And be careful and delicate with my feelings, Tom.

I don't know if this is as careful and delicate as I should be, but he did not survive the corporate takeover.

I'm sorry.

We had the consultants came in from office space.

They asked him what he did.

He says he votes against Republican interests at every opportunity, and we showed him the door.

It turns out he hadn't even been an employee for seven years.

He's got a problem in Michigan, doesn't he?

So how much of the president's midterm problems are the economy, Tom?

I- again, this is just one of these two worlds moments.

If you dig into the numbers, there are some things that are unfortunate.

For example, uh, a- ... real pay is going up, but so is inflation, as you mentioned, and that is caused by a number of things.

Now, that's the government definition of inflation.

You and I would probably define inflation as the total amount of money in, in supply, and that is not necessarily going up.

So prices are going up.

[laughs]

What happened, Tom? What did this downfall? Was it drugs and alcohol, poor associations, bad decisions, a cocktail of all of the above? But what do you attribute it to, Tom?

You know, I think...

There's something that separates us Americans from our cousins across the Atlantic, and it seems to be a level of drive and ambition that our ancestors had that made them cross the Atlantic that theirs maybe didn't.

Many people don't know this.

There's no reason why anybody would know it at this point, but the first person to interview me, when I wasn't just an anonymous page on Facebook, was Milo Yiannopoulos, using my real name.

And so I do have absolutely a special place for Milo in my 2016 How We Saved the Country book that's going to come out one day when I'm 70.

But I think what happened with Milo is he didn't have, after he parted ways with Breitbart, somebody pushing him.

Isn't that the case?

So walk us through, what were they actually protecting?

Well, of course, this was the mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28-year-old biological woman who went into the Covenant School on March, or, uh, 2023.

We learned within days of the shooting that Audrey Hale identified as a transgender man and that Audrey Hale had left some sort of manifesto, in fact, in her vehicle that she drove to the scene of the crime.

Uh, the Tennessee Star and a couple other organizations filed public records requests seeking the manifesto so we could learn what might have inspired this individual.

This is, by the way, like a basic journalistic thing.

After a m- horrible tragedy like this happens, it's completely in the public's interest to understand why and how it happened.

Well, Metro Nashville almost instantly, the next day, declined those public records requests, claiming they could not provide any documents so long as the case was ongoing.

So if the feds could release that, what was Metro Nashville still sitting on?

So why is the socialist left capturing that anger? Where on earth is the right's answer to it, Tom?

Well, the right answer is from people like President Trump and J.D. Vance.

J.D. Vance is able to speak about this more eloquently than President Trump in some ways.

And that is the fact that things are rough for young people right now.

I mean, they're getting better.

They've gotten so much better in the last two years that it almost feels like, why are we still having this conversation? People with a degree in certain fields, especially IT, still can't get a job.

They're still competing with H-1B people.

So, I mean, what does that say? I mean, just about America itself, because this is who the Democrats think that they should run in a mainstream election for Senate, Tom.

What were your thoughts on that? And then run down, Tom, the numbers.

Well, that was the biggest surprise of the evening, John, and thanks for having me on.

Charlie Hatcher, of course, is a known quantity to Tennesseans.

He's been a member of government.

He was part of Bill Lee's administration.

And just two days before the primary, the actual election day voting, primary day voting, Bill Lee endorsed him first through the Tennessean, then through a video posted to social media.

So it seems like at that combined with the support he received from a pro-clean or renewable energy group.

So what was even the purpose of that?

Talk to us a little bit about the escalating conflict in Iran.

Well, Austin, I think really what we're seeing is a, a simmering down of what Americans are paying attention to.

I do think those who are really plugged in may be becoming apoplectic yet again because, as we've seen, we have the memorandum of understanding.

That is now an ancient memory.

It's dead.

It's gone.

Nobody remembers it ever existed.

Would you agree with that?

What does Hamilton not Friedman actually mean for the guy filling up his truck this morning, Tom?

Well, I think the idea that Vance is trying to communicate may be a little bit more nuanced than he actually did, which is strange for him.

Normally, he's a very effective communicator.

But I think what he is suggesting is the idea that the government may have a role in maintaining and supporting the economic prosperity of its people.

That is to say that a laissez-faire economy is a goal, it is a good thing, but if it results in mass outsourcing, a generation of Americans that don't seem to have any hope for a job, for a family, for the ability to buy a house, well, then we have some problems that need to be addressed.

And I do think it is a fascinating thing to see some of these fault lines appear.

This is about when you would expect it to happen ahead of a presidential primary.

So do you think it's a real 2028 rivalry you've kind of given me the impression earlier that you don't think he's really a thing so i mean he's kind of the foreign policy guru he's had nothing but wins it feels like over and over whereas jd vance has struggled because him being more you know less of a war hawk in an administration that has been admittedly very hawkish has put jd vance at something of a disadvantage so what do you think

no kidding uh now tom the this milat kiros i've been playing clips from her all morning she's a 29 year old democratic socialist she ended the career of a woman named diana daggett 30 years she had been in there and this is only the latest example of this mamdani in new york two socialists who won last last week and now colorado what is actually happening to the democratic party

Well, Austin, I think the chickens are coming home to roost.

They have had no talent.

They've had no room for new talent to enter the party, except through the top down process that the party establishment created for probably 40 to 50 years now their young and up and coming candidates are people like the guy wiener in california who is now getting harangued every time he steps outside but despite looking immaculately preserved the guy's like 53 years old and that's the case for the majority of their their front line they have no talent they have no personality and i guess perhaps most importantly They have no cohesive ideology.

The Biden brand of woke Democrats is dead.

He was supposed to be some sort of bridge between the party's past and the party's future.

Well, instead, what he has done is severed any continuity between the Democratic Party of our parents and grandparents and the Democratic Party of today.

What are your thoughts on that?

But at some point, if you can't look at an opportunity like this and say, maybe we should use our fingernails and rocks and fight, then maybe Trump looked at those people and said, if they're not going to fight for it, why should we?

Well, there is certainly an argument to that effect.

I would remind everybody that in the opening moments of the conflict, Trump and Netanyahu both urged the Iranians not to go out and take the fight to their government.

And I think the concern was probably justifiably that the Iranian government would turn them into human shields, as we saw to it.

lesser degree throughout.

But look, I think one of the big things that nobody thinks about with Iran is everybody imagines, I guess, because we've had so little contact that it's a little bit like Persia from 300, I guess, where it's all a genetically or a population that is not extremely diverse.

It is fairly monocultural.

Would you agree with that analysis and assessment? And is there any way back to claw ourselves out of the depths of this conspiracism?

So, Do you think he proved anything or did he only allege?

Well, I think he restated a lot of the claims that have come out.

He didn't add some certain elements to it, like some of the commissions that he's referenced are not government commissions.

They're independent commissions that are affiliated with the survivors, etc.

So some of the information that he brought into it, in other words, may be sort of colored.

but he also neglected to include information.

In 2003, for example, it was revealed through NSA declassified briefs that Israel, once they realized this was an American ship and what Hay had done, they immediately sent helicopters and began looking for American survivors.

Is that is that a an accurate assessment or analysis as somebody who comes from the you come from the conspiracy world just like I do? You know, Tom, so so is that an accurate analysis? And what's made you sort of change and take a similar path to myself, would you say?