. But in the area of durable medical equipment, where, you know, the wheelchairs and canes, these companies have now grown so quickly that we have twice as many of these durable medical equipment suppliers as McDonald's in South Florida, it's impossible that that many people want to Sell you wheelchairs. But that's the norm. We think the Cuban government's involved because many of the perpetrators actually flee back to Cuba. Even worse, one third of all hospices in the entire country are in Los Angeles, not California, and actually specifically the city of Los Angeles. Now, that would imply a very high death rate in la. And no matter what we might say about Los Angeles, that's just not the truth. And so if you have one third of all of the hospices taking care of people at the end of their life with dignity in one city, then we would have to assume most of those folks are fraudulent. In fact, half of the people in Los Angeles, the hospice centers, we do think are fraudulent. And we have stopped paying almost half of them already. And here's the craziness of Allstate. 800 of these hospices we've stopped paying. We've had maybe two dozen complain. So most of these guys say, all right, the gig's up. You know, they came looking for a man. We knew one day we'd be out of business. We're gonna go defraud somebody else. But the fact that that occurred under the watch of Gavin Newsom, even though he was warned four years ago by the state auditor general that there was widespread fraud and really just did performative things to pretend he was dealing with the crisis, why should the federal government have to come in and clean up the mess? Well, unfortunately, it's federal dollars they're spending. So literally. New Mexico, another blue state, and Mississippi, a red state, their tax bills are higher because those folks who don't have the income of people in California are paying extra, extra federal taxes. So we can transfer it right to Los Angeles, where the unmitigated disaster of fraud, not just in hospice, but in other programs, exist. Let me give you a third example, and then we can come to the why question, which is always the most important one. New York City, New York State, these are, you know, big prosperous areas. The number one job growth, in fact, the number one job of all in New York State is a personal care service attendant. Now, what does that mean? That means we're paying someone to carry your groceries up the stairs to your kitchen. That person is often your child or the neighbor's kid, and your neighbor's kid's driving you to the doctor's office. So all these services that historically your family would do for you, we're not paying someone to do for you. It's become a jobs program. Let's take it to the why question. Why would it be that you would allow that much growth. Why does California have twice the amount of money being spent on these same personal care services than the national average? It's because if you're not making jobs yourself and you want to pretend like you're creating jobs and you want to be able to get federal tax dollars to pay for those jobs and then tax those that income so you have more state revenue. Well, you create personal care services. It's literally exactly what they have done in New York and in California. And here's the part that's really getting me. They're unionizing those workers, which means we're gonna help the union, that's the big service workers union in New York, double in size, all that union dues and all the taxes on that, that all flows back potentially for political patronage purposes to support the single dominant party in New York state and California.

[A]

So Dr. Oz, other than sort of the, the, you know, rooting out of the fraud that's happening, what systemic changes do you think need to be made to how the federal government deals with Medicaid at the state level? I know there've been a lot of critiques of the block grant program because it basically removes a lot of the incentive for states to actually police their own fraud. Because if you're just getting a chunk of change, it doesn't really matter to you whether or not you identify the fraud or not. The chunk is the same. What sort of systemic changes do you think need to happen?

[E]

Oh, this is very addressable. First of all, you need a federal government that wants to do their job. The prior administration gutted the Medicaid program Integrity. There were, and I'm gonna be clear about this, there were six people left that we're aware of that were working in Medicaid Program Integrity for the country at cms, the agency that I run for the President. And that basically means we're not serious about this. We just want you to enroll as many people as possible into the Medicaid program. We don't wanna hear about fraud. And that's what I was told by people who are here because they were told, listen, just go do something else. Just don't focus on the fraud issue. Cuz you're gonna create a narrative, a micro narrative that doesn't agree with our administration policy. But you also have to have states that want to work with us. And we need an all government approach. So what the President did by appointing JD Vance to be the head of this White House Anti Fraud task force and we've been doing announcements as you've been witnessing frequently highlighting these realities is if I've got a problem at CMS and I'm the insurance company and I see that the there's some barrancy in payments, we've doubled or tripled the payments in an area. Doesn't make any sense. I can go to doj, FBI, the Office of Inspector General and they're gonna actually work for me with me rather and take charge of this issue to actually investigate crime. Or I can go to Scott Best in the treasury and he's gonna actually use forensic accountants to find out where's the money getting laundered to. Like who are the big players involved? Cuz it turns out we have foreign groups that are are involved in organized criminal activities and foreign governments we believe that may also be involved in these endeavors. These are not mom and pop setups. We need an all of government effort. And finally governors have to feel the pressure. Governor Waltz stepped down in Minnesota because of pressure over the massive amount of fraud that he was unwilling to take charge of when he was governor. We had. The governor of Maine has now stepped down. Others may as well. If your governor's not willing to do their job, you the people should be upset because you're compromising your people and your state program by not taking charge of the fraud. Medicaid has to be run by the states. Medicaid therefore should be matured and nurtured and for good reason protected by state leadership against this kind of fraud. And if the federal government has to step in cuz our tax dollars are being abused, it's not gonna be a happy day.

[D]

To what degree is all of this fraud organized? To me with my political cap on, that's what's most interesting. Not just that some scam artists are trying to bilk the system, but that there is a system of patronage that has politicians not just looking the other way, but really in some ways cooperating with it. You mentioned Governor Walz, There are plenty of accusations there. So how organized is this? And who can we bring to account not just for stealing some taxpayer dollars but for setting up a system that's fundamentally unjust?

[E]

Well, I just interviewed a whistleblower yesterday from Minnesota. She worked in state agencies. She's a Democrat by the way. Was raised a Democrat, was a Democrat. And as soon as she began raising concerns about the fact that there was a disproportionate amount of money being taken by the Somalians in Minnesota, she was quickly ostracized and blocked off. And she said the big problem there was they did not want to be perceived as racist, they want to be Minnesota nice. And that doesn't mean that you literally blind yourself to the reality of criminal activities. But because she was willing to call that out, she was ostracized. And I think that's part of the puzzle, that people aren't willing to just do the right thing. Part of it is they recognize that by doing the right thing, they might actually look worse in the eyes of their voters. Some people may not like the fact that you're going after criminal entities. And these are dangerous groups that intimidate witnesses. If you go to Flushing, Queens in New York, you're not gonna get any of the Chinese folks who live there to talk to you about the fraud that they're witnessing. But we know there's tremendous amounts of fraud, human trafficking, by the way, lots of other bad things. Cuz once you tolerate corruption, it spreads widely. But there has to be a change in expectations. Many states have normalized fraud. Now think about this. If it's okay for a doctor to lie about a patient needing hospice by claiming that they're going to die, when in fact they don't have any problems whatsoever that are mortal or even near immortal, they're selling their soul. And what we have allowed to happen. It got worse during COVID when there was a general belief you could just throw money at the problem and hope it worked out. And then a lack of policing program integrity over the last administration's tenure. You're left with a system where fraud is normalized, where corruption is what's always out there. So you're looking for your little handout. Like many countries that have fraud, it's systemic. Everyone gets a little piece of the action. Everyone dips their beak into the equation. But I was told this by a friend of mine, and this is a profound statement they made. They said, when Republicans win the White House, everybody wants to be the Secretary Treasury. Everybody wants to be the ambassador to England. That's what Republicans seek. When a Democrat wins the White House, they want to get control of Health and Human Services, cuz that's where the big money is. Our budget's almost $2 trillion. And that money flows through many systems where all you need is a beneficiary's identification number to serve as a credit card and you can take advantage of the system. So we have got to create a world where taking advantage of our most vulnerable Americans is no longer acceptable.

[D]

Yes, we need to do that. Two things I really desire. I would desire to totally clean up HHS with all of this fraud. I would also desire to be the ambassador to England. That sounds like a great job. Dr. Oz, we've taken up enough of your time. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you for everything you're doing and God speed on this very important task. Now we turn to a man who every day goes by, will more likely need health care coverage. And that is, of course, Andrew Clavin.

[C]

This Memorial Day, and I remember the first Memorial Day, this Memorial day weekend, get 45% off an annual Daily Wire plus membership. That's. That's too nice for these people. God. Here's what you get. Exclusive member only content like Real History with Matt Walsh, which has new episodes every single month. And frankly, we've got a lot more coming. Shows you haven't seen, content you haven't heard about yet. All exclusive to members. This is the time to join. 45% off, dailywire.com, do it today or else.

[D]

Do it. Do it right now. That's what I'm gonna leave you on. Just go do it. I don't wanna put any distraction in your head before then. And I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day. Good to see you gentlemen.

[A]

Good to see you too, Michael.

[C]

Good talking to you.