0:30

Dan and Jordan Knowledge Fight.

0:32

R I

0:35

need money. R Andy

0:39

and Candice. Andy and Candice.

0:42

Stop it. Andy and Candice. Andy

0:44

and Candice. Andy and Candice. It's

0:46

time to pray. Andy and Candice, you're on the

0:48

airplane for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a

0:50

Christian. I'm a huge fan. I love your

0:52

room. Knowledge Fight. No, no,

0:54

no, no. knowledgefight.com. I love you.

0:59

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I'm Dan.

1:02

I'm Jordan. We're a couple dudes.

1:04

I can sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, and talk

1:06

a little bit about Alex Jonez. Oh, indeed we are, Dan. Jordan.

1:09

Dan. Jordan. Quick

1:11

question for you. What's up? What's your

1:13

bright spot today, buddy? My bright spot today, Jordan, is we are

1:15

here. And there is a reason, there's some massive happen that we

1:17

cannot wait until Friday to talk about. Okay. We're

1:20

here on this Wednesday because the

1:22

earth shook on Monday. All right. Everything

1:25

changed. I don't know what happened

1:27

on Monday. Everything changed. Everything changed.

1:29

Everything changed. Everything changed. Everything changed.

1:32

History will remember this day. All

1:34

right. Monday. Monday.

1:37

Wait, our, us or Monday? What? Today

1:39

or Monday? Monday. Monday. Monday.

1:43

The world. Monday evening. Right, but the world will

1:45

remember today, us. No, probably not. Okay. We

1:48

have nothing to do with this. We are mere spectators.

1:50

All right, fine. Fine. Fine.

1:53

Uncle Howdy is back. So, WWE Raw. Uncle

1:55

Howdy came back. Okay.

2:00

No, no, I'm very worried. Okay. So.

2:05

How can Uncle Howdy come back?

2:07

Because Uncle Howdy is played by

2:09

Bray Wyatt's brother, Bo

2:11

Dallas. Right, right, right. And so almost

2:13

as an homage and a carrying on

2:16

the legacy of Bray Wyatt, since

2:19

he passed tragically, they

2:22

brought in Uncle Howdy back with

2:25

a crew. He's got a crew. Is

2:27

that the way to do it? I think it

2:30

is, actually. Okay. I think

2:32

it was very well presented

2:34

in terms of the, it

2:37

was very horror movie, very

2:39

cinematic. They had killed

2:42

everyone backstage. They killed everyone backstage?

2:44

Everyone appeared to be dead. Okay,

2:47

so it was like a Simpson's Treehouse

2:49

of Horrors kind of thing. It's kind

2:51

of. Gotcha, okay. Other wrestlers were like

2:53

blood coming down their head and shit,

2:55

like it was not a pile of

2:57

bodies. Sure. Okay. They

3:00

were really committing to this. They were going for it, okay.

3:02

All right, good for them. In that sense, I do think

3:04

it is kind of nice homage

3:06

to what Bray Wyatt probably would

3:08

have continued to do.

3:11

Nice little summer ween. And if

3:13

you're somebody who is in the

3:16

business, in a business like

3:18

wrestling with your brother and you pass

3:20

away, I think obviously you would want

3:23

your brother to succeed and

3:25

do great things, even if it means kind

3:27

of carrying on this vein that you had

3:30

been doing. Sure. Bo Dallas is a good

3:32

wrestler and a great character in and of

3:34

himself. He's done some great stuff in the

3:36

past. Sure. Doesn't connect to me the

3:38

same way as Bray Wyatt did. Right. But

3:40

I don't know. I'm tentatively excited. I'm. Why

3:43

not? Right. Why not?

3:45

What is the worst that could happen? I

3:49

mean. Let's not even think about what the worst thing could

3:51

happen. Let's think about what's the best that could happen. The

3:53

last time Uncle Hanny was around, we had a glow in

3:55

the dark match. Let's not worry about the worst that could

3:57

happen. Let's worry about what's the best thing that could

3:59

happen. So I'm worried,

4:01

I'm very worried. But there's a lot of

4:04

promise here, I think. Yeah, yeah. He's got

4:06

a crew, one of them is the old

4:09

Eric Rowan from the original Wyatt

4:11

family. Sure. So you got

4:13

some of that legacy carrying over. Of course. Unfortunately,

4:16

the other person who was in the Wyatt family is

4:19

also dead. Jesus, man. Yeah, tragic.

4:21

Brutal. Young passes, just passing. You

4:23

know, you wear a mask and

4:25

sometimes it becomes your face. So

4:28

if you become a swamp monster,

4:30

sometimes you can die young. I don't know where

4:32

I was going with that. I

4:34

think that there is a way to do

4:37

this that is all quite

4:39

honoring and well done, even

4:41

recognizing the fact that Bray

4:44

is dead. And this

4:46

is Bray's brother. As long as it's

4:48

not sponsored by Mountain Dew. Please keep,

4:50

I would hope they keep that away

4:53

from this. Keep goofy bullshit kind of

4:55

to a minimum. Yeah, it'd

4:57

be nice. There was a point where the

4:59

Fiend, one of Bray's character, had a giant

5:01

cartoon sized mallet that he was carrying around.

5:04

He did not. Yeah, it's like, oh. That's

5:06

fun though. It's a little. Ah,

5:08

I like it. It's on the line. I like a

5:10

good mallet. When is a bad

5:12

time to see an intimidating, gigantic mallet? Anyway,

5:16

the world will never be the same. True. Uncle

5:19

Howdy. All right, fair enough. What

5:22

comes back? What's your bright spot? What's

5:24

my bright spot? My bright

5:26

spot is, I think this happens once every

5:28

four or five years. I

5:31

rediscover Kings of Convenience

5:34

album called Versus. And

5:38

so the Kings of Convenience were a

5:40

Norwegian folk duo around the early

5:42

aughts era. How convenient. Yeah, of

5:45

course. They

5:47

were like a more poppy version of

5:49

Simon and Garfunkel, but from Norway or

5:52

whatever. And then they

5:55

were on the Ninja Tunes label in

5:57

the UK, which had everybody who was like

5:59

a... underground producer, a bunch

6:02

of like, you know, it had like lemon

6:04

jelly, it had like roots maneuver. It like

6:06

it had a bunch of really, really cool

6:08

stuff on there. Sure. But none of it

6:10

was fucking folk. It was, it was

6:13

all like electro, it was all dance. It was

6:15

all a rocker punk or something like that. So

6:18

because they had the kick as a convenience on

6:20

the label, they just let everybody in Ninja tunes

6:22

fuck around with their songs for a while. And

6:24

they put out this album, which is like this

6:27

amazing remix album of this folk

6:29

duo with all these different kinds

6:31

of instrumentations. It's really cool. That

6:33

is always, always interesting. You take

6:35

that sort of backbone and you

6:37

add other influences and weird styles

6:39

to it. Yeah. There's some that

6:41

are really, really good. And Lady

6:43

Tron even shows up because why

6:45

not? It's Lady Tron. I'll check that

6:47

one out. That sounds, that sounds like something I could

6:50

enjoy. It's really good. Yeah. So I've,

6:52

I think I discovered it again while I was

6:54

doing yoga and I was like, hell yeah. So

6:56

I've listened to that for two days

6:58

straight now. Nice. Yeah. It's good

7:00

stuff. Hooray. Yeah. Um, so

7:03

we're gonna do a little episode here today, Jordan.

7:05

We're going to be talking about the day that uncle

7:07

Howdy came back. Okay. Bigger

7:11

return for me than

7:13

the rock. Who cares?

7:16

Yeah. We've seen a lot of the rock.

7:18

It's true. We've seen too much of the

7:20

overexposed uncle. How uncle Howdy

7:22

has started zero fast and furious.

7:24

Spid offs. However, there was no

7:26

uncle Howdy and John.

7:28

I'd be interested. I'm not

7:32

saying I wouldn't like to see him team

7:34

up with Statham. It would be interesting if

7:36

the fast and furious just went all in

7:38

on like bond and just started doing different

7:41

genres of movie every time. Like fine. We've

7:43

already gone to space. Why not do a

7:45

horror movie? Fast and furious. They have to

7:47

outrace, uh, Jason or Freddy.

7:49

Yes. Fast versus Freddy. I live

7:52

my life quarter mile at a

7:54

time, bitch. I

8:00

like it. I like it a lot. So, we're going

8:02

to be talking about June 17th, 2024, which

8:04

is of course later on in the day.

8:06

Alex had no way to know that Uncle Howdy

8:08

would be coming back, so we're not going

8:10

to be talking about any of that. Alex did

8:13

not have any take on Uncle Howdy. Right.

8:15

So you have to forgive him for his naivete

8:17

about this major world issue. The world hadn't

8:19

changed yet. Right. Yeah. Ooh,

8:23

that's a great idea. So first, the case

8:26

of MGM versus Honda was litigated for MGM

8:28

by firm Kay Scholler, and it's attorney Robert

8:30

Barnes. And while there's no way it's him, it

8:32

did make me say Bobby Barnes, media star, out

8:34

loud to a courtroom full of fifth graders doing

8:36

mock trial. Thank you so much, you're an hour

8:39

policy walk. I'm a policy walk. Thank you very

8:41

much. Might have been him. Yep. Next,

8:43

Gil Cornell from the Williamsburg School for Architecture and

8:45

Design. Thank you so much, you're an hour policy

8:47

walk. I'm a policy walk. Thank you very much.

8:49

Thank you. Next, August from Illinois. Thank you

8:51

so much, you're an hour policy walk. I'm a policy

8:53

walk. Thank you very much. August from Illinois. You

8:56

know it's great. August in Illinois. Temperatures.

8:59

It's a little hot. Next,

9:02

you can't arrest me, I quit. Bayvin

9:05

Shue... oh boy. Uh-huh, you made

9:07

it the mistake. I started scanning

9:10

ahead to the parentheses. So

9:12

close. Bavin Shilova. Thank you so

9:14

much, you're an hour policy walk. I'm a

9:16

policy walk. Thank you very much. Thank

9:19

you. And when I'm feeling down, I think about Jordan saying,

9:21

hi, Carrie, to Carrie Cassidy, and it really cheers me up.

9:23

Thank you so much, you're an hour policy walk. I'm a

9:25

policy walk. Thank you very much. So this

9:27

Monday episode, there's a lot going on on

9:29

it, and we're gonna ignore a vast majority of

9:32

it because it doesn't really matter. So

9:35

there's one earth-shaking major piece

9:37

of thing that happens that

9:39

is actually a huge dud.

9:41

And that is that Alex has Peter McCullough, COVID

9:46

anti-vax doctor fella, or

9:48

Peter McCullough. He's on,

9:50

and Alex promotes it as like, they have

9:53

found the off switch for the COVID vaccine.

9:56

And so I got really excited about like,

9:58

oh, we're going to really see. that in

10:00

stone, how we're going to get

10:02

out of this narrative dead end. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

10:05

But he doesn't have any specifics and he's

10:08

just like, we figured out that maybe there's

10:10

something to do. And so it's all just

10:12

selling his supplements that are supposed to help

10:14

you deal with the effects of the COVID

10:16

vaccine. Yeah. So there isn't anything specific there,

10:18

although it does seem like this is the

10:20

direction that we're going to end up going

10:23

with narratives, is finding a cure for the

10:25

COVID vaccine and that way

10:27

we can explain away why all

10:29

the planet doesn't die. Like here's the

10:31

problem. All right. What

10:33

they've created is essentially a

10:35

disease and what they need is

10:38

a vaccine. Right. And

10:40

they were going to find it sooner or later.

10:43

Right. And it can't be a vaccine. No,

10:45

it'll be some kind of weird unregulated supplement.

10:47

Yep. So also, Judy Mikovitz

10:49

is on. Sure. Another anti-vax weirdo.

10:52

Luminary in the field of stealing

10:54

money from rich people. She

10:56

is, she is going for it. She's

10:58

swinging for fences all over the place.

11:00

She says that every vaccine and shot

11:03

that anyone has ever gotten since 2009

11:05

has been the COVID vaccine.

11:07

Love that. She is just out

11:10

there. You texted me about that. And

11:12

that is, that's the type of swing

11:14

that I'm looking for. Yeah. It's all

11:16

COVID. Yeah. If, if it wasn't just

11:19

almost impossible to follow the

11:21

line of what she's going through, I might've

11:24

covered that. And I wish I

11:26

would have pulled the clip of her saying, there's

11:28

no bird flu. What is a bird sneezing?

11:31

I mean, that's just great. That's just great.

11:34

That's just great. It is. It is. I

11:37

am still mad that we are never going

11:39

to get to the bottom of Steve Pachenik

11:41

being the first person to do have and

11:43

cure COVID. That seems so

11:45

important to this 2009 narrative. Well,

11:47

when they, Oh, that's true. He's going to have to bump his

11:49

timeline back. He's going to have to bump it back. I

11:52

guess if they, if the new order of the

11:55

day is we have a cure for COVID,

11:57

Steve would be very helpful for that. That seems like. Since

11:59

he cured himself. swinging

18:00

and and so like Beto's

18:02

plate has the English muffin on it. Yeah

18:04

in order to put the burger on the

18:06

English muffin Right, and then there's a side

18:08

of broccoli and Alex is like he so

18:11

dummy thinks broccoli's lettuce Fuck

18:16

it dub. This is the same

18:18

level of thinking that was

18:21

the underpinning The

18:24

backbone of help my teacher is

18:26

an alien Right, isn't that

18:28

how they discovered that their teacher was an alien

18:30

of some sort when they the teacher took the

18:32

mask off and had To eat something that was

18:34

not of yes a burger on It

18:38

want Alex to find out about

18:40

the burgers that are on like

18:42

Dixie cream donuts. Oh fucking hell

18:46

Have you had one of those though those

18:49

are too good those are made by not

18:51

but I just can't imagine his Is

18:54

just like what what unconventional buns?

18:57

So anyway look here's the situation. How's he feel

18:59

about a pretzel bun? Hey hmm? I

19:02

mean everybody loves a pretzel, but I do Alex's

19:04

brioche or nothing brioche or nothing

19:07

right? Oh, he's never even trying

19:09

to roll. No, okay No,

19:13

oh, there are these potato donuts now never mind

19:15

so look here's the situation I just want to

19:17

be abundantly clear about this. I don't give a

19:19

fuck about this at all I

19:22

don't care about Alex's stupid shit I don't care about

19:24

any of this the reason that I wanted to play

19:26

this and bring it up is because This

19:28

is an example of Alex trying to

19:31

bait the media into covering him that

19:33

didn't work This is

19:35

another version of the like I'm

19:37

gonna eat my neighbors But in the case of the I'm

19:39

gonna eat my neighbors it was so

19:42

sensational and so it got people

19:45

It got like all these Like

19:48

outside of his media bubble yeah accounts to

19:50

post the video of him and make fun

19:52

of him and stuff like that Yeah, he

19:54

was trying to bait people

19:56

into covering. Oh, he thinks that Chuck

19:58

Schumer's an ace because of

20:01

this burger. He was trying to do that

20:03

in order to be able to ride the

20:05

wave. He's trying to national inquirer it. Yeah,

20:07

he's trying to coast on the wake of

20:10

other people's coverage about this, and it just didn't

20:12

work, which is kind of funny.

20:14

It's sad. Yeah,

20:16

it is more sad than anything

20:18

else. Trying to get attention and

20:20

failing is always, it's so sad.

20:23

Especially when it's like this. Yeah.

20:25

These people don't know burgers. Oh

20:27

man, that's sad. This is a

20:29

bubble. Are

20:31

we zooming in on a burger in

20:33

the midst of this holy war between

20:35

good and evil? More than once. OK.

20:37

Yeah. He spends a lot of time

20:40

on this. Because to a pod

20:42

person doesn't even know how to turn on a gas oven,

20:45

or charcoal for that matter, doesn't know how to

20:47

grill a hamburger and get it juicy and sizzling,

20:50

and get it just right, and put the piece

20:52

of cheese on it, and slide it onto that

20:54

delicious bun. You just

20:56

crispy a little bit on top of them. Just throw

20:58

the buns on for about 30 seconds, get a nice

21:00

little toastedness to it. They

21:02

know nothing about any of that. Easy

21:05

thing to cook is a hamburger. I was looking at hamburgers

21:07

when I was six years old. Because

21:09

at about the age of four, my dad's like, you come over here,

21:11

you grill it, you learn to do it. About

21:14

once a week, my parents say, hey, I was about

21:16

eight years old. Cook us french toast and

21:18

scrambled eggs. When you're done,

21:20

go mow the yard. And they weren't being mean to

21:22

me. They didn't want an invalid. Didn't know how to

21:24

run the. Uh-huh. I remember one

21:27

time my dad goes, well, it's time to re-roof the house. And

21:30

I was thinking it's a good family project. We got plenty of

21:32

money to hire roofers. We're not going to do that.

21:35

Your uncle's coming over next Saturday. And

21:38

we're going to go today and buy the shingles.

21:40

And we're going to strip that off tomorrow. And

21:43

then we're going to re-roof the house Saturday. I

21:47

remember my dad pulling up at 3.30 at school on Friday.

21:51

It was in the spring. We

21:53

go home. We tear off about half the shingles.

21:55

Didn't get it done. Got dark. Got up

21:57

the next morning, pulled off the rest. Then

22:00

roofed most the house me my dad my

22:02

uncle into the night and then the

22:04

next day we got up Sunday morning My dad said yeah, we're

22:07

not gonna go To

22:10

church today, we're gonna finish roofing the

22:12

house and by about one o'clock we were done

22:14

and my dad said We're

22:17

going to we're going to Billy Bob's and getting

22:19

you a chicken fried steak son And

22:22

that was just wasn't like some big thing. It was

22:24

constant. We're gonna roof the house We're

22:27

gonna skin a buck. We're gonna run a trot

22:29

line and to

22:32

these pot people they don't even know how

22:34

to grill a hamburger and

22:38

They look at us and they think these are weirdos.

22:40

They walk in here these leftists. They like What's

22:44

the engineer doing with a? firearm

22:46

on his side Well, why

22:48

do we have armed security here too? That's all

22:50

bonded because we're not rolling over Bending

22:53

over waiting for somebody to come after us

22:55

We're like these churches that have the deacons

22:57

that are armed So when some crazy Satanist

22:59

comes in or some Islamizes and start shooting

23:01

people most the time They don't kill one

23:04

person before they get killed because there's trained

23:06

men with guns that kill them But

23:09

it shows a little break with these people

23:12

they think we're we're the weirdos I

23:14

do I do think you're a weirdo

23:16

this whole thing is weird. Yes, this

23:19

is weird What's interesting about that

23:21

clip is I think that Alex kind of forgot

23:23

the point in the middle I would tell that

23:25

story about Reroofing the house

23:27

and then he kind of remembered it, but it

23:29

was too late He remembered that he was supposed

23:31

to be complaining about pod people not knowing how

23:33

to make burgers He was but he I think

23:36

it was too late to save the ship But

23:40

then I do think it's weird. I don't I

23:42

don't I don't think it's strange at all to

23:44

be like I'm slightly

23:46

uncomfortable about the idea of a working

23:48

environment where everyone's just got guns on

23:50

or yeah, I don't want to consider

23:53

the need for murder

23:55

at church Usually a good

23:58

idea. I think that that's indicative of who

24:00

of a larger problem. Probably. That is not

24:02

that everyone is uptight about guns. Nah, it

24:04

feels like everybody's just got to stick up

24:06

their ass. That

24:09

sounds about right. I

24:12

appreciate everything

24:14

that he's trying to do here. I

24:16

think it would be fine. Like it's

24:18

so fun because it is just like,

24:20

if you'd gone metaphorical, the idea is

24:22

essentially these elites are out of touch

24:24

with the common man. Like I get

24:26

it. Sure. Fine.

24:29

There's some bucolic pleasures like

24:31

cooking a hamburger. I get,

24:33

I understand that. But

24:35

what he's really talking about is

24:37

how he is never going to be the

24:39

man that his father was. I

24:45

mean, isn't that what he's doing? Just a

24:47

little bit of that. And there's

24:49

also a little bit of like turning it

24:51

into a larger point than it deserves to

24:54

be. Yeah. Like I think

24:56

it's fine to clown on people for like,

24:59

you don't know how to make a burger, ha ha,

25:01

or whatever. Because you're rich and out of touch and,

25:03

you know, x-men. But then

25:05

to turn it into like, this

25:08

is some sort of, this means something

25:10

about one, they're not human, they're

25:13

pod people or whatever. It's just

25:15

desperate. That's too much. The

25:17

taking it into like, they want us to eat the

25:19

bugs, and that's what

25:21

they're messaging with raw

25:23

meat on these burgers. Cooking a bad hamburger

25:26

is going to make me eat bugs? That

25:28

doesn't make sense. It has part of the

25:30

messaging, and I believe the way that

25:33

this works is that they're trying

25:35

to make eating meat look unappealing because they

25:37

have these raw meat and

25:40

these gross burgers and stuff. And so

25:42

if you're watching it, you subconsciously are

25:44

more willing to eat bugs. Putting it

25:46

next to Chuck Schumer is what makes

25:48

it unappealing. I

25:51

don't think that there's any beef politics involved.

25:53

I just don't think so. I

25:56

get that there's a need to turn

25:58

everything into a masculinity. issue with these

26:01

people because for them everything is a

26:03

masculinity issue. Yeah. That's a

26:05

huge part of it. Yeah. And then

26:07

the other part is just like there were

26:09

a bunch of memes about this and Alex's

26:11

social media feed and that's what he covers.

26:13

So basically it turns into this weird loop

26:16

of like, oh, a lot of people are

26:18

getting attention talking and making jokes about the

26:20

Chuck Schumer thing. Yeah. So I'm going

26:22

to pretend to be a little bit serious

26:24

about this and try to desperately get some

26:26

attention out of it myself. And this was

26:28

just a swing and a miss. Bad miss.

26:31

Yeah. This didn't work. But I

26:33

saw this put up with the Clintons and others. So

26:35

I guess it's like, well, get out. I think it's

26:37

the PR firms are also pod people. They go, okay,

26:39

get out here. It's the photo shoot and they just

26:41

put a piece of cheese on raw meat. Okay. Go

26:44

ahead and put that now on the bun. Look,

26:47

blow it up. Zoom in. It's raw

26:49

meat with cheese on it and they

26:52

put out more photos of them putting

26:54

raw meat on buns. It's

26:57

on m4wars.com. It's on my X account. Now

26:59

folks, that's space alien.

27:01

Okay. So

27:05

no wonder they think I'm bad

27:07

because I'm still a human. I'm still normal. Still

27:09

normal. Still very,

27:11

very normal. All right. Hold on.

27:13

Let me throw this out at you. All right.

27:16

Why when I was growing up, all right,

27:18

my dad, he could re-roof the house. He took my two

27:20

older brothers. They re-roofed the house.

27:22

They did the whole thing. Could he skin a buck and run a trot

27:24

line? Couldn't cook for shit.

27:27

Oh no. Couldn't cook for shit. I can cook,

27:29

but I can't do all that other stuff. What

27:31

are we? Are we both aliens? Are we half

27:34

alien? What's going on here? Yeah, you're probably a

27:36

half alien. Half alien? Yeah.

27:39

But why is he one half and I'm the other half? I

27:41

mean, it's genes. It's weird. Fair enough.

27:44

Who knows? I don't know. Fair enough.

27:47

I'm no scientist. I'm no health arranger. I mean,

27:49

I get it. Yeah. So

27:51

anyway, this was all just a very

27:53

desperate attempt at trying to get

27:55

people to cover this in a way that

27:57

Alex could capitalize on and get some media

27:59

attention. out of it didn't work and so

28:01

I think it's very funny to look at

28:04

this it's like a fail video yeah you

28:06

know it's a propagandist fail video I'm

28:08

talking about Chuck Schumer in his zooming

28:10

in on the ground beef yeah you know

28:12

we only really talk about the times propagandists

28:14

get it right we never really look at

28:16

a propaganda fail video and kind of analyze

28:18

what's going on I get it and there

28:20

isn't all that much to analyze but it's

28:22

a fail Alex does say something else that

28:25

I think is a little telling

28:27

okay he's talking about and complaining about

28:29

his bankruptcy and he

28:31

says essentially whenever

28:33

you hear Sandy Hook families

28:36

you should think CIA oh no which I

28:38

think is bad yeah but just remember this

28:40

headline from last Friday Sandy

28:43

Hook families we see that who's behind it is

28:45

the CIA the FBI on record that they're just

28:47

being used and so sad for them Sandy

28:51

Hook families think CIA

28:54

want to seize Alex Jones social media accounts

28:57

the judge just laughed at him so

29:04

oh we don't want to shut you down we just want you off

29:06

the air and have your social media so you can't speak anywhere see

29:11

how that works but

29:13

separately we're going to break it's key to have

29:15

money to win a war the information war I

29:17

need your word of mouth I need your prayer

29:19

to share the articles the videos from full wars

29:21

calm band out video real Alex Jones real Alex

29:23

Jones follow us there on X I

29:27

need you to also support our great sponsor who

29:29

got demonized and attacked my daddy and his great

29:31

warehouse and his great products the same CRO kicked

29:33

out of the warehouse might have helped set up

29:35

all our stuff and had his products over there

29:38

he was making 30% on all

29:42

he's getting sued by the Democratic Party I'd

29:44

had moved all those great products when

29:47

they kicked them out but you can't

29:49

get anymore to his warehouse in North

29:51

Austin at dr Jones natural's calm oh

29:53

so dr Jones natural's is just info

29:55

wars health but you removed it whenever

29:57

you got sued Wow I think maybe

29:59

maybe this is not the kind of thing

30:02

that is ethical.

30:05

I feel like he's saying this in a way that

30:07

is maybe a little bit dangerous. Are you, I mean,

30:10

I don't mean to say this lightly, but

30:15

Stringer Bell may have had some of the

30:17

most important words of our time, which is

30:20

just, are you taking notes on a criminal

30:22

fucking conspiracy? This is exactly

30:24

what criminals do! A

30:27

law says you can't, in knowing of a

30:29

bankruptcy and collections

30:31

coming, you can't knowingly then move stuff

30:34

as if like the deadline, ah ha

30:36

ha, you can't get me

30:38

until, there's no home base law. Man,

30:40

does it sound like Alex is explaining

30:42

exactly that. It really does kind of

30:44

sound that way. Oh wow,

30:46

it's his dad, it's a totally separate

30:48

business, totally different. Also, I think

30:51

that if I were

30:53

one of the family members of

30:56

the Sandy Hook victims, or as a

30:58

plaintiff, I think I would be probably

31:00

very offended by the assertion that I

31:02

have no agency of my own, and

31:05

that everything, whenever you hear

31:07

anything that I say, you're

31:10

supposed to hear that as the CIA saying this.

31:12

I think that that would probably be something

31:15

that I would not be thrilled to hear.

31:17

Yeah, it's almost as if that, during

31:20

a time period wherein he thinks it will

31:22

be advantageous for him to apologize to people

31:24

and appear as though he has the

31:26

capacity for human compassion, he does, but

31:29

then whenever it is no longer advantageous,

31:31

he does not. As almost

31:33

as if it didn't matter in the first place. And he

31:35

was full of shit. Yep. Oh well.

31:38

Oh well. So anyway, we had the

31:40

burger saga, and that was kind of all I really

31:42

wanted to talk about on the set of the show.

31:44

That was pretty good, I liked it. But it was

31:46

kind of short. It was kind of short. And I

31:49

don't know, do you have anything? Maybe.

31:52

What do you got? I've got an

31:55

interview with Mike Wendling. What's this? From

31:57

the BBC. Holy shit. Why

32:00

do we listen to that? Are we doing this? Hello

32:04

everyone. Welcome back to knowledge fight. This

32:07

is Jordan. Unfortunately, once again,

32:09

without my co-host Dan, however, I

32:11

am joined by BBC reporter Mike

32:13

Wendling. Hello. Hi, Mike.

32:17

Thank you so much for joining the show. You

32:19

are the author of day of reckoning, uh,

32:23

how the far right declared war on

32:25

democracy, uh, which will be out on

32:27

may 20th. Correct. That's

32:29

right. That's right. It's great to be

32:31

here. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to have you

32:34

on the show. Uh, I reached out to you. I

32:36

wanted to talk to you or no, actually you guys

32:38

reached out to me, uh,

32:40

which was very cool. Um,

32:42

or at least some, some rep at the

32:44

BBC did. Right.

32:46

It was, it was the publisher of the

32:48

BBC. Something like that.

32:50

Something like that. Good. They're

32:52

all the same. Yeah. They're

32:55

all the same to me. But I read your book

32:57

and I, I really, really

32:59

enjoyed it. And it's, uh, it's about, um,

33:03

well, I think it's about a lot of things, uh,

33:05

that we'll eventually talk about. But the first thing I

33:07

want to talk about is it's title. What

33:09

is the day of reckoning? Well, you'll

33:12

have to read to the end to actually find out what

33:14

the day of reckoning is. It's a little bit of a,

33:16

it's a little bit of a narrative trick. I suppose. Uh,

33:19

you, you know about those. It

33:23

basically comes from this idea,

33:25

you know, that I have, um, increasingly

33:28

noticed the conspiracy world creeping into mainstream

33:30

politics. We've all seen it. You've seen

33:32

it in your listeners have, have seen

33:34

this, but I wanted to sort of

33:36

like describe it and get into it

33:39

a little, uh, a little bit. Um,

33:42

and, um, you know, the election

33:45

was a very good time to do this, right? Because,

33:47

uh, you know, I mean, everybody, it's not just exclusive

33:49

to the far right, um, is

33:51

putting a lot of chips on

33:53

this election. Um, you

33:56

know, um, and people

33:58

think that like, you know, know, the world

34:00

is going to be vastly different

34:02

the day after, who knows it might be.

34:05

But, you

34:07

know, for particularly for the sort of conspiracy

34:09

fringes of the far right there, the

34:11

stakes seem to be bigger,

34:14

almost existential. Right.

34:17

What? That's kind of the next question

34:19

that I have because I love

34:22

I love a good declaratory

34:25

title. But what

34:27

exactly do you think will be reckoned with?

34:30

If you're are you talking about reckoning

34:32

with the far rights war on

34:35

democracy or the like, how

34:38

exactly is that to be reckoned with?

34:40

I so how I would describe it

34:42

is is like this that that

34:45

is more of a description of

34:48

what they are saying and they

34:50

is very, very broad. I go into various sort of

34:52

like strands in the book. And you know, we can

34:54

talk about some of those. But,

34:57

you know, really, it's like hyping up the sense of

34:59

panic and fear and

35:02

and the conspiracy

35:06

bit of it is

35:08

interesting. And perhaps, you know, from like my

35:10

perspective, the most interesting bit how it's, you

35:15

know, like the sort of tenor of

35:17

QAnon, let's say, and this

35:20

was very much confined to sort of like

35:22

online fever dreams, you know, just just a

35:24

few years ago, and and now it's

35:27

become sort of sort of generalized that we

35:29

don't even need QAnon anymore. You know, we

35:31

don't even need these Q drops, you know,

35:33

they've sort of disappeared. Right. What we

35:36

have instead is we have a

35:38

constant sort of drumbeat of, you

35:41

know, QAnon

35:45

themes, but like more generalized

35:47

fear and paranoia coming from

35:49

these groups. The,

35:53

the sort of two effects, right? Well,

35:56

you know, one effect is you don't know what people will

36:00

do. There's this phrase,

36:02

well, I think we do. I think

36:04

we do exactly. They will run into

36:06

the government buildings and overthrow the government.

36:09

Well, yeah. Well, okay. Yes. Yeah. No,

36:11

no. I think we've got a pretty good idea

36:13

of what they're going to do. We have a good, however,

36:16

however, there was also a balancing

36:19

paranoia, right? And I found it

36:21

very, very interesting when Donald Trump

36:23

was getting arrested and showing up

36:25

in court and whatnot. You didn't

36:27

see huge massive protests, even in

36:30

Florida, the home territory, right? What

36:32

did you have? You had Laura

36:34

Loomer walking around in a t-shirt

36:36

that referenced Hitler or whatever, and

36:38

a few like online streamers or

36:40

whatever, right? And why? Why?

36:42

Because if you look at what they're talking

36:44

about online, it's that they are so afraid.

36:46

They believe their own hype. You know,

36:49

they believe that the feds are in

36:51

their movements and everywhere and that everything's

36:53

a trap. So that's kind

36:55

of mitigating, right? And I

36:57

honestly do not think that, you know, we're

36:59

going to see, you know, we

37:01

certainly won't see like a repeat of the Capitol riot

37:04

because the police will be more prepared and the, you

37:06

know, they'll be sort of like, you know, don't go

37:08

to the Capitol because, you know, that that'll just sort

37:10

of do what we did last time. It won't work.

37:12

It didn't work last time. You know, it didn't

37:15

manage to really stop the transfer

37:17

of power. But,

37:21

you know, there's that sort of like being

37:24

eaten by your own paranoia, which

37:27

is really interesting. But then it also, as you

37:29

say, makes it like very

37:31

unpredictable, what might happen. And

37:34

we know that there's people bent on stopping,

37:36

you know,

37:39

the result of an election. Sure. Sure. You know,

37:41

I think, I think this is where I

37:44

want to, and

37:46

this is quite a part of why I

37:48

appreciated starting exactly where we are because

37:51

there's so much in

37:54

your book that falls

37:57

into falls into a strange middle

38:00

ground, I would say, not on one

38:03

side or on the other so much as all

38:06

of these people, like what you just described, you know, when

38:08

you describe that as paranoia, these

38:11

people saying we're not going to go to these, we're

38:14

not going to do this stuff. We're not going to show

38:16

up there because there might be the feds, you know, there

38:18

might be all these people in there. When

38:21

you describe that as paranoia, them being

38:23

afraid of that, you think you're saying,

38:25

ah, they're, they're overblowing it.

38:28

This is ridiculous. But

38:30

I mean, it would seem kind of silly to

38:33

me for there not to be feds in these

38:35

groups at this point, right? Right.

38:37

Yeah, sure. I mean, look, there's informants,

38:39

right? Sure, sure. I'm not, I'm not,

38:42

I'm not trying to like, oh, this

38:44

is what's really going on here. I'm

38:46

trying to say exactly at

38:48

what point are we

38:50

in the, the paranoia

38:52

is overblown, of course, but

38:55

is also a good warning. Like they shouldn't

38:57

go. Just

39:00

because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after

39:02

you. I mean, it's just, just because you're

39:04

being sold that it could be the feds

39:07

coming to break down your house

39:09

doesn't mean it's also not good advice to

39:11

not show up at a Trump

39:13

arrest. Right. Right. Yeah.

39:16

Maybe, maybe everybody should just calm

39:19

down. Yeah. Right. I

39:21

mean, if, okay, so, but

39:23

if you look at sort of how

39:26

the actual like story progresses, right? So,

39:29

you know, there were,

39:31

there were informants within

39:34

the Oath Keepers, within the Proud Boys, right? And

39:37

some of those informants were members

39:40

of the group. Right. And what people

39:43

just like, you know, don't

39:45

sort of like, get really when

39:47

they're in a conspiracy land, is

39:50

that doesn't mean they were agents, right?

39:53

They were informants. And there's like a really big

39:55

difference between those two things, you know? You

39:58

know, we know, and And you

40:00

covered it before, like, you know, the history

40:02

of law enforcement and and far right groups

40:04

and extremist groups is really kind of

40:07

murky. You know what I mean? In

40:10

this country, in other countries, you

40:14

know, it's not very straightforward. But

40:17

you take that sort of grain of truth. And

40:20

in classic conspiracy methods,

40:23

you spin it into how come

40:26

they won't say how many agents were

40:28

in the crowd that day? Sure. There

40:30

must have been hundreds. They inspired the

40:32

riot and it was all a fedsurrection.

40:36

Right. That

40:39

is. Yeah, that's the that's the

40:41

point I'm trying to make. So

40:44

so. But but see, this is kind of

40:46

this is kind of what I'm interested

40:49

in. That idea of, you

40:51

know, in terms of

40:53

all of these groups, and if you go through your

40:57

kind of meat, you've

40:59

you've kind of analyzed and classified a

41:02

lot of different groups of people. You

41:04

know, you have your QAnon groups over

41:06

here. You have your Christian nationalist groups

41:09

over here. You have your proud boys.

41:11

You have your etc, etc.

41:15

All of these things. And

41:17

I keep asking myself. In

41:21

regards to Dakota Adams, the

41:25

son of Stuart Rhodes, son of

41:27

Stuart Rhodes, son of Stuart Rhodes

41:30

is how is it possible

41:32

to leave these groups when

41:36

there's nowhere really to go? Do

41:39

you know what I mean? Like Dakota, when you

41:42

talk to him, he's talking about how he's living

41:44

in the woods and and hunting

41:46

for food. Yeah,

41:48

he wasn't quite at that level by

41:50

the time I spoke to him. But

41:52

like, certainly that that was

41:54

it. I mean, Dakota is like a

41:56

remarkable man. He's

42:01

quite incredible and

42:04

unusual. And perhaps maybe

42:07

not a great template,

42:10

I think, for somebody who's left this. Just

42:12

because it's sort of like, if

42:14

you want a bootstrap story, this is it. Get

42:18

yourself out of an extremist

42:20

lifestyle and just try to provide

42:22

for your family. And he

42:24

was just working really hard. When

42:28

we were there for a week in Montana,

42:31

we were just snatching whatever FaceTime we could get with

42:33

him. Because he was going to

42:35

college at his job,

42:37

had to take the kids trick-or-treating. It was

42:40

late October. He

42:44

was grafting, and he still

42:46

is grafting. And

42:52

then it's like family dynamics are

42:54

very unusual too. Stuart

42:58

Rose is a psychopathic lunatic. Yeah, absolutely.

43:01

Right, exactly. Absolutely.

43:08

In a cod psychology way, I always

43:10

think of the way people rebel

43:13

as teenagers. And

43:17

this is all sorts of movements, not

43:19

exclusive to extremist movements. I

43:21

mean, didn't you sort

43:24

of grow up in a, I don't want

43:26

to say it's a similar environment, but in

43:28

a heavily- Absolutely, no, it's 100% similar. ...

43:30

religious environment. It is 100% similar. Yeah, okay,

43:32

fine. Except my parents were, I guess, just

43:34

folk. Neither

43:42

of them had shot their eye

43:44

out, which is huge. Huge, I

43:47

think, personally. But

43:50

as far as belief systems go, I would say that

43:52

there are very little daylight between them. Yeah,

43:56

sure. And so I did. but

44:00

I rebelled against my ethnic upbringing, say,

44:02

you know what I mean? Like in

44:04

a really minor way by dressing

44:08

poorly and not going to church.

44:10

Sure, sure, sure. So

44:14

it's hard for somebody like myself, I

44:16

suppose to sort of put myself in

44:18

the shoes of somebody like that.

44:23

But

44:25

he's on the front line out there. He

44:28

says, there

44:31

are people in this community, which

44:35

he loves because he has friends and

44:38

he has a support and he has his family, but

44:41

it's also kind of alienating

44:43

to him because they talk about how

44:47

the, we're

44:51

gonna go door to door and kill all the

44:53

Democrats. Sure, sure, sure. No,

44:56

it's not violent fantasies that he's

44:58

surrounded by. Just through no fault

45:00

of his own, a 10 year

45:02

old kid, everybody around him

45:04

is going, let's go round up people you

45:07

know and kill them. Exactly,

45:09

and it's to this

45:11

day, right? When

45:14

you add to that, I suppose the stress

45:16

of what Donald Trump has been

45:18

saying recently, which is I'm going to release

45:21

these people. And he hasn't been specific about

45:24

who he's going to release. But

45:27

certainly, people who might have

45:29

engaged, or rather not engaged in violence

45:31

or not going into the Capitol, you

45:33

think that he might be at the

45:36

top of his list, which includes the

45:38

ringleaders, right? Stuart

45:41

Rhodes' main hope is that Donald

45:44

becomes president again and then pardons all

45:46

of them and then hires specifically as

45:48

the militia of the state and he's

45:50

allowed to go around killing people whenever

45:52

he wants, probably including his fucking son

45:54

because he's an absolute psychopath. So yeah,

45:56

that's the goal, right? Yes.

46:00

Well, you know, your words, I couldn't

46:02

possibly diagnose the man, but certainly I've

46:05

tried to talk to him. But

46:08

yeah, but certainly like his hopes are

46:10

pinned on Donald Trump being

46:13

elected, you know, but then You

46:16

know, we can sit here and talk about this.

46:18

We can sort of analyze what Donald Trump has said in the

46:20

last month or so But is

46:22

he gonna follow through with it? Who

46:25

knows? You know? He

46:30

I have a theory Having

46:37

sort of like gone into the Pizzagate conspiracy,

46:40

right conspiracy theory sure

46:43

if you look at if you sort of timeline it against

46:45

what was happening in politics national politics

46:47

at the time what you have is you have a

46:50

Campaign that to the most

46:52

fervent Trump supporters was like lock her up,

46:54

right? Hillary Clinton needs to go to jail.

46:57

Sure Pizzagate really takes off

46:59

in the couple of days after he goes on

47:01

to 60 minutes The

47:03

president elects Trump after he gets elected And

47:06

says, you know what? I

47:09

don't think that's a real You

47:11

know legitimate thing that you know, we're not gonna

47:13

lock her up. Yeah, it was just campaign And

47:16

so like you have this energy, right? I don't

47:19

really have any way of proving this. It's just a interesting

47:22

coincidence in my mind, I suppose and Suddenly

47:25

you then you have this

47:27

focus on these fake pedophiles

47:29

in a in a pizza

47:31

parlor, you know And

47:34

that gets people riled up. So

47:38

You know Donald Trump, you know

47:40

might say These

47:42

capital riot as well, you know, I've looked at

47:45

it actually and now I'm not gonna do anything

47:47

about it. Mm-hmm That

47:49

doesn't solve the problem because then

47:51

people will be like You

47:54

know all those people who are very very obsessed about

47:56

it and there's many people who are obsessed about this

47:58

and call them political prisoners and they've made to build

48:00

a movement and they managed to sort of get the

48:02

ear of Donald Trump. What do they do then? You

48:05

know, what do they do then when their hope is gone? I don't

48:08

know. It's not going to be pretty

48:10

though. I mean, I, I,

48:12

here's my, here's my problem with some of

48:15

that is like, I understand

48:17

the idea of like, Oh, where will they

48:19

go without their hope? But it's like, ah,

48:21

we got fucking hoped and changed our ass

48:24

in 2008 and then fucked

48:26

over. We're fine. We lift through it. Now,

48:28

admittedly at the end result of all of

48:30

that was Donald Trump. So maybe we didn't.

48:34

It's like nobody started a

48:36

riot. Nobody started a war.

48:39

And maybe these people are more

48:41

violent, but I don't know if

48:43

they're war capable. You know

48:47

what I mean? So wait, so

48:49

you're saying, what is that paranoia?

48:51

What are they capable of that?

48:53

Like that, like dot, dot, dot

48:55

ellipses. You know what I mean? Yeah.

48:58

Okay. This is interesting. So I mean, what

49:00

you're saying is like, progressives put a lot

49:02

of hope into

49:05

Obama country, put a lot of hope into

49:07

Obama. A lot of people. Yeah. Who weren't

49:09

even just, it weren't even just progressive.

49:12

Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. The whole country

49:14

did. You

49:16

know, I

49:22

don't, you know, that,

49:24

that campaign is so

49:27

nebulous. And look, I,

49:29

I'll be honest, like, you know, I was living

49:31

in, I was living in

49:33

Britain for 20 years. So obviously

49:36

I was, intensely interested in it,

49:39

but it's different from

49:41

actually being here as I've found again.

49:44

Sure. Yeah. You know,

49:46

hope, the hope meant a lot of different

49:48

things to a lot of people. I think

49:51

maybe this is a little bit different simply

49:53

because he's saying specific promises.

49:55

You know what I mean? Like

49:57

specifically he's going to free these

50:00

quote, political prisoners. If

50:02

you don't live up to that particular promise,

50:05

then there will be health pay

50:07

to some degree, I think. So

50:12

you think the main difference here

50:14

is the specificity of it. So

50:16

because Obama promises a kind of

50:18

generalized healthcare

50:20

will be a little,

50:22

you know, whatever it's kind of shit,

50:24

you're like, eh, he kind of did

50:26

it, whatever. But Trump said, I'm

50:28

going to lock her up and they didn't lock her

50:30

up. So people have got to go fuck her up,

50:32

right? So let me put it

50:34

like that. Yeah. But, you know, but not

50:37

specifically Hillary Clinton, right? But just, you know,

50:39

it's just somebody, something that has some sort

50:41

of vague connection. So

50:43

I need to throw a punch and I'm going

50:45

to throw it at whomever's nearby. If I can't

50:47

throw it, who needs it? Let

50:50

me let me put it like this. Yeah. Obama

50:52

could have run by saying, you know what? Let's

50:56

go back to the time and the

50:58

economy is complete meltdown. We're going

51:00

to put bankers in jail, right?

51:03

We are going to put the heads of

51:05

the major banks in jail because they completely

51:07

have fucked us. Right. Right. And

51:10

then he didn't. Right. I

51:12

think things would have been a little bit different. Right.

51:15

And, you know, there

51:18

would have been protests. You

51:22

know, and I'm sort

51:24

of a shot. Are we are we talking?

51:26

I have no idea. Well, you know, you

51:28

only, you know, in your own heart. No,

51:30

no, for sure. I mean, I mean more

51:32

like, are we talking. Is

51:35

this an equivalence test right here? Are

51:38

we talking if Obama had made promises

51:40

like I'll lock up, you

51:43

know, the bankers and then does

51:45

it. Let's actually let's take Obama out. Let's make

51:47

it burn. Bernie seems much more reasonable. So Bernie

51:49

comes to you. He says, I'm going to lock

51:51

them up. Then he

51:53

doesn't all progressives everywhere are disappointed

51:56

and hopeless. Even our champion has

51:58

nothing. Are you

52:00

saying that then January 6th happens on the left?

52:03

I mean, look, conspiracy

52:06

theories and political violence

52:09

are not limited to

52:11

any one group, right? Sure. I

52:14

mean, like, I guess

52:16

when we say like a Bernie Sanders

52:18

presidency where he fails to, this is

52:20

like very, very hypothetical to the third

52:22

degree or whatever. Oh

52:25

yeah, it's never happened in this country. Like I

52:27

wouldn't rule that out, for sure. Like

52:33

it's hard to say specifically what would have happened

52:35

but I

52:38

certainly wouldn't rule that out. You

52:40

know, obviously like

52:42

I go into political violence in

52:44

the United States and how it

52:47

comes mostly from the right, not

52:49

exclusively, but mostly from the

52:51

right these days in

52:54

terms of murders, terrorist

52:56

attacks and whatnot. There's

53:01

historical periods where the opposite has been true. You

53:03

know, certainly. That's

53:06

an interesting question. What

53:09

is that, do you mean, when

53:11

the opposite has been true? Do you mean like

53:14

John Brown or the

53:16

IRA or like? Oh,

53:18

I mean, yeah, any of those things.

53:22

You know, or the weathermen or, you

53:24

know. Okay, now

53:26

let me ask you this question. All

53:28

right, because I

53:31

wonder about this. Do

53:35

you think, because

53:37

it is called the day of reckoning, do

53:39

you have a value judgment on the day

53:41

of reckoning? Is it a good or

53:43

bad thing? I

53:46

don't have a value judgment. I use

53:49

it, I suppose, as a description

53:51

of the stakes that

53:56

a lot of people on

53:59

these fringes believe. are

54:03

going to be sort of thrown down

54:05

around the election. Right?

54:07

Well, I mean, but aren't, aren't, isn't

54:09

that like what regular people are talking

54:11

about? Like on CNN and the like.

54:14

No, you got a point. You got a point. It's

54:16

like, hey, at the end of this election, if Donald

54:18

Trump is president, CNN is probably

54:20

going to be lit on fire. You

54:22

know, like there are people who are

54:24

very stridently warning in very mainstream spaces.

54:28

It's good that we got to this because I think that

54:30

this is very interesting. And you know, in

54:33

terms of predictions, I wouldn't really want to

54:35

offer one because whatever we predict here was

54:37

not going to come true. Right? It's

54:40

just like the law of the universe. Sure. Well,

54:42

in 2017, I predicted a massive

54:44

global pandemic that shut everything down.

54:47

Who didn't predict that random? Yeah,

54:49

totally. I know it's coming.

54:51

Are you the clairvoyant? Maybe I know what's coming.

54:53

Tell us, tell us. Tell

54:56

us, tell us. I'm desperate.

54:58

I'm desperate. I

55:00

would I would I would love to know. No.

55:05

Yeah, you're right. But like, you

55:08

know, what I would like to interrogate, I suppose,

55:11

you know, because the book deals

55:13

with the far right and what they believe. It's

55:16

not so much, you know, what the people on

55:18

CNN are talking about. I

55:20

always just look for specifics. You know, I. I

55:24

look for like anecdotes and how

55:26

this actually sort of plays out on

55:28

the ground and what people in Iowa think

55:31

about it, you know, to take a random

55:33

place. I

55:35

am. You

55:39

know, sometimes I hear this talk and I think I

55:42

really don't know what people mean by, you

55:45

know, how it's going to herald the end

55:48

of democracy or like, you know, what just

55:50

what what do you do to justify like

55:52

stopping that if you believe that that's true?

55:55

I'm not sure. And

55:57

I don't you know, I may be. Um,

56:03

you know, again, like, um, I

56:08

find it hard to visualize, right? Like,

56:11

let's say, let's say Trump gets

56:13

elected and anything can happen. Um,

56:15

you know, cause people ask me all

56:17

the time, they're like, particularly people in

56:19

Britain, you know, my friends in London or

56:21

whatever, they're like, Oh, what's going to

56:24

happen? Tell me, tell me, tell me. I was like, why are

56:26

you, why are you listening to me? Number one, I didn't think he

56:28

was going to get elected in 2016. Sure.

56:30

Um, you know, number two,

56:33

I have no sort of special insight, but

56:35

I say like, just be prepared for anything.

56:37

Right. Like that, this could

56:39

happen. That could happen. Um,

56:43

we've got two old men. We've got

56:45

two old men. That's bad advice. That's also

56:47

not exactly a helpful advice. It's not helpful.

56:49

No, it's not helpful. I

56:51

mean, like if you, if you were

56:53

amended that psychologically, have a go bag,

56:55

you know, like have ice, you know,

56:58

be a blanket in your car.

57:00

Like, I feel like that's useful. You

57:03

know, um, I, I

57:05

suppose, you know, it's very interesting

57:07

to read, um, was it

57:10

project 20, 25, you

57:12

know, these reports that say, you know, this

57:14

is how Donald Trump would run his next

57:16

administration. Sure. Sure. Sure. You know, then again,

57:18

a lot of that stuff is, you know,

57:20

we're going to, you know, root out all

57:22

of these, uh, civil servant type people, right?

57:24

Sure. Um, and that doesn't. Necessarily to me

57:26

to be sort of like three alarm fire

57:29

type territory. Right.

57:31

Uh, there's courts that were, we'll get

57:33

involved with this kind of stuff. Um,

57:37

there are people who will be, you know, very

57:39

active from day one, as we saw

57:42

the last time that Donald Trump got elected,

57:44

uh, I was

57:46

having, um, dinner with

57:48

a friend, uh, earlier this year. And,

57:50

uh, it was in, it was

57:52

in New Haven, right? In New Haven, Connecticut. And

57:55

so we're sitting there. Um, I

57:57

was actually doing a story on democratic politics, not in

57:59

New Haven, but. nearby. And this

58:02

old guy I had never, I hadn't

58:04

seen him for years, was

58:06

sitting in a pizza place and he's, you know,

58:08

he's a very sort of like left guy, right?

58:10

He's a very left-wing guy. And

58:15

we're just talking about politics

58:17

and he says

58:20

to me, if Trump gets in, who's

58:22

gonna stop him? And

58:24

I just looked around the room, you know,

58:26

I looked around at all the sort of

58:28

Yale students that we were surrounded with in

58:30

one pizza place in New Haven

58:32

and the blocks surrounding us,

58:35

you know, it's like the heart of liberal

58:37

America in this, you know,

58:40

blue state, you know, completely blue

58:42

region. And they were like, we'll

58:44

capitulate in the heartbeat, sir. God

58:46

bless America. I think

58:48

maybe there may be some opposition

58:50

to Donald Trump if he becomes

58:52

president. I ask

58:54

you this question because I recognize what

58:57

you're saying, but the

59:00

women's march, global

59:03

largest protest ever,

59:07

multiple Supreme Court justices and

59:09

the end of abortion followed.

59:12

So who fucking cares

59:14

is my question about your resistance.

59:17

Well, I mean, look, that I

59:20

think that's a completely valid point, right?

59:22

Like what are the, what

59:24

is the real, you know, but it's not

59:26

as if I

59:28

wouldn't necessarily talk to that. I suppose I

59:30

would just say, you know, the

59:33

idea that there won't be any type of

59:35

resistance is crazy. You could kind of say

59:37

the same thing about it. There will be

59:39

some resistance. That's fine. But who,

59:41

I mean, there will

59:43

be some victories and that's fine. You

59:46

know, there will be some days where

59:48

you're like, oh, they didn't do this

59:50

and that's fine. But we, abortion's gone.

59:53

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I

59:55

mean, yeah, sure that, but what is the,

59:58

what is the point of this resistance? if

1:00:01

it will just, I guess, maybe

1:00:04

slow a giant ice cube

1:00:06

ball roll down the thing, you know what I'm

1:00:09

saying? You know, look, that's, again,

1:00:12

perfectly valid point. Perfectly

1:00:14

valid point. History doesn't

1:00:16

move in a straight line. We know that.

1:00:18

Sure. You say the same thing for

1:00:20

the March of Our Lives. I went to

1:00:22

cover that in 2018, I believe it was. And

1:00:25

you have all these kids, you know, you've got

1:00:28

hundreds of thousands of kids marching

1:00:30

through Washington. And it's just like, you

1:00:32

know, a super emotional

1:00:34

day. And you kind of say like, okay, well, you

1:00:36

know what? There's nowhere, we're

1:00:39

nowhere near sort of a federal assault weapons ban.

1:00:42

Right. You know, there

1:00:44

are still mass shootings in America,

1:00:48

quite a few of them. Will that

1:00:50

have some difference? Will that make

1:00:52

some difference at some level? Certainly,

1:00:55

you know, in some localities and

1:00:57

states, cities, whatever, have

1:01:00

passed gun laws, you know? You

1:01:04

know, we're not too far from Highland Park where, you

1:01:06

know, that has

1:01:08

inspired in state of Illinois laws

1:01:11

that restrict guns. Absolutely. Yes,

1:01:13

absolutely. Yeah. So,

1:01:19

you know, what's the real effect? It's

1:01:21

not zero. I

1:01:24

mean, the real effect, let's check back in about

1:01:26

25 years time. Sure.

1:01:29

That absolutely. No, no. And I'm not, I'm sorry. Apologies

1:01:32

if I, I I'm, I'm just a clownish. No, no.

1:01:35

I mean, it's a totally. Come

1:01:37

off like that. I'm just, I'm trying to,

1:01:39

I'm trying to, It's a

1:01:41

totally valid point. No, well, I'm not trying to make a

1:01:43

point. Uh, I'm trying to like interrogate the words that you've

1:01:45

written down. If that makes sense.

1:01:47

I'm not, I'm not trying to say like, Oh, this is what we need to do.

1:01:52

It's not that I'm wrong. It's not, it's

1:01:54

not that I'm wrong. And so I think in

1:01:56

your book, there is a chapter

1:01:58

titled no political solution. No,

1:14:00

no, no, let me, let me try and push back on

1:14:02

that. I don't care. Does

1:14:05

that make sense? Like, this is the thing

1:14:07

about those arguments that I find

1:14:10

so interesting of like

1:14:12

the engagement arguments that I see from

1:14:14

that kind of Twitter space that like,

1:14:17

you have to call us the alt right. Otherwise,

1:14:20

we'll all be so mad at you. Right? Yeah,

1:14:23

no. And it's not the, it's not

1:14:25

actually those people themselves that you sort

1:14:27

of care about, I mean, or one

1:14:30

cares about, right? It's

1:14:33

more just making your argument to

1:14:35

a broader audience. Right? I'm,

1:14:38

I'm interested in that. What

1:14:41

argument to a broader audience are you

1:14:43

talking about? All right. So let's not

1:14:45

say an argument. Let me, let me ask you this.

1:14:47

Communicating to a broader audience. I'm not necessarily making an

1:14:49

argument there, but if I'm, if I'm writing a story,

1:14:51

if I'm writing a story, I'm like, I

1:14:54

don't sort of, you

1:14:58

know, write the

1:15:00

Nazis or the people

1:15:02

there. You know what I mean? We say there,

1:15:04

you know, I always try

1:15:07

and drill down to the actual sort of

1:15:09

specific thing. Like I, it's

1:15:11

impossible to avoid. It's impossible to say

1:15:13

like, you know, Hey, these people are

1:15:15

far right. Oh, we're not far right.

1:15:17

You know, proud boys aren't far right.

1:15:19

Right. You know, we just believe in

1:15:22

America. Don't care. Okay. All

1:15:24

right. All right. Let's break it

1:15:26

down. Let's break it down. Why do we

1:15:28

call you far right? We call you far

1:15:30

right because you have extremist views and guns

1:15:33

and social relationships. And also you are

1:15:35

prepared to back those views up with

1:15:37

violence as you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:15:40

You know what I mean? So yes, you have

1:15:42

to use shorthand sometimes, but I,

1:15:46

I, I'd like sort of, you know,

1:15:48

drilling down to the sort of

1:15:51

like specifics in terms of actions and beliefs and you

1:15:55

know, and obviously like a lot of people

1:15:57

there, they were and

1:48:00

why I haven't been able to to let go

1:48:02

little kind of definition kinds of things the whole

1:48:04

time is Kelly

1:48:06

said, we started at JFK assassination

1:48:09

theories and then wound up at

1:48:11

January. Yeah, yeah, whatever it is.

1:48:13

Yeah. And that is an accurate

1:48:15

statement. That is an accurate statement

1:48:18

that could be said. Right. And

1:48:21

the way it is said, though, in

1:48:23

your book is it tells me,

1:48:25

ah, here is

1:48:28

the story of innocence lost. It

1:48:30

is a narrative being created out of that.

1:48:32

Yeah, by itself. Right. OK,

1:48:34

they started at Waco

1:48:37

to January 6th. It

1:48:40

is a lateral move. Do

1:48:42

you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. A

1:48:45

fall from grace. This I know this is

1:48:47

so. So to me, whenever I keep hearing

1:48:49

people talk about the state of the United

1:48:51

States, et cetera, et cetera, I

1:48:53

100 percent am delighted that people thought

1:48:56

we were good. But this is a

1:48:58

lateral move from the

1:49:01

birth of the country. Wow.

1:49:06

You've gone back, right? Not just to

1:49:08

Waco, but to yes, the

1:49:11

birth of the country. I'm just I'm

1:49:13

just saying what we're experiencing is not

1:49:15

as as earth

1:49:18

shatteringly do. I apologize.

1:49:21

I mean, political political violence

1:49:23

is like, you

1:49:25

know, cut through American history. I don't think

1:49:27

like anybody can deny that. Right. Sure. You

1:49:32

know, leaving aside all

1:49:34

the other violence that is not explicitly

1:49:36

political. All right. It's a very

1:49:38

violent country. On the other hand. You

1:49:43

know, I was at Zutin to take

1:49:45

like a global view

1:49:47

of these things, working for an international news

1:49:49

organization. I used to not concentrate

1:49:51

so much on the United States. I went to

1:49:54

all sorts of countries to make radio

1:49:56

documentaries. Yes. And. you

1:50:00

know, like, I think

1:50:02

that a lot of these people like, particularly when, um,

1:50:06

like, I

1:50:09

particularly sort of gets me when, you know, you

1:50:11

hear all these sort of like, um, the

1:50:13

massive amount of stuff about so-called censorship, right?

1:50:16

Which is basically just people getting like shadow

1:50:18

banned on Twitter or whatever. I'm not saying

1:50:20

that's a good thing. There's like arguments

1:50:22

for and against whatever it's debatable, but they

1:50:25

have no idea what it's like in Uganda, you know,

1:50:27

or like, you

1:50:30

know, the Democratic Republic Congo where

1:50:32

like, you know, oh

1:50:34

yeah, you think that you're going to get thrown in jail for a

1:50:36

tweet or whatever. Like, let's go to some, you

1:50:39

know, countries where, let's go to India, where they

1:50:41

just like shut the

1:50:44

internet down. They're just like, Hey, in this

1:50:46

state, we're just gonna, we're just gonna shut

1:50:48

the internet down today. It's fine. Um, okay.

1:50:50

You want some censorship. We can show you

1:50:52

some censorship. And again, I'm not sort of

1:50:54

trying to like minimize things to say that

1:50:56

they're not like, you know, they might not

1:50:58

be doing something

1:51:01

wrong or whatever, but it's, you need to

1:51:03

get some perspective. Some of

1:51:05

these people, right? Well, I mean, that's,

1:51:07

that's an interesting, that's an interesting point.

1:51:09

Is this, is this a four

1:51:12

dimensional problem? If you will, is

1:51:14

this a situation where you say,

1:51:17

it's a good thing. We are not like India,

1:51:20

uh, in so far as our internet can

1:51:22

be shut down. But isn't that

1:51:24

also saying, so we better fucking act like

1:51:26

absolute lunatics to make sure we don't turn

1:51:28

into India. Otherwise we're

1:51:31

fucked. You know, you know what

1:51:33

I'm saying? This we, we

1:51:35

live in a very strange

1:51:37

country on its own terms, you know? That's

1:51:39

a good point. You

1:51:43

know, you

1:51:46

can say, um, well,

1:51:50

okay. Like if you look about,

1:51:52

if you, you know, you, we're

1:51:54

obviously being roiled about debates over

1:51:56

antisemitism and the Middle Eastern conflicts

1:51:59

and. you know, anti-Muslim sentiment

1:52:01

and whatever. I

1:52:04

always find it kind of surprising how

1:52:06

surprised Americans are when this stuff sort

1:52:08

of comes home. Let me

1:52:10

put it like that, you know? They

1:52:17

hate us for our freedoms. Why would they, you

1:52:19

know, we're not

1:52:21

surprised it comes home. It's because of

1:52:23

our freedoms, man. Yeah,

1:52:26

well, I mean, I think,

1:52:28

okay, so I, one

1:52:32

of the more difficult stories I

1:52:34

covered was the murder

1:52:36

of a small boy.

1:52:39

Yeah. You're in

1:52:41

the neighborhood, so you must have remembered

1:52:44

Plainfield, Illinois. Yeah.

1:52:48

I think it happened in October, you

1:52:51

know, just a few weeks after Hamas and Israel

1:52:54

kicked off. Yep. Hamas

1:52:56

and Israel kicked off. So, you

1:53:01

know, I went to the boy's funeral. It

1:53:03

was a completely gut-wrenching experience.

1:53:07

You know, of course, you know, there's thousands of people

1:53:09

in Gaza

1:53:11

who are being killed right now, right? And this

1:53:13

is just, you know, one child,

1:53:16

right? But

1:53:21

there's kind of an assumption, I suppose, that

1:53:23

like, hey, you know, this should be like

1:53:25

safe or neutral territory, or this kind of

1:53:27

stuff shouldn't happen here. Even

1:53:31

from people, many of whom

1:53:34

who were in that crowd in the funeral

1:53:36

who were immigrants, you know, from Gaza or

1:53:38

from the West Bank or whatever. It's,

1:53:43

in some ways, it's sort of like you

1:53:45

think, well, that's hopeful, and I'm

1:53:47

really glad that you think that you

1:53:50

found safety. Obviously, you didn't

1:53:53

because you

1:53:55

have this guy who allegedly murdered

1:53:58

this small child. I

1:54:05

mean, the one thing that like, I

1:54:08

guess like, you know, not

1:54:10

living here for so long teaches you

1:54:12

is that like you got to take every country on

1:54:14

its own terms. You know, often

1:54:20

when I look at American media, I don't really

1:54:22

want to sort of give too many

1:54:24

too many people a kicking here, but I just feel

1:54:26

like some of the debates just just sort of lack

1:54:28

that perspective. You know, hopefully we

1:54:30

can add to that. With

1:54:33

this one, good God, no. I

1:54:36

do nothing. Maybe

1:54:38

I'm a maybe I'm a subtraction

1:54:40

only. Yes, I know. I'm

1:54:45

still a little naive. What can I say? It's

1:54:49

not naivete so much as

1:54:51

like this. This is probably

1:54:53

how things should work. And

1:54:55

it might be how they

1:54:57

do. It's possible. Oh,

1:55:06

I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. I'm

1:55:09

really grateful for this. This has been an absolute delight

1:55:11

of a conversation. I don't know if you agree, but

1:55:13

I've enjoyed every moment of it. Yeah,

1:55:16

you know, look, I before you like I

1:55:18

said, you sent me some you sent me

1:55:20

some questions and they were

1:55:22

challenging questions. And so,

1:55:27

you know, I was ready. I might

1:55:29

not seem like I was ready, but I

1:55:31

definitely I definitely enjoyed it. I

1:55:34

definitely enjoyed it because, you know, often like it. Let

1:55:37

me put it like this. We're going to talk

1:55:39

about good faith actors and bad faith actors, but

1:55:41

it's like, you know, your questions come from a

1:55:43

good faith perspective. And hopefully,

1:55:45

like when I talk to people like it

1:55:47

comes from a good faith perspective, it's like, like,

1:55:50

I actually want to sort of like find out about this

1:55:52

stuff and I have to evaluate them and like make my

1:55:54

own judgments or whatever. You know,

1:55:56

everybody will make their own judgments and sort of ask

1:55:58

questions. Um, there

1:56:03

we go. And then you put something in your

1:56:05

brain. Yeah, just, I always, I was trying to

1:56:07

make clear again, I am very curious. So all

1:56:09

I'm doing is trying to get to what it

1:56:11

is that you believe and think. And that's what

1:56:13

I'm curious about. Anything, if I throw

1:56:15

in my old nonsense, I don't care. I can throw

1:56:17

that into the garbage. I don't give a shit. That's

1:56:19

meaningless. What's important is that

1:56:22

you wrote a book and what matters about it.

1:56:24

And that book is Day of

1:56:26

Reckoning, how the far

1:56:28

right declared war on

1:56:30

democracy. That's right. It

1:56:32

is out May 20th. Yes.

1:56:35

Mike Wendling, thank you so much for

1:56:37

joining me. Thank you for having me.

1:56:39

It's been very interesting. They're very interesting.

1:56:42

Wonderful. Thank you very much. Andy

1:56:44

in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello,

1:56:48

Alex. I'm a first-time caller. I'm a huge fan. I

1:56:50

love your work. I love you.