I I think that Trump is very stupid. Trump, I think, is being used a lot by other forces in the background that are not spineless hacks. I'm tired of this game we have to play where Republicans mess everything up and then the Democrats have to come in and like, you know, pick up the scraps and do governance. Donald Trump and JD Vance and Mike Johnson and Pete Hexath and, you know, uh, Pam Bondi and this Boe guy, the deputy agent and Patel, these guys are all crazy and they're all saying crazy things constantly. >> Today, we're having this conversation and we talk about hostage return. Would you would you concede that to to your man Trump? >> Not at all. >> Absolutely not. No. Why wasn't it on day one? >> Welcome to Thinkers on Times Radio. You know what we do here. We try and have a bit of a longer conversation with an interesting, thoughtful person. Tackle some of the big issues with a bit of nuance. I'm delighted to say today we're joined by all the way from the US. Actually flown into this country, Steven Bernell, aka the YouTuber and streamer Destiny. One of the earliest people to make streaming a full-time career, now known for his discussions on politics and social issues as well. So much so that one Elon Musk, no less, recently called for him to go to prison. There's plenty back. Stephen, good to see you. >> Hey, thanks for having me here. >> Um, can we start at the beginning? I'm really interested that you you in the world of games and then it looked like 2016 the world of Trump arrives first time up you become more politically engaged. Was it a conscious decision or was it was the world kind of calling to you because it felt like a new type of politics was in the air? >> I've always had kind of a political background. My mom is Cuban so my household was a very conservative Republican household growing up. I think I wrote articles to my school journal defending George Bush and the Iraq war and everything. So I grew up like very conservative, very politically active. And I I was always kind of interested in in politics and, you know, in science and philosophy and just like talking about stuff. So even while I was playing games as a streamer, like I was also, you know, chatting about stuff in the background like that. And around 2016, you had Trump kind of come up, Trump and Bernie, and they got a lot of young people involved in a very different way. And then the gaming communities had this whole fiasco thing called Gamergate. >> I remember Gamergate. Yeah. >> Yeah. Which was >> that misogyny and that sort of thing, wasn't it? Well, if you ask five different people, you get 10 different answers about what that was about. >> Yeah. >> It was a political moment in gaming. >> It was a very political moment in gaming. Yeah. Um, and then yeah, gaming had its moment and I saw so much uh involvement from different gaming people and I thought the conversations were so horrible. I was like, "Oh, I could improve this and I can join this and, you know, make this a part of my content and now I'm just another one of the voices screaming into the abyss, I guess." >> Was it frowned in the gaming world to have a political opinion at one point? Like, were you supposed to like just f you know how they always tell footballers just just focus on the football? Do people say to you to just focus on the games to stop talking about politics? >> Like a little bit? I It depends on what you mean when you say that. I guess I I think um generally the phrase uh don't make this political is actually it's people don't realize it and I'm not accusing people of having bad faith, but that's coded language for I want to maintain the status quo. >> Yeah. So generally if you know the environment is a certain way and so maybe we should change this aspect of the environment, people say well let's not let's not get political here and what that means is I like the current environment. Let's not change it. So yeah, I would say for the most part, you know, like when I started doing politics on it, it would have been Twitch. It was still Twitch. It was Twitch TV at that point. Nobody else was really doing it in the gamer world, everybody in the gamer world was pretty right-leaning. So everybody called me bad names cuz I was like the only kind of like left-leaning gamer guy because that world just tended to produce more really. >> Yeah. Not like I wouldn't say conservatives, like they were people who were kind of socially liberal, but it was very much like a boys club, more affluent people. So kind of opposed to the the the women, the feminists coming into the gaming space and trying to take it over with their, you know, female characters and everything. So yeah, I was one of the only left-leaning people in that environment. So I had a lot of push back initially. >> And how would you describe yourself now politically? So we'll talk about your view on Trump in a minute, but just generally are you >> I would say like I'm Democrat. >> Yeah, I'm a very strong like supporter of the Democratic party like very solidly center left in a lot of ways. >> Voted for Harris. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Seven times. Me and all my illegal immigrant friends. We drove over and over again. went to every polling station. >> Were you happy about voting for Harris? >> Um, yeah. >> You thought she You thought she would make a good president? >> I think so. But I know she would have been an infinitely better president than Donald Trump. >> Really? >> Yeah. Absolutely. Not even close. >> I want to talk about Trump because um I present a breakfast show. We cover him a lot. I'm very struck by Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 are very different beasts. Trump 1.0 really when you were starting this off in 2016. Everyone laughed at him, including the tech world. It strikes me that, you know, if you if the big the big tech bros laughed at him, people around the world laughed at him. He was sort of sitting in his his little room in the White House watching TV and tweeting. He looked very ineffectual and very powerless. And then Trump 2.0 has the tech bros behind him. He feels that whether or not you agree with what he's doing, he's much more of a powerful figure than he was when you started talking about him first time up. Do you think that's right? >> Kind of. Yeah. I think um first and foremost I I think that Trump is very stupid. Okay. And I think that when he first came into office, I don't think he realized I don't think he had any concept of what it meant to run a government. And I think he thought that he could just tell anybody anything and they would just kind of do it. And that's what it meant to be president. And obviously, it's funny because we thought that it was like doomsday scenario back then when Trump won, but the first cabinet he had, these guys were like all star compared to the Joker squad we have now. It's funny to think of like Rex Tillerson. These were like the big, you know, oh god, an oil guy or whatever is going to be the um I think your secretary of state, you know, compared to, you know, Christy Gnome and Heg Seth and Cash like and just everything now is just crazy. So second time around, I think Trump realized I need sick offense. I need people who are willing to break the rules, break the norms. It's not enough to have strong conservatives. Like before, you know, people were worried that Bill Barr was going to let Trump do crazy stuff. I remember the New Yorker wrote a really good profile called I think it was called like I think it was called William Bar the sword and shield of Donald Trump or something like that and even for bar it was too much right like a month before I think the election or before January 6 he was gone he's like this is too much you're you're asking me to lie and do crazy stuff I can't do it so this time around he's got the appropriate cabinet who will literally just do whatever he wants and the there's like two levels of scary to that first level of scary is that you know Trump just wants to do crazy stuff I think the far more scary thing though is that Trump I think is being used a lot by other forces in the background that are not spineless hacks. Like I would say Rubio is a spineless hack, but I could tolerate a Rubio presidency. But like Steven Miller, I would say that guy's like evil. This guy's evil. >> Rubio is a kind of normal politician. He's a he, you know, Rubio you could imagine existing really in most periods of American politics that there are figures like Rubio all over the place. Do you think Middler is goes beyond that? >> Way beyond that. The best description I've heard of Rubio in this cabinet is Rubio is the only person in the cabinet who knows he's going to hell. and everybody else is just on some crazy. >> Well, Trump's actually seriously said that point. He he was asked why he does why he wants world peace. And he actually said some people think I'm going to get I need I'm going to struggle to get into heaven. This is going to help me get into heaven. >> Yeah. I don't know if that's just a new saying he learned. He has these sayings that he likes. America's the hottest country. Everybody like he's just got these sayings that he has. >> I'm interest I've got a thing I'm think of a lot is the rise of religion in politics. strikes me that we'll talk about Charlie Kirk in a bit, but >> particularly on the right, it strikes me that religion is far more important. I know America's always had a very strong religious rights, a very strong religion in politics, which we haven't really had in this country, but it's starting to sneak in. It feels like the rise of a certain type of religious behavior because you sort of say it's Judeo-Christian values, which is a sort of code for whiteness as well. I suspect you struck by that that Trump actually has to be a bit religious in order to prosper because of the people who he needs to support him >> a little. I would say I would very carefully say not religion but like the aesthetic of religion, not nationalism or patriotism, the aesthetic of nationalism. Um I think it's all weaponized and it is important because it's like it can motivate people obviously to very powerful ends because your enemies are literally evil, right? Right. I think Trump said that in the uh that Charlie Kirk whatever that W, you know, pro wrestling event was or whatever. Um you know, Trump came out and said, you know, Charlie said he didn't want to hate our enemies, but I hate our enemies or whatever. And you know, all this like good and evil. >> His his memorial service. >> Yeah. Yeah. Themorial was a pro wrestling event. >> Well, just the just it was just a crazy the the sparklers and everything else. I thought it was an insane event. Yeah. It was a political rally, right, is what it felt like. Was that? >> Um so yeah, I think that >> Do you feel okay saying that? I know that um it very clearly was a rally. I mean on the radio, but you know, there's a lot of height and emotion around Charlie Kirk and >> and do you worry about what his followers, people affiliated with him now think about what you think or do you not care? >> I mean, I am worried about it, but I I think it's bad to back away from it. Um because that's what they want. That's like the goal is to I think instill fear in the other side. Um the the thing that I said I thought that the Erica um Kirk I thought she was saying some kind of cringe weird stuff right after Charlie died. But the like the statement I make is that like I mean I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a spouse in that environment. And so like I'll you know I would allow for a little bit of wackiness craziness. But when she's starting to like do fundraisers for TPUSA, when she's starting to allow all these other people to come on and basically campaign, you know, on her dead husband's podcast and everything, it's like, okay, like the rule of the internet when I'm when I'm fighting with people, this is my background, right? Is that like if I call you an idiot and you call like, okay, well, fine. You know, that's that's the level we're at. You know, if I make fun of your, you know, I say your, you know, your dad sucks, I hate your dad or whatever, and you make fun of my mom, it's like, okay, we're on that level. But when when people when people bring it to a certain level, then that's the level that I would say it's permissible to fight at. when you bring out, you know, Erica Kirk as this fundraising weapon and you're going to start using it as a cudgel against Democrats and as a platform to, you know, accuse all of us of being violent and crazy. Okay, well then fine then we can be critical of the way that you guys are running stuff. >> So she becomes fair game then. >> Yeah, I was absolutely of course. Yeah, there I think the texts were going out like 2 days after Charlie Kirk died with pictures of her and him like fundraising for TP USA. She said like $8 million in fundraisers for her family. >> But there's a danger here, isn't it, Stephen? that you kind of object to a sort of coarsening of discourse, but in order to fight that, you coarsen it yourself. >> Yeah, I think it's a bit uh it it seems a bit paradoxical, but only because norms have been so broken in the United States, I think it's actually perfectly reasonable. The Republicans are good at pretending it's not reasonable. If I if like if you and I want to have a fist fight with no knives, like how many of us need to agree to that for it to actually happen? >> Yeah. The both of us. >> Yeah. Both of us. You can't make that decision on your own. Right? If I show up with a weapon and you don't have any, you can't turn down the temperature on that fight. We're going to fight to the death. So, one of us is going to die, right? In the United States, there's this weird phenomenon that's happening where Republicans will not disavow violence on their side. And they keep ratching it up. Um, you know, all the rhetoric when Trump was on Fox and Friends, I think a couple weeks or a week or maybe it was a week after Charlie died, and they were asking him like, "What do you say to the followers on your side?" And he's like, "Well, right-wing violence is righteous and leftwing, you know, they're they're criminals." And you know when when the people on the right get mad, you know, they got a good reason to be mad and you know, we were supposed to fight at the ballot box, but now they rig all the elections. Like Jesus, like you're saying stuff that's Yeah. >> But but in order to do that, you descend to that level. I mean, I'm because you said on Piers Morgan, our colleague Pierers Morgan here, >> I won't condemn anything. This is about Charlie Kirk's murder until Trump can go on air and say all of us need to calm down. But you're you're a rational, humane guy. >> I am rational. Very important. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But I will say one thing to correct you. Yeah, >> my position is not the same. I didn't go down to his level. I'm My level is let's all do it together. >> Well, I understand that argument, but also at a human level, you would concede the murder the the the snipering of a bloke for having free opinions is wrong. Like you would like in your heart, you you do believe that the murder of Charlie Kirk is wrong now. >> Yeah. Not just in my heart. I've said it too on that Pers episode. I said it twice like I go out and do these speeches. I don't want to get killed even in a self-interested way. Yeah. We should never be killing each other for political not the United States. You said also you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events. So they've looked to their leadership to turn down the temperature. So you think they've ratcheted it up such that actually Charlie Kuck is kind of collateral damage. >> Yes. This is what I felt the same way in the Trump rally and PICE had me on and scream at me for that one. Um that quote made the circuit because people were saying that I was saying we need to kill more conservatives in order to make them afraid. What I'm saying is that like when when there there's a way that people speak sometimes about violence where it feels like they haven't seen any or experienced any. Like if you go to the United States, you can find a lot of people that will romanticize the concept of civil war or whatever else. But like I'm my guess is if you go find a bunch of people who live in Ukraine or you go talk to a bunch of people in, you know, the Gaza Strip, they probably wouldn't have the same feelings about how romantic pool is. And I when I listen to conservatives talk, it sounds like religious fervor as a metaphor. Not actually religious, but it's actually they sound like excited for it. And I'm like, there's just no like when when the Trump assassination attempt happened and Biden came on, it was just a like we all need to stop. This isn't okay. We can't do this. It wasn't a the right-wing is responsible. They own this. >> And if and if the roles would have been reversed, if Charlie K would have gotten killed and I would have had Kla Harris in office and if she would have come on and if she would have made the statements Trump made, I would say like, you're throwing me under the bus. I'm going to get killed in an event. Why can't you tell everybody to calm down? What do you mean? Why would you just attack conservatives? It's crazy. >> But you're also playing a game here as well, Steve. because you're in the the content game and and you know there's always been a content game even before technology caught up with it. I mean newspapers did it, radio's done it, TV's done it and now it's the turn of of of of social media and other other aspects of the internet. But in order to be heard, you have to play the game as well. So although the you might make the case a very solid case the conservatives are ratcheting up ratcheting things up, they're using rhetoric in a certain way. In order to play that game, you're getting involved as well. Then you have just have to accept that. I mean, I I agree and disagree to some extent. I think that calling every I think calling it a game kind of trivializes it. Like capturing attention is important is necessary for politics. Yeah. Um but I don't capture attention disingenuously. Like there like you can watch I've got hours of my stream where we're reading the most boring research papers. We're doing a lot of boring stuff. Like I'm not just out here like a Milo Yiannopoulos type figure just saying whatever. But I do feel strongly that one of the things that conservatives have done so well in US media is they fight on everything. And when you're constantly playing defense, the best you can do is hold off an attack, but you'll never make ground. So even when you feel like a Democrat has like one kind of a fight, right? So we have a shutdown right now. Mike Johnson goes on to his show and you know, Democrats want to shut down the government to give $ 1.5 trillion in healthcare to illegals or whatever. If you fight back and forth on that, let's say you win the fight and you Okay, yeah, we got it. Mike Johnson, that's not true. Okay, well you fend it off that attack. Why is the government shut down? What are the Republicans doing? Right? So when Republicans are constantly dictating the battlefield everywhere, it's like, "No, I don't think that should be the case. I think that there should be stronger statements from the left, like Donald Trump needs to disavow violence. No more of this looking to the left. You need to do it and then all of us can do it together, which is what we should be doing." Is a no-brainer under Biden? It should be a no-brainer to Trump. >> Is there a problem here that we've s we've suffered? And again, I don't you know, it's easy to look back in the past where and say, "Well, this wasn't the case." But has there been a sort of indust industrialized lack of good faith that the way people talk now, the way that algorithms encourage us to to to talk, the way that social media encourages to talk, look at X with under Elon Musk where there's a certain type of person who gets promoted who will talk in a certain way that actually we've lost the ability to disagree decently. You talked about two people in an argument. We've lost the ability to consider there is an arbitr arbitration point which is fact. there's there is something that is uh demonstrable here and we can both appeal to that and make our arguments and then there'll be good faith in how we express those arguments and good faith in how those those arguments are then assessed. All of that's gone actually and now we live in a world of just rhetoric and tribes and there's no real way out of that. >> I think the internet has fundamentally changed a lot of how we communicate with each other. I think that there is a really good conversation to be had about that. But in the United States, both sides are not the same when it comes to messaging. I don't recall any shooter and I mean it's almost like comical to think, you know, some guy's out there and it's like Joe Biden radicalized me. You know, I'm out here fighting for Hillary Clinton. Like that just doesn't happen. Um when you look at the cander, when you look at the demeanor of the of the presidents and and the way they talk is important. Republicans like to play this weird game sometimes like, "Oh, I don't care. You know, I don't care what he says. He can be a joker. I just wanted to get stuff done. Now he doesn't get stuff done either. But like Donald Trump is known as the guy that calls people bad nicknames, right? People talk about, you know, all these coded languages. You know, the Democrats said they want to fight or whatever. Like Donald Trump did J6. He tried to coup the government. Donald Trump has told his audience, you know, if you beat that guy up, I'll pay you legal fees. He's made several references to shooting Liz Cheney, let's line her up in front of a firing squad. Uh the Second Amendment guys could do something by Hillary Clint. He makes so many of these comments over and over and over again. for the Charlie Kirk shooting. It was a It was a young Mormon guy, it seems, that came from a place, right? We had >> We still don't know why he did it, do we? Really? >> Not really. No, we had all the Republican media lighting up about how, you know, if your church isn't talking about this, they're part of the problem. And then we had a guy whose Facebook feed was inundated with crazy mega Trump stuff, drive his truck into a Mormon church and shoot it up and we don't talk. No one even knows. Like, we forgot about that like one day, right? The guy with the two flags in the back of his truck. It's not the same. and Republicans need to get a hold on it. I'm tired of this game we have to play where Republicans mess everything up and then the Democrats have to come in and like, you know, pick up the straps and do governance and then the Republicans come in and they go crazy again. It's like this this cycle is not sustainable. Yeah. I've had this conversation with people on the left in America before and I don't always agree with or even often agree with I'm interested in your thoughts on this which is does the left have some responsibility because in the course for social justice which is a lordable aim the pendulum swung sometimes to an extreme where they started defending you know 50 different genders and sexualities hundreds of different flags where saying things like defund the police where in order to get what is intellectually sustainably social justice, they allowed the extreme to drive the narrative and that in turn has both motivated and in some way sanctified the rights fight back. Does the left have some level of responsibility for that? Do you think >> they I mean they can have some level of responsibility? But again, there's a very clever game that's being played in that when people think they're looking at the right and the left. What they're really looking at is they're looking at the right and then they're looking at what the right wants you to look at, which is their impression of the left. I guarantee you I'm going to be fighting about this in a few hours with peers because we always play this game where peers will say something like uh how do you answer to the fact that you know this guy on Twitter said this thing and this guy and I'm like how the you answer to the fact that Donald Trump and JD Vance and Mike Johnson and Pete Hexath and you know Pam Bondi and this Bo guy the deputy agent and Patel these guys are all crazy and they're all saying crazy things constantly and then we're talking about this guy on Twitter like how much conversation about trans people was started ed by Joe Biden or was started by Klair. It was started by Barack Obama. It was started by, you know, Democrat lawmakers or was started on CNN or MC. It's always Republicans that are bring it up. And remember, when you're on the defense, the best you can do is win. And if you don't get 100% win, then you've lost something that the Republicans want to attack you on. And that's why there's like so much at one point there was a Yugo poll a few years ago. I think like conservatives think like 25% of Americans are trans. It's it's crazy. Like, so I will say that like the left needs to do a better job at saying like listen, this stuff over here like this is crazy. you know, it's whatever. We don't believe it. Um, you know, but they but they have to pay prices for bad thoughts on their side. The BLM stuff was really unpopular in the United States and they had to Biden and Kamla when they were running in that election. They had to disavow the violence. The violence is to stop guys. We can't do this. When Donald Trump lost his election in 2020, first of all, they don't even say they lost. Number one, and number two, they didn't change anything. They were like, "We're going to run the same campaign. We're going to run even harder next time." And that was all they did. >> And yet, we're talking on a day where the hostages have been returned in Israel. And there is a conversation to be had and I I I think you know I've been talking about Donald Trump as you have for years and years and years. It does strike me however you look this up and down that Trump has Trump is incapable of long-term thinking. So whether or not there'll be peace in the Middle East, whether or not there'll be peace in Ukraine, I think it's very unlikely Donald Trump will be able to affect that in any meaningful way. But has Donald Trump gone and shaken Netanyahu, shaken the Qataris, got Hamas's attention, and helped to get the hostages home? I would suggest that he has. And for all the desire, the liberal desire to slag off Donald Trump, there are certain things that that sort of simplistic route one eyes on the prize attitude probably does help. It might not help in long-term policym or long-term peacemaking, but it probably has helped. Today we're having this conversation when we talk about hostage return. Would you would you concede that to to your man Trump? >> Not at all. >> Absolutely not though. Why wasn't it on day one? >> Why why did he not achieve on day one? Well, these things, you know, Netanyahu is a big player in all of this. You know, he he he has influence over Nessie clearly >> and the Qataris. I mean, none of this is easy. But did Trump do you not even accept that Trump was a force for good in this area? >> Not much. The reason why I submit to you that Netanyahu got a huge string of military wins. So lucky. Nasar dead, the Hezbollah pager into the next, you know, dimension. Uh, he got all the top brass. Um, you know, Haneia Dave Muhammad the um the one Sinir or whatever got like he killed every Hamas leader and then the new leaders and he's bombing every country. He got the United States to come in and clean up Iran's nuclear program for however long. Like after that many win-win win-win win-win, you know, like if I have somebody who's got a cold and on the fourth day of them having a cold, I give them a Coke Zero and they happen to get better the next day, I'm not gonna say the Coke Zero cured them. Like I did Donald Trump drive this peace pro. I mean, like, how many more times can Netanyahu invade the Gaza Strip? If he would have solved it the day that he came in like he said he would, then I'd be like, "Oh, maybe he has something to do here." But here, I think Israel is probably ready. They got a really sweet deal on this 20point plan, 21 point plan, or whatever it is, um, >> which probably won't happen in any event. But >> yeah, >> I I mean, you talk to Israelis and you look at Hostage Square, they credit Donald Trump for this. >> I hate I hate Israelis. >> Israelis. I do. I hate them. These >> I thought you were pro I thought you were pro Israel. >> I'm pro Israel in the West. In Israel proper, I'm like a leftwing. They >> they hate you for being >> Well, I I'm being a little dramatic, but like on the people in the West think that if you're not like full on like all of Israel needs to be bombed and destroyed, you're pro Israel. Like I'm very critical of both sides. I think the Netanyahu administration has done a lot of stupid stuff and I'm not supportive of this. >> I don't think anyone would necessarily disagree, would they? >> I think that coalition, especially after all the military wins, I think is fairly is doing pretty good in Israel right now. And I think it seemed in general when I was over there, I think Israelis like Trump because Trump would basically give a blank check to Israelis to do anything. Um, Jews in the United States hate Trump, but they're American Jews or whatever, right? They're not Israelis. So, yeah. No, I I Yeah, obviously Israelis are going to be happy with Trump because Trump is giving them a blank check to do basically whatever they want to do. And then what follows on this is is anyone's game, isn't it? This idea that we're we're further away than ever from some sort of manageable peace. I mean, how how how does that even work in in because Trump can back Netanyahu as he has done the hostages come back and then what seems to be an obvious question. >> I mean, it feels like Netanyahu basically has the reigns on everything going on. Um, >> but he might be kicked out of office next year and then we'll see. >> Then we'll see which direction Israel goes. But I mean, do I mean, do do you elect do you have a left-wing coalition after, you know, Netanyahu was able to deliver so much success militarily? I haven't seen the polling and everything. I don't know, maybe the country. >> I think you look at the polling also. They blame him for October the 7th anyway because he he was he he was in charge when they let it happen. >> Sure. >> And I think it's very hard for him to to look past that. Plus, he's got a corruption trial >> which is going to hit him as soon as he gets out out of power. >> Um, do you believe in a Palestinian state? >> Um, yeah. that means really different things to different people. But >> what does it mean to you? >> Um there has to be like the difficult conversations that nobody in the west ever has is that there there needs to be a big reckoning with the refugee thing like that even in Israeli Palestinian negotiation history that's just never brought up. It's an uncomfortable topic that nobody broaches and then that it's a huge it's getting bigger and bigger because of the way they do it every year basically. What is it like 6 million refugees right now? So that has to get figured out. What is >> Lebanon in in places like that? >> Yeah. Yeah, in the surrounding states because they're not allowed to accept them as citizens. It's part of the air resolution rule. Um, and then you know, how do you manage your holy sites? Like what are we doing with these Jerusalem with some of the historic neighborhoods, your shik jar, you know, like how do you figure some of these finer points out >> which is not going to Trump which is not going to be Trump's interest, is it? >> Trump doesn't know anything about any of this or care. I don't think Trump could find Israel on a map. So >> So what h so what so just from a psychological point of view does he just get the hostages back which has happened >> talk about peace loudly? He just wants there to not be any more bombing stuff going on so he doesn't have to talk about anymore and he can focus on his US project. >> But if there are no more bombs and the hostages are back. >> Maybe you should just credit him with that. That there's 20 people who are happier today than they otherwise would have been. There may be some Palestinian people who aren't going to be bombed tomorrow because Trump even late flexed a bit and got something done. Come here. >> What did he flex? Well, he must have said, well, he got he got Netanyahu to apologize. Yeah, I remember. But he was also to bomb them. It's pretty crazy, right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, >> so no credit. >> I'll give him I'll give him a >> a fraction of credit. >> I'll give him a gold star, I guess. If he wants the gold star, okay, >> I'll give him a gold star. >> I'm sure he really would. >> If he could have ended the war earlier, then he said he was going to end on day one. That's his fault, not my fault. Like I'm only holding to his own standard, you know. He said day one. >> He said the same about Ukraine. >> He did. >> And these things are difficult. Yeah, they indeed they are kind of like uh Doge finding$2 trillion dollars in uh wastefront abuse. That's a couple billion, right? >> We've got a really interesting thing because the Reform Party, which is the right-wing party in this country led by Nigel Farage, >> had this moment where it saw Doge, so it said, "Oh, we're going to do Doge in local councils." And two things have happened. A, people have said to him, "Are you sure?" Because Doge hasn't actually worked in America. And two, when they've gone into the local councils, magically they've not found all the money they thought they'd find. I don't know if it's the same in the UK, but in the United States, um, people just think the government and people that work in the government make way more money than they actually do. This is not the money is in like my positions, alternative media positions is people that do, you know, like the entertainment side of things or people that are like involved in the corporate side of things, government people are not making anywhere near the money that people seem to think they are. They think they can go to the government and find all this wasteful spending. It is just Yeah. It's just not at least in the US it wasn't there. Yeah. Well, I think also for what happens to politicians in this country is because they don't want tax raises and they don't want to cut public services. The magic money tree is we'll do the same thing other people have done, but we'll do it quicker and cheaper and we won't waste it. Now, you probably can do a bit of that if you came in with a proper attitude. You could probably find wastage in I mean local government. I'm sure there civil service increased by 300,000 people uh in the last sort of 15 years. So there's clearly an argument that stuff could be done better. But that's what governments always say. They'll always find a better way of collecting tax. They'll crack down on tax. >> Sometimes you hear them say line by line through the code and find Yeah. It's like when you have a friend who like weighs >> is you guys use stones here. 30 stone. I don't know. They weigh 300 lb. And the friend is like >> 25 stone. >> Sure. 25 stone. And the friend is like >> I'm going to stop eating in the morning because I heard that I wait to eat my metabolism will start. I was like you just need to eat less. Like there's an obvious answer and it's a lot of it sucks but like there's no shortcut there and for yeah in the United States I said this a ton like if you're look you need programmatic cuts or you need to raise your you need to expand your tax base it's one or the other you're not making anything sign this whole like waist front you're nibbling around the edges on a massive expenditure federal budget yeah >> in this country we we say say that people want American taxes and Scandinavian public services and you can't really have both of that you can have one or the other but you can't have you can't have both if you Scandinavian public services, you got to pay a massive amount of income tax. >> Yeah, that's funny. And in America, we we want we we think we have Scandinavian taxes. No one has any idea what you guys in Europe pay for taxes. Uh and then we think we have services that are the equivalent of like like Somalia or that's Yeah. The United people in the US are funny. Yeah. Um before you go, um are you optimistic because there's an argument that we're all going to hell in a handcart here and actually public discourse is is awful and the right versus the left is never going to get any better. You know, Trump might stick around for a third term. JD Vance might do it instead. Um the left's going to have to weaponize itself to fight back. Social media isn't going anywhere. AI is going to be thrown into this mess to make it even worse. I mean, are you despairing or are you at the front line of this stuff feeling optimistic? >> I sound corny. Um, but the um watching Charlie Kirk get shot on video, that was a really crazy moment to see somebody who's essentially a colleague to get murdered on a stream doing events that are similar to what I do. Um, I think we had an event planned like I think a week and a half after his death. And initially I was I was I you know I told the they're called Unfuck America. I told him I like I don't think I can go to this is like I don't want to get killed because I'm like the one of the more inflammatory people. Um but then you quoted that Elon Musk tweet and Trump Junior all started tweeting at me. He's like well okay I'm going to get bullied out of going to the event. And before I went um I I think the chances of anything happening are incredibly unlikely just cuz probabilistically I don't think I would actually get killed in an event. I don't think so. Um but I you know I wrote up a little note um and I had like my you know manager like okay just in case like publish this. Um, and you know, it's funny when I sit down initially, like I'm always filled with like so much anger towards this administration and everything, but you know, when I when I was like trying to write something sort short and sweet. What I actually found out >> your post death manifesto kind of >> not manifag long, but it was basically like you I I think in order for anybody to do anything on a level that is greater than themselves, I think you have to have some fundamental optimism in the general direction or arc of human existence. So when you say like is it doomer like things get really bad sometimes but the general arc of history has been a positive one and I think you h you even if it's delusional you have to believe that I think you have to until you can't anymore until it's all over. So yeah >> let's leave it on that note shall we? Okay >> it's a yeah it might be a delusion but it's probably a necessary delusion for now. >> Absolutely. >> Stephen, great to speak to you my friend. Really interesting stuff. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me >> and thank you for watching. You know what to do. You can leave a comment beneath. I know it'll be a thoughtful and polite one. Uh thanks very much to Destiny to Steven Banell for joining us. We'll be back with some more guests as we go along. My name is Sig Gable. I present the Breakfast Show on Times Radio and this is called Thinkers. Uh do join us again. [Music]
