← The Rubin Report
The Rubin Report
The Real Reason You Shouldn't Trust Joe Kent's Insane Stories on Tucker Carlson
00:38:26
Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:01]
A
From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with prime, because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today.
- [00:32]
B
Good morning, everybody. I'm Dave Rubin. This is the Rubin report. It is March 20, 2026. And do not adjust your screens. Yes, we are on location. We are here at the Danube Institute in beautiful, safe and clean Budapest, Hungary. This is my third year in a row here. I'm here for CPAC tomorrow, where I'll be doing some speaking and doing a whole bunch of interviews on both sides of the microphone for that. So I'm looking forward to a couple great days here. I had some amazing goulash last. I think they've got a picture of it. I'm going to be eating a tremendous amount of Hungarian goulash while here. And we'll talk a bit about Hungary and their upcoming elections. They have elections in about three weeks coming up here. And, you know, for as safe and clean and as sovereign as this nation is, the election is a little bit closer than you might think as an outsider. So we'll do that at the end. I want to get caught up, obviously, on some of the Iran stuff and the big story that seems to be happening back home, which is Joe Kent going on Tucker Carlson. And it seems to be a bit of a strange framing about why he stepped down. So let's dive in and just get right into it. There's a whole bunch that we're gonna hit on here. So now I can say former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who is basically serving under Tulsi Gabbard. As you know, he stepped down and he wrote a letter, he posted it on X, basically saying he was stepping down in prot. The Iran war. Now, what was a bit strange is that the day after he steps down, he immediately went on Tucker Carlson's show. And I don't have to explain to you guys, Tucker, let's say in the last year has gone a bit off the reservation. So it seemed like a per maybe a bit of an odd choice to do immediately after. And here he is, here's Kent on Tucker claiming that Charlie Kirk, that the last time he saw Charlie Kirk, Charlie was telling him to stop the war in Iran.
- [02:38]
C
And then Charlie Kirk is killed publicly in a very horrific way. And we're not really even allowed to look into that at all. And Charlie Kirk was one of President Trump's closest Advisors. And he also advocated heavily against a war with Iran. He was in the Oval Office in the lead up to the 12 day war. I wasn't particularly close with Charlie. He was very gracious to me when I was running for Congress. Very, very supportive. So we knew each other. And the last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this earth was in June in the West Wing, in the stairway. And I said hi to him and he looked me in the eye and he said very loudly, and it's a small. You've been in the West Wing, it's small, it's a tight space. And he said, joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran. Very loudly.
- [03:23]
B
He was single minded.
- [03:24]
C
And he walked off and he went, I believe, into the Oval.
- [03:26]
B
All right, so first I just want to talk about something that I think we've seen a lot of over the last six months, which is all sorts of people using Charlie Kirk's former tweets, former thoughts, former video clips for their own political purposes, using private conversations, text messages and things of that matter. And they always release them or mention them and it so happens to fit what their political ideology is. I've really tried not to do that. I think when I've showed you clips of Charlie, you know, since his assassination, I think I've tried to show you clips that stand on their own without manipulating what he may or may not have said. I also had many, many conversations with Charlie and we were very close for a long time and used to tour together. And Charlie said all sorts of things to me off camera that I wouldn't repeat. And I have all sorts of texts from him saying rather, rather controversial things that, that I wouldn't bring up because they were private things that he sent to me. So I think this, just generally speaking, I think this notion that Kent did right there and we' so many people do it. The last thing Charlie said to me just so happens to be the thing that I'm on this show to talk about. I think you should take that with a grain of salt. It is also worth mentioning that a few days ago I had Andrew Colvette on. Andrew Colvett was the executive producer of Charlie Kirk's show and the guy that I saw with Charlie more than anyone else. I mean, he was really his right hand man. And Andrew even said to me on the show, and you can watch the clip, we'll post the link in the description below that Charlie was completely supportive of Operation Mid Hammer, which was the 12 day war, and that he trusted Trump. And, you know, my position on all of this has been that Trump deserves our trust. At this point, we don't know exactly what's gonna happen. But the idea that Trump isn't making the decisions or he's being manipulated into these things when he's been so consistent about Iran for 40 plus years seems rather crazy to me. The other part that was going sort of viral was that Kent took the position that Iran was not going to get a nuclear weapon. Take a look.
- [05:34]
D
Was Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon?
- [05:39]
C
No, they weren't. You know, three weeks ago when this, this started. And they weren't in June either. I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling of fatwa against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That's been in place since 2004. That's available in the public sphere. But then also we had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or it was on the cusp of being lifted.
- [06:02]
B
Okay. So first off, we have to understand that we don't think that this guy was privy to all the information because he was thought of as a known leaker. We'll have more on that in just a second. Also, you may remember we showed you the video about two weeks ago. I think we showed it to you a couple times. Steve Witkoff, who was our lead negotiator, talking about the Iranian enrichment that the Iranians were doing and that they said that they could, they were close to being able to build 11 nuclear bombs. Those are their words. So at some point, you have to just sort of people are giving us all sorts of information. You have to choose who to believe. To me, it's a little tough to believe a guy who was working in counterintelligence suddenly comes out against the war. We've shown you many tweets and previous comments of Kent where he's completely foregoing after Iran over the years. And then the next day goes on Tucker Carlson, who has been the most radically anti Trump person on the right, if Tucker's even on the right anymore. So something seems a little bit thin there to me. But as it pertains to nukes and ballistic missiles and all of the bad things, the exporting terrorism quite literally all over the world that Iran's been doing for years, here's Bongino talking. Dan Bongino on Fox talking about the Iranian threat.
- [07:14]
D
If you were making a court case here for a threat that was imminent, Right. You know, we had Erbil, Beirut, Beirut, The Khobar Towers, EFPs explosively formed penetrators in the Iraqi battlefield. We've had drone attacks, we've had threats of drone attacks. We've had, you know, decades of hostage taking in the, in the Strait. We've had decades of actual hostage taking in our own embassy. This Cafe Milano. You've had lethal plotting, Asif Merchant, just the federal case and the. The Pakistani at the IRGC's beholding in the assassination case. What more evidence could you possibly need that this was an actual threat that was imminent and they still want a nuclear weapon while chanting Death to America so much? It's just become. You say it on tv, it almost sounds like you're telling a story.
- [08:01]
B
Okay, so look, Dan Bongino happens to be one of those guys that I trust, but I also wanna show you a video we showed you last week where Marco Rubio lays out why we did the Iran situation right now. Because Kent is basically saying Iran was no threat, even though he has been on the record with all sorts of tweets and comments over the years encouraging Trump to go after Iran, but suddenly he's completely 180 on that. So you just heard Bongino laying out a bit of a case. Here's a bit more from Marco Rubio about the timing as it relates to all this, because everyone seems to be getting hu on the word imminent. Are they a threat? What is imminent actually mean? And basically, do you wait for a threat to become more of a threat before you do something about it?
- [08:43]
E
They're attacking airports, they're attacking hotels, they're hitting not just military bases, they're attacking our embassies directly. They're attacking facilities that have nothing to do with war or with military. And that's a weekend Iran, that's in Iran. Despite years of sanction, Imagine a year from now or a year and a half from now, the capabilities they would have to inflict damage on us. It's an unacceptable risk, especially in the hands of a regime that's run by radical clerics. There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded. Because the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first, and we waited for them to hit us, we would suffer more casualties and more deaths. We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn't act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.
- [09:47]
B
Okay? And as you know, Donald Trump has subsequently said even after that, that he may have even pushed the Israelis into it, that in some sense, that doesn't even matter. We are, as Pete Hegseth says, we're a force multiplier. So the question really is who do you trust, Right? You have to figure out who to trust here. Do you trust Marco Rubio, who's been wildly consistent on this stuff for over a decade? Do you trust Donald Trump, who's been saying the exact same things about Iran for 40 years? Or do you trust Joe Kent, who. We'll get to the leak part in just a second, was saying all the reverse things about Iran for years, then steps down and the very next day does a PR tour on Tucker Carlson again. Of all shows to do Tucker Carlson, who's the most radically against Trump and the administration, administration of all the pundit class on the right, you have to decide. But Rubio's broader point there, it's interesting, Bongino laid out, here's a whole bunch of stuff that Iran has been up to that we know about. And then Rubio's point is, do you wait for them to be stronger? Right? And what we've done in this month, less than a month, it's 21 days or so of the war is completely take out their ballistic missile program. They were building about 100 of them a day. They cannot build any of them. Their air force is gone, their Navy is gone. And all of this falls down in the end. At the end, it all falls to the people of Iran. And will they be able to take their country back? And that is a huge if. So let's put the military part aside for just a second. I think the big thing that we're seeing around Joe Kent resigning is that it seems that he was trying to actually get ahead of a story. And the story that he was trying to get ahead of was that he has been a known leaker from this administration, which has had remarkably few leaks, actually. But this is from Jackie Heinrich, who is the chief, chief White House correspondent over at Fox. She wrote on X senior administration official says Joe Kent was a known leaker and was cut out of the POTUS intelligence briefings months ago. He has not been part of any Iran planning discussions or briefings at all. Officials say the White House told Dni Gabbard Kent should be fired for suspected leaks, but she never did. Okay, so that's super interesting there. So you have Kent telling Tucker that Iran was not an immediate threat, there's no nuclear threat or anything else. Here you have the White House chief, chief correspondent over at Fox saying he wasn't involved in any of these meetings because they knew he was leaking. Now I think we're going to find out who he was leaking to. I suspect it probably was Tucker and maybe some other people as well. But the point is he wasn't even privy to the information that Marco Rubio and Trump and Hegseth are now laying out there. So something seems a little fishy there. And if you want a little more fishiness, well, how about this? These are images from press tv, which of course is the Iranian regime state media. And they are now posting, this is just a small selection of it. They are posting multiple clips of Joe Kent and, and Tucker Carlson. So do you think that maybe what they are doing is actually pro Iranian? Perhaps. But let's continue a little bit with what's going on on the sort of right wing punditry class because the other person who I think unfortunately this one really is unfortunate has, has gone off the reservation, gone off the deep end is Megyn Kelly. And she's if there is a conspiracy to be had or the wrong take to be chosen, she's just doing it. Every time she put this up on X, she wrote, holy shit, I'm trying not to curse these days, as you guys know. Is this real? And somebody took a screenshot of Fox and in their war coverage, you can see on the bottom there, what they have is the American and Israeli flag. Now this is a joint American, Israeli war on Iran. Everybody knows that. As I said before, Pete Hegseth is calling this a force multip, having the two most powerful air forces in the world working together. Our armies are working together. That's what allies do. You may not like what they're doing. I guess Megan doesn't like it. But it's absolutely not just an American war and it's not just an Israeli war. It's a joint war and hopefully we'll have some other allies getting involved. But anyway, she was very upset that those flags were merged together. Of course, it took the sleuths of the Internet about two seconds to find this. Yes, her own thumbnail on her own show after saying that you shouldn't merge, merge these two flags together. Well, there it is. The American and Iranian flag meshed together. And then Megan, this is, this was really the broader point that I wanted to bring up with Megan. She wrote this on Twitter. You want to rip the GOP right to its core and prevent a single America first voter from participating in the midterms. Indict Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson. See how that works out. Megan, let me talk directly to you, my former friend Megyn Kelly. Maybe we can do this over your favorite chicken parm that David used to make you. You should indict people who are known leakers, right? I'm not for indicting people or going after people who didn't commit crimes. So if Joe Kent didn't commit a crime, didn't leak classified information, then they shouldn't go after him. But to blanket say you just, you're the. That the Republicans will lose, in essence, if they go after him. Well, don't you go after people who commit crimes, especially as it pertains to national security? And it sounds like maybe Tucker did that, too. I'm not, I'm not for chasing people down for nothing, but I think Republicans actually want rule of law and I think they want to actually go after leakers, and we shouldn't have these people in the government. So we'll see about that. Like, she's taking up a political position over a moral and legal position. And I think that that is very dangerous. It also is not congruent with what's going on with MAGA itself. You know, there's, if you just pay attention to the ex pundits, it seems like these, like the Tucker, Megan wing of this thing is winning. And in reality, it is not at all. Americans are not isolationists. Americans do believe in America, and MAGA absolutely believes in Donald Trump. Here's the guy that I called the dorkiest dork in Dorktown, Harry Entin with some numbers over on cnn.
- [16:08]
A
The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up. March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about. Get real time, score, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.
- [16:38]
F
Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of A new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic. And it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday, I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward.
- [16:55]
G
It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are.
- [17:01]
B
You know, I am a believer in America, and that's worth fighting for.
- [17:04]
F
Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:08]
H
Yeah. You know, sometimes you look at the polling data and there are numbers that just jump off the screen at you. And this is one of those, because just take a look here. MAGA, GOP view of Trump approve 100%. 100%. If you are a member of MAGA and the GOP, you approve of Donald John Trump, 0% say that they disapprove. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know you can't go higher than 100%. He is the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Now, there are some Republicans who disapprove of Donald John Trump, but they are not members of the Make America Great Again movement.
- [17:48]
B
Okay, that guy is dorky. He is just dorky. He loves numbers. That's fine. Look, 100% seems a bit much to me. So, you know, you have to take these polls with a bit of a grain of salt, and there's always, you know, a little variableness on each side. And, you know, you can also whittle it down to what does MAGA mean? Right. Like, Tucker is no longer maga. Obviously, if MAGA is Trump, then Tucker is not maga. So there's ways you could sort of decipher the information and say, okay, it's not really 100%. But let's say. Let's say the poll is wildly off by 10%. Like, that would be. That would be a pretty big number. That means that 90% of the base still supports Donald Trump. So I see no break in Trump. Trump. I think if they find out that Kent is a leaker, which again, seems quite likely, and perhaps that he was leaking to Trump, that people will want to go after him. I think that Rubio and Hegseth and Trump have made a consistent case. In Trump's case, it's been for 40 years. In Rubio's case, it's been for at least a decade. They've made a case for why this is happening right now and that you don't wait for your enemies to get stronger. And clearly, the 13 or so countries in the Middle east outside of Israel, who are getting bombed right now by Iran are happy about this and I said it weeks ago and I'll say it again right now. I think when this thing is wrapped up, there are gonna be new peace deals on the table because everyone's gonna realize, boy, America's back in action. They're not messing around. Israel was actually protecting and getting rid of our number one enemy. And let's sign some peace deals and not have rockets being lobbed all over this part of the world. But let's do a little more on the granule side of what's been going on over there. There was a little cont yesterday. Listen to this on Truth from Donald Trump. Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle east, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars Gas Field in Iran. A relatively small section of the hole has been hit. The United States knew nothing about this particular attack and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape or form involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen. Unfortunately, Iran did not not know this or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Pars attack and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar's LNG gas facility. No more attacks will be made by Israel pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case Qatar, in which the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas field. That amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before. I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long term implications it will have on the future of Iran. But if Qatar's LNG is attacked again, I will not hesitate to do so. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. Trump so there were all sorts of people yesterday freaking out that oh my God, Israel and America are going to have a problem now because they went ahead and did this. Things are going to happen in war. I think it's going to be fine. I think it's also interesting that Trump is very, very defect offensive over Qatar. Right like that. That's definitely a piece of this that is interesting and you can extrapolate from whatever you want for that. But beyond this one little hiccup, which I think is worth mentioning because this has been going so well, Trump is basically saying we're moving forward with all of this. And we're going to keep going and going and going and going. This is also to the backdrop of the fact that so many people online have just been lying relentlessly about everything happening. That's why I've tried to read as many of the Truth Trump Truth social posts. It's why I try to go to direct statements from Rubio and Hegseth, et cetera, because I think you have to get the information from the source, not the pundit class. And I say that with all due irony, because one of the big conspiracies over the last couple days online was that Bibi Netanyahu was dead. And it was being pushed by all sorts of people with millions and millions of views. And it was obvious to me it just wasn't true. But here is Candace Owens, who Joe Kent apparently is going on Candace Owens show to continue his PR tour. Here's what she wrote a couple days ago. There is a pound of makeup on his face and he's shooting SNL skits with Mike Huckabee while missing serious meetings. Everything is wrong. You don't need to produce skits to prove you're alive. You just have to go on living. This is after Candace had also tweeted that there was a big conspiracy about around Netanyahu's health and everything. And of course, he's completely fine. And here's Netanyahu addressing one of the things that Kent and some of these people are saying, that somehow Israel or some other people tricked Donald Trump into this Iran war.
- [22:40]
I
Welcome to the foreign press. First of all, I just want to say I'm alive and you're all witnesses that someone can tell President Trump what to do. Come on. President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America. And may I add, I think what is also good for future generations. In this case, those interests are absolutely clear. And so is the clarity of our achievements.
- [23:12]
B
I thought throwing that video up there would be important for two reasons. One, if you're following these people who just consistently lie about everything, not get things wrong, I get things wrong. Some of my predictions as to what might happen at the end of this war might be wrong. I've gotten other predictions wrong in the past. It's one thing to get things wrong wrong. It's one thing to. It's another thing to blatantly lie about everything all the time. And that's what Candace has been doing. That's what Tucker has increasingly been doing. And the fact that those are the two shows that Kent chooses to do right after stepping down, tells you a little something beyond his flip flopping on the Iran issue, beyond that. So there you have Netanyahu having to address something that's completely ridiculous. It's just like Internet brain slop that he's not even alive. But the bigger point on that point number two, is that there he is saying what I think we all know to be true, but they keep pushing as well. Does anyone honestly believe that Donald Trump doesn't make the decisions? At the end of the day, does Donald Trump bring in all sorts of people? J.D. vance talked about this the other day, that Donald Trump brings in everybody. We have some different opinions on things. And Donald Trump's the decider and it's his job as the Vice president and it's the Cabinet's job to then follow his lead. Right? But the idea that Mark Levin or anyone else walks into the White House and just bamboozles and confuses Trump and Trump doesn't know what he's doing. It's actually, at this point, after all these years with Trump, it's offensive and it's ridiculous and it is just Internet slop. So let's leave that there. Let's put the international stuff aside for a moment and let's deal with some of the things happening in America right now. Because the great divide in our country is that we have some states that basically work. They happen to be red, and we have a whole bunch of states that really don't work, and they happen to be blue. So we're gonna get to Cali in a second, but we will start in the place that I was born, New York. It is very sad to me what has happened to New York. Kathy Hochul is the mayor, is the governor of New York, and here she is begging wealthy New Yorkers to come back. They have lost so many wealthy people who they need their tax dollars from for their giant government that Kathy Hochul, who was once applauding the fact that these people left, she needs them back now because she wants their cash.
- [25:40]
J
And being conscious of the fact that I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state right now. There are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up, okay, cut me the checks if you want to be supportive. But maybe the first step should be go down to Palm beach and see we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded. So I feel soft. We don't have a problem. It is like I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other States who have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals. And I would say remote work changed everything. There are people who could only work in an office in Manhattan or work in New York State, and they were captives to our state. They were going to stay. We saw that that's not the case. I mean, you know, Wall street businesses looking at Texas, they're not going there because they have a nicer governor. I know that for sure. But they're going there because of the tax rate. We have to be smart about this.
- [26:40]
B
I like how everybody, like, half laughed. I don't know. I would gladly take Greg Abbott over her. Like, does she strike you as very nice? I don't think so. But that's a sidebar note. She says, I need high net worth. Cut me the for the very generous social programs we have. Oh, so she's very generous with other people's money, so just cut her the checks. You know, she also says that some of these patriotic people will give her the money. It's like, all right, lady, well, whoever's left, they stayed in New York. Why don't you just ask them for more money? Right? They're staying. They must be supporting you. So why are they only giving you the bare minimum that you can steal from them via taxes? Why don't you just ask them for more? And then she has the gall to say, why don't we go down to Palm beach and try to bring these people back? They don't want to be there. They fled because of you. Ironically, when you're talking about your generous social programs that don't do much, if they did much, you would have much less homelessness, you would have cleaner streets, you would have safer cities, et cetera, et cetera. While you're talking about that, you're the same person that's pushing people to places where they're taking less of their money and the services are better. So ironically, she's making the greatest argument for federalism, Right? The argument for federalism is, oh, you don't like it here? Well, then go there and see what happens. And what's happening is those people in West Palm who now have a little bit more of their money, they're also realizing that they're happier and they can do with their money what they want. And that doesn't make them less patriotic. It's completely absurd. But you might say, well, why did they leave? She's such a nice lady. She's much nicer than that mean Greg Abbott. And, you know, she's got all that makeup. She's just lovely. Maybe they left because when she said this in 2022, fighting to bring government
- [28:26]
J
back to the people and out of the hands of dictators. And we're here to say that the era of Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro, just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. Okay? Get out of town. Get out of town.
- [28:45]
K
Save on family essentials at Safeway and Albertsons this week at Safeway and Albertsons Signature select spiral ham bone in is 127 a pound. Member price with digital coupon limit 1 while supplies last and Fuji Gala or Granny smith apples are 79 cents per pound. Member price plus selected sizes and variety of Pepsi Pure leaf Tea, Rockstar Energy Propel Water or Gatorade are 97 cents each. Member price with digital coupon limit 10. Visit safewayoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways
- [29:15]
A
to save the Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA's Heat March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about. Get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.
- [29:46]
B
So that's her three, four years ago telling the millionaire class, get out. We don't want you. What happens over the course of four years? They listened to her. They got out. They moved to Palm Beach. They moved to Florida. They're saving their tax money. They're doing better. They're building businesses. Florida is number one in virtually every metric that we can grade anything on right now, Right? So Florida is reaping all the benefits of New York's disaster. But like mirror. It's the mirror thing. Get a mirror, lady. You're wondering why they left you, literally when you were elected, during your speech on election night, told them to leave and they listened to you. And then, of course, what happens when you do things like that, when you punish the productive people? And what does she need? She needs her generous. What does she call them? Generous social programs. Well, her generous social programs, they don't really do much. This is wild. Right now in New York city, they're spending $81,000 per homeless person. Take a look.
- [30:48]
C
Let them live someplace.
- [30:49]
J
It'd be one thing if they were proving that spending all this money is helping the homeless population get off the streets and get back into work and. But there's no sign of that. In fact, the homeless population is only growing in this city.
- [31:00]
B
So think how crazy that is. She wants her generous programs. Generous? Well, they are generous. $81,000 per homeless person. You would think you'd get less homeless people. You'd think these things would be working. But actually, the more money you shovel into it, the more homeless people you get. We spend less on that in Florida and we have less homeless people. And by the way, homeless people, everything being equal, would rather live in Florida where it's not cold and it's safer and everything else. Fortunately, they're at least staying in New York for now. But of course, it's not just New York. All of these places where they want their generous programs and they want you to be patriotic and give them more of your money, nothing seems to work. So now let's go to the other place. I lived about 3,000 miles away from New York. Yes, let's go to California. Look at this headline from the New York York Post. California's Bridge to Nowhere has cost you 77 million so far. But experts say that's just the start. So the Bridge to Nowhere you might go. Well, where is this Bridge to Nowhere going? Is that. Does that have anything to do with the railway that cost them billions? That went absolutely nowhere that was supposed to connect LA to San Francisco? That's a whole other thing. Boondoggle. That didn't go anywhere. Here's video of the lady in charge of the Bridge to Nowhere in Los Angeles. This is not parody. This is. Well, it is parody, I guess, but it's not. AI yes, this is real. Her name is Beth Pratt. She is a wildlife activist who's in charge of the $77 million Bridge to Nowhere. Enjoy.
- [32:33]
L
When we started stage one and we're waiting to start stage two, the world changed beneath us, though this spring, construction is. Construction costs increased considerably. Although we were holding reserves to finish construction, all those are exhausted at this point because of tariffs, inflation, and so many other factors impacting construction projects, not just ours. So we need your help one more time to get us to the finish line and help us build back those reserves so that we can ensure that we finalize construction by November so we can all cut that ribbon together. What a moment that will be. And like you, I can't wait to see that first mountain lion cross.
- [33:16]
B
It should be noted that that lady there, who doesn't look very qualified, is not qualified at all. She has zero construction experience, but they gave her the keys to the castle and said, could you build the bridge? And if you were watching that, what you, if you're listening on the audio podcast, you didn't see it. They flash an image of what this bridge to nowhere is supposed to do. The bridge is supposed to basically go over a road so that the wildlife could get across. It's not working at all. It was supposed to go over the 101 freeway, which is one of the big roads that goes through Los Angeles. They can't do it. They cannot do anything. But they want their generous social programs and give them more so that birds can go fly across the bridge or something like that. It's completely absurd. But now I want to connect this to something else because there's such an obvious stark contrast between what's working and what's not working. However, because of the media layer that keeps people so confused about the issues, you would think if people were just looking at their lives that at least 60 to 70% of America would be Republican at this point. Right? It doesn't mean card carrying Republican, but would understand that the Republican Party has way more to do with what this country was founded on and law and order and safety and sovereign borders and all of those things. And yet, despite all of the craziness of the left, we know we have these midterms coming. And it's extremely likely at this point, although I'm a little more white pilled than a lot of people, it's extremely likely the Republicans will lose the House. But now look at this. According to polymarket Republican Senate seats, after the 2026 midterm elections, less than or equal to 47 seats, 25% of people now say that and 49 seats, 17%. So if you add 25 and plus 17, you get 42%. So 42% of people are now saying the Republicans will lose the Senate, not the House. So if they lose the House, which conventional thinking says the House, right. And we know that 70% of incumbent presidents parties lose in the midterms. But if they lose the House and the Senate, goodbye, everything Trump is doing, literally, then what we're looking at right now is the last six months of the Trump presidency because they will impeach him, they will hamper him every which way, he will be a lame duck, Republicans will turn on him and everything else. Now, again, I'm more white pilled on this. My suspicion is that the Iran war is going to wrap up nicely. I think we're going to see wins on the economics, economic side of things with the trade deals. I think we'll see gas prices go down and a whole bunch of other things to the backdrop of, as I keep saying, July 4th is America's 250th anniversary. I think some good things are gonna happen. But that's a little black pilly right there. That is a little black pilly. So now to wrap the show together, because we have a busy day here in Budapest, I want to talk a little bit about what's going on here in Hungary, because in a few weeks they have their elections. And Hungary, as I said, this is my third time here in three years. I love this country. I love the people. I love coming here. It's stunning, beautiful, and it's safe. You know, we went out to dinner last night in Budapest and we were walking around after. And you don't see. I'm not saying there are no homeless people. You don't see any homeless people. You don't see any crime. It's clean, it's lovely, it's quiet. It's just they've done it right. They have done it right in this country. And a huge amount of that falls on their prime minister, Viktor Orban, who decided when he came into office that he was going to secure his country, that Hungary, as he said to to me in the presidential or the prime minister's building, which is right next door to where we are, as he said to me a couple of years ago, Hungary is for Hungarians, and that's not racist or anything else. Hungary is a sovereign nation and should decide what it wants to do within its sovereign borders. So he closed the borders while the rest of Europe was flooding their own countries with people from the Middle east and Africa and people that were not going to assimilate into their nations. And we know what's gone on now in the UK and in Brussels and in Ireland, in Spain, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And what he has done here is create a little sanctuary of safety. But he's about three weeks away from this election, where it is closer than you might think. And I've talked to a few people about this, including this morning asking them, I'm obviously not an expert in Hungarian politics, but what some people are saying is people forget when you have it good. And we have versions of this in America, too. When you have it good, you forget what you have. You think that everywhere else is like what you've got. And there could be some version of that happening right here in Hungary. So Viktor Orban, when he came in, and from the American perspective, the media, that he's the trumpet, he's a fascist, and all these things, again, all he did was secure his border. We've been walking around all morning. I didn't see any secret police. Did any of you see any secret police grabbing people up? No, nobody. Joseph, you're still here. Okay, everybody's here. He pays. Hungary pays 1 million euros a day penalty to the European Union so that they can keep their borders closed. Think about that. To remain a sovereign nation, but then still be able trade with the European Union, they basically extort this country. It's a mafia racket. They say, oh, you want to play ball with us? You want to do business with us? We want 365 million euros a year just so you could trade with us because you want to keep your borders closed. And that's a bet they're willing to take here because they want the trade and they want to keep their borders closed and keep their country. Here's Viktor Orban in an interview yesterday on why he's doing what he's doing.
- [38:47]
G
Migration, especially. We are sensitive to that because Hungary is a landlocked country and we are just on the road of the migrants they regularly used coming from Turkey to Europe. And hundreds of thousands appeared a decade ago on our borderline, and we were the only country in Europe who decided to stop them. And even we raise a fact and guard the border by military forces. So we stopped them. No migration and no migrants in Hungary. So the number of migrants in Hungary today is zero. I'm very proud of it anyway.
- [39:25]
B
Yeah, and he should be proud of it. And that has nothing to do with racism or xenophobia or anything else. If you could go back 20 years, you know, I'm always talking about that time machine. Get me a DeLorean and 1.21 gigawatts of power. And if you had that and you could go back and tell Angela Merkel 20 years ago, what will be the fruits of what you are doing to your country? Most Germans would say, close the border. If you could go back to all the British prime ministers, they've had a rotating cast of prime ministers over 20 years and say, don't do this. And all of those other countries, so they've done it right here. But I would say, much like in America, where it's like, if Trump only has six months left, things could flip very, very quickly. Well, all the goodness that Hungary is happening had that you can clearly see. And we'll do some videos out on the street that you can just clearly, clearly see here. It could all be flipped very, very quickly. That's why elections are important. That's why I'm speaking at CPAC Hungary tomorrow. That's why I'm sitting down later today here in front of a live audience with Ivar Vladingerbrook, who we've had on the show, who's an incredible speaker from the Netherlands, who has been on the forefront of the immigration situation over there. And that's why we're bouncing around and fighting for free freedom wherever it may be. I think I just ended the show like GI Joe. Why not? That's pretty good. Thanks for watching, guys. No post game show today. Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday.
- [40:51]
F
Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic. And it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward.
- [41:08]
G
It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are.
- [41:14]
B
You know, I am a believer in America and that's worth fighting for.
- [41:17]
F
Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:21]
H
The Global Gaming League is presented by
- [41:23]
B
Atlas Earth, the fun cashback app.
- [41:25]
M
Hey, it's Howie Mandel and I am inviting you to witness history as me and my How We do it gaming team take on Gilly The King and Wallow 267's million dollars GAM gaming in an epic Global gaming league video game showdown. Plus a halftime performance by multi platinum artist Travy McCoy. Watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship match right now@globalgamingleague.com that's globalgamingleague.com in partnership with Level Up Expo.