Brett (5:11)

Thank you.

Will (5:11)

It's returning, returning champion.

Brett (5:14)

Yeah, right. The return of the prodigal son. No, it's good to be back. It's been a while since I've been on IRL and I'm always happy to be here. I'm senior Counsel, the Article 3 project, working with Mike Davis. We work and have been successful I think in getting a huge slew of Trump's nominees confirmed. I mean obviously there's a lot of people, other people working but.

Will (5:32)

Well, you haven't. The only person that has, that hasn't been confirmed that Trump picked was, was his first AG was Gates. Gates. Right.

Brett (5:38)

Yeah. Well, I mean I think he got ultimately what he wanted which was to be a, you know he's now primetime host on O and so congratulations, good for him. But yeah, I think, you know, other than that. And that lasted four days I think, I think a lot of people thought it would go worse with the nominees. There were a lot of people betting a lot of people would have been not gotten through the process. So we're happy to see.

Will (5:58)

That's something that I'd like to talk a little bit more about tonight to the confirmation process and just how success Donald Trump has been getting the not only the people that he wants, but how successful his first, you know, couple weeks has been so far. But we'll get to that. Brett's here.

Phil (6:12)

Yes, guys, Brett here. Normally I am hosting Pop Culture Crisis Monday through Friday at 3pm Eastern on YouTube but tonight we got a bunch of stuff to get into it. So let's go.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (6:21)

Hey, what's up guys? It's Remy G. Stanley Jr. By the way, I work here at Tim Cast. I'm your local veteran and blue collar fella. Talking about the, the Discord real quick. I just want to shout out we, we lost someone recently. Recently. But Mickey Tech, he was a big part of the community. He helped us start. He's a great guy. He actually helped me build my, my Fortaline logo. So he's part, who's part of the family. We lost him. So, but so I want to. His family doesn't want anything just they just want to. If you want to contribute guys in the Discord, you can go to cast off pet rescue.org and to donate for him in his name, shout out make.

Will (7:11)

It Tech RIP that's, that's really hard to, to deal with the you know, losing people, losing family members, losing friends. It's, it's a really tough thing and that's, that speaks to one of the things that the Discord has, has really done. It's really got, it's given people a place to, to really like I said we, you know, we, we talk about meeting like minded people and stuff. And you know one of the, one of the hard truths of life is when you care about people, losing them really hurts. And so you know we send our best out to, to Raymond Cheese Stanley Junior's friends and stuff. So. All right, we're going to go ahead and get into the news today. We're going to start with the Bondi says Epstein client list sitting on my desk right now and is reviewing the JFK MLK files. I'm of the opinion that this is an important story to a fairly narrow group of People. But I think that, and the thing, the reason I say this is because there are people that are, that find it extremely interesting and the content of it. Right. Like children being raped. It's a serious story.

Phil (8:15)

What do you mean, what do you mean by narrow group of people, like just people who have kept their focus on that?

Will (8:19)

Yeah, I think that, that, I mean that there are people that are really, really, really interested in this story connects.

Phil (8:25)

With the Diddy files. Because what it is, is both of those cases have become this sort of quasi catch all for when somebody doesn't like someone on the Internet, they say, you know, they're probably in the Diddy files, they're probably in the Epstein files. So actually seeing something done about it and seeing follow through actually is a really, really big deal.

Will (8:42)

Yeah, I think, and there are people that, that I think that it's really important too. But the, the thing that I, but what I also think that because I say it's narrow because it doesn't have a major impact on most people. It's important that people that have done these kind of crimes, committed these kind of crimes, you know, like child trafficking and stuff, it's important that the FBI go after them. So I think it's very good that that cash is not only putting this information out so that people can see it and so that we bring this to light, but hopefully there will be arrests. If, if there are names on these, on these lists of people that have actual, that have you, that are implicated in committing crimes, the FBI should get them, they should wrap them up and they should be prosecuted and it doesn't matter who they are. But when I said, when I said narrow, what I mean is it doesn't have a really big effect on the average person's life.

Phil (9:33)

Well, no, the, the cases themselves, the actual list does not have an effect on the average everyday person's life. But an erosion of trust in the government, an erosion in trust in power, speaks to the average everyday person's reasons for voting for Donald Trump.

Will (9:48)

Yes.

Phil (9:49)

And one of the big parts of that is they feel like the government has been held unaccountable. They feel like celebrities like that get to spout off anything they want and nothing bad happens to them. No how much bad they do in the world. So that depends on your idea of average everyday lives and whether it affects them. Because if it brings back a certain amount of trust in the people that we're supposed to believe are out to help us or at least enforce the laws, then there is some type of benefit for Everybody, because it can help start building trust once again with these institutions that we don't seem to care for anymore.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (10:22)

This, during his, his speech day was beautiful. When he got, when he signed in, I got sworn in. I'm sorry. And he said accountability like three times. It was his energy in that room. When he was talking, everyone was so excited. He had the boys in his room with them. And so Cash Patel being sworn in is gonna, he, hopefully he brings us that accountability that we're all looking for. We're seeking.

Will (10:42)

Will, do you have a sense of what kind of director Cash is gonna be?

Brett (10:47)

I mean, he's gonna be a badass. Like we've seen. Cash is extraordinarily effective. I think the thing that Cash did during the first administration, he was, he was working for Devin Nunes. He did an incredible job revealing what Adam Schiff and what a lot of the Democrats had been doing to try and screw the Trump administration to try and manufacture the Russian narrative. He's really diligent and he, and he's also been targeted by these people. I think one of the best parts of the way that Trump has set up his cabinet is in so many cases he's chosen people that have been in some way the victim of the agency they're now overseeing. Right. Like he chose Tulsi Gabbard as the head of dni. Tulsi Gabbard was on the deep sky. Blue skies. Deep skies.

Will (11:28)

It was quiet skies.

Brett (11:29)

Quiet skies, right. The. Some skies. Yeah. The program that was, you know, instituting the surveillance over her and now she gets to supervise them.

Will (11:37)

One of the things that I find most problematic with that is, is, you know, Tulsi Gabbard as a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, or I think she was the reserves Lieutenant colonel in the Reserves. Like that. To be that. To, to main. To, to achieve that kind of rank. Like that's not just a, that's not like, you know, a butter bars lieutenant. You know, that's a, that's a, a very high ranking person. And to think that, that even though she's gone through all the vetting necessary to not only be that, you know, to, to, to be an officer in the, in the, in the National Guard and then an officer in the Reserves, but also to continue to get promotions while after they've already started to slimer and, and, and stuff, I think that it speaks to, to how, you know, how bad the, the narrative building machine, you know, was and how they were treating people. But, but you mentioned, or you mentioned the people that, that Donald Trump has, has, has had gotten confirmed. But I think it was Bhattachary was the Bhattacharya.

Brett (12:35)

Yeah, Bhattacharya was targeted by nih. Right. They, they, nih and Francis Collins, who's the previous head, did all this work to marginalize him and now he's running nih. And it's, and that's a sort of consistent theme where this is, this is not going to be the first administration. You know, I, I supported Governor DeSantis in the primary. A lot of people know that. And I worked, went down to actually work for him. And I mean, a big part of it, you know, wasn't. I was a Trump supporter in the first term. But I, I knew that there were issues with how he had staffed up and he just had, he had a lot of trouble kind of getting a hold the administration. And I think he'd admit as much. But what I've been thrilled by the first month of Trump too, and every pick and it's just clear, like, not only has he learned from the mistakes of the first term, has he selected people who are not going to just be captured by their institutions. He's also personally very invested in ensuring that the government functions the way it should this time. And I think, you know, I really think in many ways it's like the four years off has, has done him really good. And we are about to. I'm just, I'm thrilled with what I'm seeing. I think we're about to have a.

Phil (13:40)

Really amazing even, even look at how like, vocal in front of the camera JD Vance is in comparison to Mike Pence during the first term, he's taken a much more front seat approach to how he's taking on the media and pushing forward the ideas that the Trump administration is trying to push through. And he is very, very good for that. And it speaks to a big change between term one and term two.

Will (14:00)

Yeah, I think it's important that not only Donald Trump be, you know, Donald Trump and talk to the media the same way that he does and be that, that, you know, strong Persona that he is, but having a vice president that will also take the media to task. Because one of the things that, I really think that, especially looking back, one of the worst things about Pence was he was clearly the estate, was clearly the, the old guard establishment and he wouldn't stand up and say, you know what? No, the President is right. Take it to the, to the left. And the media has been such a valuable tool to the left and only recently Has. Has kind of the rest of the country. Or when I say the rest of the country, I mean like the, the people that used to say, no, it's not that the media is biased, it's just that they're mostly in the city, so they have kind of a default urban perspective. No, that's not true at all. They're actually funded by NGOs and funded by organizations that are looking to push a narrative that comes straight out of the government. You know, when you talk about the USAID money that was going to, you know, Politico and other organizations, I think.

Brett (15:15)

I think the key thing with Vance is Vance means that Trump isn't a lame duck.

Will (15:18)

Yeah.

Brett (15:19)

Because Vance is a. What represents a further eight years of continuation of what Trump is doing. And I think that's so different the first term where Pence was clearly not of the MAGA world. And so it's an opportunity to create a wedge. It's. It puts in question whether or not this is going to be the permanent direction of the Republican Party. Vance puts an end to that. You have, you know, he's young, an elite communicator in his own right.

Phil (15:41)

Yes. He's a fantastic speaker.

Brett (15:43)

Yeah. Just.

Phil (15:44)

And he can take the media to task in a way that sometimes even better than Trump can. Like, he is a better communicator, a better speaker, and he needs that right now because one of the things is, is they like to harp on the Miss the misspeaks and the things that he says that he kind of, you know, Trump gets carried away and he goes off and then they grab onto something.

Will (16:02)

Right.

Phil (16:02)

Then Vance doesn't have that problem. Kind of in the same way we would joke that Vance had this one bad moment where he tried to go donut shop and seem like a normal person and just fail. Like, you don't need him to do the normal guy shtick. He is a fantastic communicator, is a fantastic front of the line politician. Let him do that.

Brett (16:19)

Yeah. Trump. Trump is like the sledgehammer. Yes. Is the scalpel. Right. Like, Vance is like surgical kind of legalistic debate mind. Like, you know, make sure just not. Not leave anything exposed. Right. And where it's like Trump is just like, we'll just bulldoze you.

Will (16:35)

That's.

Brett (16:35)

It's a very. But they're both, they're both great and they're both like very different and complimentary styles of persu.

Will (16:40)

Not that I disagree with you, but I mean, I don't. He. He. I don't disagree, but the effectiveness of, of Vance. It's, you can't overstate it. The, the, the interview that he did when, when he got the I really don't care Margaret line that was, that was beautiful. And I mean it's T shirts and it, it's become a mean in and of itself. And I think that those kind of moments, like really taking the media to task where I don't, I don't care. Like there was another time where it was like, do you hear yourself? I forget what it was. Oh, one town got taken over by.

Brett (17:14)

Yeah. Only one apartment complex. Hey, only a few apartment complexes.

Will (17:19)

The correct number of apartment complexes to be taken over by trend. Aragua is zero. And these kind of moments really matter. And I think that he does a fabulous job. So you were going to say.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (17:30)

I was gonna say. I love that. I don't know if you guys seen today. He's been on, he's on X and he's using X and he's getting his message out there. He's arguing, arguing, but he's giving his points across. He's being very transparent with what he's saying to arguments about the whole UK and Russ Russia thing. So that while normies might not know about that, a lot of us, a lot of folks who are watching millions and millions of millions are seeing him be transparent, unlike Biden and everyone else and give his thoughts and he's solid, bro.

Will (17:58)

Two things. First of all, I completely agree. You mentioned Biden. I think that the, the, the transparency that the Trump administration has and their, their availability to the press and their not just willingness but desire to, they, they relish it. They enjoy taking these, making, putting the message out there, getting their own message out. And when the press tries to challenge them, they enjoy body slamming them. And first of all, and second of all, I loved. There was one more thing that J.D. vance did when he body slammed Medi Hassan. I don't know if you saw that one. Yes, but I'm, I'm not a fan of Medi Hassan anyways. And, and I, I don't remember the exact tweet off my, off the top of my head, so I'm not going to try. But it was absolutely, it was brutal and wonderful. Kind of, you know, aggressive but, but correct and factual take and willingness to correct the media. I think that's going to pay dividends for the administration.

Brett (18:54)

No, I'm thrilled. He's, I don't think, I don't think Trump could have done any better than Vance.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (18:58)

So like everyone was a little sketchy at first about J.D. vance because we didn't know him, but after like hearing him talk the first time, the second time, the third time, and now we're a couple months into.

Phil (19:06)

It, I mean he had a fantastic debate performance.

Will (19:10)

Yeah. And if you, I mean if you paid attention to J.D. vance when he, because he was a senator and so like, you know, if you paid attention to him, you like people, he wasn't an unknown quantity. People that were in the know knew how smart he is and knew his story. He wrote the book, the Hillbilly Elegy, I think it was called, and, and that was really well received and it really spoke to some real prescient problems in the United States. And, and I think that was part of why Donald Trump selected him.

Phil (19:37)

If you contrast him with Mike Pence, you really do see like the growth in his choices. Yeah. So when you look at Mike Pence, you look at somebody who was very much a part of the old guard and somebody who spoke to the past generations of politics and what JD Vance represents is the forward movement of what they consider now to be America First.

Will (19:58)

Yeah, I mean the, the, the, we've made this, had this conversation a little bit before, but there's, there's. The MAGA coalition is not a right wing coalition the way that some people assume that it is. And I think that I was talking a little bit to Sean about this. It's really a coalition of not the leftists, you know, because the, the most of the people in positions of power now are 90s Democrats or they were Democrats even very recently. And so that is the big tent kind of idea is, is really where the right has, has capitalized and they're, I mean obviously the conservative Christians are welcome in. But that means, that also means that you have to have room for people that are not conservative Christians. That's why the whole Ashley Sinclair Musk thing, it was a big deal to the Christians, like conservative Christians, but in the overall MAGA kind of coalition they were like, look, you know, maybe it's not, maybe it's unbecoming, but it's not something that should be, you know, should be a problem for the, the broader coalition because well, Musk really did have a lot to do with the, with, with Trump getting elected or some people would take, would have a problem with like Scott Pressler's lifestyle choices. Well, if it wasn't for Scott Pressler, you don't get Pennsylvania because Scott Pressler went to Pennsylvania, lived there for four years and, and did more work in Pennsylvania than probably anybody else. So As a broad coalition. I think that that's, that's why, or I don't think that it's, it's deniable or debatable. That's why Trump won. And that kind of, that kind of unity is something that, that comes from the left being so insane and really.

Phil (21:38)

Really disconnected from what the right has become now. Because most of the people, at least the way I've seen it, is the ones that suffer from, like, terminal leftism, like the farthest left that you can see, they look at what it is now and they think of it as a far right Christian nationalist party, when anybody who's paying very, very close attention to it knows that there are too many disparate personalities for it to be anything so succinct.

Will (22:02)

You're 100, right? Can you can hear that? Or you could hear that for so long when they were trying to scare everybody with the whole Project 2025 narrative. I read, I read a lot of stuff about Project 2025, and I'm not particularly devout Christian or anything. I'm, I'm fairly agnostic. But at the same time, there's Nothing in Project 2025 that I was like, you know, it was, it was, it is not particular.

Brett (22:26)

They had to manufacture stuff. They had to manufacture, like they're going to make you register every abortion or something like this. Stupid. But, you know, now that the election's over, we can all admit that Project 2025 was the real plan all along.

Will (22:37)

I was saying, even leading up to the election, I was, I was like, look, man, Project 2025 is not bad. I like, I was like, if, if the option is Project 2025 or Trans the Kids, I'm going with Project 2025 every single.

Brett (22:54)

What Project 2025 was really like, how to take over the government and not let the civil service run itself. Yes, right. And how to staff it properly. That was the core of the whole project Philly. It wasn't these random policy proposals thrown in by the occasional person. Like, that's the stuff that the Democrats seized on and everybody objected to and that stuff's not getting done. But, like, the, the heart of Project 2025 was stuff like, oh, yeah, civil service reform and we're firing bureaucrats and they're going to obey us or we're going to fire them for different reasons. Like, DOJ is going to obey us. You know, we're going to talk a lot about DOJ later, I think, with all these drop process prosecutions. But, I mean, that's a classic example like, no, Department of justice is not independent. It's not.

Will (23:32)

Yeah.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (23:32)

Phil, Are you saying, sir, that folks like us who were, you know, Democrat back in the past when I was.

Will (23:39)

Younger, because I was dumb, I was never a Democrat.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (23:40)

But I mean, I'm registered now because. Only because I want to be part of the primaries. But anyways, are you saying that we're not moving into the Christian right? They are, they're not leading the Republican Party anymore. They are coming into our, the tent of middle ground.

Will (23:57)

So. No. Well, I'm saying that the MAGA coalition is a coalition.

Brett (24:02)

Right.

Will (24:02)

And there, there was one. And I, this kind of brought, again, I mentioned Musk and the, and the whole Ashley St. Clair thing, because this is really kind of what brought it to my attention. There were so many people saying, oh, you know, this is not conservative, this isn't Christian, this isn't conservative, this isn't conservative. And I'm like, you're right, but that doesn't matter because not everyone in the, in the MAGA movement is a conservative.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (24:25)

Right.

Will (24:26)

And you don't win if it's only conservatives. If it's only Christian conservatives. They just don't have the numbers to.

Phil (24:32)

Win elections or the media backing the way.

Will (24:35)

Well, yeah, that's true. That's right.

Brett (24:36)

But I mean, it's, it's a, you're, you're 100% right. It's a much bigger group of people now and Christian conservatives make up a smaller portion of it. And so, and I actually, I've had discussions with Christians about this where it's, it's like this is still a very real, this is the religion friendly party.

Will (24:49)

Yes, right, absolutely.

Brett (24:50)

Yeah, we are, you know, you have a, the other party is hostile to you and wants your way of life to go away. We don't want that. We are religion friendly, but we're also, there's, there is a bigger and bigger chunk of the party that's secular. And that's true all over the west too. Right. Religiosity is going down even as right wing parties are growing. And so it's about, I think, you know, everybody understanding this is a coalition that you can, you know, we don't want as a party to be disrespectful to religion ever. Yes, right. Like, it's really important that everybody stay respectful of religion, religious people, while simultaneously, I think it's just religious people understand that. Yeah, you're not the coalition anymore. You're part of the coalition, a very important part, but you're just part of it.

Will (25:26)

That's really important. The fact that the, you mentioned that this is the party that's not just not hostile to religion, it's actually friendly to religion, even the people that are not religious. Like, I consider myself, I consider myself agnostic, maybe a little Catholic. Curious. I've been go. I grew up Catholic and, and I've gone to Catholic mass a couple times with some friends and stuff recently, and I find it, I find it extremely attractive. I think that the values that they put forward are good for society, good for, good for the country. And I'm definitely, I'm definitely fond of the things that come along with. I'm fond of Christmas, I'm fond of, of Easter. I like the idea of the, of a church community and stuff like that. And so I don't think that it's a good idea for Christians to be like, hey, you must be this kind of Christian. I think that you do that. If they try to do that, what ends up happening is they don't kick people out of the party. They have to leave the coalition themselves.

Phil (26:27)

Well, also think, like, base it solely on results. Right. Yeah. Whether you want to criticize the coalition that Trump has built, this is still the party that helped repeal Roe v. Wade. It is still the president who pardoned pro life protesters at the start of his term. There is a lot of evidence that despite the fact that the coalition of people around it may not all agree on religion, religion, that the party itself is doing what it can to benefit those who are religious.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (26:53)

Yeah.

Will (26:53)

And even, and even if you're not religious, I think there's a lot of people in the coalition that are like, you know, maybe I'm not particularly religious myself, but I see that if you don't have a society that has some kind of religious grounding, something else takes the place of religion. And that something else is always bad.

Brett (27:11)

Yeah, that's, I think, always worse. I think that's also, you know, there were a lot of, there's a lot of mojo behind new atheism in the mid 2000s y and the sort of like, and people like Chris Hitchens wrote a book, you know, God is Not Great, why Religion Poisons Everything. And I think whether or not you, you are religious in your belief or not, the, the thesis of that book was wrong. Yes. Right. The, like, Hitchens was wrong. It's not religion. That's the reason we have crazy beliefs in this world. We, we saw what happens when you have like, the left, secular leftist takeover. They can believe in wilder, crazier things in any religion. Or any traditional, traditional religion. And I think a big part of that is religions have thousands of, a lot of them have thousands of years of evolution and theologians and people thinking about ethics and most of the leftist stuff has been invented in the last 75 years.

Will (27:53)

Yeah.

Brett (27:53)

By academics who are not grounded. Yeah.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (27:56)

And our biggest thing for our coalition is America and what's best for our country and what's best for our kids futures.

Brett (28:02)

Yeah.

Will (28:03)

Yeah. I think, and I, I think that there's, it's, it's, I, it's hard to argue that religions, that especially the long standing religions, you know, it's hard to argue that they don't, don't provide a very good road map on how to have a society and that families first, families being the first, you know, the first kind of small little government I guess is a good thing. And focusing your, your entire society on making sure that families are the folk or are the, the most important thing will provide for a better result than what the left hands do with the, you know, centering the margins and stuff.

Phil (28:44)

Like, well, I mean, or, or leftists and academics in Hollywood all pushing anti family messages on just about everyone all the time.

Will (28:53)

So. All right, we're going to move on to the, to the next story. Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is actually a very, very big deal because I don't remember the last time that a, that a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was ever fired.

Brett (29:10)

Yeah, it's, I mean it's, it's not common this. So many people, some people had been predicting this because the CQ Brown guy was like all in on DEI and was, you know, product of the previous Biden administration. And so we'd been, I think we've been hearing rumblings about it that Hegseth was going to do something like this or that Trump was going to do something. And now it's finally happening. I'm good. Right? Good. It's about, it's about time we had a military that was focused on readiness and war fighting and not on social engineering.

Will (29:37)

Yeah, that's, that's something that I want to get to the social engineering aspect. So the AP reports Washington President Donald Trump abruptly fired Air Force General C.Q. brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, sidelining a history making fighter pilot and respected officer as a part of a campaign to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks. The ouster of Brown, only the second black general to serve as chairman, is sure to send shockwaves through the Pentagon.

Brett (30:05)

Stop right there.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (30:05)

Yes.

Brett (30:06)

Like, notice the thing that they said, a history making fighter pilot. Where is, what history did he make? And it's like, is it really just that he's the second black general? Is that the history?

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (30:15)

Yes, that's their history.

Brett (30:16)

Maybe. I mean, I could be wrong. There might be something. But if, if I'm wrong and there actually is some history that he made independent of merely his race, then like, the AP should be ashamed of itself in terms of the way it's framed this article.

Will (30:27)

Yeah. I mean, but this is, this speaks to the way that the entire, entire media thinks now, though, doesn't it? You know, that this, the identity of the person in question takes precedence over any of their achievements or any of the things that they've done. You know, so Donald Trump has tweeted about this. He says, I want to thank General Charles CQ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family. Today I'm honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Raisin Kane to be the next Chairman of the Churches. I love it. General Kane is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a war fighter with significant interagency and special operations experience. I, I like the fact that Donald Trump was magnanimous in his, in his, you know, in the tweet. And, and for Trump, that's magnanimous. That's about as magnanimous. Yeah, that's, that's heaping on the praise for, for Donald Trump. Trump, he didn't call him names, so there's, that's good. And I also, I didn't know General Kane, Lieutenant General Kane was, was. I did. I, I didn't know that his nickname was.

Brett (31:44)

Never heard of this guy before, but he sounds great.

Phil (31:46)

I like the idea that that was never his nickname and Trump just gave it to him now.

Will (31:50)

Right. I mean, I totally would. Part of me, part of me wants that to be like Raisin, to be his, his call sign. But I, I, I call. So now that you mentioned it, I do think that it would be even better if Trump was like, no, I'm going to give him a nickname. It'll be great. I don't know anything about, about General Kane, so I'm going to actually.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (32:11)

So A big thing AP should have noted was that he is the 780th General White General to hold this position.

Phil (32:20)

Yes. I was going to ask when does it become no longer newsworthy? Is it when you're the third ever of something?

Will (32:26)

No, it's, it's, it's when. It's when they, they stop talking about dei. Yeah, that's really what it is. Let's see. He was, I wonder if he was. So he's an F16 pilot.

Phil (32:38)

So, so he's the 781st. He'd be not. It wouldn't be newsworthy. But since he's the 780th, I kind of was.

Will (32:44)

I was. When he said, when they said special operations, I was wondering if he was something like a PJ or something like that or if he was. If he had done that kind of special operations, that kind of special operations job. But either way, I do think that it's good that, that Donald Trump is and, and Secretary Hegseth are putting, you know, the generals and, and staff on notice. I've heard that he's talking about getting rid of like, I want to say half the generals in, in the, I.

Brett (33:16)

Mean they deserve it. Sorry. I mean we haven't, When's the last time we won a war? You guys are all focused, I mean, on everything I've heard about what's been going on in the military and in terms of what they're, they're putting the rank and file through with all these idiotic trainings and just, they're, they've, they've screwed up the military. Recruitment is down horribly to the point that it's actually, you know, implicates our security. That's, that's just not, that's not acceptable performance. And I think a big thing is that, General, there hasn't been accountability at the top level for failures by our military. It's always been like lower level people who've been held accountable.

Phil (33:49)

How do generals at the top and those in charge of the military get recruitment back up then? I mean, I just feel like that's one of those things that there's anti American sentiment from within America that's very, very hard to reverse.

Will (34:02)

So just. Peg. Seth, being the SEC has increased the, the, the, the, the rank, the, the enlistment ranks.

Phil (34:11)

I remember there was a guest and I can, I wish I could remember who it was was talking about that members reenlisted after Trump got elected the first time because they didn't want to, you know, they weren't interest Obama. And then I'm sure that, that once again would probably pick up maybe two now after Trump was reelected. I'm not sure. But it's Very, very difficult to try and reignite fervor in the military when America's having such a hard time, you know, fighting amongst itself.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (34:39)

I feel like there are a lot of people who want to join, but what they see the DEI in the service, they see what's going on and they're not joining. I see.

Phil (34:46)

Are those people paying attention to those stories for.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (34:50)

Not these stories, but they're, once they see Trump get in, they're like, okay, cool, I could join. I could, I can do what I want to do. They want to fight, they want to protect the country. Serve without being told they're bad people.

Will (35:01)

Yeah. I mean, so first of all, the, the, the, I don't know if the majority of young men that were joining the military are white, but I know that there's a lot of Hispanics.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (35:10)

Oh yeah.

Will (35:11)

And Hispanics where, and, and there are times where Hispanics count as white, so that they might be counting the Hispanics as white. But one of the things that, that, that Hispanics generally like, they don't like the progressive left stuff. If you're, if you're the kind of Hispanic dude that's like, I'm going to join the military, you're not.

Phil (35:30)

You don't want to hear Latinx.

Will (35:31)

Yeah. You don't want to hear that there, you know, the, the whole machismo thing, like, that's real. And dudes are like, yo, I, I love my country, I love America and I love my, my, my Latin heritage, but I don't want to deal with this kind of bs and, and you know, I think it's very, very good that the current SEC death has made it abundantly clear that these things are changing. And when these kind of stories come out that Donald Trump has fired the, you know, the top general in the, in the whole military because of his take on dei. I think that you, you'd mentioned how do we get the recruitment numbers up? This is exactly how you get a, a leadership that is friendly to the troops. Hegset I guarantee when Hegseth decided to get up and do PT with the special Forces in Germany, he probably got a thousand men to sign up. A thousand 18 year olds across the country looked and said, that's the kind of guy that I want to serve. And because all of my friends that are, that are former and in the military, they were, they were just like, man, it doesn't get any better. The, the SEC deaths out there with pting in the cold with the special Forces, that's the military I want to join. Yeah.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (36:49)

Young men are aggressive, especially if you love their country.

Will (36:53)

They.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (36:53)

They got this testosterone that they want to exuberate into the world. So when they see Pete doing his thing and they want, you know, it's just a thing like. I mean, I joined because I wanted to do stuff and fight and shoot guns against enemies. That was my. My whole. The only thing. Reason I joined. And I know there's. We have not. I don't think we've lost that out there.

Will (37:10)

There.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (37:11)

There's definitely still many million millions young men who want to do that. And you also grow up at. You become a man within four weeks or four months or, sorry, four years. Whereas you see your college buddy, dudes who are just learning about gender.

Brett (37:23)

I.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (37:24)

Whatever you're talking about.

Will (37:25)

You know, there's a animalistic. There is a. One of the pictures actually, if you could go back to that. Those pictures that you had for a second there. Serge. There was a. There was one picture that has spawned a boatload of memes. And it was. It was Hegseth running with. With the Special Forces.

Brett (37:44)

Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. It was that, like, big Hulk looking dude.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (37:47)

Oh, yeah, right.

Will (37:48)

We just. You just had it. Just put it up on images.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (37:51)

Show me a hook.

Brett (37:52)

Yeah.

Will (37:52)

Where to? Right here. Okay.

Brett (37:54)

Yeah, there it is.

Will (37:55)

Oh, wow.

Brett (37:56)

Yeah. Yeah.

Will (37:57)

Okay, like, bring that up. This dude here.

Brett (37:59)

Okay.

Will (38:00)

This guy himself has inspired at least a hundred dudes to say, I'm going. Going.

Brett (38:07)

Yeah.

Will (38:07)

Because I want to be that monster. Yes. You know, like, look like, that's just the kind of dude that young guys look at and they're like, I want to be that guy.

Brett (38:16)

It's amazing we ever got away from that. Like, people. You know, what. What do you got? What did everybody think the military was for? Right? Like, do like, you know, to like, hand out flowers. No, These are the people that when we need to, we send them to kill people.

Will (38:30)

Yeah. And when you heard. When you heard General Miley saying, you know, I want to know about white rage, that probably turned off. That probably turned off a thousand people. They're just all. I was going to join the military, but I'm not. I'm not.

Brett (38:41)

Not under that guy. Not under that. None of that fat liberal.

Will (38:44)

Like, yeah, especially that was. That was. That happened before or after the Afghan pullout?

Brett (38:51)

I think that was after. It was so bad. I want to understand why it raised what an.

Will (38:55)

What an incredibly bad leader. You botched the pull out of Afghanistan. Get something like 18 people killed. How many people died in the bombing? We had 13, 13, 1313 Marines died, you know, and billion dollars worth of equipment left all that gear over there. And then you, you, you have the, the. There's no repercussions for anyone.

Brett (39:17)

No one gets fired.

Will (39:19)

Unbelievable. None of them have the, have the, the like he should have stepped down himself. He should have said, yes, I am resigning. Yeah, a good leader would have said, this happened on my watch. I am resigned.

Phil (39:33)

I mean, but it's like when we're talking about the JFK files or the MLK files, Americans don't believe that there is any accountability within the government. That's one of the reasons why those stories piqued the interest of people like, wow, am I actually going to get answers on this thing that happened all these decades ago? That everybody looks at one another, they knows what they're hearing. They know what they're hearing is not the whole story, but they just kind of accept that that's the way that things are. And in, in the current year, to hear about any level of accountability whatsoever, even if it's just the declassifying of files and the releasing of them, that seems monumental to a country that's been left in the dark for a very long time.

Will (40:12)

Yeah, I do think that that, I think you're right. I think that there is a significant distrust. I think that not only is it because of the things like the JFK files and these kind of like rumored things that people have a, an intuition about, but like the obvious things as well. Like the whole Covid. I really think Covid did was like the final nail in the coffin when it came to the credibility. Like they were just like, like they were. There was the whole, like, you, you don't have to wear a mask. And then it was, oh no, you do. And then come to find out the reason they said don't. You don't have to wear a mask is because they didn't have enough PPE for the doctors. So they, they right out of the box, they lied to you. Then all of the BS that comes along with out that masks actually don't do a significant job of, of protecting you. And all of the, all of the misrepresentation, all of the lies and all of the force that went along with it, all of the threats, all of the people that would get arrested, you know, the, the social distancing which comes out, oh, that turns out that didn't mean anything. That was, that was made up and, and all of that stuff. I think that the general cons. I think you're right about the general consensus and the, the kind of intuitive negative feeling people had about the MLK stuff and the, and the, the, the CIA with jfk. But I think that the, the, the outright things that the media and government have come out and said, yeah, that was not true. I think those have, were like really damaging.

Phil (41:39)

Yeah, it's, it's when even if you don't pay close attention to what's going on, you've heard in passing or in some fashion about what we do with our intelligence agencies overseas in the ways that we have, have gone into other countries and nation building and all of these things. And then to see those tactics then turn back around on the American people again, if you're paying attention, makes perfect sense. But to somebody who only, you know, pays attention to the corners and don't listen to it regularly, they are, they just started to understand just the power of the intelligence apparatus and the way we've weaponized government against other people.

Will (42:16)

Yeah, we're gonna go, there's, we're gonna go on to what one another story in just a second. But there's one thing I want to mention you mentioned about nation building. I think that, that Mike Benz has, has made a lot of thing people aware of USAID and all the things they do. And he, he's also, I think that he's performing an important function now with. He's, he's kind of making, he's out there in the, the podcast world again saying, look, these organizations have been corrupted, but that doesn't mean that these organizations are all bad. And a country like the United States with, with the amount of power and with the, with the expectations that the rest of the world puts on the United States because we are expected to be the, the hegemon still and we are expected to keep the seas open for trade. The, these type of, of organizations that, that again, they have been corrupted and there shouldn't be DEI stuff and the US shouldn't be trying to go into strongly religious countries and teach them about LGBT issues and stuff like that. That's, that's completely ridiculous. This, but having these, these organizations that will project soft power is important. I wanted to get your thoughts on.

Brett (43:22)

That on that point. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a big, you know, this is sort of my, you know, general one of my main critiques of libertarianism, but it's like, do we really want to let somebody else be the guardian of, of naval. Of sea lanes? You want that to be China? No. Okay. Right. Like we are. It's. I think I tweeted out a while ago. It's like it was in response to the Trump Gaza stuff where I, I think everybody was freaking out about the idea that we might control some territory. And I'm just like, it's okay to be an empire. Like we can just do colonialism if we want. You know, like nation based dumb colonialism. I don't know though. A lot of countries used to do it. So the point being that, you know, yeah, we are. There's a lot of benefits that come to us as a result of being so powerful.

Will (44:04)

That's a great distinction though, that the, there is a difference between nation building and colonialism.

Brett (44:08)

Right. Nation building is when you spend a bunch of money for other people. Colonialism is when you spend it for yourself.

Will (44:14)

I dig it.

Phil (44:15)

The big issue for a lot of the people is though, is they're like, these organizations are so large and the amount of money put into it is so ungodly that they're like, who are we putting in charge to actually put the checks and balances into place to know that what we're doing is right. And most of the time what we're seeing now is you see, USAID gets exposed and whole entire NGOs fold. Well, you're not really non governmental agency if you can't survive without the government, right? And all I'm saying is like to the average person, like I said, Mike Benz is, I've preached, I have said to the he is one of the best, right? You have to go read through everything he posts. But you're not going to expect the average person to go into these deep dives and understand all of that. What you have to understand is that the size of the country is now vast. We are so powerful that it's ripe for corruption. And most people want to see we'll see that undone now. And I do, I fully admit that I for the most part have a very utopian idea, a non interventionist idea of global politics that is not in line 100% with reality, that the way the world works is obviously far more complicated than the way I would like things to be. But I don't see my viewpoint as the right answer. I see it as a jumping off point for a discussion on how we can pare back some of it and find a middle ground.

Will (45:36)

All right, we're going to move on to this story here from the New York Post. Sean Diddy Combs LAWYER QUITS SEX TRAFFICKING CASE under no circumstances just Can I continue. You got to be real dirty when your lawyer's like, bro, you up.

Phil (45:49)

Imagine being like a, a defense attorney who's just like, I can't even do it, man.

Will (45:53)

I, I, I can't imagine that that, like, I mean, I, I imagine he, you know, and it's not like Sean Combs doesn't have money to pay the man, you know.

Phil (46:02)

And I read the article. It didn't seem like he had much. He said that he doesn't, he didn't really give a reason. He's just like, I can't do it.

Will (46:09)

Yeah. I mean, well, I have a look at this motion. So, so the New York Post is, is reporting one of Sean Diddy Combs defense lawyers quit the disgraced music producers criminal sex trafficking case. New court paper show Anthony Rico filed a motion Thursday to withdraw as one of Bad Boys records. Bad Boy record six defense attorneys without explanation. Rico's bid to step down won't be official until a judge signs off on it. A judge must find sufficient reason to approve such a request. Under no circumstances can I continue to effectively serve as counsel for Sean Combs, Rico wrote in the Manhattan federal court affidavit. Affidavit. It is respectfully but regrettably requested the court grant the relief requested. The lawyer didn't elaborate on why he wanted to step down, but noted the decision came after spending after speaking with Combs lead counsel Mark Agnafillo. I mean, so obviously there's just going to be inference and people are going to make assumptions, but it seems likely that the things that that P. Diddy has done are so egregious that his lawyer is like, I won't be a.

Brett (47:17)

I'm, I'm finally understanding what's going on here. So this is, this is less revealing than I think we would think it would be intuitively, because there's six lawyers on the case and it's one of the lawyers being like, I cannot be his lawyer. There are a lot of reasons why a lawyer might make that decision, so, or make that, ask to be let off the case. Conflict of interest is the most obvious one. Like some, some apparent, you know, for example, you know, Diddy has like, all these people that he previously, you know, we had the did list. We were talking all that. It's like, conceivable that this RICO guy represented a different client and might have knowledge that came from that and realize that, like, I'm someone in some sort of, like, conflict of interest situation. It also could be payment, but it doesn't seem likely because he's wealthy and there's five other lawyers who are still going to be on board. So I'm guessing what this is is some sort of like newly. Be a conflict that he became newly aware of because that, that explains the firmness of the. Like, I can't be his lawyer. Right. Like, and that, that, that strikes me as very much like conflict of interest. Your ethical rules are prohibiting you from.

Phil (48:16)

Going forward and a whole bunch of cases have continued to be pushed forward. I mean, it was the, it was the lawyer, I believe his name was Tony Busby was the lawyer who was filing all those cases on behalf of people who were filing claims against Diddy that have just come forward and for. And I think some of those have actually been dropped since then in the. Jay Z were dropped in the case between him and Diddy of the. It was like the rape of the girl back in 2000 or 2001, something like that. So I don't know how much I actually expect to come out of this case. But I think the more interesting discussion is about the concept of him having a list of people, you know, having a list of blackmail against powerful people in Hollywood. Because a lot of people see that list akin to the way that they saw the Epstein files with politicians and world leaders. Leaders.

Will (49:02)

Yeah, I think the, the, again, I think the, the Epstein file would be more impactful. I think that the, the P. Diddy list would be more salacious. P. Diddy would be rolling.

Phil (49:13)

People you've actually heard of. Yeah, the ones on the Epstein files. P. Did.

Will (49:17)

He's going to be rolling around with millionaires and multi millionaires. Maybe there's a couple people that might reach a billion. But you know, when you're dealing with the Epstein list, that's power players and people that are, you know, powerful on, on the international scale beyond just. I'm an entertainer, but like actual P. You know, heads of state. Prince. Prince Philip was disgraced because of the Epstein list.

Phil (49:40)

Do you think that there's like, overlap between. Because I think me and you and Mary had this discussion at one point about whether there was overlap between the lists.

Will (49:47)

I think that there's some. But I don't think that it's. I don't think that it's significant. Yeah, I think that. I think. Think that. Not that. Not that the people that P. Diddy hangs out with wouldn't be interesting to people in positions of hype, of, of actual power. Because again, like, someone like P. Diddy's got, you know, a lot of power and a lot of money and that means a lot. But that's not Prince Philip. That's not a, that's not a Prince of England. You know, that's not like those kind of powerful people are different.

Phil (50:17)

No, but if we're talking about the people who are pushing cultural, cultural values of leftism on America, it's the entertainers, it's Hollyw. But it's those people that have helped push forward that message for a very, very long time. And Obama partied around with lots of celebrities and lots of entertainers. It's not hard to believe that there is overlap there amongst other people. Maybe not to the extent of the.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (50:39)

Epstein files, but I mean, I'll give it maybe 15%. But in the end of the day, that many people with Epstein and P. Diddy, that goes to show us that a lot of people, powerful people, impact power are deranged, disgusting, terrible people.

Will (50:54)

What do you think, Will?

Brett (50:55)

I mean, I think you're basically right. There's probably mild overlap. Not much, I would suspect. I think it's just different circles and different, different people attending these parties.

Phil (51:02)

But he's probably getting funded by usaid.

Brett (51:04)

You know, I'm a lawyer, so I think about this again, like, why is this lawyer resigning? And the other, I mean, I think, I know people want to say it's like, oh, it's because like Diddy's so disgusting. And it's like, I'm pretty sure that's not the reason. One, the guy would have signed onto this case well after a lot of these revelations would have been revealed field. So he knew what he was getting into too. You want to be a criminal defense lawyer, you got to be. You can't just abandon your client if some bad news about them comes out. That's a great way to.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (51:29)

Big news right here.

Brett (51:29)

Right? Well, I mean, this would be a news to do but like, you know, say some bad revelation comes out in the press. Like, imagine you're facing your life's on the line. You're like going to trial over, you know, something that's going to put you away forever. And one of your lawyers is like, I can't defend you anymore. You're disgusting. How dare you. What. It's, you know, that would be just contemptible behavior. I wouldn't respect this lawyer if he did that. So I think conflict, conflict is the thing that makes sense.

Will (51:54)

It's hilarious that the, the idea of, of dropping someone over moral issues is what loses you respect in the.

Brett (52:02)

Of course it does. That's your job. Like, it's, it's a, it's a. Somebody has to do it. Right. Like being a criminal defense lawyer is perfectly ethical. I mean, our whole system is built on the ideal idea that people have our right to a criminal defense. So if you're, if you're actually going to try and go be a high profile criminal defense lawyer who represents wealthy people, you better be used to the idea that they might have done something really disgusting and it's your job to defend them anyway.

Phil (52:24)

Innocent until proven Diddy.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (52:26)

We.

Will (52:27)

Yeah, well, I mean, John Adams agrees, right? Yeah, right, absolutely. So we just got this breaking news that I want to cut to here. Zelensky surrenders to Trump and will sign mineral deal within hours. This is something that we were debating on, talking about. We didn't have any news at the beginning of the, the show, but Daily Mail is reporting Donald Trump appears to have won his trade standoff with Vladimir Zelinsky as the Ukrainian president is set to give in and signed a deal giving the US Access deposits to deposits of critical minerals. The deal was seen as crucial for satisfying Washington's demands for a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia to end the three year long war. It's a staggering surrender from Zelensky, who I had said just days earlier, I defend Ukraine. I can't sell our country. I don't know that he's actually selling it. But Zelensky said on Friday that officials from his country in the US Are working on concluding an economic deal to ensure that the accord worked for and was fair to Kiev. We're signing an agreement hopefully in the next fairly short period of time, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about a deal for Ukraine's minerals. Do you think that, that that's because Donald Trump sometimes gets out over his skis. Do you think that this is one of those cases?

Brett (53:42)

No, no, no, no. I mean, well, Trump is in a position to kind of dictate terms. Right. Like as we are. I mean, the Ukrainian defense is overwhelmingly dependent on American funding and American goodwill. Yeah. So, you know, Trump coming in and I mean, Zelensky made some real mistakes in over the last few years, but I don't think there's a bigger one than deciding to go to Pennsylvania and effectively campaign for the Democrats.

Will (54:02)

100% agree.

Brett (54:03)

So, so, you know, I don't, I don't have a lot of sympathy. And I think I watched there were some clips, I think Rubio had an interview on with Katherine Herridge, actually, that was on X. And Rubio in that interview described how, look, we thought we had an understanding with Zelensky about the fact that we're going to work together on the steel. And then we hear him saying, like, I'm not going to sign anything. And Rubio basically said something along the lines of, well, that's not very productive for our relationship going forward. And I think that there must of. Somebody had a. Had a talk with Zelinsky that's like, do you like your job? You know, do you. Do you want to keep it?

Will (54:36)

Well, I mean, there's. There is an argument that, you know, Russia's after Zelensky's head. And as long as the United States is. Is kind of standing in between Russia and Zelensky, Zelinsky gets to keep his head.

Brett (54:47)

Right. I think. I think Zelensky might have. I saw he might have made a call to the Polish, where the Polish were. Like, you can't piss off the Americans like this. Like, they're. They are your patron. You get to, you know, know the idea that you get to just operate independently of the Americans. Like, that's not your situation. Sorry, bro.

Will (55:02)

How much do you think this stems from the personal relationship between Donald Trump and Zelensky?

Brett (55:07)

Well, there's a good amount of that. I think that if Zelensky had been more st. You know, I think about Netanyahu as a good example of a comparison, right? Like, Trump's not going to Netanyahu and demanding, like, mineral rights in Israel, partially because Netanyahu is able. And Israel are able to defend themselves a lot more effectively. Effectively. But the, you know, in particular, I think that Zelensky has just played the global neoliberal cards so aggressively. Like, he's like, I'm, you know, you know, he's just of the left. And then Donald Trump comes into power and it's like, oh, yeah, maybe this is a reason that countries that are dependent on American aid try not to weigh in on our domestic politics because it goes. It goes from one way to another. And, you know, I think at a certain point, you got to wonder if Zelensky's got to realize he's. He's going to need to resolve, resign. He's going to need to, you know, his, his relationship with Trump is simply not strong enough that they, the Ukrainians need someone new in there to, you know, to have, like, a fresh, fresh start in terms of their relationship with the Trump administration.

Will (56:02)

So this is the first time that I've heard actually anyone articulate that. Can you expand on it?

Brett (56:06)

Yeah.

Will (56:06)

So the idea of Zelinsky resigning.

Brett (56:08)

Yeah, no, I'm seeing a little bit of that. I mean, I don't know that that's ever been discussed officially, but you know, it. If you're, if you're running the government of Ukraine right now, you can't be in a position where you have a bad relationship with the United States government.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (56:20)

Way.

Brett (56:20)

Just not. It's just not. It makes your position untenable. Like, if, think about sitting in your shoes, imagine, you know, put yourself in the shoes of a Ukrainian voter and what you would want your government to be doing. And you, if you actually cared about winning this war or cared about a reasonable settlement, which you probably do, you don't want to, you, you don't want to get screwed over. So you'd say, well, we, we just, it's. Whatever the reason and whatever the justice of your cause, Vladimir, like, you can't, we can't have you being on bad terms with Trump. Like, you just can't, can't. You know, I mean, we would say the same thing in, in if, if you were thinking about your own, if what you would want is your own leader, you'd want your own leader to be on good terms with the President of the United States. And so you'd be pissed at him for, like, going, you know, creating this tension with people like Vance and Rubio. You'd be pissed at him for going off and saying all sorts of nasty stuff, because you'd be saying to yourself, rationally, the worse your relationship with Trump is, the worse it's going to be for me and my family. Family. So that's, that's why I think, like, ultimately, I suspect Zelensky, I don't think he'll make it through the year. I think, oh yeah, that's my guess. Like, and I'm not basing that on, like, any internal knowledge. I'm just sort of looking at the situation and thinking, this guy, this is not tenable. And eventually you, you know, top level Ukrainian politicians are going to say to him, like, you need to go, bro. Like, we need, we need a fresh start with Trump.

Phil (57:32)

It's crazy to me. Like, when Trump took office again and we keep talking about economic sanctions and tariffs, and you see all of the times that he would, would level these on other countries. They would bluster and say, we're not going to, we're not going to bend the knee. They would eventually bend the knee. You actually get a glimpse of just how powerful America could be if it actually cared about itself or, like, it's insane to me. Like, I look at it and I'm just like, do you know how much, like, as powerful as this country is how much more we could take and do if we actually cared about our own self interest.

Will (58:09)

I, that that is a great point. And I think that most Americans don't realize because I, that's just the exact same way. Like the, the way that our government has behaved for the past, you know, the, for 12 of the past 16 years has been as if we could not risk upsetting anyone else. And the way that Trump exercises power, soft power, clearly, because he's been, he's not gotten us into any kind of wars and he's made, made far greater overtures towards peace with our adversaries or with what people that we consider adversaries. I'm thinking of North Korea specifically, the things that are possible for the United States really become clear. And I think that, again, that's a great point because I felt the same way. I, I did not, I guess I didn't really understand how much soft power the United States had. It's clear that the US can blow up every other country. Right?

Phil (59:14)

Like, that's what I'm, that's the difference. Like whenever we thought of that before, we thought it was through might. Right. Like, but then people make the joke like, yeah, but you haven't won a war and however many, many decades. Right. That's not the point.

Will (59:24)

I have a problem with that argument, but go ahead.

Phil (59:26)

The point being is that, look, we're not even talking about intervention of the US Military. We're just saying that we're going to slap sanctions on you, we're going to cut off trade, and then you start to realize just how big and powerful the nation is. And it's crazy to me how much, like you said, the left will gaslight you and say these other nations are laughing at us. I'm like, if they are, it's because they don't care about their own self interest because they, if they do, they understand they're going to lose out by not being involved with us, whether it's through trade, whether it's through the use of our military to protect their own borders. There's a thousand ways in which we could be doing more for our country that we're starting to do now. And I worry that the second you lose power, then it just goes back to the way it was. You have to start imparting the idea that our own self interest is key.

Will (60:13)

So that's one thing that I want to get your take on. Well, like, I agree completely with what Brett's saying and I think that, that the idea of America first has been so foreign to American, to Americans. We don't understand the potential that our country has. And I think that Donald, because we were talking earlier about the MAGA coalition versus the left, I think that Donald Trump has really demonstrated that the United States can do great things for itself and still operate in a moral and ethical way, international. And this is how not just the, the right though the right is probably, you know, screaming how much they love it. But this is the way that the right and the not left should look at the, the not left, the the whoever isn't in the crazy leftist. These, these are the way, this is the way that politicians should act towards the United States. And I'd really love to hear your thoughts on that.

Brett (61:08)

So I think, you know, for a long time we had on the left a sort of general globalist, internationalist sense that we shouldn't be rocking the boat, that we should be seeking consensus, that we should just be doing what everybody else wants. And on the right, the right was, had antibodies against that because the right's historically more nationalist, anti UN for example. But the right also has this long standing free trade approach that would totally exclude the idea of using tariffs as an economic weapon as a way to get people to do serve our interests. And the combination of those two things meant it's like, well, we have hard power or nothing and most of the time it's nothing thing to get people to behave the way we want. And Trump comes in, he's like, well I'm not, I'm obviously not some internationalist cuck. And then also like, like obviously not. And then, you know, but also that I'm, I'm not at the same time some like afraid of using tariffs. And so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go around and be like, wait a second, you all are completely dependent on access to our market. Your, your economies are completely dependent on access to American consumers. Consumers. So guess what? You, you get to do what we want because otherwise we're gonna, we're gonna make your access to our consumers painful and you can't afford that. And that's just the nature of how having such an incredibly powerful economy here allows us to exert force abroad and get people to do what we want.

Phil (62:24)

He was, I mean, he kind of got into it in the first term. He's like, well, what is the UN or NATO done for us?

Brett (62:29)

Yeah.

Phil (62:29)

In the last however many decades and people maybe just that was the first time anybody thought of asking the question. Question. Oh yeah, what have any of Them done for us.

Brett (62:38)

Yeah, well we're, I mean the NATO is us. We're, I mean we spend more than the rest of the NATO countries combined on our military. Yeah, that's crazy. And, and a lot of them are, you know, deciding to buff up their welfare states and not meet GDP targets. They're standing as a percentage of GDP targets.

Will (62:51)

The, the idea that the, that every NATO country is supposed to make spend 2% of their own GDP right. Is, is I think that's what the agreement is. The US I've I just recently learned only spends 3.6% of our GDP on our military. That's something that if you tell your average leftist they're going to be like no way they're going to say no, we must spend half the money that we the of our GDP on, on. We spend so much money on the military and blah, blah, blah. And whereas we do in absolute dollars, we spend a lot. But it's because The United States GDP is like $29 trillion. It's just a mind boggling amount of money. And then to think that we ask, you know, countries like Poland and Poland is, is I think is one of.

Brett (63:31)

The better Poland meets its targets.

Will (63:33)

Yeah. Like they're really, they're really good about it and they spend 2% of their GDP. I don't know what Poland's GDP is but it's obviously dramatically less than the United States, you know, because they're just a smaller country with fewer people. And, and so the actual ask of the individual European countries or other countries in NATO in absolute dollars is minuscule compared to what the United States.

Brett (63:56)

And then they get, you know, they really start talk like being, you know, appeasing. I really can't stand country countries that are tiny that spend, that do not even meet their, their target on NATO spending. Like you know, you're tiny in the first place and you don't even spend 2% of your GDP on your military. And then you're telling us that we're appeasing. Like this isn't, I mean we don't even, I don't care what you think.

Will (64:17)

Yeah, that's not, it's not even a real conversation.

Brett (64:19)

Like you're, you're, you're like a Chihuahua yapping at us like you're not a serious country. Like we, you get to, if we start defending you, you, you'd fall to Russia in an instant. So like you know, be grateful for the continued support of the American taxpayer despite the fact that you guys have been obnoxious towards our Current sitting president.

Phil (64:37)

I mean, that is a lot of where I think a lot of the leftist arguments come in these days about when you see people, you know, coalescing online and talking about health care and they talk about it in foreign countries and we talk about how they say, oh, it's amazing that Americans don't just get free health care. And then we say, well, that's because your military is pretty much subsid by the might of our military. I get that anger. Like, I do. I understand that that's a very simplistic argument, but I do understand the anger from the average American who does think, you know, maybe the hospital, you know, maybe all your medical bills shouldn't cover, shouldn't be covered, but you shouldn't go into insane debt because you broke your arm. And to know that we're doing that so that we can defend other countries is infuriating on some level. So I get that. That argument.

Will (65:24)

Yeah, I do. I think that, I think that most of that kind of perspective comes from a lack of understanding of what the actual problem is, because the, the, the idea that, you know, you shouldn't go into, you know, you shouldn't have to go into hawk just because you break your arm. Well, breaking your arm is, while it's a bad thing, it's something that modern medicine is very capable of dealing with. And it happens frequently enough where it shouldn't cause. Cost you $10,000 to get your arm X rayed and set and medical, and.

Phil (65:54)

Then you get into insurance.

Will (65:56)

It shouldn't be at all. You should, I mean, you can go and get your teeth clean from a dentist for a couple hundred bucks. That should probably be 50 bucks because it takes them like 10 minutes nowadays. And, and that even that is still, it's like, it's not outrageously expensive to get your, you know, spend 150, 200 bucks to get your teeth clean. It shouldn't be more than a couple hundred bucks to get an arm set because it's something that's fairly routine. And unless they need to do, you know, put in, you know, steel and, and those kind of repairs, they go.

Phil (66:24)

In and they're like, we need to take an X ray. And then like when, and then they set your, they set them on like, we need to take another X ray. And the poor person's like, do you need to do the second X ray?

Will (66:32)

Like, but, but the point being is like, like when I, we talk about like plastic surgery or Lasik or those kind of procedures that aren't covered, all of that stuff, the prices have gone down because, and this is where I'm most libertarian and the market does work. The market does drive prices down. It's, it's a miracle that it happens and that, that it works the way that it does. But because we don't have a market for health care, all the prices are going to be sky, are through the roof because the insurance companies just pay. It's a nightmare. But that's not, because that's not the fault of the, the American population. That's because of the government.

Phil (67:11)

Well, and then the scary part is, is they somehow turn that on its head and say that that is an argument for single. And then you're like, yeah, hold up.

Will (67:20)

That's insane, too. Yeah. We're going to go ahead and move on to the next story here. Judge denies bid to block Trump administration from placing U.S. aid workers on leave. This is being reported by CBS Washington. A federal judge on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from putting thousands of employees with U.S. agency for International Development on administrative leave and recalling others from overseas, clearing the way for President Trump to resume his efforts to overhaul the agency as part of his plan to slash the size of the federal government. I, I do think that it's a good idea to do these things, but I think the real tangible results when it comes to the significant changes of USAID are going to be the fact that the left doesn't get the, the doesn't have the access to federal money the way that it used to.

Brett (68:12)

No, I think, I mean, so first off, this is a big W for the Trump administration.

Will (68:15)

Yes.

Brett (68:15)

Right. Like, let's, let's get that out of the way. This was something, something that one of the cases where there had been a temporary restraining order put in place. And, you know, I'd followed a lot of these cases. This Judge Nichols, you know, I've got a friend named Bill Shipley who is heavily involved with J6 defendants. So he actually was in front of Judge Nichols a lot and he was saying, everybody's getting really mad at Judge Nichols over this particular injunction. He was like, give him a second. He's a really good judge. Like, there's a reason, I think we're, you're going to end up winning pretty quickly here. And that's what's happened. Usaid, you know, or these, these labor unions try to say, it's like, well, you can't get people off from USAID in foreign countries because they need access to, like, foreign alerts about danger in their country. And he's like, well, okay, I'll give you like, five days to demonstrate that that's true and like, that you're actually entitled to, like, not get fired. And five days later he's like, nope, you're, we can fire you actually, they can. They go ahead and do it. They want. And that's what's happened here.

Will (69:12)

Do you anticipate, do you anticipate that there will be another challenge to this from, from.

Brett (69:18)

No, I think, I think this is going to be the end of this particular case of the U.S. i think that, you know, this is, you have a, you've lost your attempt to get an injunction to stop, you know, Trump from putting all of USAID basically on administrative leave and telling them all that you get to, you know, you can sit at home for the next six months until your salary, until we cut, we finally fire you. And, and I just don't think that once this, once this ruling's been denied, they're not going to go to a different judge and try and judge stop here like the, the original, a new judge will look at and be like, you already filed this case in D.C. it's already been resolved, no injunction. So I think this is just a straight w. There have been, there's a lot of different ones of these injunctions all over the country, obviously, where, you know, liberals are trying to lawfare and stop Doge and stuff, you name it.

Will (70:01)

That's my, that's my broader point is I, I wonder what. So I, there's been a discussion that we've been having around, around the table here about, about what the goal of the Trump administration is and about trying to return the power to the executive and get it away from the, the, the bureaucracy. And that was one of the reasons why he's trying to do the birthright citizenship, because that should go before the Supreme Court. And that'll really bring the question, does the executive have the authority to fire people that are in the bureaucracy or not? And I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Brett (70:32)

So, yeah, I think that the big case and I think in the next.

Will (70:34)

And how does.

Brett (70:35)

Probably early next week, because it's Friday, right. So there's nothing going to happen next two days, but probably Monday, Tuesday, I would expect the Supreme Court's going to rule on the pretty, the case that's before them. I think it's the first one, which is Trump fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel. I think a guy named Dellinger. Dellinger went to the D.C. district Court, got an injunction saying you need to keep your, you the Trump administration are not allowed to fire this guy. And that went up on appeal. And the, in the D.C. d.C. Circuit Court said, well, it's a temporary restraining order. We don't, we don't meddle with temporary restraining orders because the idea being you don't need to appeal them because they're going to expire in 28 days on their own terms. But the administration has gone to the Supreme Court and said, no, no, no, no, no. Judges do not get to tell us who to hire and who to fire. And they can't use temporary restraining orders to deny us the ability to fire people with within for a month. That would be a ridiculous, that's a ridiculous interference with such an obvious core article to power that, like, not even a temporary restraining order should be allowed to stay in place. And so that's already at the Supreme Court. Right. Like, there's already been briefing. We're probably going to hear about that Monday, Tuesday, I expect the Trump administration is going to win. And if they win that, they might essentially win a huge knockout to a slew of these temporary restraining orders orders basically saying, like, the Supreme Court's either going to, you know, take a wider view of this or just put in some dicta, basically saying all these temporary restraining orders have gone wildly beyond the judge's authority. They need, people need to stop messing with the executive branch, period, and stop.

Will (72:11)

Some, some of the things that I've been hearing people discussing when it comes to this kind of stuff there. Even when, like, FDR was making massive, massive executive orders that, you know, really changed the structure of government, there were no federal judges that were just saying, well, we're going to throw an injunction on this and stop it. And this is really kind of an innovation that's happened, started, I guess in the 60s, but really took off in, in the Barack Obama administration. Can you speak to that?

Brett (72:34)

Yeah. So the idea of a nationwide injunction, it's not obvious at all that judges should be able to issue injunctions beyond the parties to the litigation directly in front of them. You know, a good example of this, I think. Think there was, There was a case in Florida where, you know, the, the state of, I think DeSantis was trying to, like, ban puberty blockers or something, and they went to sue him. And, you know, in federal court, the injunction was crafted so that DeSantis was not. While the case is being resolved, DeSantis was not allowed to prevent these two specific people from getting puberty blockers. He can enforce the law broadly, but he couldn't enforce it to them, that's sort of, that's the normal understanding of like, what court, what power do district courts have? Well, they have power, power in, of over the litigants in front of them. They can say, you don't do this to this person until we've settled your dispute. So the idea that an injunction could be just broad and affect everybody in the country, despite the fact that not everybody in the country is in front of the court, it's, it's not obvious that that should be allowed. And especially given how aggressive some of these district court judges have been. I mean, you know, there was the New York case where Judge Engelmeier told Doge that they weren't allowed to access treasury data. I mean, they were, they were straight up telling. It created this artificial distinction between political and career appointees. And it's like you, the political appointees are not allowed to see this data. Like, whoa, what? This is a democracy. The political appointees are the people who are appointed by the elected president, United States. The civil servants do not have some, you know, bestowed grant of authority from our government. So that was bizarre. There's been so many bizarre ones. And I think in general, what you're going to see, I mean, I know Justice Thomas has talked about tailoring these down and basically, you know, we way too many judges are getting way too quickly involved in the, working as the executive branch. I think that it's time for that to stop. I think it's personally time for this as a normative claim, and I think it will stop.

Phil (74:29)

Is that just, is that where I hear so much about the term and the concept of activist judges now? Is that just because it's all become so heavily politicized, like I've heard a lot of people discuss, discuss about the, the idea of the Supreme Court wasn't always seen as something that was politically biased, but rather something that was just supposed to be about interpreting the Constitution. Now, you expect most of these cases a lot of the time to fall along party lines.

Will (74:51)

Well, general, generally, yes. I, I mean, I'm probably biased in my assumption, but I do think that the argument that the conservatives or the textualists are the ones that are correct in their understanding, you can't, can't. You have to go by what the words on the paper mean and you can't infer meaning. So even though it's the conservatives that are the textualists, and I would be, you know, my, my political opinions align far closer to conservatives than to progressives, I do think that that is the act, the True thing. There are other. The other side of the argument is is the Constitution is meant to be interpreted and so the meaning will change. But I find like there's arguments made by like judging, apologizing that Paltanu that says things like if the, if the Constitution mean. If it doesn't mean what it says then it doesn't mean anything. It either means what it says or it doesn't and if it doesn't mean what it says then it doesn't mean anything at all. Or things like if the Constitution was meant to be interpreted then they would not the framers would not have put an amendment process into the Constitution that is not only there so that way you can change it, but also arduous and very difficult. Like. Like it's the reason that the amendment process is arduous is because they didn't want you to just change the meaning of the words on the paper based on what is popular at the time.

Phil (76:15)

I guess I just think of it from a. It's from a media framing device which is that we talk about Soros backed DA's or Obama appointed judges or Trump appointed judges which is a tool that both sides of the aisles friendly media apparatus uses as a way to frame their arguments when they're covering a story.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (76:33)

Yeah.

Will (76:34)

Not.

Brett (76:35)

I just wanted like you've actually sort of landed on a very interesting bigger debate in American constitutional law and the question of like should you know it it almost goes to like should we even allow judicial review? Right. That's not obvious. You know, we, we treat it as obvious that our Supreme Court can weigh in on the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress and can overturn them. It's not obvious that you have to allow that to happen. Right. You can just say that the all the court's job can always only to you know, interpret the laws passed by Congress and then see if people's behavior conforms to it. But you so and then the, and then that connects to the question you're also talking about which is like okay, when when exactly did judicial activism start and what is judicial activism? That's you know, query whether or not like some of our most famous cases that most people would think of as the best cases the Supreme Court has ever decided were weren't in fact very activist. So Brown vs Board is a sort of classic example example of this where you know, there's 80 years of precedent saying separate but equal is okay and the court just decided nah. Changed our mind. And you know, was it super principled in terms of like if you read the legal reasoning or you're like, man, this is just a masterpiece of legal reasoning. Nobody could point, poke any holes in their argument here. No, you could, you could poke some holes in how they got from how they just threw out 80 years of precedent. But I think nobody wants to see Brown versus Board of Education overturned. We all agree that, you know, racial discrimination is bad, so it's reflective of.

Phil (77:56)

Society at the time.

Brett (77:56)

It can be. I mean, you know, these things are. There's, you know, I think conservatives always want, I think and I, I'm sympathetic to this the idea that it's all. You want it to be black and white, but the, the project of interpreting text and understanding meaning is there's always some amount of gray. Like language is not computer code. It's not perfect. And I think in general the, the idea the conservatives have the better of the argument that in a world where you completely go to languages, totally indeterminate it and it can just mean whatever we want it to mean, then basically you're saying that there is no constitution and it's just a pure exercise of power. I don't think that's right. But I think that, you know, we, you know, we shouldn't overstate the extent to which the con. This is actually a black and white problem consistently.

Will (78:42)

Yeah. And the, to your, to your discussion about, about it's just a language. It doesn't matter. It's just an exercise of power that is kind of the, the, the furthest postmodernist leftist they. And that's a fundamental belief that they have that there is no like the discourses are only an exercise of power. That the words that you, that you say don't really mean anything. And that's actually where, that's where the foundation for the, you know, everyone's a Nazi kind of comes from. The important thing isn't whether or not they're Nazis. The important thing is do you convince the people listening that they're bad people? So you use whatever hyperbole that you want. And these are arguments are made by people. I think it was like folk Foucault and, and Charter and stuff like that. That, that it doesn't matter what you're saying, just that you're convincing the people listening.

Phil (79:31)

It may. It's really easy to understand why that tactic became so popular as phones became more commonplace and our in our communication went digital, which was that those bludgeoning arguments of name calling and categorizing you as something abhorrent became far more, more tactical when everyone was now connected via social media. And they could use that as a way of silencing people they disagreed with because people weren't used to having those types of things hurled at them by people they didn't know.

Will (80:00)

I think that there's a lot of. I don't think you're wrong. I wouldn't, I wouldn't disagree. But I think there's a lot to it because these ideas, like I said, like the, the, the postmodern kind of left kind of got their start, you know, in the like the 60s, like late 50s, early 60s and stuff. Well, 50s and 60s. So.

Phil (80:15)

Well, now you have, you know, you have your academics and your students who go to your four year colleges and have years of indoctrination into those beliefs. Arguing online with somebody who works at an auto body shop, and they think that those tactics of sounding unbelievably erudite while insulting you are going to work forever. But we're seeing that that's less and less true now as those kind of arguments hold like less weight.

Will (80:39)

Yeah, well, I mean, as, as long as, as long as people, when you're first, when you're first called a Nazi, it's shocking because you're like, what, how do you get there? I'm not. And then you start, people start, they, they second guess themselves. They're like, am. Have I done anything like that? Have I ever said? And it's like you have to, you kind of take stock of yourself. But the more you read, the more you hear it, the more you get called it when you know that you, you know, you've never zigged a heil, you know, you're just like, that's not true at all. Like there's, there's nothing that I have ever done that even remotely resembles that. So you're just saying this and then you, then people kind of get used to it and that's kind of what's happened. People like, they know that they're not Nazis. People know that they're not actually bigoted. And so when someone calls you bigoted when you know you're not, you're just like, I know that I'm not.

Phil (81:24)

You know, the cudgel works on the most, the ones who are the least self assured. Right. So it works on somebody who isn't sure of who they are or at the very least has a very deep fear of what others think think of them.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (81:35)

What's the use of dismantling language? Maybe Will, you might know, as you know, they make. Words don't mean anything. Anymore, maybe go to the Constitution.

Brett (81:45)

So it allows you to kind of do whatever you normally want to in terms of law. Right. So that's the first. The power of, if you can basically win, that all language is totally indeterminate and that then really law just becomes an exercise of power. There's no principled basis on which to say like you can or can't do anything. And I mean, the left prefers that because it, you know, it believes in what's so called like living constitutionalism. I think this is what you were getting at with a lot of your kind of, you know, the critique of interpretation. But you know, the left really doesn't want to be constrained by the past understandings and past written texts. They just want, you know, they want to go towards, you know, is that.

Phil (82:26)

Like when they talk about well regulated militia in regards to the second Amendment, when they understand that's not what they meant?

Will (82:32)

Well, I mean, to, to a degree, yes. I mean it is like mostly if you look at the, if you look at the context of a well regulated in the time frame, like it's pretty, pretty clear that they meant, you know, a working properly militia. They weren't talking about, you know, the government regulating things. Because now the government regulations, like the way that we think of the administrative state. When you think of regulation, you think of the bureaucracy deciding laws, making rules. Rules. That's not what well regulated.

Brett (83:01)

The key thing there is, it's, it's about how does that clause operate grammatically? Okay, so the clause is a well regulated militia being necessary to a free people. Something like that. The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. You know, this is, this is a good example of where English is actually not indeterminate. That phrase is a prefatory phrase that is basically saying the way that sentence reads properly is the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And here's a really good reason why. But it's not saying this is if the, you know, this is the only reason why, and this is therefore the only purpose for which bearing arms is acceptable. No, that's not the right way to read that English. And so would it have been easier.

Phil (83:40)

If they just didn't give any reason and just said the right.

Brett (83:44)

Yeah, well, they, they didn't assume that. I mean, it's pretty clear actually. I mean, my understanding of, you know, the history of the Section Amendment, they understand exactly what they were doing. I mean, you know, there's a lot of like really cruddy second amendment arguments that the left puts out there things like, well, you know, they only had muskets back then. So like you can only have muskets now. It's like muskets were state of the art. Right. They were basically saying that the Sudanry should have state of the art weaponry, you know, and I mean there were, there are, I mean, obviously like some limits on that. But the, there's a whole slew of terrible left wing arguments, but the worst of them is sort of seizing all on this prefatory clause and then in just butchering even not only English grammar when the thing was written, but English grammar now.

Phil (84:28)

Like, ever seen the meme where it's like women, if they go back, if they had a time machine, men, if they had a time machine. And the men went like, write it as if they're two. Write the second Amendment as if they were five years old.

Will (84:42)

We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna, we're gonna jump to one last story and it's a light one to end the week.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (84:47)

Yeah.

Will (84:50)

Israel, Hamas swap to go ahead despite claim child hostages were killed with bare hands.

Brett (84:57)

Yeah.

Will (84:58)

So the, the, the, the ceasefire d deal still on track amid uproar over fate of two Israeli boys and false return of their mother's bodies. So this is a situation that I find, you know, particularly disgusting and it's something that people seem to ignore when they're talking about the Israel, Palestine argument where if they're, if they're sympathetic to the Palestinian side. So. From, from the Guardian, Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on sun on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were brutally murdered by Hamas and the group's failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead turning the corpse of an unidentified crazy. The Israeli Defense Force said in a statement on Friday afternoon that autopsy results and military intelligence concluded that members of Hamas used their bare hands to kill Ariel Bias 4 and his 10, 10 month old brother Kiffer when they were seized in October 2023. If I understand correctly, there's actually no evidence that these kids and their mother were actually seized by Hamas. They were, they were, they don't.

Brett (86:13)

There's some idea that they were seized by Gazan civilians.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (86:16)

That's what I've been hearing.

Will (86:17)

Because they don't wear uniforms. Which, I mean, whether you think that.

Brett (86:21)

The, except when they're handing them over in these, in these ceremonies, then they, then, then they somehow find their uniforms.

Will (86:25)

Crazy, right?

Brett (86:26)

I wonder where they went. You know, maybe it'd make it easier to identify who's a military and who's a civilian if they would wear them during conflict.

Will (86:32)

Well, you know, the Geneva suggestions are just that apparent. But they don't wear, you know, they weren't wearing on October 7th. They weren't wearing, wearing, you know, military garb. They weren't wearing uniforms. And there's a lot of people that would make the argument that there were a lot of Palestinians that just went into Israel and were kidnapping people. And I, I find it difficult to disprove that theory again, because they weren't wearing, you know, they weren't wearing uniforms. So you can't really prove that there is a distinction. And that's something that I, I find, I find difficult to, to parse out. Generally. The, There are people that say, oh, well, you know, there. No one in, not everyone in, in, in Gaza is Hamas. Sure. But they, I think they had like 70 approval rating or something like that in a poll or something.

Brett (87:22)

So where are the, where's the Gazan? Oscar Schindler Right. Where is, where is the, where is the, where is the Gazan? You know, there have been hundreds of. It's been a year and a half. It's not like also Hamas is not as powerful as the Nazi regime was in Germany. Right. Like, Hamas got, got their ass kicked very quickly.

Will (87:42)

I want to, just, just for a point, I want to articulate that. In Germany, there were Germans that saved Jews. In Gaza, there were no Gazans that saved Jews.

Brett (87:52)

Yeah.

Will (87:52)

So in Nazi Germany, there were Germans that were protecting Jews and hiding Jews. In like, you know, in Nazi Germany, there are no Gazans that were protecting Jews. In fact, there were Gazans that were considered Gazan civilians that went into Israel and kidnapped Jews.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (88:08)

This is my ignorance for the situation. And in Germany, Jewish folks lived inside the city of where Germany was with the Germans. I don't.

Will (88:18)

They were German too. German Jews. Right.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (88:20)

But I'm just saying.

Will (88:21)

Yes.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (88:21)

But also, I don't know of any. I've not heard of Israelis living in Gaza. I think, like, it's out zero.

Brett (88:27)

Right. You know why, why?

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (88:28)

So there's no.

Brett (88:29)

Israelis literally ripped the Israeli government ripped Israeli citizens from their homes and their settlements in, in the Gaza Strip. In 2005, they made the Gazan Strip free of Jews.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (88:40)

Well, that's why there's no Gazan Schindler list, because there was no one living there at the time.

Brett (88:45)

Yeah, I guess they make it up. Yeah. It's just like it's a place where they're working.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (88:48)

Yeah.

Brett (88:49)

You know, and I think you're right, actually that's a good point. Right. They, the people of Gaza, Gaza don't have any day to day interactions with Israelis unless they were among the few who were getting work permits to go work in the Strip. So you, you just have no relationship and no sort of, you know, empathy because that, there's none of that cross cultural interaction. And I think that that's, that probably is a good explanation for where, whereas, you know, not everybody in Germany agreed with Hitler and, and certainly there were plenty of German Jews, there were plenty of Jews just living in Germany prior to hitting Hitler that Germans would have been interacting with.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (89:22)

So that's the point that folks are saying online, I know nothing to feel is mute, that you can't just say that anymore.

Will (89:27)

And there, there, there's also in the, in the background of this or during this, there was a, I think there were three buses that exploded in, in Israel.

Brett (89:36)

Six.

Will (89:36)

Oh, six buses.

Brett (89:37)

Yeah, six. They designed to kill. They, I mean we are very, everybody's very lucky that they went, you know. No, somehow nobody, nobody died.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (89:46)

Oh good.

Brett (89:47)

Despite like and very could have easily been mass casualty events. Yeah. And this is also, I mean I was just in Israel, just like full disclosure, I was in there for about a week and I've never had any security issues myself. But the big discussions have been all about these hostage release deals and where Israel's giving up 30 or something prisoners for every one hostage they're getting back. And a lot of these prisoners are convicted criminals, people who used to be involved in bus bombers bombings back in like the second intifada in like 2000 or, and even more recently and all of a sudden, you know, after Israel has now released something like a thousand of these convicted criminals, all of a sudden buses are blowing up again. Like not, you know, I'm a, I'm a fan of Israel, but I gotta say and, and you know, I really don't like the hostage deals they've been doing. I think they've been really too, a little bit too cavalier about the future consequences of releasing these criminals. Like that their own citizen, a lot of their own citizens are going to die or be taken taken captive in the future by some of the people that they're releasing.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (90:47)

Are they releasing them into the city or are they setting them some of.

Brett (90:50)

The reading released into the West Bank. Some of them are getting released into Gaza.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (90:53)

Okay.

Will (90:54)

Do you have a sense that, I mean obviously Gaza has been basically leveled. I, I, I don't know exactly how many cities there There were in Gaza. I think there were two major cities in Gaza, right?

Brett (91:03)

Three.

Will (91:03)

Three.

Brett (91:04)

I mean, Gaza City is the dominant population center, but then there's Kanye and Rafa other south, and.

Will (91:09)

And I know Rafa got. Got really destroyed. Yeah, that was kind of the final standard people forget.

Brett (91:15)

I mean, Israel's really small and the Gaza Strip's even smaller.

Will (91:18)

Size of New Jersey. Right.

Brett (91:19)

Israel might be the size of the New Jersey Gaza. The Gaza Strip is the side of the Las Vegas. Of Las Vegas.

Will (91:23)

Oh, wow.

Brett (91:24)

That's it. You know, not in Las Vegas is a big town.

Will (91:27)

Yeah, right.

Brett (91:28)

Like, there's downtown and there's a strip. Right. But like, still not that big. So, you know, I mean, we're talking 50 by 8 square miles or something.

Will (91:36)

Is it your sense that the Donald Trump is. Has been talking about some. Some very novel ideas of how to solve the issues going on in Gaza? Is it your sense that the. That kind of, kind of approach is something that the first of all, that would. Would produce positive results, and second of all, is it something that. That the world is ready for?

Brett (91:59)

I mean, I think the world, whether the world's ready for or not, it's happening. And I think the. What it. What it has done. I mean, Trump basically saying, you know, he was basically being boxed in by the people. They're like, well, you know, Israel won't take this over and nobody will stand for it. And so, you know, your only option here is basically like, take the Palestinian Authority that's in charge in the West Bank. You can put them in charge of Gaza. That's it. That's your. Really, your only option here. Trump's like, well, don't they suck too? And everybody's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, they really suck. Trust me, the Palestinian Authority is not cool. They. They, you know, they might be like, less radical than Hamas, but they still give, like, annuities to people who've blown up Israeli civilians. Like, that's like, you know, blow up an Israeli civilian terrorist attack, you get rewarded by the government of the, Of. Of the Palestinian Authority. So these people. And they're notoriously corrupt, too, as often, you know, Arab governments are, because, I mean, we can get.

Will (92:51)

Are they. Are they as. As they do the bidding of. Of Iran the same way that, that.

Brett (92:57)

No, no, they have.

Will (92:58)

And.

Brett (92:59)

And I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't even say Hamas really does the bidding of Iran. They're sort of. They've always operated more independently. Hezbollah does a lot more. Is a lot more directly tied to Iran. Hamas is more Just supported by them. And Hamas surprised everybody with 10, seven. That's something. Yeah, yeah, that's something else. But basically. But getting back to Trump, well, Trump is like, well, that's stupid. Like, and, and moreover, it's not. None of this is sufficiently deterring this in the future. So here's the new plan. We're just going to take it over. It'll be ours now and all the Palestinians get to leave. Right. And it's like, it's, it's sort of, it's, it's like a new anchor and it's basically saying what it really is saying is to all these Arab countries, it's like, your solutions suck and I'm not accepting them. And unless you can come up with a solution that effectively resolves the Israeli security concerns and is not some like, oh, we're going to put the PA in charge, like that. That wouldn't last. If you can't come up with something, then we will solve this problem for you and we will just, we will kick everybody out and we will take over and, you know, put beautiful hotels in a military base in Gaza and.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (93:57)

Send them to Egypt and send them to Jordan. They who?

Brett (93:59)

Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I talked with some people. One of them had a really funny idea. He's like, I really believe in the right of return for Gazans. You know, their name, Half the people in Gaza are named, have a last name of Al Masri, the, the Egyptian, others have Al Hijazi, the Saudi or, you know, you name it. It's like the idea being that they can all, they should all go home to their, their places of origin. That would be just fine.

Will (94:20)

The, the. So the Egyptians have been. They're not interested in taking the Palestinians. The Jordanians are not interested in taking the Palestinians. Because I know that there was some kind of uprising attempted in Jordan. Right.

Brett (94:33)

Well, I mean, historically, the, the Palestinians have been a major source of instability in both countries, particularly in Jordan. They tried to assassinate, you know, the PLO when they were there. I mean, we're Talking about all the 80s, 70s, 80s, they were like trying to assassinate the King of Jordan. I think that's right. But they tried to rebel against the Jordanian government.

Will (94:52)

Isn't the Queen of Jordan, isn't she Palestinian?

Brett (94:55)

I think she is. She's certainly sympathetic to them, but I get it. I'm actually a little more sympathetic to the Egyptians and the Jordanians and maybe not the Egyptians because they did allow all those weapons to go into Gaza and then are like, ooh, me, you know, but, you know, these are, you know, this is a radicalized population. You know, as I think we articulated at the beginning of the segment, there's a lot less distinction between Hamas and the Gazan population writ large than people try to articulate. This isn't like, you know, ISIS just randomly coming in and not having a serious amount of domestic support. Like the people of Gaza support Hamas by and large. So, you know, there is. I sent that to the Egyptians and Jordanians not wanting an additional, like, Sunni Islamist, you know, population in their country to like, destabilize their own countries. I get that. But guess what? Like, some, you're going to have to take some people, I think probably, and assuming we go there or again, you're going to have to figure out a way to solve the underlying problem in Gaza in a way that satisfies the Israeli security concerns, which are substantial.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (95:55)

It's not going to happen.

Will (95:56)

I mean, the argument. I'm, I find the argument compelling that if the. I think it was. Might have been Hugh Hewitt that said this, but he said if the, if the, if the Gazans put down their weapons or if Hamas puts down their weapons, then there will be peace. And if the. Is, if the Israelis put down the, their weapons, there's going to be a lot of dead Jews.

Brett (96:15)

Yeah, I mean, there's the. And it's. The thing that really is interesting is the way that the west kind of projects its own way of viewing the world onto and saying that the people in Gaza and the west bank think the same way or should think the same way. Like, they just want a state. No, no, they don't. They want Israel gone. Y. That's their goal. They want Israel gone. They think it's a stain on their honor.

Will (96:32)

That's exactly what from the river to the sea means. And you can hear saying it.

Brett (96:36)

They're like, how clear could be like, they're like, you know, it's like even.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (96:39)

When they tell you we, we want.

Brett (96:41)

To get rid of Israel, we want the Jews gone, oh, they just mean they want their own national aspirations.

Will (96:45)

Remember, do you remember Deak. Do you remember Debeak?

Brett (96:47)

The Beak.

Will (96:48)

The, the, the. When it, when ISIS was actually a, a real power. They had their, their magazine, they were putting out, it was called the Beak. And they had an article called why we hate you and why we fight you. And it literally went through all the reasons why. Why the, The Sunni or the, the Shia. No, the Sunni Islamist hated people that were not Muslims. Right. And it was very clear. It was all this. It was you're, because you're unbelievers, because God says we got to kill you like straight down the list. And Barack Obama was still making the argument. And this is to your point about like the west projects, their ideas on Barack Obama was making the argument. Well, no, it's economics. They're, they're doing this because they don't have, they don't have iPhones and they don't have modern things. Things. It's like, no, they literally put out a magazine with better copy editing than your average New York Times and they were straight up saying, hey, this is what it's called. This is why we hate you and this is why we fight you.

Brett (97:47)

And we should just have the seriousness and the respect for them to take them at their word, right? Like just, just take them at their word that this is what they want. And stop saying that like what they want is just a side by side state. They don't, that's not what they want. And that's like uniform both in, both in the west bank and in Gaza and, and say, I mean there are solutions here. I'm actually, you know, I, I listened to some people have some pretty interesting ideas about what to do about the west bank too, which was, you know, the idea being that the Middle east is sort of has three different forces kind of pulling it in different directions. Islam, tribalism and modernity. And tribalism is an important thing. It's, it actually kind of explains the origin of Islam because you know, tribalism emerges because there's not a lot of water in the Middle East. So you, individualism doesn't work. You need to have a tribe, you need to have a clan, you need to be loyal to the clan. And so there's a lot of, you know, there's on the one hand a lot of internal support, but also that's where you know, inbreeding in the Muslim world comes from. It's actually not a phenomenon of Islam, it's a phenomenon of the underlying tribalism. Islam is actually supposed to be the corrective to that because it was like Muhammad who was saying things like you should marry from afar, you should marry outside the clan and they're jihad. And also like we should all be coming together under, underneath the banner of Allah rather than constantly fighting with each other over water sources and that actually, you know, talking about it really over wildly oversimplifying history of the Arab world, but basically like, because Islam managed to like unify tribes, get them to stop fighting each other, deal with inbreeding and, and tamp down blood feuds. It was able to unite a lot of people and then swallow up a huge amount part of the, the Arab world. But anyway so, but it hasn't like the tribalism hasn't gone away. It's still a thing. And so you know, when you're trying to explain the Middle east, like why are certain countries peaceful and why are they not? You might say, oh well, some of them have oil and some of them are wealthy. It's like no, Iraq has tons of oil. So does Syria, so does Iran. They're dysfunctional basket cases. Dubai doesn't have any oil. Dubai is, you know, super wealthy and powerful despite not having any. What it is stable tribalism. It's like families that are. Saudi Arabia is Saudi Arabia Arabia owned by the Saud family. The Emirates are United Arab Emirates owned by individual families and tribes that worked, have worked together in concert. Kuwait owned by, owned by a family. Bahrain, Qatar, everywhere that's stable in the Middle east has like a st. Stable tribal sovereignty. Thus this guy's solution. He said Palestinian Emirates there should be an emirate of Ramallah, one of the cities, an emirate of Hebron, an emirate of Bethlehem, an emirate of Jin. Like you have small little areas that are run by like with, by a fan, you know, essentially put the family in charge and then they own it and they can run it and keep it stable. And you avoid all the sectarian. Because the thing is one thing people don't realize. If there were in fact a Palestinian state, like of all the area of the west bank with all these different cities in it, the only thing that would unify it is hostility to Israel. And so you're, it's a recipe for endless war because the moment if they, you know, other, other than that they all be fighting amongst each other with their own regional and sectarian biases against each other. And so it just like the only way to glue the state of Palestine together is, you know, trying to common an enemy.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (101:03)

Okay.

Brett (101:04)

You know, this is also why like why did Assad, why is Assad so historically anti anti Israel in Syria? Well, he leads this hodgepodge of the Alawites and the Druze and the Sunnis and the Shias. And the only way you could get everybody to stick together is be like those Jews, they suck. And so the, yeah, I mean so that's, you know that's like a sort of long, that's a. The short form explanation of why like the two state solution isn't one many reasons why the two state solution is bad it doesn't account for tribalism, it doesn't account for the clan structure of families in the region. And you know, better idea would be many, many smaller statelets, little emirates, city.

Will (101:42)

States, like back in.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (101:43)

Yeah, thank you. I didn't, I, I had no idea about any of that. So now it makes a lot of sense.

Brett (101:49)

Yeah, I didn't either until two weeks ago. And then I listened to a guy explain to me. It made a lot of sense to me. So.

Will (101:54)

All right, well, I think, I think we're going to go ahead and go on over to Super Chats. We're going, we're going to end on a positive note like there. So smash the like button, share the show with your friends and head on over to Timcast.com and join our Discord. Discord. We're not doing an after show tonight, but you can call in and speak to our guests and speak to us. If you're a member of the Discord, you can find like minded people. Maybe you'll get married, maybe you'll start a podcast. Who knows? There's a lot of, a lot of great things that happen over in the Discord. So go on over and, and join up.

Phil (102:29)

Opportunities abound.

Will (102:30)

They are Alpha Turkey says, well, well, main governor got nuked. So glad we have a president with big cojones in and I barely feel like we can keep up. I agree. It was, and that was one of the things that, even though I didn't mention that was one of the things that I was thinking about when we were talking about how the president will, you know, he will assert himself. And for people that don't know, Donald Trump and the main governor got into a disagreement today about federal funding. Actually it was about trans women. So met boys on girls sports team teams. Donald Trump had said, hey, you know, you're going to have to stop doing this. And the Maine governor said, well, we'll see you in court. And he's like, well, if you see us in court, we're not going to give you any federal funding, so you're going to do it. And I know that Maine isn't all that blue. It's actually kind of purple. So I think you lose. And honestly, if I understand correctly, some of the analysts that I've been listening to were saying that it is an 8020 topic in, in Maine, 80% of the people don't like young boys that are dressed as girls on girls sports teams. I think that's generally, it's generally kind of the split in the US Most, most, most of the people are kind of like, you know, even if you decide you want to go live your life and maybe I'll call you she, you still can't play sports with the girls. So there's your backstory for that one. Let's see here. What else do we got? Whiskey drankers says, hey Phil and crew. I was hoping to get a shout out for for Heroes Never alone. A 501C3 out of Legionnaire, Pennsylvania. A good place to move without West Virginia. 1099 BS. Thanks for all you guys do. We love you. Cheers. Thank you very much. And there's your shout out.

Phil (104:14)

There you go.

Will (104:15)

There you go. Common Sense Fishing says, I just busted a gut laughing hearing Phil smirk when saying Ray Stanley will be be in the members area. Like he's been. No nobody. Quickly followed up by a junior. I I that's kind of what he said or that's what this, the super chat says. I know it's kind of tough like, like YouTube is, is real finicky when it comes to the typing. So.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (104:40)

So shout out. Common Sense fishing.

Will (104:43)

I think so. Yeah. Shout out, man.

Phil (104:44)

Sometimes there's character limits depending on how much super chat.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (104:47)

It's very tricky.

Phil (104:48)

You gotta figure out a way to fit everything you want to say in.

Will (104:51)

There and it also, it'll finish it for you. But it doesn't do it like other spell checks, does it? It'll, it's kind of difficult.

Phil (104:57)

Like the hardest part for me when we're doing the show is reading the articles because I suck at reading out loud. Doubly as hard when it's reading the super chats.

Will (105:05)

Super chats.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (105:06)

Yeah, because you got to kind of know what they're saying as they say.

Brett (105:08)

Right. You can't just, you can't just robotically read. You never, you never know what somebody's going to say to you.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (105:13)

You'll get halfway.

Phil (105:14)

No, it happens that, that's, that happens.

Will (105:16)

To Mary a lot of times she'll just go, I'm not reading that.

Phil (105:21)

She's good at not falling into the trap.

Will (105:24)

Right?

Phil (105:24)

Right. Otherwise somebody's going to get you to say something awful.

Will (105:26)

R. So YouTube just crashed. So we're reloading here. Give, give us a second. Let's see. Let's see here. Zack Yandel says, Brett, your lie in April on Hulu, recent Discovery.

Phil (105:44)

What? Read it again.

Will (105:46)

Literally says, brett, your lie in April on Hulu recent Discovery. And it's your as in possessive, not you. You are.

Phil (105:53)

Oh, so it's a show or a movie? Oh, okay. I'll have to.

Will (105:57)

Let's go.

Phil (105:57)

Okay. Let's go. I'll have to check it out. You should go check out Reacher Season 3, which is very, very good.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (106:04)

Okay.

Will (106:05)

Yep.

Phil (106:05)

Much, much better at its start than season two was. Even if Alan Ritchson is kind of a TDS suffering lunatic. That's okay.

Brett (106:11)

I'd go watch the Agency. You guys haven't seen that one, The Showtime.

Phil (106:15)

That's a little bit too cerebral. I mean, it's Michael Fassbender, right?

Brett (106:20)

Yeah, it's Michael.

Phil (106:20)

I. I get into it like, I don't care about the mental health of spies. I just want to see him blow up. I just want to see him, you know, like, let's find a middle ground here. Like, I don't want to watch a spy go to therapy.

Will (106:33)

Can he go in a car chase after he gets out of therapy? Like, or get on a car chase getting to therapy and he runs in the office and he's like, okay, now I'm safe.

Phil (106:39)

Gets in a gunfight on the way to the therapist that I'm okay with.

Will (106:43)

Yeah.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (106:43)

Therapist is like, tell me about your day.

Phil (106:44)

Yeah.

Will (106:47)

Tommy K. Atomic says the FBI should halt all flights scheduled by people on the list. What list?

Brett (106:54)

Must be talking about the Epstein.

Phil (106:55)

Epstein.

Will (106:56)

Oh, the Epstein list. Okay. Yeah, there you go. I mean, we're on the Diddy list. Yeah.

Phil (106:59)

I mean, that depends. With the. With the way flights are going these.

Brett (107:01)

Days, I feel like they should just be arrested. Like, can we start with, like, I don't know, I'm just like, going to throw out there that maybe the people who sex traffic children should, you know, the consequences should be more substantial than awkwardness that they can't.

Will (107:13)

Walks abound.

Phil (107:15)

No, they're like that. Or you have to fly one of those Endeavor Air flights.

Will (107:18)

Or Spirit.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (107:19)

Oh, yeah.

Brett (107:21)

Imagine if that was the way that, like, our government resolved this problem. They're like, okay, we found you guilty of flying to go have sex with children. The. The solution is this is you're not allowed to fly anymore.

Will (107:31)

No.

Phil (107:31)

It's like nothing but flights from women.

Will (107:33)

Yeah, it's all just unmanned flights.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (107:35)

The.

Will (107:36)

The Endeavor Air. Endeavor Air.

Brett (107:37)

Right. You have to go on those flights.

Will (107:39)

All women. Endeavor Endeavor Air.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (107:42)

I mean, they had.

Will (107:42)

They would. They would actually have hashtag unmanned because there was a. All woman crew, which is cringe but typical of feminists and stuff. Cards, common sense, fishing. Says the way politicians flip flop like fish. I don't trust anyone who hasn't been America first from the get go. Even before Trump showed up. Like, Ron Paul, Ron and Rand Paul, they're all swamp creatures. Nearly all.

Phil (108:06)

I mean, like, you do have to give some grace to, to politicians that have turned things around and have stood by their convictions since then. Right. From what I understand, J.D. vance had some stances early on in his career that necessarily didn't like Trump.

Brett (108:20)

In the 2016 primary.

Phil (108:21)

The point is kind of more to. If the ideas that you're promulgating are good for the country and they're held by a lot of people, you want to get the politicians to go to work for you and your views. I don't go to politicians or actors for honesty. I go to them because, you know, either you're making a piece of art that I want to consume or you're potentially in charge of helping put forth laws and ideas that I want to see come forward. And in that case, I don't know the person, I don't know whether they honestly believe that. But it's about making sure that the views that the movement are pushing are the ones that are popular because they're the ones that they're going to go with. I don't look to them for integrity.

Will (109:02)

If, yeah, if, if the option is a politician with integrity that I disagree with or a politician that's going to lie about what he believes but still going to do the things that I, I like, I'm going to go with the guy that's going to lie and do the things that I like.

Phil (109:16)

And that is more likely to be the case even for the ones that are going to do things that you don't like. You're more than likely going to get one void of integrity going against you or for you. Very rarely do you get a politician with integrity.

Will (109:29)

And there's one thing that I want to say on this, like, and we talk about it fairly regularly on here, like it's easy for us as pundits or, or people that are on the Internet talking about politics and stuff. It's easy for us to get wrapped up in. This is what I want. It's got to be this way. But you got to remember Congress, the Republicans only have a two seat majority in the House and they only have like a one seat majority sometimes in the Senate. And that means that you have to deal with the opposing party to get them to vote with you. Like how the sausage is made sucks. But this is the system that we live in and it's real easy for us to say we want this and we want that and if we don't get it, then we're going to primary this guy and block, blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't mean that the next guy is going to have a different circumstance if the split in the House or the Senate remains the same.

Brett (110:20)

This is sort of my, you know, we had the Article 3 project, have been pretty hard on a lot of senators and we did a lot of bullying, which I'm very proud of.

Will (110:28)

It's always proper to bully senators and Congress.

Brett (110:31)

People especially like to get, you know, President Trump's nominees confirmed. But I do have a view that is. And I think especially you should let Susan Collins do what she wants. That's the view. Why is that? Because Susan Collins is as good as we're going to get in Maine. We're not going to get a better, you know, the alternative to Susan Collins is a Democrat who votes with us 0% of the time. Susan Collins voting with us half the time is gravy. It's why the Democrats were so stupid when they complained about Joe Manchin constantly. Like, Joe Manchin's from here. He's a West Virginian. Yeah. Yep. You're lucky you get, you know, West Virginia went 70% for Trump. You're lucky you get any votes. Votes ever. And you should be grateful every day that Joe Manchin doesn't just decide to switch parties and tell you to screw yourself.

Will (111:08)

Yeah.

Phil (111:09)

And the difference is kind of that the Republicans look at that as somebody who's voting to support what his constituents want, whereas the left sees it as somebody who's not obeying their rules.

Brett (111:18)

Yeah, right.

Will (111:19)

And, and you're. I agree with you both totally. And I. It's, I just think that it's important for. Or it's, it's incumbent on us to remind people that there are realities. Realities that we're dealing with. And, whereas we're gonna, like I said, we're gonna sit here and, and pontificate and we're gonna say we want this and we wish this and we think this. That doesn't mean that that changes anything in Washington. And the realities on the ground are always going to be the realities on the ground. If we can get 2/3 of, of the house and then a 75, you know, 75 seats in the Senate, then let's go do everything we want. You know, go make all, like, repeal everything. Get rid of all the stuff we can get rid of. That sounds awesome to me, and I'm all for it, but considering we don't have that kind of majority, there are limitations as to what we can do. And if you're if we end up with two big bills like they're talking about, it's better to have the stuff that you want and a bunch of garbage that you don't want than have nothing at all. And that's your option, a bunch of garbage to get the other people to vote for it or else you don't get a bill that you like at all.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (112:23)

So on the J.D. vance thing, casual fishing is correct. I mean he, he could have been, he's a Marine. He's, he's, he's from the, the Appalachian. He could have loved America's whole life. It didn't mean he was America first just because he judged Trump in a certain way. So like he could have, you know, he said what he said about Trump. He had his thoughts. But I may be in the back of his mind a lot of people, he still loved this country, still wanted to serve his country. So I give respect to that part.

Will (112:48)

Absolutely. So we're going to go ahead and read some more super chat chats. Shane H. Wilder says one thing I noticed MSM not covering is the 70 Christian martyrs beheaded by ISIS linked terrorists in the Congo in the Kanga massacre. I did not know about this at all. That recent I assume so.

Brett (113:09)

How do you spell that? Kanga. Kanga Church massacre.

Will (113:14)

Things that happen in, in Africa frequently get ignored unless it's North Africa and.

Phil (113:19)

They don't like to talk about any form of persecution that Christians Christians face ever. Oh yes, the Marxist left wing view.

Will (113:27)

In America which kind of speaks to the, the, the conversation we were having earlier. Like even in the big tent MAGA movement you do have people that are, even if they aren't true believers, they're fond of Christianity, of religion. You know, they're not hostile to it. Which is obviously far much better.

Brett (113:46)

No, this is, and it also connects to sort of the broader Israel point. Like Israel is a lot more friendly to Christians Christianity than its neighbors are. Yeah, a lot more.

Will (113:53)

Yeah.

Brett (113:54)

You know I spoke with a lot of, yeah, I could go into detail on this, but I spoke with a number of actually a couple of Palestinian Christians who came to speak with us and they had really, really interesting stories about you know, like one of them was involved in like a sort of kind of Palestinian like not terror group but a Palestinian activist group and he thought like he had his friends and then one day like one of these Islamists kidnapped his sister and brought him back to, brought back to a different city and he, and he knew the people in there and he went there, went to the city. He's like, hey guys, like, I've been working with you all this time. I'm with you in this activist group, like, can you, can I get my sister out, please? Thank you. And they're like, you're, you're Christian. There's nothing for you here, like, at all. You know, like, and that's, that gets that point I was making about, like, there's an underlying tribalism and sectarian in Arab. In a lot of Arab culture that like, oh, you're not, you're not our religion. Well, you're not us. So, you know. Oh, your, your sister got kidnapped. That's too bad. Like, yeah, sucks for you. Yeah, not our problem. And that's, you know, one. And then you compare that to like what they get in Israel where. Yeah, they're, they're. The Christians are definitely a minority in Israel, obviously, you know, and really what they're fighting for is to not be treated, treated under the Arab rubric. Because there's the pal, there's the Jewish rubric and the Arab rubric that are sort of settled in because those are the much bigger populations. And there's fights that the Christians are having to be like, no, no, we're different from both. Like, we want Christian education, we want our kids to be brought up Christian. And the Israeli government's like, yeah, okay, sure, yeah.

Will (115:28)

Tyrant God says, I found out in France you have to have a suppressor by law, if you own a firearm. Your safety of the public. The only reason they are why they are heavily regulated in the US Is control. Rock on, Phil. Cheers. You're talking totally right. And it's not just France. There's multiple places in Europe where a suppressor is actually mandatory. So polite. It is polite. It is. I mean, if you put a can on a rifle, especially like a, you know, a medium cartridge, like a 5.56 or whatever, like it's still got a loud snap when you're, when you're shooting it, but it's totally different than shooting that same rifle without any hear hearing protection and, and without a can, man. It's one time when I, when I first started shooting rifles, one time I went to the range and I forgot my ear pro and I was like, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and shoot anyways. I shot one round. No, no, the hell I'm not. Yeah, yeah, it was when I lived in Massachusetts. It was a 40 minute drive to the range and it was a 40 minute drive home and it sucked. But I was not shooting anymore because, man, that rings your bell.

Brett (116:30)

Yeah. No, I've, I don't shoot often, but I think I got invited to go to a shooting range once and it was the first time I'd gone shooting in like 20 years. And I go there and I'm like, you forget if you don't do it how loud guns are. Like just, they are, you know, and I can hear it. I'm like, I hear my hearing. I can't tolerate this. And if I, if I don't stop, if I don't get out of this room, my hearing will be permanently damaged definitely. Like I need to, you know, that's, that's pretty rough. And I wonder, I wonder how soldiers put up with that. I mean, do soldiers just have ear protection or is it just something that.

Will (117:00)

Nowadays, Nowadays most of your, your military like so like especially your, your infantry guys, most of them have some kind of ear pro.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (117:08)

I always wore, I didn't, I never did combat at all. But any training exercise, anything. We did always hearing protection.

Will (117:13)

Did you have the, the plugs or was it. I was.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (117:15)

The orange plugs.

Will (117:16)

Orange plugs.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (117:17)

No, you can't, you can't f. Around with the, the big old ears. The muffs.

Will (117:20)

But so it just be now the new helmet, you can, man, they, they have the, you can put the muffs that are connected.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (117:24)

Oh sure. Oh, that would be nice. Yeah. Bop bop, bop, bop. I could dig that.

Will (117:27)

Yeah. They, yeah.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (117:28)

So a robot.

Will (117:29)

But that, that's one of the things like, I mean the military, like if you look at the, even, even your, your regular rifleman infantry, like they're pretty well equipped. They're, they're, they're walking out with like, they're walking out with hard armor for rifles and they're walking out with, with a decent amount of armor for flack and they're walking out with ear pro and, and most of them are getting at least a, a, a single tube night vision. And you know, they're, they're really well, they're really well armed.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (117:58)

You can just go right down to the local PX and a lot of places in town like Jacksonville. You can, you can. If the government, government's not going to give it to you. You can, you can load up yourself and take what you need.

Will (118:07)

Yeah.

Brett (118:07)

How about, I mean, actually, I'm curious like, you, you're a, you're a musician, right? Like, and I mean ear production's got to be a big deal for you too, when you're just playing.

Will (118:14)

Yeah, well, I mean so like on stage we have, we wear in ear monitors. So I'M in control of like how loud it is. But it's, it's, you know, they're, they're form fitting, they're, they're, they're, you know, they're expensive as hell to, to get the, your, you know, the, they're multi drivers. There's multiple little speakers in there and stuff and they've got a, you know, full range and stuff. I've been doing it 25 years and I have tinnitus. You know, on stage it, you'll. I'll start out at a certain volume and depending on the size of the stage or where we're playing, it's like if you're playing a smaller place and you're right on top of the drums or you're close to the drums, you kind of need to crank it up and it gets loud in there. But if you're playing in a big arena, you know, you kind of to turn it down. But it, you know, it's, it's a real, it's a real balancing act because you know, you want to, you want to be in the moment and you want to be able to hear the crowd. So you have mics that are facing out to the crowd and you have to turn those up. But then you've got a lot of splashback and stuff. So it's, it's like I said, it's a balancing act and it's tough. And I've definitely got tinnitus. I hear it ringing right now. That's part of the reason why like I'll wear these for a little while, but before the end of the show, usually I'll end up taking them off because just having that kind of over the ear. Even though I turn every, every time I sit, no matter where I sit down, whoever was there before me has it way louder than I want it. I'll go and sit down and where Mary does and for to do PCC and she's got it cranked up and.

Phil (119:38)

I'm just jumps out of his seat because her volume is just.

Will (119:40)

Yeah, girl, you're gonna be, you're gonna be deaf in a year. But yeah, it's, it's a real thing. And I shoot a lot too and, and I don't skimp on Ear Pro. I wear expensive.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (119:50)

You have to. It's important. You can be old. You never gain your hearing back. Once your hearing is gone, it's gone.

Brett (119:55)

Yep.

Will (119:56)

So let's see here. Awoken state, Florida says first time, super chat. Love you all and everything you do. Wanted to shout out My man's new channel, Department of Deportation. Also a website with T shirts for sale. I was hoping you. You can help get him some extra visibility, more viewers. Thanks. Congratulations on your new endeavor, Department of Deportation.

Phil (120:18)

Great name, yo.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (120:19)

It'd be so popular for the next four years.

Will (120:21)

Yeah, right? All right. Mystery beard said my vinyl of antifragile arrives Sunday. Sick man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. If you're looking to get a copy of all that Remains new record, you can go to all that Remains online or you can get it off of Amazon. Amazon. I think they. They've got the. The. I think they have the CDs. If not go to go to all that remains online dot com. We got them there. Let's see. Anthony Green says if you do not know who Raisin Kane is, you have to hear his story. He's the general who told Trump ISIS could be defeated in weeks, not years. It's legit. Trump's Funniest story from 45. I will check that out. That's worth looking into. All right. Yeah, Phil, talking about Diddy and Epstein while wearing a TTI shirt is a bold move. I'm not sure why I'm not going to talk about what tti is, because YouTube has rules. But if you know, you know. So, yeah, I'm not sure why that's. That. That's a. A bold move. Let's see Dark Angel, Don or Poops. There you go. First, super chat. Longtime fan wanted to highlight the fact that Jeff General Jim Slife also got fired today. He was a toxic POS over at FSOC and pushed DEI hard. Also, openly hated enlisted people. Maga. You know, it's bad news when you're. When your brass hates the enlisted.

Brett (121:45)

Yeah.

Will (121:45)

Yes. You know, yes.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (121:49)

Like the brass to begin with. But if you give hate back, you can go F the F off.

Will (121:53)

I mean, hate has to only flow up. Hate cannot flow down.

Brett (121:57)

I mean. Yeah, why do you want to even want to do that with your lives? You, like, hate the people you're, you know, the. The soldiers serving under you. That's.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (122:03)

And it's a huge deal. It's like life, their lives you're dealing with and everything, man. You can't be effing around with that.

Will (122:09)

All right, so smash that, like, button, share the show with your friends, and go ON over to timcast.com join the Discord and. Yeah, so will you. Got anything you want to shout out?

Brett (122:20)

Yes. A3paction.org so article three project. We are, you know, we haven't really Talked a huge amount about this, maybe a little. We're all about getting people confirmed now. A lot of President Trump's main nominees have gotten firm, but now we're on the subordinates and there's a lot of very important people.

Will (122:36)

Even the Labor Secretary.

Brett (122:37)

Yeah, well, I mean we're, I think we just, we believe Trump should get all his appointees.

Will (122:41)

Okay.

Brett (122:41)

So including the ones we don't necessarily agree with on policy. So we, we think you should support them. But there's a lot of think people like Harmeet Dillon, who's going to be running the civil rights section at doj, people like Gail Slater is going to be running antitrust and going after big tech. There are a lot of like secondary nominees that some of these senators might be getting ideas about. Oh, we could maybe stop them. Go to a3paction.org we make it unbelievably easy for you to contact your senator. Like you just, you click a couple of buttons and you send an email to your senator. And trust me, that's what they pay attention to. They don't pay attention to the broader hubbub necessarily. But if you are a constituent and you email your senator and they hear about it, they're going to take that serious.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (123:18)

It's a straight, streamlined, streamlined, you know.

Brett (123:20)

Within a minute you'll have an email at the door and you don't, you don't. So a3p action.org guys, if you want.

Phil (123:27)

To follow me, Instagram and Twix at Brett Dasovic on both of those platforms. But what you should do is join us Monday through Friday at 3pm Eastern on YouTube. Pop Culture Crisis. It's a lot less serious than all of the various serious stuff that we talk here. We have a lot of fun. You should come join us on Monday.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (123:44)

Friends, if you want to follow, follow me. Come to X. I'm at Raymond Giussanley on X. Raymond Stanley Jr. On the Internet. I have some based takes that are semi good sometimes. So I had a great time. It was a great Friday. Will always a great conversation, sir.

Brett (124:00)

Absolutely.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (124:01)

Also, yo, congratulations to Tim Allison. They, they had the thing and so that.

Will (124:06)

So that's.

Brett (124:07)

Yes. Congratulations.

Raymond G. Stanley Jr. (124:08)

I'm not. I. So that's, you know, shout out.

Will (124:12)

I am filled. It remains on X. You can subscribe to me there. I'm filled. It remains official on Instagram. The band is all that remains. The new record dropped on January 31. It is called Antif Fragile. You can head on over to Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music and Deezer. To check it out. Please do. And also don't forget, the left lane is for crime. It is a Friday, so keep an eye out here for updates throughout the weekend and we will see you all back here on Monday.

Phil (125:02)

Sa.