Original subtitles

at the clock.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, people. How are you?

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Woof, woof. Absolutely.

All right. Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Let's get to all the big news.

Big news from outer space.

No, did you see this? You know, Elon Musk has his company, SpaceX, an amazing

company.

And they went public a few months ago, did very well. But their rocket crashed

into the moon. I don't know if you saw their rocket. Look, that's science.

Things go wrong before they go right. But yes, we hit the moon with a rocket.

Trump announced today the moon has been completely defeated and they're begging

for a deal.

Begging for a deal.

I kid the Iran war. Is it a war? I don't know. It's a war, not a war. It's

complicated. That's the status. It's very complicated.

Iran, ooh, now they're saying that they're going to, the Strait of Hormuz

is open, except they're going to ban ships just from the United States and

Israel. This really pissed off Trump. He said, you are so lucky we are out of

missiles.

Yeah.

Turns out we are. You know, we kept saying to Iran, there's more where that

came from. No, turns out not.

Turns out not more where that came from. I don't know. We spent a trillion

dollars on defense and Marata missiles. You know, French fries are expensive at

McDonald's, but when you look at the bottom of the bag, there's one leg.

President had a, I would say, a mixed week.

He did get his attorney general through. That's his personal lawyer, is the

attorney general. And he got his director of national intelligence

through. But he lost Jeanine Pirro.

Even she would not go along with his story about the reflecting pool.

And she's pretty far MAGA, but no, even she wouldn't go along. And Trump said

she folded like an umbrella.

Don't we want umbrellas to fold?

It's like saying about some guy you don't like, boy, that guy really

shat the toilet.

Yeah, that's where you shit. Okay.

But yeah, Jeanine Pirro literally brought a suitcase of evidence to the

White House to show it wasn't vandals, it was bad construction, and Trump not

buying it.

It was sad. He said, people get away with things and it's a disgrace. He was

very wounded. He said, sometimes I wonder why I even bother making shit up.

I said the president.

But listen, while we're obsessing about reflecting pools and the ballroom, that

was in the news today, the ballroom, the pool.

I say this every week. AI, going to kill us all.

Last week, it was they kind of like went into their own evolution. They can

evolve on their own. Now, we found out this week, for the first time, they've

created functioning viruses not seen in nature. No date when we'll all be dead,

but you can access the new platform through chat RIP.

Listen, I've said this before. I hope the

aliens are here.

I do. I hope they're here and watching this and they're going to save us. And

by the way, the administration this week, just a few days ago, maybe

yesterday, they unleashed a new trove of UFO files.

Interesting things in there.

Triangular craft, weird lights over an army base, a dick-like figure with large

eyes. That was just an R.A.R. in a Grande video.

We want her to, maybe that joke will make her eat something. So I'm doing my,

I'm saying maybe it'll help.

Speaking of eating something, I got to tell you this. Democrats have found a

candidate who hates Thanksgiving and wants to get rid of it. Yes, running for

governor in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong.

Have you heard about this? Yeah, Thanksgiving, she says, should be

canceled. I say good. Finally, a politician willing to stand up to big

stuffing.

I love the Democrats.

Surprisingly, Debbie Downer's policy about Thanksgiving is not popular

with anybody, really.

I mean, white people don't like it. People of color don't like it. Women

don't like it. Men don't like it. It does have 98% approval with turkeys.

But of course, you know, she wrote this. She said right

on her tweet a couple of years ago, Get rid of Thanksgiving.

Of course, yesterday she went on CNN, renounced it. I don't believe you.

I don't believe you people who renounce things. We know what you said. You mean

it. Live by it. You're fucking squirrelly out of it. No, you meant it.

You know why I know she meant it? Because she hates all holidays.

She talked about feeling attacked on Christmas when someone put on her

computer a Christmas scene.

Doesn't like fireworks, Fourth of July.

All the far lefties hate Halloween.

Costumes that are inappropriate? Oh, please.

This woman doesn't like Valentine's Day. Another way of capitalism taking over

our love life. She said, Valentine's Day, the holiday that brings out the

worst of humanity.

That's the holiday that... That's the holiday that brings out the worst of

humanity? Have you ever been to a Black Friday sale?

People will hip-check an old lady to get an air fryer. That's the worst.

Okay, so this is her policy.

No Christmas, no Thanksgiving, no July 4th, no Halloween, no Valentine's Day.

One place you don't have to worry about running into Francesca Hong, Party City.

I couldn't make a character like this up. And she's running for governor of a

big state, Wisconsin.

She also said that she once left a restaurant because she had an anxiety

attack from being around, quote, too many old white people.

Well, there's an easy solution to that. Don't go to Cracker Barrel.

All right, we've got a great show.

Sarah Palmieri and Matt Roser here. But first up.

He is the founder and CEO of the Mike Rowe Works Foundation and a host of the

Way I Heard It podcast, Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe.

Mike.

You haven't aged a day since I saw you in 2013.

How you doing? Don't think I'm buying a blink.

All right.

It's been so long since you've been with us. I'm glad you wore your blue jeans.

You are the...

Yes, you're work boots even on a show like this.

You're the blue collar.

This is so weird. Why?

It was literally 13 years ago. We weren't in this studio. It went like

that. In a blink, but it was the most, I was just talking in makeup.

I'm wearing makeup.

It was the strangest week for me because I did your show.

The foundation had just announced a scholarship program, so I'm out there

hawking it, and I'm making the rounds.

And we had a great conversation, and it moved the needle. Three days later, I

wound up having the exact same conversation with Glenn Beck on his

show. Wow.

Moved the needle. It was great. Went home, felt pretty good, went on the

socials. And that's the first time I saw all my buddies on the right completely

lost their minds when they saw me talking to you.

And all my buddies on the left completely lost their minds when they

saw me talking to Beck. Fuck both of them. You know what?

I... It was truly the first time, though, I realized, I don't think people

are listening to anything I'm saying. I think they're looking at who I'm sitting

next to. Yeah, people don't engage.

I make this complaint all the time. I just say to people, whenever they

criticize me, are you engaging with the idea?

If you are, we're good. If you're just saying, no, you're old, you're white,

you're this, you're that, or on the other side, you're black, you're blah,

blah, blah, that's not the idea.

Engage with the idea.

What a contrast. So let's talk about your idea.

All right. Because, you know, you are the original blue-collar guy. I mean,

your obituary is going to say, you know, blue-collar hero who put that issue on

the map. You really are.

And it's ever more relevant.

It is.

You know, it's a heck of a thing when the headlines catch up to your own

smack. Right.

And honestly, no, look, I was trying it on 13 years ago. The foundation had been

around for five years. We were doing a pretty good job of shining a light on a

bunch of decent jobs that, for a whole lot of reasons, people weren't excited

about having.

Job like?

Well, welders, steamfitters, pipefitters, fit builders, linemen,

plumbers, electricians.

You know, that part of the workforce that doesn't require a four-year degree,

but kind of keeps the whole country stitched together.

Right. Dirty Jobs was a love letter to those vocations, but it was an

entertainment show. The serious part of me wanted to do something a bit more on

the nose with the foundation. So we started these work ethic scholarships.

We've given away about $20 million in these things. Thank you.

I've been looking for applause.

Thank you. But you deserve it.

Well, I don't deserve it, but I'll tell you who does. The people like you, and

I'm not just sucking up, but this is... I'll go ahead. All right.

Okay. No, no. Okay. No, no. No, no, I will.

This is marketing and PR 101.

And it goes both ways.

You know, people always kind of poo-poo marketing.

They're like, whatever, it's the first thing in the budget to go.

But... The ideas, the stigmas, the stereotypes, the myths, the

misperceptions that surround 7 million open jobs right now, many of which are

in trades and in manufacturing, those things are real. And it's a mindset,

right? And so to get parents and guidance counselors and people to think

differently about the nature of the work, it's turning a tanker around.

People are paying attention now more than they ever have. And you have had an

effect. An area we've both agreed on for a long time is instead of trying to make

everybody get a college degree,

I've certainly done a number of editorials on this.

Make it so a college degree is not necessary as much for jobs where it

isn't. And 16 states have now put that into law. I think that's because you put

that idea in the water, that you don't need a college degree for everything.

And that's what we're doing now. This is great progress, I think, because as you

say, there's so many jobs that need to be done, and we don't have enough people

to do them. I mean, because of so many things that are, you know, the

environment is kind of going off the edge. and AI and God knows what else,

fires. We saw all the need for rebuilding here.

Rebuilding, to me, is going to be a very big growth industry. And there's just

not enough people to do it. We had $1.1 trillion in outstanding student loans

when you and I talked last. Now it's $1.8 trillion. Most of that's held by

kids who either started a four-year degree and dropped out or who got one

and statistically aren't. working or not working in their chosen field. That's a

bad number. Meanwhile, we've got 400,000 jobs in construction right now, twice

that many in the defense industrial base.

It's bananas.

And look,

people, I'm not sure, believe me completely, but not a week goes by when

I don't get a call from some CEO of some consequential company, some of whom you

mentioned in the monologue, or an elected official, governors mostly.

And they're freaking out. Like, they've done the math for every five

tradespeople who retire to come in. It's been that way for about 12 years now. So

never mind the stigmas and the stereotypes. The arithmetic is

horrifying. And it's all just conspired into this bully base of

bad data.

I'm telling you, they are in a panic.

I mean, they, I mean, anybody, certainly any company that has a blue-collar

workforce is going full on.

Jim Farley told me, he's got 5,000 empty bays at Ford.

These are AI-proof six-figure jobs, right? 120,000 a year. He can't fill

them. He can't fill them.

And that's... But they're out there. They're everywhere.

Well, there's 7 million men.

able-bodied men, mostly young, who are what they call nilf.

Nilf is not in the labor force. This is different than unemployed.

Unemployment means you're looking, but you can't find a job. This is not

looking. Not looking. The guy who should be sitting here to have that

conversation with you is called Nick Eberstadt, and he wrote a book called

Men Without Work. He published it in 2005 originally, and then... Again,

during the pandemic, because everything he predicted happened.

That exact number right now, it's like 6,990,000 able-bodied men, not only not

working, not looking. That's never happened in our country, not in

peacetime. Why aren't they looking? I think it's because the porn is too good.

The porn is excellent, but it takes away the motivation. You have to be

motivated. You have to, oh, I got to get a job to get a girl. Yeah. Now, they

don't want a girl because they sit home and...

Take matters into their own hands? They do.

Come on. I mean, come on.

Nick would say the question doesn't start with what are they doing? It

starts with what aren't they doing?

They're not volunteering at their local church.

They're not in the Kiwanis Club. They're not checking out the Rotarians or the

Lions Club. They're not in the Boy Scouts or Skills USA.

community what are they doing on average they're spending between 2 000 and 2 100

hours a year on their screen it is just we just

haven't seen the like of it before how are they able To survive, I can't paint

with too broad a brush. Maybe some of them are trust fund kids. Maybe some of

them have enough. Well, a lot of it is money from other generations. Sure. You

know, they just hate our generation, except when we give them money, that's

always okay.

Yeah. It's always okay when you get daddy's money. Then the boomers aren't

so bad.

I shared your monologue from last week.

Oh, yeah.

I thought it was really important because you didn't.

You didn't accuse anybody of anything, really.

Just quoted. You quoted. Yeah.

So I put this up on my little page, and I wrote what I wrote. And we have over

200,000 comments on this thing. You hit something that's so

primal right now.

And for me, I don't really have a dog in the big socialism hunt specifically,

but I've got one in Workforce.

And when I look at 400,000 or 500,000 open jobs, and then I look at those 7

million able-bodied men not even looking at the jobs at all, and then I look at

this whole conversation unspooling, I don't know if you saw this, but the stat

that got me, within the Democratic Party right now, 59% of Democrats

who support socialism have college degrees.

40% who support socialism don't.

So this thing that's being called a worker uprising, it's really

not. It's not. This is happening because a lot of people with a really expensive

credential are in the hole in a big way. And they're pissed.

And I don't blame them, honestly.

I mean, you can say what you want about it, but they took our advice, man.

They took our advice. We said, borrow whatever it takes.

Go follow your dream. And then go get your dream job.

And that was a bunch of nonsense. Yeah, they don't want to borrow money to get a

degree for a job that doesn't exist.

And I don't want to lend them money that they'll never be able to pay back to get

their credentials for the job. No, I mean, you had it right all those years

ago. Shop class.

You know, which, by the way, they've taken out from a lot of schools. I

wanted to show you this picture. Do you remember a couple of years ago, there

was a big story. It was out of Canada. This is not America, but it could have

been here.

A shop teacher, I think her name was Kyla Lemieux. Yeah, yeah. Show the

picture. This is a shop teacher. Yeah, there you go.

Your thoughts.

Well, that's a shop teacher.

Two thoughts come to mind.

I'm doing what I can.

I think you're doing great.

The first thing that has to go is her hair.

Her hair is a real hazard. You get around a lane with that hair.

No, look, when we took shop class out of high school.

They said the one-on-one would be a serious look at the changing face of a

modern-day proletariat. I just thought it was apropos for you. It's apropos. I

mean, it just says a lot that that is it. Now, that's not the typical shop

teacher, but... Not typical, no. But at least the shop class is there.

I mean... When we took shop class out of high school, we sent a message to a

whole generation of kids, not just that these jobs aren't worth pursuing, but

they're not even worth looking at.

We removed all the optical proof.

from K-12 that that kind of work even existed.

So even a guy walking from math to English can't poke his head into the

metal shop and go, oh, look, a lathe. Oh, look, enormous boobs.

Whatever they see, that's gone.

So I can't prove it, but I can draw a pretty straight line to every

calamity we're talking about right now, whether it's student debt, those 7

million men not working, or all these open jobs.

It starts with the removal of shop class.

And everything that happened after that turned us into frogs in the boiling

water and a little more and a little more and a little more. And now my

foundation has electricians that we trained six years ago that are making

$230,000 a year.

$230,000 a year.

Right now, no college debt. They're setting their own schedules.

More overtime.

than they can fill.

And those stories, man, that's the compliment I meant to pay you and

everybody else. I have nothing to do with shop class. You have everything to

do with it. Let's not make it another 13 years. It's mine. Thank you, Mike. That

was fantastic.

Mike Rowe. All right. Let's meet our panel.

Thank you.

What?

Last place you'd ever find me is shop class. Okay, here's an editor-at-large

at Reason Magazine and co-host of the Fifth Column podcast, Matt Welch, our

friend Matt Welch.

And she writes The Red Letter on SubSec and hosts the Tara Palmieri Show.

Tara, Tara, right?

Yeah, Tara.

Jersey girl, like you. Tara Palmieri, not Tara Palmieri.

Okay, so...

Let me pick up on what he was talking about. Yes, last week I did this whole

thing about how the democratic socialists, only in recent years, are

really communists. And I just quoted them, okay? I just used their own

quotes. Now, you can argue with me.

Somebody in the audience gasped. Several people did at one point. That told me,

okay, this is new to people. But either you don't know what communism is or you

don't speak English.

Here's the interesting part.

The democratic socialists, very recently were truly socialists. They were founded

by this guy I think his name is Michael Harrington. His name is now a slur. That

should tell you where they've gone.

It's like, oh my God, you're a Harringtonite? You still believe in

socialism? So interesting, the wrinkle in this story, because now that they're

communists, there's an opening for socialism.

And you know who's filling it? Donald Trump.

Donald Trump. How else do you explain a 9.9 stake in Intel?

by the government. Is that not socialism?

Nvidia, we took 15% cut when we let them sell chips to China.

Nippon Steel, that merged with the U.S. Steel, we have a golden share. We

basically run their boardroom now.

And you know this is socialism, I think, because Bernie Sanders agrees with it

all. Oh, yeah. He wants to do it with the AI companies.

The free market is dead.

They have decided that the government wants to control.

30 different companies, and Intel alone, which was a loser because of NVIDIA,

they basically own 9.9% of that company.

And that's a lot. And President Trump, after they invested in this company, he

then went on to buy stocks in NVIDIA, which shot up 200%. Okay, so he actually

made a ton of money on this. His government created a floor on a stock

that he owns.

It's crony capitalism. It's crony capitalism. Yeah. Seizing literally the

means of production. Because let's remember how these things happen. How

did Intel happen? Right. One year ago today, Donald Trump was out there saying

we need to maybe fire the CEO of Intel because I think he's a Chinese spy.

Like what? The president is just singling out a huge CEO of an important

country company.

And so they had to scramble the jets and have a meeting at the White House. And

what happened at the end of that meeting? OK, you stay. We get 10 percent

of your company. That is luggage.

We have never seen anything like this in modern times. Also, the shakedowns. I

mean, since he came into office in 2025, he has raised $800 million, mostly from

corporations, for his ballroom, for the library, for the Freedom 250, which is

where they are doing baptisms on the National Mall. And it's all going

through foundations and LLCs. Who's getting rich?

Who gives a shit about the ballroom? We have to stop talking about the ballroom.

It's not about that, though. Just the stupidest. It's not about that. It's

about the money.

that they are making from the ballroom.

Who's getting the contracts? In a $4, $5 trillion economy, we're talking about

the ballroom. It's no stupider than Burning Man.

No, but there's just so many... The ballroom is a device for them to make

money. It's important not to sleep on the problem of seizing companies, which

is something that Republicans knew a lot about when they objected strenuously to

Barack Obama joining or, you know, having government motors, right?

Remember, they're always saying, he's picking... winners and losers.

At least some of the companies he picked were winners, like Tesla.

What happens is that the government now is your regulator.

It's your shareholder. So it's profit and loss.

Sometimes it's your financier. It's giving you money. And then sometimes

it's your customer, too. The conflicts of interest are crazy.

And then from the perspective of the company now, the company doesn't have to

think about its customers, which a company should be doing. It's thinking

about one person in the White House right now. So it's doing worse and we're

doing worse.

none of us are saying that we're against socialism.

Every... Modern democracy is a quasi-socialist country, as it should

be. The private sector shouldn't be. Wouldn't you say none of us are against

socialism? Of any kind? You're not for Medicare, Social Security, the Marine

Corps? I don't necessarily call those. I'm not against social programs

necessarily. Many of them I am.

But socialism as an idea is a bad idea. It's worth calling socialism out as well

as communism. Communism is the bad applied version.

Socialism ain't no picnic either. But some part of a democracy has to be. be

socialistic. The government has to do certain things that the private sector

cannot or should not. Am I wrong about that?

The government is there to do things that we decided that we can't do

ourselves. Right? And that's going to happen in every single company. I don't

call that socialistic. Okay. Well, most people do.

Social... It's literally called social security.

Alright. By the way, I found someone who's not a socialist in the Democratic

Party, and it's a surprising one, but I was reading a lot about him this week.

Mr. El-Sayed, Dr.

El-Sayed. That was the big story in politics this week, is there was a

primary in Michigan. There was a more conventional Democratic candidate. He

lost a squeaker to Dr.

El-Sayed. Now, he's obviously on the subject of Israel.

We're not aligned at all.

But it's interesting.

He's not DSA.

He says he's not.

He says he's not, and he says I'm a capitalist. He does say that. He

believes in regulating monopolies, which I think most people agree with. I think

right now he realizes he just won the primary election with the help of Hassan

Piker, and he's probably got to move a little bit to the right.

He didn't win Detroit.

I mean, he didn't win black voters. He didn't win rural voters. He won the

Subaru voter, the white, urban, college-educated voter.

So he's got a lot of work to do in Macomb County, Wayne County.

thing about him is he really speaks to the moment and it's a huge rebuke on

Donald Trump.

Whether you believe in the DSA or what they stand for or socialism, he is a

change candidate.

He went out there and he basically said...

to people who are broke and pissed i hear you and i am running against the

people who are in power right now and it's not just donald trump because the

rest of democrats are only running against donald trump he's running

against donald trump and chuck schumer who spent 30 million against him and

aipac that's been another 30 million against him so he's the anti

-establishment candidate trying to he's like this isn't a gate i don't get past

you people you want to spend 60 million dollars on me that's 60 million dollars

with billboards thank you very much so this is this is just what's going to

happen in these moments, because Americans love change, and he is the

change candidate.

We learn about major political parties by what happens in their contested

primaries. And what we see now, kind of beginning in New York, but also the

Grand Platinum race in Michigan, in Colorado, and elsewhere, all the

tension, all the fights are right there on this. And what voters in Michigan

have decided, enough of them, and what DSA and Hassan Piker, a big fan of

Chinese communism and Cuban communism too, so he might not have DSA on his...

on his forearm, but he's hanging out with Hasan Piker, who's a loon.

And what they're saying right now is that we don't care if we lose.

Or we're willing to roll the dice on losing this. This is what the Tea Party

was doing with Sharon Engel and Christine O'Donnell 10 years ago. We

will back this person because we want that change agent so much. We want to

change the nature and the characteristic of our political party so it's no more

Chuck Schumer's because, my God, how long is Chuck Schumer's going to be with

us? Forever.

And so they back a person.

Michigan is a contested state. Democrats absolutely want and need to win it. The

conventional wisdom is that Democrats walked into a trap. They often happens

in the primary. The fringe candidate, the candidate on the far left, as in the

Republican Party, the far right, wins the primary because that's who votes in

primaries.

I don't think that's the case. I think he's probably going to win Michigan, and

I'll tell you why. Because in the Democratic Party, when you're a person

of color, it allows you to be more centrist.

A lot of these people, they simply don't trust...

White people. And I'm talking mostly about the white people. Are you saying

that he... They don't like... White people don't like white people. Are you

saying that he's centrist, though?

I'm saying it allows you to be more centrist, like Obama was. They just

trust you more.

I mean, look at this Francesca Hong.

I mentioned in the monologue what she said about whiteness and toxicity.

She described her son. Now, she has an ex-husband who is white.

Okay, she's Asian.

She described his wrestling with, this is her own son, being in proximity to

whiteness.

Of all the things I think the Democrats have to lose, number one, whiteness.

It's not a disease. You look like nice people.

You're nice people, right?

Yeah, kind of.

You might be Italian.

Oh, yeah, I'm white ethnic. White ethnic, I guess. Okay, well, I'm sorry,

but that does not count as a person of color. No.

That's a person with a good tan. That's a very different thing.

But this has got to go, I think. I think this is their big...

I think they're not running on that. Like, she didn't run and campaign on

abolishing. No, but people hear it. Sure, because it's in every single one

of their tweets from 2020 and 2021.

I mean, these grown-ass adults five years ago were saying and doing absolute

nonsense, and now they're running it in every Democratic race and distancing

themselves from their tweets that they made as, you know, 35-year-olds. Yes,

only in America.

Can you be 35-year-old and be like, oh, I'm sorry. It was a youthful

indiscretion. I don't know what I was saying. I don't believe any of them. All

the DSA people are saying, oh, these things you quoted last week, we don't

say. Yeah, you said it. You meant it. Stop it.

Yeah, flip-flopping, though. This is as old as politics. That's not flip

-flopping. That's lying.

That's just pretending you don't. I know who you really are, and that's okay.

Communism.

Communism is an economic system. It always leads to a horribly corrupt,

violent political system, but it is an economic system. You're allowed to vote

for it. I'm not saying make it illegal or anything, but just own up to what it

is. That's what it is. When you're talking about seizing the means of

production, you are a communist.

Okay, just own it.

Yeah, I think the interesting twist right now is that they are trying to

distance themselves from their tweets of five years ago because they realize how

just completely unpopular it is. And it also reminds us that what did we do 12

years ago? Suddenly we decided that, you know, that biological sex was incredibly

fluid, but race was cement.

This is bizarre.

I mean, race is a much more kind of variable, sometimes even fictitious

concept. And yet we're going to die on this hill and then be obsessed over here

with everybody's little single drop of whatever background that they have. It's

madness. We need to get away from that madness. And these reminders that people

were saying five years ago, they are telling on themselves. A person who

thought that five years ago right now is not going to be serious today, I don't

think.

Who is the Democrat who's going to stand up and say, I'm a white guy. I'm not a

racist because I don't think white people are worse.

We're all the same. Humans are not good people.

No. They just aren't.

We've all done horrible things of every race.

Slavery wasn't invented in 1619.

Everybody did it throughout history.

They didn't even think it was wrong. In the Bible, there's lots of rules about

it. None of them are. Don't do it.

There's an additional burden that this places when you are thinking constantly

in terms of race. Who gets off easy in this?

White people do, actually.

Because we're not obsessed with being white. We don't think about it. It's

weird. Anyone who does think about it, we know is weird and we don't want to

hang out with them. It's strange.

But the burden of it is like there's supposed to be a black way to think or

an Asian way to think. It's madness. We should think like individuals and not

have to be always self-conscious of how we are different than some majority.

That is the stupid way and an anti-American way of looking at it.

Yeah.

It's just, it's weird.

The far-left liberals, they seem to have this self-loathing. Like, that's very

important to their identity.

That we know we're bad, that's how we know we're good.

Anyway, we like to cover all the issues on this show, and I noticed that, you

know, it was state fair.

Why am I even trying to sell this?

We're doing it because it's funny, but it is. It's time for the state fairs all

around the country. They're having them now in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, New York,

Minnesota, Alaska, Kentucky.

We cater to all types. We're not one of those shows that just caters to one

group. We had Mike Rowe on, for God's sake.

So we even picked up a copy, because we care about this so much.

State Fair Living. This is the magazine about state fairs, and it's just

fascinating. Would you like to hear some of the articles? I thought you would.

Okay.

Ten ways to eat a corn dog without looking gay.

Is operating a tilt-a-whirl while drunk illegal? The answer may surprise you.

Top LGBTQ-friendly state fairs? None.

Original Beach Boy or Old Man Muttering Barbara Ann? Five ways to know.

Dear State Fair Living, what are the bearded ladies' pronouns?

Guess your weight, worker, tells all. A Zempik is ruining my job.

I'm sorry, he's in a better place. And other things to tell your kid after the

goldfish dies on the way home.

And gold cotton candy tastes the president's hair.

Many important stories, but I want to talk about cancel culture for a minute

because I saw this story this week.

An actor on Broadway named Geno Seegers, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Oh,

there he is.

He was set to star in a movie, a play, maybe a musical, I don't know, called

Hadestown. Hadestown, not Hadestown, Hades. He was going to play the devil.

And then they found out he is the devil.

So he will not be playing the devil.

Why? Because they got a hold of the old tweet.

I guess they're not that old. But the lesson here to me is that cancel culture

is not dead, because he is shit-canned from the show, and that in certain

precincts of this country, you are not allowed to have any opinion that doesn't

conform exactly, and I mean exactly, to the one true opinion.

He said, he's talking about trans people.

I'm not against anyone living out their lives the way they want, but I am

against their rights superseding the rights of other people.

Now, if you made this argument in any sort of reasonable debate, it's okay.

About anybody?

About anybody.

Superseding your rights?

Yes.

We do not have the right to have a differing opinion. This cannot go on. I

don't think it can go on. I guess it will go on. I think it was a calculated

marketing decision because Broadway obviously has a very big population that

runs it, gay population, people that buy, they're consumers that buy tickets

are gay. I think that they probably decided that this online mob that moved

very quickly against them, they made some comms and marketing decisions and

they were like, we don't want to have a boycott of our show.

So let's just get rid of him. I think this is more of a market decision in

terms of Broadway, because he'd be welcome at the Pentagon under Hegseth in

a second.

Every time I read one of these stories, I always like,

you know, they usually portray his hateful statements that he said. I'm

like, all right, what paragraph is it going to be? 12 or 19 that we're going

to get to what the statement is? And is it going to be remotely hateful? I

didn't find it.

Did you find? I don't. I mean, there are some other ones.

He said so.

He said, no, of course, some people will come to me and say, oh, you know, they

meaning trans folks don't feel that way. They're just tired of being hunted.

They're tired of being oppressed and persecuted.

I'm sorry. I don't see that. I don't see transgender people becoming oppressed or

being persecuted. Well, of course not. You work on Broadway.

But, you know, he's just basically saying there isn't some pogrom going on

out there. Jews are getting stabbed every day somewhere around the world.

And let's say he's wrong about that. Like, he's just materially wrong in that

analysis. Okay.

You can say something that's wrong. You can say... No, you can't. You can.

That's the thing, is that you just can't. This is not the only one this

week. The Indiana Fever star, Sophie Cunningham.

I don't follow the WNBA as closely as I would like to.

Not because they're women, just because I'm time-first, all sorts.

I don't watch college either, okay?

What?

It's okay.

I know. It's okay.

I don't even have to apologize for it, okay?

She said, I got a lot of feedback, negative feedback about me hating trans.

She didn't say she hates trans. She said, I am here to extend love, but I

also think that love is truth and being honest. And I want to protect young

girls in a locker room or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against

biological men.

Again, this is where about 80% of the country is. And Martina Navratilova is

and has been for a long time. Right.

Prominent athlete and lesbian.

What? The lesbian part is just the funny part. No, I mean, that's relevant to the

discussion. And someone who had a trans trainer. I mean, Renee Richards was her

trainer for a long time. But not all gay people are necessarily.

the same in terms of like their beliefs on this. Of course. I mean, I'm just,

Martina Navratilova is not an insignificant person in this debate and

can't be called a MAGA Barbie, which is what people are calling Sophie

Cunningham because she's blonde and she pointed at people and she is, she knows

that she has a fan base of people who don't, who are on the, on the 80 side of

the issue instead of the 20 side of the issue. And there's an attempt to kind of

demonize her. And I think the interesting part is that it's failing. I

mean, there's, she has to answer questions at every press conference.

in the WNBA, and she kind of just matter-of-factly gives it back, and

she's not really suffering all that much.

I think the culture has changed a lot in healthy ways, but just as in Broadway,

just as in the sports press corps, strangely enough, there are places where

they try to enforce the 20 against the 80, and it looks ridiculous

increasingly. So you think it's also marketing when they made Patti LuPone of

Broadway? Bend the knee, because she had a controversy about a year ago. If you

don't know Patti LuPone, she's a big Broadway star.

And she was working in a theater that was very, shared a wall with another

show. Happened to be a black show, and the noise was bleeding through the wall.

And Patti LuPone said, can we work this out? And she was...

history's greatest monster for suggesting black people are loud.

That's not what she was saying. She was just saying people in my show can't hear

because of your show. Maybe we can work something out.

And she was made to apologize.

All of Broadway had to put out an open letter. They all hated her. This is

madness. I think that the arts are controlled by liberals.

Yes, you think? And so therefore, they get to set the rules.

I mean, that's what they do.

I don't think that's liberal.

That's regressive.

That is not liberal.

Liberals don't know what liberalism is anymore. By the way, Patti LuPone was on

this cruise ship. Did you read about that? The cruise ship?

There was a gay cruise ship. She's a gay icon, Broadway star. Okay, so she's on

this gay cruise ship. Would not let it dock in Turkey and Egypt.

Would not let the cruise ship dock.

A lot of people were saying, well, I mean, on the left, they were saying, you

know, this rightist backlash against gay people. No, it isn't.

It's because they're Muslim countries.

They don't think gay people have equal rights, or in some ways, some instances,

don't think they should even be allowed to exist.

This is what the problem is. They don't know where liberalism is.

Yeah. I mean, that's illiberal.

Yes, and we are in a situation where there are...

large minority strings in both major parties and the blocs that comprise them

that are anti-liberal. The post-liberal right has been talking about this for a

long time. They look at the Enlightenment founding principles and

say, I don't know, that's not common good. We need to think about common

good. And on the left, we've seen for a long time now a very anti-liberal set of

sort of speech ideas and just the amount of social pressure that was enacted on

people for many, many years.

And everyone went through it. There was a backlash. You know, if you are facing

your HR person trying to tell you a bunch of nonsense, and you know if you

speak up and say, that sounds a little crazy, you're going to get into a world

of hurt. A lot of people went through that and told themselves, like, the

solution to this is to vote for Donald Trump, and now I'm sure there's some

regrets about that. I mean, there's always going to be a consequence to

having an unpopular opinion. Someone could hear one of my opinions while I'm

sitting here, and they might not want to open a door to me.

And I just think a lot of it is driven by the market.

Some of it is driven by fear.

And if they make decisions in 48 hours, it's super rough. And especially with

the way that things move right now, the online mob, it can get together in a

matter of minutes.

But I do think that you don't know if what you say is going to close doors.

You don't know how you are offending people at any time. Well, I'll give you

a good example of that.

And if they have power and money, then they make the decisions. That's usually

how it works, you know? I'll give you a good example of that.

apropos to the idea that the liberals are fetishizing the wrong people,

Melissa Chaudry, she was also running, she was, you know, pretty staunch

liberal. She was asked about LGBT rights, which she has supported,

including, as she has supported, justice, health care, protections in

housing and unemployment. She says, then why is that not on your website?

Her answer, because a lot of Muslims do not feel that way, unfortunately.

Oh.

since they don't feel that way, we just throw the gay people under the bus?

Yeah. And this is what liberalism is now?

Yeah. I mean, there was some of this in the Michigan primary of, well, I didn't

want to come out too strong about the Ayatollah being killed because a lot of

the constituents out there are a little upset about that. Well, you can probably

take a position about the Ayatollah being killed or about Hamas being bad or

Israel having a right to exist.

El-Sayed several times and said he found it hard to get to a yes, let's say.

Right. And I don't think El-Sayed is a terrorist.

I don't know enough about him to know what he thinks about some of these

issues. But I assume he's running in America.

He wants to be an American. He wants to have American values. I certainly would

hope that to be the case.

But, you know, come out forthrightly and just say.

We do not want to be the country that doesn't allow gay ships to dock.

Okay. Is that that hard to do?

Okay.

So Trump got two guys in this week, two of his people. He had a pretty good week

with them. Todd Blanch, his personal lawyer, which, okay, Jack Kennedy had

his brother as the attorney general. Okay. And Jay Clayton.

John asked Ossoff, who I think that's the guy, the Democrat.

should be looking to. I think he says some great things. Of course, he's a

Jew. Forget it.

He said to Todd Blanch, who could not, or maybe it was Jay Clayton, who could

not get himself to say that Trump lost the 2020 election.

He said to him, aren't you embarrassed?

This is the right question to be asking, Republicans.

Aren't you embarrassed that you have to sit here knowing that Donald Trump is

watching you and that you can't say what everybody else in this room knows,

including you, that he lost the 2020 election?

How can you do your job under those circumstances?

That, to me, is the question the Democrats should be asking.

And it goes to your Jeanine Pirro thing in the monologue, too.

Your job, the way you got that job is by nodding enough when the president of the

United States said something that was just absolute BS.

You got that job for that reason. And then you will come up, and this happened

with Dan Bongino and everybody else, suddenly you come into the office and

you can't keep doing the lie in office.

And it's very difficult. And so then you have to go and have a rough meeting with

the president. Think about that world that we're in right now. Like, that is,

you either have to say that the 2020 election was rigged, or in the case of

RFK Jr., that the 2004 election was rigged against Democrats.

Look that up if you haven't. But that is a really bad place. We're in an

epistemic dead end right now. All right. Thank you very much.

Very fun.

Time for new rules, everybody.

Okay.

New rule. Now that Jeanine Pirro stood up to Trump and said she won't prosecute

the guy Trump accused of vandalizing the reflecting pool, she has to tell us. Why

don't you want America to be great?

And don't think Trump isn't going to get back at you. That 200% tariff on French

wine, now it's 300%.

New

rules, scolds and prudes have to stop saying there's something weird about

Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson being married to his second cousin.

Have you ever been to Maine?

There are three things to do. Marry your cousin, get Lyme disease, and kill camp

counselors.

And... And they're not actually married. They just have a couple of

kids. Marry your cousin, that would be gross.

New Rule, since I couldn't make this year's International Owl Porn Festival

in... in Nada, Switzerland, please sign me up for next year because I'm dying to

find out where you put the weed and how you light it.

And I hear the music sucks, but the snacks afterward are amazing.

But scientists have created the first ever 3D map of the nerves running to and

from the female clitoris. They have to tell me, why does it look so much like

the cover of the Eagles' One of These Nights album?

Neural designers at the AI MOGA company must tell us why their new humanoid

robot comes with blonde hair and a fat ass.

You're working too hard. Have you met a human male? We'll stick our dick in a

vacuum cleaner.

Here's a sign you're living in a future nobody wants when you meet a girl at the

club and tell her, back that thing up.

And she says, you mean to the cloud?

Stop threatening to put everyone in jail who you just don't like, the way Senator

Rand Paul is trying to do now with Dr.

Anthony Fauci, who was back in the news because Senator Paul, formerly of the

privacy is everything wing of the Republican Party, got hold of Dr.

Fauci's personal diary and published all of it.

Rand, babe, your entire brand is Senator Right to Privacy.

You're the libertarian guy.

The Fourth Amendment guy.

It's your family legacy.

Your entire political career has been about warning us about government

overreach. You printing someone's diary is like AOC wearing a gown that says,

tax the poor.

And so we enter yet another story news, news story that illustrates the

Rorschach test that is America.

Dr. Fauci, depending on your politics, is either an esteemed, dedicated public

servant or a vain, flawed bureaucrat.

Well, it's both.

Life's complicated that way.

You know what's really complicated?

Science. And Dr.

Fauci definitely got some of that wrong.

He said if he got the vaccine, it was highly unlikely you'd get COVID or

transmit it. Wrong.

Okay, but that's not because it was part of some self-dealing plot.

Things were changing rapidly. They just got it wrong. That's science. Reports of

Fauci deliberately lying are based on lazy research, including from centrists

that got timelines wrong or transposed.

But Fauci could be unforgiving, too. In his diary, he describes a dispute with

another medical advisor, Scott Atlas, who wanted to keep the schools open.

Which Fauci told his dear diary, borders on criminal.

No, he's not a criminal and you're not a criminal, which should be obvious since

only two months later when Atlas resigned, Fauci wrote, the one area he

was correct was in saying that school children are not the drivers of the

outbreak. Okay, so can we not call people criminals just for the part they

got wrong?

Look.

Look, from the beginning, there were two schools of thought on how to handle

COVID. One was the model they followed in Sweden and Florida, two places that

have nothing in common except the love of old people in sweaters.

But both places thought it was smarter, and both did quite well.

By laser focusing on protecting the vulnerable and letting life go on for

everyone else. They thought it was a good idea to get out and go in the sun

for vitamin D and fresh air. You know, crazy stuff.

Not crazy stuff.

The other side, well, let's just say they erred on the side of caution.

Really, really into erring on that side.

I showed this picture last week.

That's a Democratic socialist meeting in Colorado last month.

Now, that's extreme, but it's the direction that that half of the country

tends toward.

David Leonhardt studied this issue and wrote of Democrats during the pandemic.

Organizing their lives around COVID is core to their identity as progressives.

And that is the place where I have a problem with the hero worship.

of Anthony Fauci, because it seems fame is a drug with a 100% addiction rate.

Have you read some of the shit in Fauci's diary?

Last week I played a game here called, Who said it, Fauci or Trump?

Let's play.

It is not hyperbole to say I am the most famous and talked about person in the

country. The nurses went absolutely wild to see me. I am such a valued

spokesperson and a good communicator.

One person said that Tyra Banks was sexy, but I was even sexier than she

was.

None of that is Trump.

That's all Fauci.

Writing to himself.

At 80.

Why? So we can read it back when he's 100 and remember what a hot piece of ass

he was at 80?

Talk about main character syndrome.

Fauci dropped celebrity names like 60 Minutes drops correspondence.

I mean, it's like finding out that in the 1950s, Jonas Salk kept a diary as

he was developing the polio vaccine, but it was mostly about how he got to meet

Howdy Doody.

Now, am I saying all of Fauci's decisions came about because he was

lapping up the adulation? No.

But you have to try awfully hard not to notice how much Fauci is energized by

being embraced by one particular cultural tribe.

It was Julia Roberts who was telling Fauci he was Jesus with a petri dish,

not Randy Quaid.

And that side likes to think of themselves...

As the purely science people, even though keeping kids out of school that

long and traumatizing two-year-olds with masks wasn't good science, Fauci

supported some strange policies for such an esteemed epidemiologist.

Natural immunity doesn't count now?

Meaning, even if you've had the disease, you still had to get the shot?

That sounds more like what Pfizer and Fauci's celebrity friends wanted to

hear. He let the shit go to his head.

Turns out the really dangerous intimate contact wasn't shaking hands, it was

kissing ass.

And yet, he is very, very far away

from being a criminal.

Please, he's not Dr. Mengele because your kid had to take algebra on Zoom.

He put in a lot of service for the country, but at the end of the day, he

was somewhat seduced. I mean, ask yourself, what happens every time in

high school the nerdy kid gets invited to the cool kid's table?

Okay, that's never happened. But if it did, look, when someone strokes your

ego, it affects your opinions.

And it's all too easy to go from everyone says I'm amazing to only idiots

disagree with me.

Hollywood co-opted Fauci, and Fauci told the country what Hollywood wanted to

hear. If you go outside, you'll die.

So send your assistant.

All right.

That's our show. I want to thank Matt Welch,

Sarah Palmieri, and Mike Rowe. Club Random Drops every Monday on YouTube, or

listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Now watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.