Okay,

let's talk about the money and these groups. Let me cue this up for you here, because I got to thinking about this and looked a few things up. So you talk about, like, Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, the Freedom Research Council's turning point usa and cpec uh you know there's there's dozens of seven mountains mandate oh the oh yeah well anyway just there's a whole laundry list of these groups many of which you you went to and talked to but just for fun i just googled left-wing think tanks and i mean there's just as many of them and right i mean there's open society foundation move on millennium promise new america european movement uk scientists for eu center for american progress the aspen institute the urban institute freedom at freedom house yeah maybe i don't know economic policy institute the aclu brookines institute i don't know i think they're more centrist. Oh, but a bunch of these were funded by George Soros. Okay, I'm teeing this up for you because conservatives listening to this would say, this is the way the game is played. You guys do it. Here's your list of groups. Here's our list of groups. You have your billionaires like George Soros. We have our guys. That's the American democracy. What's the difference?

Sure. And the big difference is that money on the right, there's a lot of money on the right, there's a lot of money on the left, although I would argue the amounts of money spent on the right are greater, like the amounts are greater, but they're spent differently. So on the sort of, when I say left, I mean, sort of moderate liberal left progressive, whatever, that sort of big tent, big, noisy, sort of undisciplined tent. The money is spent on often technocratic solutions or it's spent on organizations that are operating in silo. They're not sort of networked with other organizations, and they're also not functioning as giant voter turnout machines. They're getting the rank and file to vote on a single issue or a handful of issues. You just don't see the kinds of voter guides distributed through churches on the left. I mean, you see some, but the churches certainly don't have... There's a lot of progressive politics in America, but those churches, first of all, they're graying, you know, and they're sort of thinning out. And they also don't have the money funding them, and they don't have the organizational capacity, whereas the right is much more disciplined. You know, the right people don't just invest in technocratic solutions. They invest in infrastructure, and they invest in people. So they're really good at leadership development. I'm not saying that you can't do these things. I mean, in some instances, they're using the tools of democracy to dismantle democracy. I write about it to show how it's done. Somebody described my last book, he said, if it's a watch, you like take the back off the watch so you can sort of see how it all works. And that's why I covered the infrastructure of this movement to show how they're able to punch above their political weight, to show how they're able to get the rank and file to vote against their own, frankly, their own economic self-interest. And we're talking

billions of dollars here. Oh,

yeah. I mean, many billions. I mean, we're talking Barry's side with his $1.6 billion donation to form the Marble Freedom Trust and putting Leonard Leo, who is the head of the former, built up the Federalist Society to where it is today, putting him in charge of it. It's Bradley, which also has one point something billion in assets. It's the National Christian Foundation, which also distributes like hundreds of millions, or I believe it might have been like up to 1.1 or 1.5 billion over the last couple of years. I mean, the amounts of money are absolutely massive. You know, and money lies in God. I pay very close attention to this group that I call the funders. These people are the beneficiaries of the massive concentrations of wealth over the past decades. They're investing their fortunes, or at least a portion of them, in anti-democratic projects. And by the way, religiously, they're all over the place. You know, I'm thinking about the Corkeries or Barry Side or Tim Dunn or the DeVos Prince family juggernaut. I mean, some are evangelical, some are Protestant, some are Catholic, some are Jewish, some are frankly atheistic. But what they really want is economic policies that are going to benefit them. They want, I would say, justification for their extreme concentrations of wealth, and they want to be able to make more money. They understand, I think, to some degree that their extreme wealth comes at a sort of, there's a social cost to it. We have a sort of, now winner takes all kind of economy and it's making life harder for people, you know, the ordinary families. But, you know, they need to get the rank and file on board. So they invest in part in these disinformation projects and they invest in the culture wars because the culture wars are just very distracting and they get people to not think about what's really going to sort of help them economically. I mean, there's a lot that this movement offers that rank and file, sense of community, a sense of pride and being American, a sense of belonging and all of that. It's very focused on identity politics. You know, they accuse the left of playing identity I think they play it harder. But at the end of the day, you think that a funder like Elon Musk cares about religion? Absolutely not. I mean, he just sees that stuff as the price of doing business so he can get his privileged contracts and expand his business and be on his way to becoming a trillionaire.

Yeah. You know, I don't know Elon personally, but I've watched endless hours of him on Rogan and other shows. He doesn't come off like that at all. That's not what he's doing. He already has all the money he needs, more money than he can ever use. Why is he doing that? Well, he said, Joe asked him, why are you doing this? You don't need the money. He doesn't need more contracts and so on. He's doing it to save America because he's worried about what the left has done to destroy free speech and whole censorship thing. And the whole crazy woke, you know, far left progressive D.I., you know, anti-racism, all this stuff that, you know, a lot of people are not even centrists or even a lot of old school liberals are not happy with. And that's what he says. why he's doing it. And

what they're really doing is declaring a total war on anti-discrimination law. I mean, there's DEI programs that were overreach or that, you know, was there some silly stuff? Of course there was, but they're not doing it to improve that. They're also not sort of acknowledging at all the condition under which some of these programs arose, where you had like, you know, rank discrimination against women and people of color. They're really doing it to declare war on anti-discrimination law. I mean, lot of this is going to end up functioning as, I hate to say it, an affirmative action program for white conservative men. I mean, just look at Pete Hankseth, you know? Is he really the most qualified guy for the job?

Well, none of these people that are appointed were the most qualified, including Tulsi Gabbard. So a woman, whatever. but again how do you know that's what elon

is really up to because he says that's not what he's up to so how do you know you know i don't know what's in people's hearts but i will say this a lot of extremely rich people and i spend enough time in santa barbara to know a few i live in um uh in from like i would say, islands. They're living in these very privileged islands where everybody around them is super nice to them and super obsequious, etc. And they know that a lot of them derive their wealth from monopolistic businesses. And at the same time, life is getting harder for a lot of Americans. Like, you know, people, you got two parents, you got three jobs, and you still can't afford a house or a dignified life for yourself and your kids. And so they, you know, we don't have like a problem with not enough wealth in America. But we've, you know, just don't take my word for it. Like, look at the economic data. You know, you see a sort of ballooning of the super tippy top, and then you see a sort of thinning out in the bottom, you know, I would say like 90% perhaps. So they can sort of hear from like far away over the walls of their islands of privilege, the voices of their critics saying well you know maybe you should pay your taxes maybe you should pay at least as much taxes as a public school teacher they feel really defensive about this and so they get really fixated on this sort of into woke stuff because it almost like a kind of thin cover for otherizing, other groups of people, and so then they get all in on this thing. I mean, the whole woke thing is kind of a massive distraction. You know, I'm not particularly woke, but I'm also more anti-woke than woke, because I see anti-wokeism as a tool of an authoritarian movement. I see it as a means of distraction. It confuses people so they align their politics in an anti-democratic direction. So I'll give you an example. In this last election, there are huge numbers of people who were voting on the issue of whether transgender female athletes should play on women's sports. Now, a huge number of people voting on this, but there are so many issues facing the American people. if you can get people to vote on this shiny bauble, right, which is, you know, frankly, I'm against it in many circumstances. I think there's some complexity depending on the ages, the people, the sport, etc. But it's not a big issue at all compared with the other issues that we're facing. You know, we're looking at an administration that is aggressively destroying the planet, rolling back every policy achievement, turning the Department of Justice into a personal law boss service. We're seeing the destruction of global alliances. And you're telling me that the 10, I think it's 10 NCAA athletes or whatever the 500,000 NCAA athletes is the issue we should be focusing on. I don't know the exact number, but the head of the NCAA. I've

looked it all up. It's close to that. Yeah. It's not the numbers or the percentage, which is minuscule, you know, it's the individual stories, you know? So when you see somebody like, uh, uh, Riley Gaines, usually on Fox news talking about this stuff. But did this not happen? I assume she didn't make this story up. There's, you know, Will, what's his name? Leah Thomas, Will Thomas, you know, standing next to her in the locker room, staring at her, getting dressed naked, putting on her swimsuit. And he's there all fully intact, male. That's I mean, come on, that's not right. think these people should be asked in the end of the day

did their anti-woke crusade in the end make them fellow travelers with a fascist movement do you think the secular uh left center the anti-woke left became so distracted by these anti-woke issues that it became a useful ally for the right maybe because it allowed people to of course they don't think that's what they're doing they

don't want to do that but these

are not issues that these kinds of issues can be adjudicated by sports authorities and doctors and it's a relatively new thing um and frankly it could be done without regard to politics but listen i think the trump administration has done everything conceivable to make everyone scared of DEI so that everyone is now going overboard. Is that going to be honestly meritocratic now that we know it's less possible for women and people of color to be hired, even if they're the best people for the job? It's, you know, I have a friend who works in the federal government who was told, you know, send an email. If you suspect anyone in your division is using DEI in their hiring, here's a place you can call. And this person said, it's very alarming because the federal workplaces are like any other workplaces. There are people who hate you and people who like you, right? Some people are competitive. And what it's going to mean is if I hire a woman or a person of color, even if they're the best person in the job, someone who might not like me is going to say, oh, she's using DEI, right? And what that means is, well, I better not hire a woman or a person of color. I better hire a white man and better be conservative so that I can't be accused of being DEI or employing DEI. It's going to basically make it very difficult, much more difficult for it's going to bring back discrimination. And then there will be no recourse

for discrimination. Well, but the laws, the 1964 laws that Johnson passed are still on the books. Those aren't going away. You know, you can't discriminate against people in this administration. Yeah. Well, I've been kind of outspoken against a lot of this stuff because, you know, it's very divisive. That is to say, to constantly get people to focus on other people's skin color. But who is doing that? I mean, it's the right who's doing that. The left is doing that. That's all you hear from the left. I don't know. I don't know what you're looking

at or what kind of media you're consuming, but that's not my world at all.

Really? Well, I consume as much as I possibly can across the spectrum.

I mean, is this stuff you're seeing online? Because the right pushes this stuff online. So, for example, at America Fest, I was just there in December, every other person spoke about the issue of transgender women playing in women's sports. Nobody spoke about the fact that gun violence is the number one cause of child and adolescent death in our country No one spoke about the fact that 16% of American children are impoverished and struggle to eat. Nobody spoke about the fact that we have a scandal of child abuse in our country. No, instead, it's focused on this tiny little, like a laser pointer cat toy, Michael. We need to move away from this stuff. They're the ones who are pushing it all the time to get folks who are susceptible to it, to focus on that, to the exclusion of every other problem in our country. The fact that too many families can't support themselves they can't like the bread and butter issues that affect so many american families and instead we're all going to be focused on this little tiny side issue over there well

um that was an analogy i used when um the left media went crazy over elon's supposed Heil hand wave. I thought that is the dumbest thing to waste time on because meanwhile, it's almost like Trump sent him out there, go out there and do something crazy because I'm about to issue a bunch of executive orders here. And the entire left media will just talk about you giving a Zieg Heil for days. And that's exactly what happened. You know, that's not the right media. That's the left media. Well,

here's the thing. These people are essentially attention seekers. And they figured out that this is a low cost, easy hit for a round of media attention. It's low cost or even profitable for them, and that they're confident their supporters will not view this as a genuine Hitler salute, even if they are indeed tapping into anti-Semitism and racism. It's with a wink and a nod they're tapping into it, but oh no, I'm not a Nazi. So they're confident that their supporters are going to see this as another exercise of owning the libs, and the libs are going to oblige by complaining about their performance. But combining this with religious rhetoric, frankly, shows quite clearly what religion has become for these people. They are power worshipers. They worship power. Their religion is one of extreme intolerance and a desire to make others unhappy and to exact

vengeance. Yeah. I don't know how much you follow Bill Maher, but he's on this almost every week. You know, he's an old school Democrat liberal. His whole life, that's all he's ever voted. And he complains constantly about his own party. Obsessing, again, about DEI and trans and this and that. And he thinks it's a terrible idea to ruin the party cost you guys the election he says to his fellow democrats you know this is not cool stop it drop it course correct now or else we're going to lose the midterms we're going to lose 2028 what do you think about that well

i would i want to ask you a question i mean with you think that with his obsession, do you think that he is actually, by buying into the trap that they're setting for him, do you think that he's helping to drive a certain number of voters into supporting fascism and authoritarianism? I mean, you're not really acknowledged what's happening in front of our eyes, Michael, to our democracy, to our institutions, to our overseas alliances.

Yeah, he doesn't think that's what he's doing. But, you know, there's enough examples, again, even if it's a small number, you know, like the, what do they call it? The drag queen story hour at the public school. This has happened. You know, maybe it's a small number, but why is that happening? And why are, you know, why does the media cover that? And then, you know, the left praises it. Oh, this is a wonderful thing. No,

it's not. What do you mean when you say the left? I mean, where are you finding your stuff? Are you just like looking at libs of TikTok stuff? Well,

okay. Are, just, you know, Bill Maher is-

I mean, do you see it in your own life? I see a lot of poor people in my life. I know people who have lost their children due to gun violence. I, you know, I think we have real problems in our country and we need to, you know, when the right starts harping on this stuff, you know, whatever you think of those issues, you need to say, listen, we need some policies and we need politicians to do that as well. Has, you know, the Democratic Party made mistakes? For sure. On the other hand, they weren't really focused on this issue. It's the right that talks about this stuff constantly making, you know, turning a molehill into a mountain. That does happen. Do I see this in my whole life? No. I think it's private schools that have more of a problem with whatever wokeism that people are talking about than the public schools, which are really focused on, you know, getting kids, you know, often from modest families, the skills they need to succeed in a modern economy. Like a lot

of this stuff comes to me on Twitter. I'm not on Instagram or TikTok or any of those. But on Twitter, I mean, since you mentioned libs of TikTok, they just post videos made by liberals, by these, you know, the blue haired, nose ring, crazy, googly eyed, ranting, screaming people every day, every hour. What am i looking at you're looking at libs of tiktok and you're just falling right into their trap michael what trap but those but but the videos are real right they're not fake videos what what am what am i looking at then there's

all kinds of nutty stuff but we could have priorities man well

agreed okay so gun violence and poverty yes way way more important videos

of people sticking their heads into alligator mouths but like they're crazy but is that really the biggest problem facing our country you

know

no

certainly the gun violence thing but even

there you gotta read the headlines honey just like read the new york times i do i

have the new york i have the browser open right here new york times wall street journal next to me you'll be glad the wall street journal is pretty critical of trump uh so far um but um yeah so but even say the gun violence thing so uh conservative media will say yeah black lives matter why don't the people promoting black Lives Matter care about all the black kids being shot? I'm

not familiar with Black Lives Matter.

Defund the police, you know,

all that stuff. What they do or they don't do. But gun violence is now the number one cause of child and adolescent deaths in this country. And it's an absolute disgrace. This doesn't happen in any other country. You know, most Americans support some form of gun control. You know, even people who are gun owners and responsible, you know, gun owners support some forms of gun control. But we have a gun lobby that restricts us from actually being able to take certain kinds of statistics on this. The lobby appears to have bought and paid for the entire Republican Party. People are tired of thoughts and prayers. We've got some real problems in our country. And I think we need to be focused on those. and Wright would like us to get distracted with these shiny baubles of the culture wars, because that's how they manipulate the rank and file into voting for an anti-democratic project. Who

are the Jewish devotees for Ayn Rand? Oh,

as you're reading about somebody... Well, just from bullet

points from your book. I

think that referred to Barry Seid. Oh, okay.