Full Transcript for The $110 Billion Paramount Merger & Michael's Political Pundit Tier List

paramount merger that's possibly happening. Exactly. And so if you guys want us to see more esoteric like theory debates, or if you want more breakdown of the politics themselves, or episodes like this where we're kind of in between, let us know. You know, we're new to the series, and so that's one of the good things. We only got a couple hundred viewers so far, so you guys have a lot of power. Drop in the comments what you want and we'll do it. speaker-0: Yes, let us know what you think and we'll give you more of what you ask for. So without further ado, let's get into it. To antitrust or to not antitrust. Here we go. So, one of the biggest media mergers in decades is about to wrap up. Paramount Skydance, run by David Ellison and backed by his father Larry Ellison, is acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at roughly $110 billion, bringing Paramount CBS and Paramount Plus together with Warner Bros. HBO, CNN, and HBO Max. The Federal Justice Department reviewed the merger and concluded that it was unlikely to harm competition. But the California Attorney General. Rob Banta, it's an interesting name, Banta, and eleven other state attorneys general sued to stop it, arguing that consolidating two major Hollywood studios could reduce competition. The fight ended this week with a settlement. Paramount agreed to a series of commitments, including $1.5 billion in U.S. production investment over five years, and the states dropped their effort to block the deal. okay, so what we have here is essentially a new enormous media company that's going to control a bunch of stuff. You got HBO, you got CBS, you got CNN. and I think what's interesting about this one is it it's a pretty fun case study to think about when should government actually step in and stop a merger and when should it not. Now, Jake, your opinion is that all antitrust is bad and the government should never step in to stop a merger. So why don't you kick us off and and tell us a little bit about why you believe that? Why do you hate antitrust? speaker-1: Yeah, so first a slight clarification. It's not that it's always worse for antitrust law to come into place. or or or or that every single time you would implement an antitrust, you get a worse outcome after. The problem is the the issue of knowledge and information and control. And so overall, if you give this power to the government, you are going to tend towards worse results. Not that the government couldn't possibly get it right once or twice. You know, a stop clock is right twice a day, and particularly a clock that's trying to predict, but maybe has an incorrect prediction system might be right sometimes. But that is not a clock to trust. And so to like I I certainly wouldn't state that it's always and forever instances of antitrust application were wrong universally. I just don't believe the law should exist because it's wrong so damn often that that becomes a disaster. And I I think the biggest problem, first let me explain

a little bit about why antitrust is deeply subjective. The the big issue is on twofold. One What is the purpose of antitrust along competitiveness and goodness for the consumer? And the second issue is what even counts as too much control of a market and what is the market? So the first one's e the second one's easier to explain. Imagine you know you're you have a monopoly on typewriters. Like you're the only company that really sells good typewriters. The problem is like, well, is a computer a replacement for a typewriter? Are you competing with like app? Microsoft and Dell for word processing. Well kind of, you can kind of replace them, but there is a uniqueness to a typewriter. That is not exactly the same as a computer, but the utility are somewhat replaceable. Same thing if you're the only company that sells sandwiches in the neighborhood, are you a monopoly on sandwiches? Or is pizza a replacement for sandwich? Like there are certain things that are very similar about pizza and a sandwich, and certain things that are very different about pizza and sandwich. And then the second problem is how much of the market do I have to control before we call it a you know a monopoly? You know, is 85% too much? Is 95% too much? Maybe 50% too Is too much. Like the degree to which you have a control over the market is the the supposed problem is because now you are single-handedly able to set the supply. And so if you generate too much of the supply, you now have the ability to set the price rather than having to take the price from competition. And so the but the issue is that. When that happens or not, these cases often take many, many years, five, sometimes as much as ten years to settle. And so by the time the case is going on, the company is increasing or decreasing their share of it, other things are being invented, there's competitive goods, there's literally debates that the judges have to settle on of like, is a typewriter and a computer a complimentary or or a supplementary good? What's going on here? And so It immediately gives the government the power to destroy or at least to threaten to destroy a corporation on completely subjective terms. And you look at Donald Trump trying to censor Jimmy Kimmel, which I think was evil and insane, and I guarantee one of the big things that was happening there is the tacit threat of we might antitrust, mess up your merger. You have an intense amount of pressure you can apply on corporations. When you look at the case of Murphy v. Missouri. where they ruled that the Biden administration was pressuring social media companies, namely Facebook, to take down right wing content in the sort of d early Biden administration. And for the record that case got really complicated and they ended up overturning it and based not on the merits of the case, but based on jurisdiction and whether or not you like had the right to even sue at all in the Supreme Court. But in the appellate court they ruled and the one of the things that was happening was this sort of Underpinning of a subtle threat of like, you know, it would be a shame if we were to do some crazy stuff to Facebook. So you probably should take down all this, you know, right-wing content and an intense pressure gambit. And one of the things that they can use in these pressure gambits that's kind of unspoken but very known to all of the CEOs of these companies is is Facebook a a monopoly? Like it's very unclear. So that's the big problem of what actually is a monopoly. The second problem Which is little bit more insidious and little harder to explain, is whether or not a monopoly is a problem and what happens pragmatically when you break up monopoly. And so you talk about anti-competitiveness, but one of the really interesting things is it's not immediately obvious that competitiveness is better for the consumer. Sometimes consolidation increases efficiency. If you were to break up Amazon's supply chains, because the fact that Amazon can ship anything anywhere in the world is an anti-competitive thing. It's like, well, I don't know I really want that much comp competition where like this company can ship to this area better, that company can ship to that area better. Or you think of like the golden age of Netflix, where everyone had Netflix and we could watch all the movies, and now you need Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and Disney Plus and and and and and and so it's not immediately obvious that the competition necessarily is better. And I think a lot of times people people misunderstand capitalism and they think that capital is about competition. Capitalism is about subjective utility and letting the market set its own prices. And sometimes that is best set by consolidation, and sometimes it's best set by competition. And you get this very strange idea where you insist on competitive markets. One of the things that happened after we broke up Standard Oil is Rockefeller got richer, not poorer. Because what happened is this competition was able, he was able to control different elements of the market and each of these companies had their own stock prices and they ended up getting priced higher. And so h the like the this oligarchy kind of control of the individual man went up, not down. And so th to to summarize Antitrust is not that every instance of antitrust is always evil. But it is the case that these laws give the government too much power to subjectively manipulate and destroy individual corporations. It's really, really hard to say we're gonna pass a Facebook tax or Facebook has to pay like a lot of money. But it's really, really easy to say we're going to launch an investigation into Facebook antitrust. We're gonna launch an investigation into Paramount Antitrust, and suddenly Jimmy Kimmel might be out of a job. And that's Not vaguely appropriate to give that power to the government. And then it's also not vaguely appropriate that the government pick winners and losers amongst competition.

It's not obvious when competition is good and when it's bad. It tends to generally be good, but the government should not be in charge of deciding when it happens. speaker-0: Got it. Okay, so just to summarize that before I respond, so I know that I'm I have your argument straight, essentially what you're saying is that it's not that antitrust in principle is necessary necessarily bad. It's that the people who are enforcing antitrust are not these omniscient third party referees. They are politicians and they are bureaucrats. And if you give the government the power to decide when and if a company is too powerful or too big or is stifling competition, that power can inevitably become used politically to punish people you don't like, like in the case of Trump and Jimmy Kimmel, or to reward allies, maybe people who have lobbied for you, or to protect incumbent companies that donate to your campaign or that you have some sort of vested interest in, or maybe that you own stock in from other better competitors, all of this stuff. So is that kind of essentially in a nutshell what you're saying, what the problem with antitrust is? Because if speaker-1: The first half of the argument is corruption, cronyism, misusage. Where you're deliberately being like, I don't like Jimmy Kimmel. I don't like this Republican posting on Facebook. I don't like whatever, you know, I want my stocks, I want, you know, whatever. Like the personal either enrichment of the person or political gain for their party. That's the first problem. The subjectivity of the law. The second problem. is the inaccuracy of the law where they just did it wrong. The government is really, really bad at deciding when companies should be competitive and when they shouldn't be. And so even if they're not doing it for evil reasons, they're probably gonna get it wrong. And it's the exact issue with price setting. It's not that like price setting is always in principle evil. It's that when you allow for price setting, you get the ability to come to the pick winners and choosers and you get the pact that the government is going to price set incorrectly. They're going to get it wrong. If we were ruled by omniscient angels, like we could let the government have all the power they want. But unfortunately, we're not ruled by omniscient angels. And so they're going to be evil. They're going to misuse the policy. And antitrust is one of the most misused policies. I mean, we just saw Trump do it. Like, it's fucking nuts. And it's also one of the most difficult to properly apply. Only the the market is an amazing numbers-crunching formula. Like you have all of the utility functions of all the people competing for all the things. And the moment you try to set rules by the government, it's always arbitrary. You know, I love to ask you, what are you optimizing for? Right. Yeah. If you read any of these cases, the the the sort of the prosecutorial or the the the the government who's trying to break it up can never give you a a solid definitive answer on what they actually want to achieve. And often they just make Rockefeller richer afterward speaker-0: So I want to break it up into the two. So let's start with the first argument about the corruption. So it's definitely interesting. I would probably say that, you know, I agree with a lot of what you're saying in principle. I think that where I would disagree is the jump from antitrust can be abused to therefore anti-intrust antitrust shouldn't exist at all. So, for example, in the case with the Paramount Warner merger that we're seeing, I actually think that this is. great thing. I think it would have been anti-capitalist to have intervened here because I think that Paramount and Warner merged together could plausibly create a more powerful competitor to Netflix, Amazon, and Disney in streamer, in streaming. So I am totally in favor of this particular merger. And I think that the left is very wrong on this one. And I also want to say that I think, you know, big props to Gavin Newsom for letting it happen. I think that if he does end up running in 2028, which all signs point he is, I think this is a major Major feather in his cap and it will allow him to run to the right of some of his far left opponents and saying, Hey guys, I let this merger happen. I think it's good. I think that capitalism is a rough and tumble endeavor. And sometimes there are mergers, sometimes there's acquisitions, sometimes there's bankruptcies, and it's not the government's job to intervene when those things happen. It's the government's job to let that play out, and that's exactly what I did. And I think it's going Well, he wanted to make sure that there wasn't going to be a a lack of that that that the merger wasn't going to create an environment in which competition was stifled. But ultimately he did let the merger go through. I guess you could argue that he that you know, that there was a settlement in court with the one point five billion dollars where Paramount has to make an investment in the state. But ultimately I would argue speaker-1: You see how that's evil, right? No, look, to be clear, there was going to be a merger. He sues that the merger is bad for the consumer because it's anti-competitive. And then he settles and drops the lawsuit for an investment in the state. You see how that's extortion, right? How this law generated Gavin Newsom extortion. Like that's evil. Like you you must see how there's nothing about that that's vaguely appropriate. speaker-0: I know I I I I d I definitely see the r the argument that you're making that that it's extortionary. But I think that I I would say that the the the problem is that what happens when a company gets so enormous that it goes from you know, it it becomes so big and goes from providing something consumers are able to get cheaply and efficiently than everyone else, I think that's fine. And market share is not evidence of a company doing something wrong. So I

wouldn't argue that it has anything to do with the enormity of the company. I would I would say that, you know speaker-1: That is what's used as evidence in the court cases about this, by the way. The was. speaker-0: Right, I mean that's Yeah, I mean I don't think that it should have anything to do with the enormity of or the size of the company. I think that speaker-1: Think competition and monopoly has anything to do with the market share of the company? speaker-0: Not necessarily. So I guess I would say, you know, if I had to define what a monopoly is, is it is a company that has substantial power over a market, and it has enough power over that market to control prices and exclude competition without being constrained by rivals. speaker-1: So how they exclude competition? How does that how do how does how does such company exclude competition? Like how does that competition exclusion happen? speaker-0: It it well the the exclusion happens by either purchasing or thwarting or obliterating companies that would have competed with them so they have sort of a vertical and horizontal control. I mean one great example is the ATT merger. I'm I'm sure that you're familiar with speaker-1: Yeah, so let's look at all three of those. Purchasing first, if their plan is to keep purchasing out competitors, they've now created an incentive structure where they've increased the buyout likelihood of joining a competitor and now increased the likelihood of more companies, small companies trying to enter the space. So purchasing doesn't work. Second, about, you know, thwarting. You know, thwarting has to be done by, you know, violence or coercion at some point, which now needs intervention from the state, which is now a cronyism problem, which is solved by removing regulation, not increasing them. And then the deal of obliterating well the biggest obliterating force, the individualized obliterating force is antitrust itself. And so I I'm I'm like speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: in your example. speaker-0: Like like for like, you know, so essentially what happened with with the ATT thing is that they controlled, you know, all of the local telephone networks and they were able to use that to create a bottleneck that allowed them to disadvantage other long-term distance carriers. and they were also able to bottleneck, let's say, equipment manufacturers and all of these things. So then the government stepped in and it was a big antitrust lawsuit, and they forced ATT to break up its control of the local phone networks. And it'll you know, it required those networks to essentially have equal access in the market. And what happened afterwards is that long distance competition expanded and you saw prices drop by like fifty percent. And Department of Justice officials often look at that case as one of the clearest successful remedies towards monopolization. So that to me is an example of antitrust going right. I would say that if that didn't happen, you see a market in which

you have ATT essentially own all of the competition and then therefore there's no competition and then therefore they're able to raise prices, which is precisely what happened. So what would sort of be w what do you think should be done in that situation? Just nothing? speaker-1: Yeah, I the biggest thing is it's to deregulate. I mean the there there's an enormous amount of control. The government has control over these lines, over who can build lines, over where they can build lines, over what can be processed on the lines. They have the Telecommunications Act in nineteen ninety six had a type one versus type two classification where at the time under Chevron deference they were able to classify almost arbitrarily which kinds of companies are under type one versus type two, which had different amounts of regulation on them. They had an You had an intense amount of ability to basically pick and choose winners and they were you know, you talk about like forcing out competitors. Yeah. The thing that was forcing out competitors is the government regulation and zoning and rules along trying to compete with ATT. Like, I mean, you get you get a monopoly almost exclusively. There's basically two ways to get monopolies. One way is a temporary monopoly where you've done something so unbelievably difficult that the barrier to entry is so high that no one else is also going to try. But typically, that means you have to have an immense profit incentive to even try at all. And so you get this weird situation where if you start trying to say, you know, we're gonna break up your monopoly once you get there, well then no one tries to get there. And so this is what government often does, is it helps a particular space and then it deincentivizes people from trying to do things like that from that point on. And so if A if you have the kind of monopoly to the degree that, you know, it's kind of a mixed bag on why both of these happen together, but if you have the kind of monopoly where it was created because ATT achieved something so unbelievable. Insanely difficult. Then you broke it up so they make less revenue, less money about it. And now you have a de-incentivization to try and do something like that again. That's the first problem. The second problem being that these were largely facilitated by government contracts and by the sort of creation of the state. And so you have state-funded monopolies that are then broken up by the state. And then the third idea is if you can point, even if I were to consider. see that this is an individual benefit of antitrust. I think the benefits are are largely misunderstood, where we're kind of in the early era of this developing, and so it got way better afterward, but things just tend to get way better as technology gets way better in general. so I think it's really unclear that this even made anything better at all. But even if I were to concede that, that would be one of the rare individual examples of a slight improvement

in a very particular space at the cost of now Gavin Newsom for the rest of eternity until we get rid of these laws gets to extort Paramount. speaker-0: We're so we're we're talking about this merger. Imagine a world in which Netflix decided to buy Paramount, Warner, Disney, and every single promising streaming startup, and then use the control of essential content and distribution to prevent anybody else from ever building another viable streaming service. speaker-1: How do they prevent anyone from providing a viable streaming service? speaker-0: Because they would control all of the distribution of all of the content. They would control essentially th they would control the entire industry horizontally, vertically, so it th you know, nobody would be able to to ever let's say stream anything or create a a competitor because they literally own Everything. They don't they they just they just own everything. Everything that gets streamed, everything that gets produced, everything that gets created, everything that goes through Hollywood, if you're watching it, you're watching it through Netflix or one of Netflix affiliates. speaker-1: You've described a fantasy land where Netflix takes over everything. Like one of the really cool like Obsession was an amazing movie that was created for seven hundred thousand dollars. Like you cannot control the means of production of all movies. Like particularly as you get bigger and bigger and bigger like that, you get more and more bloated. speaker-0: If control streaming, like you don't you don't think that's possible? Like like what if Coke bought Pepsi? You know, like that that is a that is a feasible thing that could happen. speaker-1: I mean if Coke bought Pepsi, you'd have I mean, A, I think the degree to which these things can even happen is often very, very difficult. You know, it's the price for that is extremely high. the consolidation is almost impossible. But like there's Dr. Pepper. And if Coke bought Pepsi and then they start, you know, producing both and now I can have b like it doesn't hurt me at all that Coke owns Sprite. Like it doesn't make my Sprite worse that Coke owns them. It doesn't make my Sierra miss worse that Pepsi owns them. Like the the this this kind of like worship of competition. Competition A is wrong. I'm not as sure it's immediately obvious that back when like Netflix was the primary streamer and you could basically stream anything you wanted on Netflix. I'm not sure it's immediately obvious that that's even worse. That's that than now that we have Prime and Hulu and Disney Plus and and and and and and then the idea of the of Netflix's ability to even do that, I don't think is high. I I think it would be very surprising if they could manage to do that. And then if they did it and did it very well. Well, that'd be great. If they did it and did it very poorly, then there would be an incentive for some other company to offer at a lower price or at a better offer. You know, like when you make a new movie like Obsession and you say, well, Netflix will immediately own it, it's like I don't know about that. That the company gets bloated. Like this doesn't happen. This doesn't happen. This this this sort of antitrust this this monopolistic demon, it it doesn't exist. speaker-0: I see. Wow. I mean you know, yo yo you always give me a lot to think about. And this is one of those topics I want to think more about because it's not something that it's it's it's not speaker-1: What does exist is the anti-speech controls and the cronyism. Like we just saw it. The number one big case right now, Donald Trump used it to try to crack that on Jimmy Kimmel, which is evil, and then Gavin Newsome used it to extort Paramount, which is evil. We saw both ends of it happen. We saw the political cronyism, we saw the polit the the the like financial cronyism, and we got kind of lucky that Gavin Newsom dropped it. Even you admit that it's it would be bad if. And so we could have seen the third c problem, which is the government just gets it wrong. We almost saw it wrong, we did see political corruption, and we did see monetary disasters. speaker-0: Correct. No, I agree with that. I I you know when I think about antitrust, my ideal version would be a very restrained version. I'm just hesitant of this idea of having no antitrust whatsoever, because I do think that I think that there are tons of examples of it being misused, which I I do think you're a hundred percent right. I just wonder if So speaker-1: Near universal examples of it misused. speaker-0: you don't think that there's a way to optimize antitrust for protecting competition? You in fact you don't even think that c competition should be optimized for. speaker-1: Yeah, I was gonna say, you definitely could optimize for protecting competition. You could set a very clear law that was once you pass eighty percent of the market, and even that's a little subjective because what is the market is subjective, but you could kill most of the subjectivity by passing an exact law. You say once you have eighty percent or ninety percent or whatever, pick an arbitrary number. It has to be arbitrary. But you could pick an arbitrary number, and you can say once you pass eighty-five percent of the market, then we're gonna break you up. And you could do that, you could remove a lot of the subjectivity. The problem is optimizing for competition is dumb. Because competition doesn't guarantee the best subjective utility. The market speaker-0: What if a company doesn't make the best product? What if a company just gets large enough that it's able to buy every emerging competitor before they can challenge it? They can lock competitors out of all the distribution. They can force suppliers into, you know, exclusivity agreements and things like that. And they can acquire every potential competitor that tries to enter the market. And so you end up with like this weird thing where you say, Well, the market will

correct it. Well, what what happens when we get to the point where the mechanism that is supposed to correct monopoly, which is entry by other competitors, what if that mechanism gets prevented by the monopolist? Is there no world in your opinion where that could happen? speaker-1: Yeah, I it could happen temporarily for sure. The main way it happens is just with technological superiority. Like the thing about like Rockefeller was there was like a new kind of refinement that his company developed, and therefore it was just making the best oil. Like it was doing it the best by like a huge margin. And that like the reason why we have this great industrial boom is largely because we have massively more efficient oil now. Like we have way better ways of doing things. And so Rockefeller was able to force out competitors. By being better, by literally doing competition. If the idea is that it's forcing out competitors by buying them, that means you now have a space where people are getting bought and you've now actually increased the incentive to try to join. If you have this idea where you're trying to do like, you know, control over suppliers and you're trying to manipulate up and downward along this the the scale, the issue is that the game theory immediately breaks the second other companies because the the companies ab at the level above this your multiple suppliers they it's really hard to manipulate all the suppliers out of competing with other companies because if any one of them breaks with them and they suddenly get all of the competitors which are being aquahired or being ac ac you know not aquahhired which are being acquired and are therefore now being worth more the VC funding, the private equity funding all of that will pump in to overcome this problem unless the problem can't be overcomed because the giant monopolistic firm has a in has a better way of doing something. And sometimes consolidation makes things better. Like it's it's it's it's really not obvious that consolidation is a problem. speaker-0: That's why I I I agree. I think that the that this precise merger is evidence of that. Whereas whereas, you know, the f Warner and Paramount joined together and merging makes them a more formidable competitor to Netflix. I totally agree with that. You know, an example that popped into my head while I was thinking about this was Blackberry. You know, BlackBerry literally owned the entire smartphone market. And then within a few years the iPhone showed up and essentially Blackberry was irrelevant. And you could have argued at the time that BlackBerry was a monopoly. So what I was trying to say was that it my concern is not with the enormity of the company. My concern is not with the market share of the company. My concern is when a sufficiently powerful company can stop competing within the market and start using its power to exert control over the market itself. So that's speaker-1: That's trying to late. General Electric basically tried to do that. And the problem is these companies always fail because they get out competed eventually. Like that's what General Electric was trying to do, you know. Like that's what Walmart basically tried to do. And Walmart's still a huge company, but Amazon came along and they were like, Like people innovate. And Walmart became a huge company that was able to have basically like, you know, pseudo monopolistic control over a huge number of things by being the GOAT. Like they just offered stuff better. You don't end up with monopolistic control. by sucking. Monopolistic control by inventing a new way to refine oil. speaker-0: So you disagree with like the two big to fair thing. So you think that if a company gets so big and so big and so big and they continue to just dominate more and more and more control vertically and horizontally over the supply chains and the exclusive agreements and all these things, you don't think it could ever get to the point where there is no more competition and now they can jack up prices because they just control and own everything and they don't have any viable competitors, so they could do whatever the fuck they want. You you just speaker-1: Because the the the the classic formula is you drive down because you have you're because you're so big, you have so much efficiency that you can offer prices really low that other competitors can't. So they all fail, they go out of business, or you buy them up for super cheap, they go away, and then you can raise prices back now that you've gotten rid of them. That's kind of the like the formula that people often talk about. The problem is the second you raise prices back, you've now created an economic incentive. You now have economic profit. That can be made by other companies to re-enter. You don't just have one competitor. You have every single high IQ, high ambition guy considering entering and competing with you. You have 330 million Americans to compete with. Might be more than that. I might be a population wrong. But it just, it doesn't like this too big to fail. Look at the Fortune 10 companies over time. It's not the same companies. I mean, you talk about like you know, like does Facebook have a monopolistic control over the social media? So like I mean, A, I think it's extremely unclear. Like TikTok came out of nowhere. and then the government like fucked up TikTok and gave basically Instagram control back over reels, which again, the the sort of monopolistic control being created by cronyism there. but or like like would MySpace at some point have been like a monopoly 'cause everyone was on MySpace? maybe. Where could they have had anti competitive control? Could they have forced out, you know, this sort of Vertical idea. They certainly had the ability to try. But it turns out Facebook was just better. And when you're just better, you just win. speaker-0: Well, when I get back from Italy, I'm gonna do a deep dive into this and then we we're gonna talk about it again

and I'm going to come back to the conversation with more information and that we're gonna see and if you just continue to just defeat everything that I throw at you, I will adopt that position. Because at the end of the day, my mind can always be changed. And I do think that you're very clear. speaker-1: Goals make Michael an Austrian, make Michael a Christian. It sounds like we're making progress on making him an Austrian guy. speaker-0: You're you're you're chipping away with this with this with this particular topic. I don't know. You know, again I don't know. I need to look more into it but it was very interesting. Very, very interesting conversation. It's funny. speaker-1: One my close friends when we announced this podcast, he asked me, he's like, Is this gonna just be you giving an economics lesson? And I was like, Some episodes might be that. speaker-0: Right. Yes, that's this episode. Yes. Class was in session with Jake this time, when it comes to antitrust. All right, so who's going first with segment? speaker-1: Alright, for you, I've got a you're gonna put a tier list of modern political pundits. So you know you your S A B C D F speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: and you get to rank these people or place them into tiers as to what they are. So I've got ten right wing and ten left wing commentators, and obviously like the left-right continuum, like some of these people are more in the middle or whatever, but like I've placed them as ten left and ten right. You ready? speaker-0: Okay, I think that this will be pretty fun. So I I get I do S tier to F tier. speaker-1: Yep. And I'm gonna go one left, one right, back and forth. We got ten of each. Let's speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: start with Tucker Carlson. speaker-0: I had a feeling. I gotta I'm gonna put Tucker Carlson in the S tier. I love Tucker Carlson. I think that Tucker Carlson represents the direction that I want the Republican Party to take. He's so anti-national security establishment. He's anti-neoconservative, anti-intelligence wing of the party that he's speaker-1: Algebra. speaker-0: Yeah, the the he goes off the deep end sometimes, like when they were talking about that what like algebra is like Jew math or whatever. I don't know what that was about. And then there are other weird clips of him talking about like the Middle East and how much he loves it and things like that. And that's all really weird. But I think that like he he hates so many of the things that I hate. And I think that he has a really strong fleshed out moral compass where he's like, hey, like it's actually just not conservative to support killing children. Like whether you're killing them in the womb or you're killing them on a battlefield, like that should make us weep. We should not support that. And I think when he talks about the destruction of beauty, that's one of the things that I talk about all of the time. Like I talked about it a lot. In our last show, when we were talking about you know the the Sydney Sweeney conversation, and I was talking about the degradation of cultural norms. Like there was a time when like you felt connected to your city and to your environment because it was beautiful and because the architecture meant something to you, and you wanted to uphold it and you wanted to preserve it because it was gorgeous, and it wasn't beautiful for any sort of capitalistic reason. It was just beauty because beauty in and of itself is worth preserving. You want to preserve and protect beauty, and it's wrong to destroy. Destroy beauty in your own country, and it's wrong to destroy beauty in other countries. We should want to protect beauty, and that's not a point that I hear a lot of people making on the right, but it's one of the fundamental tenets of what conservatism is. So I love that aspect of Tucker Carlson. And I also like the aspect of Tucker Carlson where he is when it comes to economics, like he's like, like I heard him say in the clip once, he was like speaker-1: socialist. speaker-0: Like no, I don't think he's a socialist because he hates he's not a Bernie Sanders AOC social. Like, I don't I don't think it's fair to Abdul al speaker-1: endorse Abdullah. speaker-0: Sayyid. He he he didn't endorse Abdullah al-Sayeb. He said that he could never vote for Mike Rogers. And to be fair, Mike Rogers is a horrible candidate. Like, this is a candidate that is literally the embodiment of the national security establishment. This is like the most neoconservative intelligence wing guy of the party, which is Everything that I think is wrong with Republican politics. Like Mike Rogers is an absolute nightmare. He doesn't talk about reducing the national debt. He doesn't talk about affordability. He doesn't talk about young people. He doesn't talk about the housing market. All he talks about is hawkish pro-Israel foreign policy and and maintaining the national security apparatus. Like Mike Rogers is awful. And like Tucker Carlson was like, Yeah, like I don't know much about Abdul al Sayyed, but I know for a fact I couldn't vote for Mike Rogers. And like, yeah, I kind of agree with that. Like I hear Abdul Abdul Al-Sayed talk on these shows, and he's talking about affordability. He's talking about manufacturing jobs. He's talking about the fact that people can't afford to do anything anymore. And I don't Well look, there's one there's there's two things that we have to separate here, which is your ability to describe a problem and your ability to solve a problem. And one thing that I think that the left needs some credit for is that they're really good at describing problems. Like Abdullah Sayyid is looking into a microphone or looking into a camera and he's describing a problem. He's he's he's recognizing that the number one cause for bankruptcy in the country is health care costs and is Yes, yeah, I'm I I'm not defending Al Sayyed's solutions, but I'm defending his eloquence and his emphasis on describing real kitchen table issues, which

to me is much more respectable than somebody like Mike Rogers, who also doesn't have any solutions to make it better, but also doesn't even talk about them because he's too preoccupied. I'm not defending the policy solutions of these people, but I'm defending their ability to actually talk about issues that are affecting Americans and trying to contribute to the canon of ideas to solve these problems. Even if I don't agree with the with the solutions, I'm happy that these people are contributing to the dialogue around things that matter. And I'm sick and tired of candidates and people who just decide to opt out of the conversation and maintain the status quo, especially if the status quo that you're maintaining is spending billions of dollars on foreign wars. I've never been more done. And I think that it makes somebody like Abdullah Al Sayyid Much more interesting to an independent or a conservative voter because they're I'm voting for Republicans over and over again. I really think that there is something to be said for that. I think that what Tucker Carlson represents is he's not Abdullah Sayyid. I don't think that's a that's a fair read of Tucker Carlson. I don't think that he's a socialist. I don't think that he's Bernie Sanders. I I I think that he is a a true capitalist, but he at least is willing to talk about the domestic issues that are plaguing the United States. And I think that he looks at things like. Like automation and oligarchy and income inequality and the distress that young people are in. And I think that he sees those as really legitimate problems and wants to do something about it. I think that if he runs in 2028, I think he would be a really formidable candidate because you could throw anything at him and you lose. Like you can say, all the Republicans do is spend money on wars. They're the most corrupt party in history. And you know what he's gonna say? Okay, you're right. I spend my entire show shitting all over the Trump administration. Like, what are you going to say to Tucker Carlson that's gonna get But if you're from the left. I actually agree with Tucker Carlson's prescribed solutions much more than I would agree with the prescribed solutions of somebody like Abdul Al-Sayad or A or AOC or Bernie Sanders. That's why I really like Tucker Carlson. speaker-1: Hassan Piker. speaker-0: Ooh, Hassan Piker is awful. Hassan Piker is the F tier. Hassan Piker is absolutely terrible. Like this is somebody who defends. communist dictators. This is somebody who spends his time shitting all over the United States, saying that the United States is a larger and more formidable terrorist organization than Al Qaeda. Like that's just ridiculous, bro. Like that's actually he's so inside he's like the Donald Trump of the left. Like he's incendiary. He is just he's reactionary. He says things for shock value. He's not a serious person. speaker-1: Ben Shapiro. speaker-0: Ben Shapiro's a C tier. I think that Ben Shapiro used to be like the absolute goat of debate. He just owned the libs. He was so cool for so long. I just think he's so washed up and irrelevant because he has such a kind of staunch belief system that to his credit is unwavering. Like if you look at a Ben Shapiro clip from 20 years ago and a Ben Shapiro clip from now, they're effectively indistinguishable. Like what he believes is what he believes. That comes from such a bedrock foundation in the philosophy that he that that undergirds his opinions. So I think that that's great. And that's why he's not in the F tier. He's in the C tier because I have a lot of respect for that. I just don't think that it's that like the times change, bro. And like you're still here talking this your the same book that you've been talking, and you have no response or rebuttal for the fact that like We're in a very unique political and economic moment right now, and you're just not meeting the moment. All you're doing is defending the Iran war and it and defending American adventurism. And in fact, you won't even engage in good faith debate on the right with somebody like a Dave Smith or somebody like Tucker Carlson or Picker Poison, honestly, somebody who disagrees with you on this issue, you won't debate them because that opinion of isolationism versus adventurism is so more. Morally abhorrent to Ben Shapiro that we can't even platform it. But he'll gl gladly go on Gavin Newsome's podcast. He'll gladly to you know debate Democrats. So the the opinions of Democrats are worthy of being platformed and are worthy of engaging in discussion. But the opinion of Ben Shapiro of of Dave Smith, because he disagrees with you on Israel, is so outrageous that we can't even have a conversation. Like to me, that is a level of hypocrisy and disingenuousness that really rubs me the wrong way because I thought. that Ben Shapiro was like the facts don't care about your feelings, let's debate everybody. And it's like facts don't care about your feelings until you hurt his feelings about your opinions on Israel. Until you hurt his feelings about his opinions on Israel. So that to me is just a level of hypocrisy that I don't love. I have a ton of I think he's one of the best modern debaters just in the world. Like I think he's a ama I think he's a guy so smart. He's so quick. He talks really fast. He's he's he's a brilliant guy. I think he does a good job of like criticizing the right when he has to like I think that he tries not to fall in the what a babism trap. Although I think about some of the corruption that Donald Trump has engaged in with crypto scams and and and family enrichment. And I think about if Biden was doing those things, what would Ben Shapiro sound like? So and it I think that it would sound much harsher than it sounds now with Donald Trump in office. I think the reason why he's not that harsh on Donald Trump is because he really likes the war, so he's not so he's gonna overlook some of the crypto scams because he's really excited that

Trump is fighting Israel's war in Iran. So the all that stuff really annoys me. And then there's a lot, and then his stuff on economics, there's a lot of clips of him talking about, you know, the affordability crisis. And his answer is, you know, it, you're, you know, your your family had it much harder than you had. Like they didn't have, you know, their idea of a gourmet meal was a four dollar taco from Del Taco. And it's like, you look at all of these excesses and luxuries that you have. It's just like, dude, like you're just not meeting the moment. Like you're just not meeting the moment. Like there is a massive fertility crisis in this country. There's a massive affordability. crisis. And your response to that is well your life is actually better than your parents had, so shut up and do the thing. I just don't think that's good commentary. So C tier. speaker-1: Alright. Racial Maddow. speaker-0: she's an F tier. She's awful. She's so annoying. She's everything I hate about the left. She's whiny. She's just so annoying. She's just I what she Russia, Russia, Russia for years. All you you just switched on fucking the Rachel Maddow show. She was just droning on about the Mueller report nonstop. And I mean look, the woman's really smart. I got looked into her because I was I thought for a second maybe she was retarded because she just didn't stop. She's actually not retarded. Like she has a lot of really fancy degrees. She's not retarded. She just has a terrible personality. And that's something they'll say about Democrats more broadly. Like if just take politics out of this and just think about like which of these people would I want to invite over for a barbecue? Like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson would be really fun to hang around with. Like they're funny, they're interesting, they're like not easily offended, like they're hilarious, they laugh, they don't really take things that seriously, they love their country, and like they would be super fun to like hang out with in your backyard. Rachel Maddows is a miserable person. Like Rachel Maddow would not be able to have fun. She's just too triggered. She just lives her life as a triggered lib. And like I don't really care. I I just take politics out of it. She's just that's just an insufferable personality to me. F tier. speaker-1: Candace Owens. speaker-0: Candace Owens represents so much of what's wrong with the state of truth in modern America. Like I'm really I I have to give her I like Candace as a person, so I can't give her an F tier. Like Candace Owens again, like would be really fun and funny to have at like an outdoor barbecue. And like I don't believe in like cancel culture or whatever. So I'm never going to like, you know, not engage with somebody on a personal level just because I think they say fucked up things. So for that, I'll give her a D tier because I Candace is hilarious and an interesting person and crazy in like a funny way. But what she's doing on her show. you know, just sowing doubt and objective truth, denigrating third party institutions such that nothing can be trusted. Just nothing can ever be trusted at all. Like we we we can't rely on third party institutions for anything. We always have to do our own research for everything. Like, that's really bad. And I talk a lot about the left wing denigration of the culture and the rise of postmodernism, which is essentially the rise of subjective truth in the idea that objectivity and the very existence of objective truth as something that is part of a power hierarchy and sh and should therefore be dismantled as a problem. And there's kind of a horseshoe thing in effect here with Candace Owens, where she does the same thing. She sows doubt and objectivity, but she does it from the right, but it's the same degradation of the culture that I'm fighting against. So D tier for Candace Owens. And I I think what th the what she has done in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death has just been Just ridiculous, honestly. Just ridiculous. D tier. speaker-1: Destiny. speaker-0: Destiny's really smart. Destiny's really a really, really good debater. I think that he has a lot of personal flaws. A lot of character flaws. I think he's funny. I think he's entertaining. I think he makes really good arguments. I think he's very convincing. I he's very good at what he does. I just think that he's not the best person. But I think as a commentator, he's not he's not Rachel Maddow, he's not a fucking triggered lib. he makes really good arguments from a you know, a a place of of logic and philosophy, and though I think the way he fresh fleshes them out is convincing. But you know, I'm I'm a big I'm a big kind of like morality guy, and I think that he has some personal blemishes. I'll go pfft I'll go C tier. I'll put him with Shapiro. speaker-1: Megan Kelly. speaker-0: I like Megan. I like Megan a lot. I'm I I I'm I'm I'm gonna put Megan in the S tier. Like I think Megan is like the kumbaya girly of conservative politics. Like, she will have Tucker Carlson on the show. She would have had Ben Shapiro on the show until they had a falling out because Ben Shapiro like outed her at like a turning point event and like told her that she should be ashamed of herself for not condemning Candace Owens and then Megan was basically like, fuck off. And I do think that was wrong of Ben Shapiro. I think that Ben Shapiro, if he had that gripe with Megan Kelly should have called Megan Kelly and should have handled it in just a a better way, but that's just not the kind of guy Ben Shapiro is. but like Megan Kelly built your career. Like Megan Kelly put you on her show, the Kelly file, when you were nobody. And I don't think it was right to do what he did to her, even if he has these moral disagreements. I just I just wouldn't have done that. But Megan Kelly, like, you know, she was humiliated by Donald Trump and attacked by Donald Trump after she asked him the infamous Rosie O'Donnell question, when she was

like, you know, you have a tendency of calling women fat pigs and disgusting animals. And Trump was like, only Rosie O'Donnell, and the audience erupted in laughter. And then for like weeks and months after that, Trump just like obliterated Megan Kelly. And it's not really tried to ruin her career. And like one thing I really respect about Megan is like she doesn't hold grudges. Like she didn't like get her feelings hurt and get all upset because Donald Trump is mean. To me. Like she didn't do that. She like, she's a good journalist. At the end of the day, she's a lawyer who wears all black and she's a little cold, but she's super rational, and she doesn't let her emotions get in the way of her job, and she still covers the president fairly. She could still be friendly towards the president, and then she could be not friendly towards the president. And I think that she does a good job of straddling this like independent but conservative leaning, but doesn't you know she doesn't identify as a Republican, even though she is, you know, a Republican. She gotta identify with it she wants. She's a Republican. but like, you know, she can call them out when she feels that she should call them out. And I think that that is a consequence of her being in independent media, and I think that independent media is great because you don't have to answer the corporate overlords. I think that her career is really indicative of that where she doesn't have somebody over her shoulder telling her what to think. I also just think what she has built with MK Media is exceptionally, exceptionally impressive. And she's doing great work and she's a great person to listen to. I like Megan a lot. S tier, Megan. Megan Tucker, twenty twenty eight. speaker-1: Crazy, crazy. Thank you, Ger. speaker-0: I li I like him. I I have to say, I like Chenk. I like the young Turks. I like what he has built a lot. he's super progressive. He's super left leaning. We have disagreements. but he's really smart. I think that again he's he's really a compelling speaker. I love the work that he's done with Dave Smith. I've watched a lot of their debates on the Israel Palestine conflict. I think that Cank is again, you know, a a generational talent when it comes to describing problems, which is the job of a pundit, by the way. A pundit is not here to flesh out policy positions. That is the job of policymakers. A pundit's job is to call balls and strikes on American society, tell you what's wrong. It's not their job to come up with a plan to fix it. That's why they're not in Congress. They're not lawmakers. So I like Cheng. a lot, even though I don't agree with his policy prescriptions. I don't follow him for policy prescriptions. I follow him for his analysis of American culture and society. And I think he's he's the best in the business when it comes to that. So I'm gonna put him in the A tier. speaker-1: Nick Fuentes. speaker-0: Ugh man, Nick Fuentes. I can't help it. I like Nick Fuentes. I think

Nick Fuentes is really funny. Like, I think he's an unserious person. I think that he says pernicious things about American society. I think he believes pernicious things about American society. I think that he's racist as fuck. But I like him. He's funny. He's he's really good at what he does. And at the end of the day, he's young kid. And I'm not like I'm not like trying to downplay Nick Fuentes. I think that you Nick Fuentes saying that he's a great admirer of Stalin is evil and ridiculous. I think that the things that he says about Jews and blacks, that's not cultural criticism. That's racism. The things he says about the Holocaust is racism. Like I don't like that at all. But again. Nick would be invited to my backyard barbecue. Nick is a good fucking time. Rachel Maddow isn't. And sorry, you get a lot of points for that from me. I like people who are likable. Like sorry, I just do. So Nick believes a lot of disgusting things about American society. He also is a really good commentator. He's mega talented. And he's obviously built a tremendous audience. and he says a lot of things about society that are just true. And he's willing to engage in conversation with anybody. Like I just watched he had a great conversation with Hunter Biden. I thought it was really interesting. I think he gets a little bit angry too quick and a little bit dismissive and he's a little bit more disagreeable than I would like. but so he has a lot of problems. I'm the and he is just really fucking racist. so I don't like that. So I'll put him in the I'll put him in the C tier again. C for Nick Fuentes. speaker-1: Anna Kasparian. speaker-0: god, I gotta put her in like the D tier. She's just fucking annoying. She's just annoying. I don't know that much about her, so I can't say so much about her. Let me just make sure I have the right woman. speaker-1: It's Sank Ugur's co-host at Young. speaker-0: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Yes yes yes yes the this th this woman sometimes I I get her confused with Navarro. yeah you know if I'm tuning into the young Turks I'm tuning in for Chank. I don't have any like major problems with Anna Kasparian, she's just not that interesting to me. I'll I'll I'll give her a C tier. speaker-1: see Matt Walsh speaker-0: Matt's funny. I don't think Matt's that deep. Like, I think that Matt just says true things about society in really clever ways. Like, yeah, men can't become women. And like, let's make a documentary about it 'cause it's ridiculous. And like his documentaries are great and he's really funny. But he's not like a compelling commentator to me, or like a particularly brilliant guy that I'm like excited to tune into. I just think that he says basic facts about life and he presents them In really entertaining ways. I appreciate that he's willing to buck his boss a little bit, Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire. I think it's nice that Ben Shapiro keeps him employed. I think that's that's a nice part, nice thing that Ben Shapiro does. I think that it's nice that Matt is willing and able to do that. But he's not like particularly interesting as like an academic or public intellectual. He's just a really funny guy. I think what is a woman is an amazing documentary. I think I Racist is an amazing documentary. I think he's fucking hilarious. Again he could come over to my house for a backyard barbecue and I would make him delicious smash burgers. I'm gonna put him in the B tier. speaker-1: Piers Morgan. speaker-0: Piers. I gotta love Piers. I think Piers is great. I b do you classify Piers as a left wing or a right wing commentator for for this game. speaker-1: I d I I put him in left and I definitely feel he's more on the left. Like he's a pro free speech guy, which in some ways kind of makes you right because the left is so radically against speech lately. But like if you interview him on like any of his policies, like he's not he's not a right wing guy. I I I would almost guarantee you he supported Harris in twenty four. and he speaker-0: Although did you see him on Jubilee? Like, he like I forgot what he was debating, but when he was surrounded he was like you know, debating like Parker and and those guys like speaker-1: himself an anti-woke liberal versus woke liberals. speaker-0: is that what the is that what it was? speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I mean, in some ways I feel like I'm an anti-woke liberal. Like I don't really like I said, I struggle with conceptualizing myself, but I mean I have a lot of disagreements with Pierce Morgan. But I also have a lot of agreements with him too. I just think he's great. I think he's one of the best in the business. I love his show. You know, I think he does a really good job. I think he's an interesting guy. I think that he stumps for his country too hard. I think that England is a horrible place. I'll give an A tier. speaker-1: Michael Knowles. speaker-0: Michael is to me is similar to like a Matt Walsh. Like he's good. Again, he's not like an exciting intellectual. He's just like, you know, sly and, you know, quick on his feet and like, you know, owns the libs every now and then. I appreciate that he likes cigars. I love cigars too. I think he has a cool aesthetic. I think he has nice hair. But I'm not going to Michael Knowles for like deep commentary on American political culture. Like he's just not that interesting to me intellectually. And he's less funny than Walsh. So C tier. speaker-1: Medi Hassan speaker-0: Ugh. I hate him. He's horrible. You just cannot have a conversation with that guy. He's always play blaming the victim, playing the victim card. He is an insufferable person. He is truly terrible. He should just go away forever. He's everything that's wrong with the left. Like he's why people don't want to support the left. Like the left actually, I think, has some good ideas and like does some good stuff and like is a necessary force in American politics. And I like that tug of war that they have with the right. But you why Watch

him and you're like, this just this whole party is useless. Like he could just make you hate the left. He's a F tier, he's the worst. speaker-1: Dave Smith. speaker-0: Dave Smith is S tier. Dave is great. Dave is amazing at what he does. He's funny, he's consistent, he's one of the best debaters alive today. He's really a good debater. He's so smart, but also like funny and cool and interesting. He's got a really strong moral compass. I think he's I I have nothing bad to say about Dave Smith. I think he's an amazing, amazing, amazing man S tier. speaker-1: Dean Withers. speaker-0: Dean is better than Parker, but he's still annoying. I don't like politics that is designed for shock value. And I feel like everything Dean and Parker du does, specifically Parker, but also Dean, is built for internet clicks. Like it's just click farming and rage bait. Like, you know, these like random segments with like 80 IQ Trump supporters with like no teeth. And like you just clip that all day. And it's like that's just not positively contributing, positively contributing. To the conversation. Like all you're trying to do is make Trump supporters look stupid by choosing stupid Trump supporters. There are arguments that are specifically concocted to work for Instagram and TikTok and Jubilee and things like that because he has mastered what trends and what doesn't. And that's a skill and it takes a lot of intelligence to do that. But just to be clear, that's what he does. This is not a serious person. This is somebody who knows Instagram algorithms. It's not somebody who knows politics. D tier. speaker-1: Charlie Kirk, who is the only, you know, deceased person on this list, but I feel like he's still, you know, a speaker-0: Charlie's in the speaker-1: commentator. speaker-0: I mean Charlie Kirk has to go in the S tier just because of just because of everything. Just because of like what he stands for. What he stands for in the wake of his assassination. He's he's somebody who lived Exactly what he preached. He was an amazing father, he was an amazing husband, he was the personification of free speech, of debate. I didn't agree with a lot of the things he said. Charlie Kirk was to the right of me on pretty much all opinions. Like, Charlie Kirk is a more right-wing guy than I am. I'm I'm not nearly as right-wing as Charlie Kirk. If you applaud us on the graph, he's way to the right of me. But I think that he stood for so much good and I think that he did so much good and he had probably a larger effect than anyone on young people and galvanizing young people that care about politics. I thought that he was incredible. I'm I I think he's you know, he's one of the best. He was so I mean the fact I I sometimes I would watch him and I'd be like, How do you know all of that? Like he just had so much knowledge about so much stuff. He could just cite books and research and quotes and it was like w it was overwhelming the amount of knowledge and how effective he was at just recalling it right on the spot. I've never seen that before from anybody besides him. He's He's he had a just a a one in a million mind. I he's he's you know, he's one of the best. S tier. speaker-1: John Oliver. speaker-0: John Oliver, I don't know. Let me look let me see a picture of him. yeah. speaker-1: Fish like I I don't know if he's on like Comedy Central or what, but he does like a a weekly news show but it's like and he's very to the left, but he like it's more comedy than it is just commentary. speaker-0: I don't know him enough, so I can't say. I can't comment on John Oliver. you know, I like a lot of like left wing kind of like political comedians. Like I love John Stewart, I love Bill Maher. they would rank quite highly for me. I just don't know enough about John Oliver. So I can't I can't rank him because I don't know. speaker-1: Alright, unclear on John Oliver. speaker-0: Unclear. What do you think? Is he should I look into him or is he terrible? speaker-1: I think John Oliver is one of the smarter people on the left. I think he's genuinely funny and I think he's really clever. I we have Bill Maher coming up on the list as well, but I would personally give both of them a B. And they honestly like they might be my like John Oliver and Bill Maher are probably like them and Piers Morgan would be my highest ranked liberals. speaker-0: You're not a John Stewart guy? speaker-1: I have a problem that you have with Oliver, why I don't know John Stewart and Stewart. You and I are flipped on Oliver and Stewart, I guess. speaker-0: Got it, got it, got it. Okay, okay, let's continue. speaker-1: two left. Joe Rogan. speaker-0: Joe Rogan's interesting. Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan's intelligence comes from the sheer amount of conversations that he's had. Like he's had a lot of conversations with a lot of really smart people. So now he knows a lot of stuff from those conversations. I don't think he's actually that bright of a guy, which is fine. You don't need to be a genius. Nobody's saying you need to be a genius to enter this field. The problem is that sometimes I find he is in over his head in the conversations that he's having, where he's not able to recognize that the person sitting across from him is actually espousing age-old, pernicious, dangerous ideas, and he's just not well read enough to realize what is being said to him. So he ends up agreeing with things that I don't think he agrees with because he's just unaware of what's happening before his eyes. And that's fine. Except when you have a platform as large as his. And I think that when you have a platform as large as his, you start to get into this weird situation where what is my duty and responsibility to fact check people? What is my duty and responsibility to push back on dangerous ideas? Because millions of people watch this show. And so he has a massive effect on the discourse. And I think with great power comes great responsibility. And I don't know if he has the

personality structure or the intellect. to to meet what the amount of to to fulfill what the amount of power the the the demands that come with the amount of power he has. With that said, he's an amazing interviewer. He's super entertaining. I could he's the only guy in the world who could have a three hour podcast and it'd actually be good. Like he's great at what he does. He's just effortless in the way that he talks to people. but so that's the bad part of Joe Rogan. The good part of Joe Rogan is I mean what he's done for media is incredible. What he's done for discourse is incredible. He'll talk to anybody and I love that about him. I think he's I think he's great at what he does. I just think that there's speaker-1: Jeffrey Epstein. It's funny actually. Lawrence Krauss. actually I I don't know for certain it's Lawrence Krauss, but certainly Joe Rogan will attest to the fact that somebody tried to get him to have Jeffrey Epstein on the show before he was arrested. Really? And he looked into his background and was like the guy who was like a pedophile in two thousand nine. No, I will not have that guy on my show. speaker-0: Wow. Yeah, I mean good for him. That's probably one of the few people that you should exclude from your show. okay. So he's A tier for me. speaker-1: Last one, Bill Maher. speaker-0: I love Bill. S tier for Bill. Bill is like very similar to me in like my positions. Like if you were to map me and Bill Maher, like Probably pretty close. I think that Bill is the best in the business. Like what Bill does, the way he just kind of he has like a scalpel on American culture. Like he's just so specific and so niche in his criticisms and s his wording is so precise. He's so good at what he does. And whether you agree with him or not, just he's just to watch a master at work like that. is just amazing to me. I think Bill is unbelievable at what he does on his show. Absolutely unfucking believable. I I mean talk about somebody who is adept at navigating the American cultural landscape. Like he's so good. And then you'll listen to like Club Random, Bill's podcast, and you recognize that like besides being a a brilliant intellectual, the guy's really funny. And the guy is really charming and he's chill and he just likes to smoke weed and have great conversations with people. And he's interested in everybody and and he wants to learn about what they think and why they think it. He's so creative and clever and open minded. I mean he's he's amazing. I have to say it's really disappointing his perspective on children. and the family unit. So one thing I hate about Bill Maher almost wants me to put him in the S in the A tier, where he spends like a portion of his show like advocating for how great life is as a single man with no kids. And that's just ridiculous. But other than that, I think he's great. speaker-1: Cool, cool. I'm gonna give my placement, no explanation, just my placement on all these people rapid. speaker-0: Yes, I'm curious.

speaker-1: Tucker Carlson C. Hassan Piker F Ben Shapiro S. Rachel Maddow F. Candace Owens F Destiny C Megan Kelly B. Sank Uger C. Nick Fuentes D. Anna Casparian C. Matt Walsh B. Piers Morgan B. Michael Knowles A. Matty Hassan F. Dave Smith S Dean Withers C. Charlie Kirk, A. John Oliver, B. Joe Rogan, B. Bill Maher, B. speaker-0: Wow. We're not so far. We had some major differences, but not terrible. speaker-1: Yeah, well I mean that's kinda how this show works. We're not that far apart, but we have some like spiky major differences. speaker-0: We agree on the worst of them. speaker-1: for sure. Yeah, I think all of our F's were the same possibly. Yeah. speaker-0: Did you give Candace an F? speaker-1: I gave Candace an F you gave her a D. Yeah, yeah. but we both gave Hassan Piker an F, we both gave Rachel Maddow an F. we both gave Mehdi Hassan an F. speaker-0: Horrible. speaker-1: and those were all the Fs. And so the only one was I put I gave Candace Owens an F as well. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. And you like Ben Shapiro a lot more than me. speaker-1: And I dislike Pika Carlson a lot more than you. speaker-0: Yeah, so our Ben and Tucker are inverted. speaker-1: Exactly. Yeah, I'm a I made a video about this really briefly, talking about like what do I do if I like Ben Shapiro and Dave Smith, because they don't like each other at all. But my views on economics I think are far more important than my views on Israel. And so like I agree with Smith on the war, but I would make Ben Shapiro Emperor of America long before I made Tucker Carlson. Because Shapiro would have some wars and lots of free markets. And Carlson would socialize the economy and not have any wars. And I would way rather have free markets and some war than no war and You know, the the the the view that Christianity and capitalism are incompatible. speaker-0: Right, right, right. So you you you you don't make any distinction between like Tucker Carlson's vision for the economy and like Bernie Sanders? speaker-1: I mean the I would pick Carlson before Sanders for sure. But I think Sant Carlson is closer to Sanders than he is to Shapiro. speaker-0: And you would you say I'm closer to Sanders than I am to Shibir? speaker-1: I don't think so. I think I think maybe like You might be more dependent on how who you hung out with last. Like when you hang out with like your liberal NYU friends, you come back being, you know, closer to fucking Lenin than you are to Shapiro. You like speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: do a podcast with me and you're like, maybe antitrust law isn't so bad. And so like I think I think for y for you it kind of depends on who you talk to last. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's probably not the best that's not the best way to do politics, you know. But that's that's that's true about me, is that I do I like lots of different I could be persuaded by lots of ideas. I think good ideas are good ideas, and I'm like, I could hear you talk about antitrust and I'm like, Yeah, like that makes a lot of sense. And then I could talk to somebody else about it and like, my god, like f we'd be fucked without antitrust. Like that's true. And that just might be a consequence that I just don't know enough about antitrust myself to have my own form that opinion. speaker-1: You also put a lot of weight on like would I get a like would I put this guy in my barbecue? speaker-0: Mm, I do. speaker-1: And that's the same question we had with like Harris and Trump, where you were like, Trump is just evil. Like I can't vote for that guy. And I was like, Harris is just incompetent in going to destroy America. I can't vote for her. And we're like you put like it's not like you don't care about policy, but you also put a lot of weight on personality while I care a lot less about like if I were to rank these people on like who I would be friends with, I would have probably like I think Dean Withers and I like could like I've never met him, but like I know a lot of people who 'cause we've both in the Jubilee circuits a fair bit. And I bet you Dean Withers and I could like share a beer and like be good friends. I just like really, really don't think that I want Dean Withers in charge of policy. speaker-0: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I could see that. All right, well, that concludes this episode. Thank you all for tuning in and please like and subscribe to support the show. We'll see you next week. Cheers.