Author & Journalist Richie McGinniss Discusses His Book "Riot Diet" and the State of America

there. There's like, indivisible a lot, you know, George Soros, there was the accusation that he funded riots in 2020 he wasn't funding the riots. He was funding the bail funds that got people out for, you know, committing violent crimes during that time, and all the prosecutors who were basically giving carte blanche to the protesters in these liberal cities were also, you know, their campaigns were largely funded by the sort of Open Society Foundation. So, so it's, yeah,

couldn't miss it, right? And then it was like, oh, okay, that's weird. And then takes, like, 20 years later, now, all of a sudden, there's protests just all the time. And there were so many people that protested in the Tesla one because it was on my news feed, on Facebook, like every other post was like, hands off, you know, blah, blah, blah, we're here. And I'm like, Okay, I don't understand what is the point of this. Like, I'm not

saying it's good or bad. I just I don't understand the point of all these chess I've never had my mind changed by a cardboard sign or protest, or it's never really swayed what I think. So, is it doing anything or I don't understand? Well,

types. But the crazy thing about my analysis of that, when I went back and looked at all the news reports, is the fact that the New York Times was pro free trade with, you know, the Thomas Friedman's writing on the front page, and they wrote an article claiming that the protesters through Molotov cocktails, and had to issue a correction later on, saying that it didn't take

place. And that is also indicative of the paradigm shift where the New York Times back then was going in with an agenda that the protesters were wrong. And then you fast forward to 2020 and it's completely flipped on its head. Also the corporations that were the ire of the WTO protests, who are going to benefit from these free trade policies under, you know that Clinton was ushering in.

They were not in the crosshairs in 2020 they were actually, you know, committing money to Black Lives Matter and black lives matter related causes. And so you saw this whole flipping where corporate culture was backing, you know, Republicans in the 80s under Reagan, and then through the 90s, Clinton adopted a lot of the free trade policies that George Bush had pushed forth in his term, and then Bush, too inherited them, and Obama really perpetuated a lot of these free trade

policies. So over the course of that 20 year period that we're talking about, between 1999 and end of 1999 and 2020 you had kind of the merging of the two parties into corporatocracy that you know really gave Trump the opportunity to win in 16 and 24 because the working class no longer felt like they were represented by the Democrat party in the way that they had

been in the past. And so like regardless of what you think about Trump, there is a paradigm shift that's taking place right now whereby the a lot of the working class voters who were lifelong Democrats, many of whom voted for Obama, are now voting for Trump, and that's really hard for the media to wrap their heads around. You know that this, this orange MAN bad is getting votes from people who were Democrats for their entire

lives. But if you look at the 2024 numbers, he made further inroads with minorities, with the working class, with the young people, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that Kamala Harris ran on a platform of business as usual in DC, whereas Trump in 16 and in 24 ran as a change candidate. So I even quote Bernie Sanders in the book saying, Oh, they're going to ship 3 million Chinese jobs over to China. Working Class votes, working class guys are getting jobs shipped overseas.

And if you know that taken out of context, you might think that was a Trump quote in 2024 and so the far left, the pro labor left and mag or right actually have a lot in common as far as what they view to be the selling out of the American worker.

bit of confusion. It just seems like they are just the opposite of whatever Trump is doing. Yeah, I think that is very strange to me. Rather than just holding to your principles and going, oh, like, because there's got to be some things that, you know what? Actually, we both agree on this. Let's work together. And you're just not seeing any of that in America anymore. Like, I don't know, yeah,

And over the course of you know, the eight years from 2008 to 2016 those views of being pro free speech and anti war really like kind of changed parties. Yeah, right. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that I would ascribe myself to being right. But you know, I still, I still hold those principles. And it seems to me that the Democrats abandon a lot of that, you know, in favor of kind of what the unit party wants to do. But you're right. It's like,

it's very hard. Their platform has been eroded so much by Trump's change platform that you're they, they're largely just the Never Trump party. Now, yeah,

me too. So I'm an independent, but I, like a lot of my family thinks I'm like, this Red Hat Trumper, because a lot of my stances that are, I feel like, are pretty moderate, and so free speech. And what was the other thing you said anti war? Yeah, thing that I always thought was like, was something that I was very far left on, was like, We need way more regulations on food, on the FDA. I think the FDA is terrible. They do, yeah, and all the medical industrial complex, the pharmaceutical

companies. I was like, that's the left thing, isn't it? And it's like, no, it's now conservative. What?

He's a Canadian from Berkeley, California. He moved to Berkeley, California. He's he wrote all about 911 and he wrote about the deep state under the Patriot Act. And bush and I was reading books in the early 2000s by this guy, Peter Dale Scott, and he coined the phrase deep state. And so that was a phrase that was coming from the skeptical left who was skeptical of the entire military industrial complex that was being built up after 911 and now it's like some right wing term.

And I think the same thing applies to the medical industrial complex, where you know big pharma, the corporate oligarchy that exists there, and their special interests in DC, and how much you know DC is intertwined with what's going on with our our medical system. Yeah, it's now, I guess that's a right thing. It used to be like a hippie granola thing.

I don't know. Now, it's, maybe it's shipped, yeah, well, people like Bezos and Zuckerberg that, they're like, oh, okay, the money. Everyone's Republican. I'm a Republican too. Now, yes,

on behalf of BLM. They have the entire corporate media establishment behind them, and aside from maybe Fox News and, you know, New York Post but, and there's one Trump supporter out at this protest, you know, with a Trump sign. And I'm like, Who here is counterculture. But now in 2024 that Trump won the popular vote, you do see Silicon Valley has done this 180 and they're like, Oh yeah, actually, conservatives were allowed on our platforms, like, oh yeah.

Sorry about all that stuff in 26 and I was working at a Daily Caller in Trump's first term. And I mean, objectively speaking, I was running a video outlet, so a lot of people on my team were lefties, but objectively speaking, we were getting censored. We were having our content. The reach was limited on places like Facebook, because if you put the words stolen an election side by side in 2020 after the election,

you'd get a strike. But if you did that in 2016 with Russia, Russia, Russia, you know, that was totally fair game. So there now Silicon Valley doing this about face is it's interesting to me, because they were definitely stepping on the scale previously. But I think the more that if history, the last eight years, have shown anything, it's the more that you try to force this stuff into the dark corners of the internet, the more traction that it's going to

gain. Because it's like people look at it and say, Wait, you know, why is it that we weren't allowed to question anything regarding this brand new vaccine that they were rolling out? Like, aren't we allowed to do that in the town square? Like. Or not, you whatever, wherever you stand on the medical front, it's like, at least you should agree that we should have be able to have a conversation out in the light, out in our town squares, today's town squares.

this? There's just the world now, because it's weird to me that it's kind of like my buddy was saying sports is like year round now, like, you know, like, NBA is like nine months and then there's, like, the draft, free agency, you know, like, there's just, like a year round thing. And I feel like that's politics, because you saw AOC and Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail. Well, there's not a presidential election for four years. It's not a midterm for two and

they're already out there. I mean, it's a little early, don't you think it

Bryan who lost a McKinley. But he was this 36 year old dark horse candidate who ran on a platform of the average he had a famous speech at the DNC called the cross of gold speech, where he said, You guys are crucifying the average American worker and farmer on this, this gold standard, this cross of gold, because it didn't allow them the capital to keep their businesses running, or to, you know, start new businesses and be

entrepreneurial. And so FDR, 30 years later, kind of inherited that platform of converting the Democrat party from the party of the south to the party of the

working class. So I think if you look back in history, we've been through these kinds of moments of really broad inequality between the rich and the poor, and also secondarily, that economic strife providing an opportunity for this party or that party to reinvent their platform and to appeal to the worker who's been getting screwed over for X number of decades?

people don't even own cars. I used to drive for Uber and I'd pick up people with it would have their groceries and stuff, and their family. They don't own a car, so they're using Uber to get groceries and do their errands. Yeah,

the city. But they view that, you know, the car insurance and the maintenance and all that, they're just like, I would rather just get a Zip Car when I want to go out of town and, you know, Uber every other time, or whatever, use the metro. But I do think that's like a lot of what we're witnessing right now, the clash between urban and rural voters, between voters who have college education and who don't, between men and women. You know, there's a lot of differing, different lifestyles

that are, I guess. You know, one is more copasetic with the with the modern information age than the other, and that's why I think a lot of these rural voters and younger people who feel like they can't buy a house are getting activated to go to the polls.

and stuff. I mean, yes, they have free health care, and they have a living wage and all this other stuff, but they don't own a lot of the stuff. They're much more dependent on banks and stuff well,

over. They settled the Mass Bay colonies and the coastal cities. They created the laws. They established a system of law and order. And then the hillbillies, the Scotts, Irish originally, they came in. They were poor, so they went out to the frontier, and they carved out the frontier. And so the hillbillies, you know, they want to remain independent, and they kind of don't like, you know, over regulation, and they don't like the government telling them

what to do. And then the Puritans like their law abiding, and they say, Hey, follow the law. You know, it's not like specific to any race so much as it is, hey, you know, I want my freedom or I want my safety. You know, those, those are really the two. I think you saw that play out in the streets in 2020, for sure, yeah?

issues. And I'll say that with a caveat, this whole culture war around gender ideology, I think, has been a major galvanizing point where, you know, obviously the Christians are saying, you know, this is too far. But then, like a lot of the average like, especially like white male

voters. I mean, look at how they voted in 2024 not a lot of them are Christian or like, oh, I don't believe that that, you know, gay or transgender people should have the right to this, or that they're more like, Hey, I don't want you to tell me that I have to use this new gender language, or whatever they're like, I just want to return to

normalcy. So I think there's a lot at play as far as like, which party represents what right now, but I will say that the Maga wing is is not overtly that Christian conservative block that it was originally. Obviously, they brought in a lot of other groups as well. Groups as well. So it's a strange coalition. And then the billionaires is a whole nother thing, with Elon coming in and Chuck Berg, well,

But it is weird because there's this thing, like, I don't if you saw the clip last night, Bernie Sanders on Anderson Cooper, and this woman, they said, Yeah, she has a question. And then she goes, actually, it's, I use they, them pronouns. And Bernie Sanders makes this face, like, yeah, you so confused. And so I think there is this thing where it's, like, some of that stuff has gone too far for the average American voter. I'm just, I did, wouldn't you agree? Like, just,

yeah. And I think, well, and then yeah, it all goes back to not anti gay that I

founded. They were run by a black guy, Enrique TARIO, half black, half Puerto Rican or Dominican, no Cuban. Sorry, but you know that the idea that like, like, Dave Rubin is a prominent conservative Maga influencer, and he's gay, another former Democrat, yeah, and Trump is a former Democrat, exactly. So Elon and Tulsi Gabbard and yeah, yeah, yeah. So certainly Trump got the Christian vote because he was viewed as, okay, well, he's more conservative than the other option, but I don't think Trump.

If you look at his track record, as he's, he's appointed conservative judges, but if you look at his own life, I mean, the dude was remarried multiple times. Obviously, there's accusations of Indi. He's, you know, from New York, and

Like, yeah, you're out there in the streets, you're out.

because he's Indian. And I was like, well, he's American, but okay, he's ethnically and they were like, we only believe in, I mean literally, white supremacists. They were like, We believe in European white America. You know, with that being said, it used to be like the ADL who was defending these guys to go out in the streets. And now, obviously the ADL and the left are, I guess, less on the pro free speech side and more on the pro censorship side.

But as far as, like, white supremacy being, you know, this resurgence under Trump, I do think that, from what I see online, from what I saw in the replies when I interviewed those guys, yes, they are emboldened by Trump. But Joe Biden, you know, saying that that's the biggest threat in America is detached from reality and as far as every people's everyday lives

go. And secondarily, you know, the whole BLM thing, it was tied around this idea that black people were indiscriminately targeted at much, much higher numbers than white Americans. Historically, that has been the case. But if you look at like numbers from the 2010 since Obama came into office, it's simply not the case as far as unarmed individuals being killed by officers based on their right race, and you saw Joe Biden's FBI was cooking the numbers they made white defined as also

Hispanic. And so the FBI was saying, Oh, look at how high the murder rate is under. You know, for white Americans, like, look this points back to this narrative that white supremacy is and white people are extremely violent. But the fact of the matter is, they rolled in Hispanics with the whites to make it look like the whites were more violent. So, like, that's the problem that we face

today. Is that, okay, we're gonna say that white supremacy is the worst threat to America, because Trump in January 6, that ties into our best opposition to, you know, keeping him out of office and keeping his

supporters down. But like, if you look at, I mean, even after four years of Joe Biden saying that more black Americans voted for Trump than any Republican candidate in 48 years, and so, like I was saying earlier, the more that you try to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with the internet age, you know, you can only do that for so long. The same thing that was happening at the border, oh, immigration is not a problem. The border is not a problem.

Well, that finally became a problem when they showed up by the millions in Democrat run cities across the country, like New York, and people were finally like, Oh, now it's affecting me in my backyard. I don't want a migrant shelter in next to my dog park in William or in my dog park in Williamsburg. So now, all of a sudden, I'm mad about it, but I was at the border in 2021 watching people come in through the gaps in the in the border

wall, and asking them. Every single one said, Yeah, I'm coming now because Biden is president, and I know that I'll have a much easier time getting into the country. I don't blame those people for taking that we're open for business sign and coming up. I mean, actually, they made tremendous sacrifice to do it. And it's there's something very American about taking tremendous risk and sacrifice to venture to a place where you think you will, you

will have opportunity. So all that to say, the Democrats have been screaming America as this terrible place. It's racist, it's horrible. But then at the same time demonstrating through what happened at the southern border, that people still want to come here for a reason, and these people are largely brown people, yeah. And so like, if it's that bad, then why are they coming here?

Riot. I'm like, No, I'm not saying that, but I am saying, like overwhelming majority of the people that I saw out in the streets for BLM, wearing black block with umbrellas and gas masks, fighting against police, there are younger kids who feel like they don't have the job prospects that their parents did. They're living in their parents basements. Like the stereotype that's actually true, you know, and I document that in the book. But then also on the

right, it's the same thing. It's a bunch of, you know, younger Americans, and in this case, white ones, who are like, Oh, our jobs are being taken because of unfettered immigration. And so on both sides, all it takes is, like a couple of people infiltrating those groups to, you know, sway things in one

direction or another. So historically, whether it's the Black Panthers or it's the proud boys or it's Antifa or the Patriot front, it'd be naive to think that our domestic law enforcement agencies, and potentially like places like the CIA, who do operate domestically as history turns out, it'd be naive to think that they're not doing some degree of monitoring

and infiltrating. And when I was in Kenosha in August of 2020 it didn't come out until the trial for Kyle Rittenhouse for the murder trial, but she was acquitted on all charges. But turned out in the trial that they were flying an FBI Cessna above us with infrared cameras, and they also had a drone that was flying over the shooting and we didn't learn about it until a year and some months later. But if they have intelligence in the sky. They definitely have it on

the ground, too. So my question is, is, if they have that intelligence and the whole city is burning, why are they allowing that to take place? That is very resources. Yeah, that is

And so when you you know the Democrat party since the 60s and since the Great Society, have been the party of civil rights. But now I think you know, you see ways in which Democrat run cities across America have not seen like, places like Baltimore or Detroit, they haven't seen the positive benefits of voting Democrat for 40 years until, yeah, a lot of people are like, stepping outside the box, specifically black men in the last election, who are saying, well, hasn't been working going

this way. So I'm just going to go, whatever is not that, and it's really hard for like lefties to wrap their heads around that. But ultimately, you know, people have the right to vote the way they want, and the polls went the way they did. I think just because, you know, the Democrats weren't really offering much opportunity to change the way the gravy train is going,

should be spending. Yeah, and a lot of that comes back to the special interests, whether it's the pharmaceutical lobby or it's the gun lobby, the gun lobby or the military industrial lobby or big tech, you know, all of these really, really powerful forces are pulling at the purse strings of these congressional candidates, and it has a lot more to do with the money of those special interests getting reelected that is than it does.

You know, really like bringing positive change for your constituents?

in DC. Well, the, in actuality, the pharmaceutical lobby and the military industrial lobby and the lobby for things like, you know, Silicon Valley, like for Google, they're all throwing way, way, way, way more money. We're talking about, like, if you look up the top lobbies in America, gun control, is wait on the list, or, you know, places like the NRA and stuff like that, these groups that lobby on

behalf of gun control. So it's, I guess, people have an idea in their head about what it is that keeps the keeps the pockets greased in DC and like he's, like we were talking about earlier, if you look at war and our health care, I mean, those are the two most powerful systems, and I don't know, I've always been skeptical. My dad

was a doctor. My brother's a doctor, but for that reason, and having a look on the inside, I've always been very skeptical of what it is that motivates doctors, like, why do they do invasive surgery? Well, it makes them a lot more money than a more therapeutic approach that's non invasive. And the same goes for, you know, drugs,

it makes sense. But in terms of, like, Yeah, I mean, I like to go to the doctor, I like to get their opinion, and then I like to kind of make my own decision, because I think a lot of people will just, they'll take the pill, they'll jump, they'll go to the pill and or they'll go to the surgery. And I think a lot of times you can, you can do other things to or, you know, a lot of it too, is preventative care. There's no talk preventative care ever. No one

ever talks about that. When COVID hit, I was like, Okay, this is when they're gonna get on. They're gonna say, Okay, if you guys exercise and you get sunshine and you eat red, you're gonna, you're gonna be able to handle this virus better. They never said, I never, I watched a ton of those press conferences. I never heard Fauci or any of those guys saying anything like that.

What he said is 400 years of slavery is more important than religious services. So he's saying you can't go out to church, but you can go out to protest because that's more important, and it's just surprising for me, because, like, I, you know, I, I always viewed the Democrat party as being skeptical of, you know, the big government telling you how to what to do with your body.

vaccine. These are people that are, again, they're more like hippie, liberal, like natural, organic foods and all that. They didn't want to inject an experimental vaccine into their veins so that of a disease that probably wasn't going to kill them anyway. So it was a little bit confusing. I think they almost seemed mega to me. And I was like, this

think we're over taxed. Or the other day at Trader Joe's, this guy was like, what does that mean? Unvaxed over tax? And I was like, oh, you know, just like, I'm skeptical of the medical industrial complex, and I think we're overtaxed in DC. And he was like, Well, I agree with the overtaxed part. And so like, you're right. Like people, like, they don't even really know where they stand right now. They're just like, okay, yeah, if it's Trump, it's awesome, and if it's Trump, it's terrible.

And like, nobody's thinking critically outside the box and being like, let me view this without those preconceived notions about Orange Man good or orange MAN bad. Well,

in 2016 Yeah. You know what people are gonna say, like, I have people that are Die Hard, uh, Republican and Die Hard Democrat. I already know what their stance is on on I don't have to ask them questions, because I know they're just gonna side with their party on every question I ask them.

tribal identity. Because, I mean, just look at our local communities, our local newspapers, they're being eroded. And you know, everybody's moving to big cities, and everybody's because they don't have their local community and paper to read every day and what's going on in that community, and the neighbors don't wave to each other anymore. It's like you attribute your identity with your national political tribe, rather than your local community.

this is all. It's like, almost WWE to me, what if you see Trump talking to Obama and Chuck Schumer and kind of paling around with these people, and you're like, wait a minute, I thought they hated each other. Well,

Kenosha. So it's, it's the Maga side of things leading up to the election, and there's still some BLM stuff in there, but it really tailed off after the after Kenosha and after the summer of love. But yeah, in October, we had interviewed Rudy at his apartment right after the New York Post story, and I'd been trying to lobby to get the laptop, and I just finished recording mass looting in

Philadelphia. And that chapter is called from looting to Rudy, because his assistant texted me that morning after we're literally filming the rubble of these riots in this shopping mall in Philadelphia, and she's like, Oh, you want to come to get the laptop, copy the laptop on a hard drive. And I was like, yep. And so I drove straight from the looting in Philadelphia to New York, and I got the Hunter Biden laptop and drove

back to the caller. But that's another thing where it's like, if your political ideation was like, Trump can't get back into office, then you had to say it's Russian disinformation. But you saw it firsthand, yeah, but I saw it, and we verified the smoking gun email of 10% for the big guy. We verified that that was a legitimate email. That was sent from Hunter Biden to the

recipients. The metadata the recipients, we confirmed all that so it wasn't just like made up by the Russians, as the narrative said, from the 51 intelligence officials that came out right before the election. That story, which was not hacked, Hunter literally handed it over his own laptop, signed a document that said, Hey, you can go into my laptop and repair it. And then he didn't pick it up.

And the guy contacted him multiple times, contact the FBI, and then finally contacted Rudy Giuliani, the laptop repairman. But that censorship of the story from the Twitter files and all that that we've gathered, it was just like overtly had nothing to do with the reality of what was on that laptop. It had to do with keeping Trump out of office and keeping this Russian collusion narrative going. And

you know, it's it's like this. I cite many instances over the course of that time period where the Trump administration and Trump himself acted like a nut bag idiot, but at the same time, I'm not going to, like, sit there and say, like, Oh yeah, you know, just because, you know, it kept Trump out of office and it was totally true and yada yada yada. It's like, if you look at that with fresh eyes, it's, it's crazy, especially with all the evidence

has come out since then. So yeah, that the but the second book all that to go back to what I was saying earlier about the left turning on Trump. You mentioned him with Obama and Schumer. I went to the Saturday Night Live episode a year before he won in November of 2015 when Senate live had him on and everybody was buddy buddy with him, because he was a joke. There were 17 candidates. Nobody thought he was going to he was

going to win. I saw the same thing I saw in 2024 I was like, He's the change candidate, Hillary's not this guy's going to win, because people are mad and they still want things changed, even after Obama promised hope and change, it doesn't look like much changed after the oh eight financial crisis, as far as the way that things are run in this country and who's benefiting? So Trump, you know, obviously the left

turn their back on him. He, all of a sudden became this horrible racist once he became the primary candidate and finally won. But what I track in the second book, at the beginning of the first book, I'm talking to Jeff Zucker, asking him that challenging question at NBC, when he was the president and I was a production assistant on my third day, that was fine, and Zucker, soon after that, went to

CNN. The most watched day in CNN history was January 6, and Jeff Zucker was the head of NBC entertainment when the apprentice picked Trump as their go to billionaire guy, and they made him into that that the myth of Trump as the phenomenal businessman was born in the fake boardroom that they built to make Trump Tower look a lot more glamorous than it was for the

apprentice reality TV show. So I go through all that in the second book, as far as like Trump as this reality TV star that was birthed by Jeff Zucker, and then all of a sudden, Jeff Zucker in 2016 the highest rating CNN had to date was 2016 when they were never trumping, and everybody was freaking out, and they were giving him all this free air time. So it really in a weird way, the left, in the way that they turned their back on Trump, and in the way that they apoplectically screamed the

five, five alarm fire. For years, they, they gave birth to Trump. You know, as as this, like modern day businessman, tycoon.

behind. But this whole, like, everybody's a white supremacist, and I use they, them pronouns, it's a little bit confusing for the average American.

do exist, sure. But as far as like the name calling that's going on across the aisle, it's like people just use these pejoratives. I just wish they would use terms like authoritarian, because Trump certainly has authoritarian tendencies, so did Obama. But you know, if you use more clear language, yeah, then you're not going to get the same retweets and clicks, because the outrage machine, the algorithms, favor people who are hysterical on either side,

thinking. So it, by design, these algorithms keep people angry and online. And so, yeah, that's a byproduct. You go into one echo chamber or the other, and you end up in this dugout trench that says anybody who's over the hill on the other side, in that other trench over there, they're the worst people ever. And let's all get together and like, let's all confirm each other's biases, and let's all be angry together. And it's really difficult as somebody who's, uh, stood in between the two

trenches, you get blasted. You get blasted big time. And when I wrote the article, Kyle Rittenhouse is not a hero, he's also not a white supremacist, because Joe Biden implied that he's a white supremacist. Kamala Harris implied that,

But you know, my experience firsthand with that whole situation and with testifying on the trial, it was like I was very strong for the defense my testimony, what I saw was advantageous to the defense in so far as I saw this guy chase after this kid who had a gun, I didn't write the laws again, but saw him chasing down. He screamed, F, U, the kid was standing stationary after a gunshot went off. After running away, he turned around. The gunshot went off, he turned around and he's aiming 45

degrees to the ground. This guy continues to pursue him. Screams after you, lunges for the gun. He dodges and shoots at the same time, I told police that I looked down at the time of the shooting, because I told them, I looked down, I felt something go past my legs. I was like, did I just get effing shot? And I stamped my legs. And I was like,

No, I'm okay. And I ran over to try to help Rosenbaum, but that part of my testimony was not good for the defense, and they wanted me to say I wasn't afraid for my life in that moment, but I was so on the one hand, I was good for the defense. On the other, I wasn't. In Wisconsin, you can get acquitted of self defense, but still charged with reckless endangerment of another individual, which I was a victim, named victim named victim in that trial, and was up

to 15 years. So I knew that saying that truth, that I was scared I was under oath, I had to say it, that could throw him in jail for years just because of my testimony, and he could be acquitted of everything else. And so I didn't want to say that. To be completely honest, I wanted the easiest path out that wasn't going to have me looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, but the truth was the

truth. And so whether it was Joseph Rosenbaum lunging, or whether it was the bullet going past my legs, I was just like, Yeah, this is what happened. And when I wrote that op ed trial, written house is not a hero. He's also not a white supremacist. It was actually the conservatives who came, who I lost 1000s of followers, and I got like, I got plenty of threats. Look, I'm not asking

for sympathy. I knew I was kicking the hornet's nest, but the mere reaction to the Op Ed proved the thesis, which is that we've got complete, completely in two completely. Opposite direction, and I was actually there, and the two narratives are this, sides missing this, and the sides missing that, that point those things out. Yeah.

we're missing. Because, like I said, I think there's family members that think that I think they hate me because they think I'm a white supremacist, because they think I vote for Trump or whatever, like, it is weird. It is very and I think there's some of that going on the right to, like you said, they call the other side commies and all this. And so there's some of that going on too, but it's just, it's such a weird time that we're living in, and I don't know how to get out of it, or if

we ever will. Well,

creative destruction. You can call, I mean, you can call it a number of things, but Trump's bull in a china shop approach to the federal government into Washington DC is in the long term, going to cause people on both sides of the spectrum to reassess the way that our government, quote, unquote, serves its people, and to reassess the way in which you know you are able to impart change by taking to the streets

and by going to the polls. I agree with you that, like a lot of these protests, you're like, what is the what is the point? You know you're not going to get Trump impeached or thrown out of office, but, you know, just the mere fact that there are that many people out in the streets, not every single one of them, not even a small minority of them are paid. They're just going out there because they're they are mad and they want a reason to go out and

Like, here's like, if you want to, you're never gonna reduce the number of abortions to zero, but if you wanted to, you know, save a baby, why doesn't that lady, instead of spending eight hours holding a sign, why did you spend eight hours and go mentor a young girl, and then maybe you're going to prevent her getting pregnant and then having to have an abortion. Like, what isn't that an idea? Like, couldn't do things that are more constructive and

positive to help each other? I think, because that's ultimately what we're fighting for, right? Is the betterment of a mankind and better things for everybody. So wouldn't that be a better use of time? I think that'd be an ideal situation that, can we go viral? Like, see, no one's gonna watch this interview. This will get like 20 views. But like, if I know, if you video, If I light myself on fire, right now, we would get freaking. Yeah, that's, that's not a bad idea.

right? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, and Joseph Rosenbaum committed all kinds of crimes over the course of his life, specifically sexual assault of minors, which is a reprehensible and completely inexcusable crime. Now, when I cite this fact, I get a lot of hey, well, you're trying to justify it. I'm not, but I've spent years trying to figure out why all this stuff

happened. And you can't ignore the fact that Joseph Rosenbaum, who committed those crimes, was sexually assaulted by his stepdad at age 13, and the kids that he sexually assaulted, some of them are in jail for the same crimes. Kyle rittenhouse's Dad, the only time that he was present, he obviously let his 17 year old son go out to a riot with an AR 15 which no well built conservative family is

going to do that. But the only time that he was present was leaving drunken messages on Kyle's lawyers answering machine, and, or at least that's the only thing I've been able to gather, as far as his participation in the whole thing. I didn't even know his father is so interesting, though. Yeah, so his dad is absent drunk. Anthony Huber, who was shot in the heart, who hit Kyle in the head with a skateboard, his dad was absent,

and he used. Skateboard is a zolling solace, and that's what he tried to use to hit Kyle Rittenhouse before he was shot. And Gage groskowitz, absent father, and who was the third man shot. His bicep was shot off. I saw him in the hospital right after I dropped off. Rosenbaum, he had an absent

father. And then also Jacob Blake, the man who started all of the riots when, well, the riot started when he was shot by police, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said he was shot seven times in the back in front of his family. Well, Jacob Blake had a warrant out for his arrest for assaulting his baby mama. His baby mama called the police. Said, my kids are here, and Jacob Blake is back, and I feel threatened, and with the warrant out for his arrest, the police

arrived. The video that went viral showed Blake just jumping out of police, the police's grasp, and he was shot four times in the back and three times in the side. His kids were in the car, but those the kids that his their mom had just called the police, saying, This guy's, you know, a danger to my family, and he was armed with a knife. And what the video doesn't show is that he was tased twice before the video picks up. So the police tased him twice. He's armed with a

knife. He's trying to get into the car where the kids are, where a police call with a warrant out for his arrest was just made, saying, I'm afraid for my safety and my kids safety, and that Jacob Blake, his dad, only came out of the woodwork to sue the city, to sue the police department for the fact that his son was shot, but he wasn't there for the entire 20 some odd years of his life before that. Yeah.

huge factor. A lot of the kids that I've worked with that were struggling, it was from a single parent household. And I'm not saying all single parents are bad, so don't know, I know me or whatever, exactly, there's some single moms that are just absolutely amazing. There's some single fathers that are amazing. But it does, yeah, put a burden on the kid, and it makes things harder. And some kids can handle it, and some can't. Yeah. Some

kids really struggle. Yeah. And when that is something to talk about exactly,

It's like, not like they're not going to succeed, no. But with that being said, when you have the divorce rates being what they have been for the last 30 years, you have an entire generation of people who millions and millions of them did, did face these challenges, and that's going to have an outsized impact on the way in which you know those people conduct themselves in their future, when you have it repeated over millions and millions of times.

any morals. And everyone's going, Oh, George Bucha, old fogy, like you don't know what you're talking about. And now I look back at that, and I go, I think he was right. Think he might have been right,

important. And we, we've our society has become more and more focused on personal happiness, as opposed to the preservation of the family unit or the building up of community. And so because of that, or just be like celebration, yeah, yeah, if you don't want to now I'm powerful, and now everybody will celebrate me, whereas if you're stable home, it's like, that's not worth celebrating, you know, right?

whatever. But I mean, it's just something that we should talk about, that this is an issue. And again, I think with the with the with kids and mental health, the kids mental health. In this country is, it's just the anxiety and depression problems are going through the roof. And I think a lot of that, too, is with social media. Like, I feel like all this stuff ties in. I think we're on to media too

much. I think that there's, there's lack of connection, real connection, with your family and with your neighbors and with your friends, not on social media. Because I think social media there has its place, obviously, like, you know, the technology allows us, you and I, to have this conversation now, but this is more real. Whereas like interacting if I like your tweet or whatever that's that's not the same. It's not the real world. Yeah,

aspects of their live lives. They're not showing you, you know, the more difficult things that they're facing. And so you have a bombardment with not only like everybody that's doing better than you and everybody that has better circumstances, you know, the grass is greener, but also you can go on Twitter and have, you know, watch a guy get punched in the head in some fight, or somebody gets stabbed and killed before you even have your morning coffee, and so like it, yeah, that, that kind of

stuff. We're just hyper aware of every rich person in their lives, and also every bad thing that happens in our country, and it just has a very negative force on people being more concerned with their own lives and with, you know, not looking over their neighbors fence and seeing how much better they have it than they do. It's like you you can no longer hide from that. You can no longer just be in your your own, your own small town community and be happy with what you got. Yeah.

this. Yeah, they also, seems like the media threw fuel in this fire, and it was kind of this divide and conquer thing. Because, yeah, I think in 2008 2009 ish, there was the Occupy Wall Street, and then the Tea Party. And so the Tea Party was saying, you know, they're taking too much money in the taxes. The Occupy Wall Street was saying Wall Street's, you know, not

paying enough. Like if those two forces had combined and we, well, we all grabbed together and we looked up, yeah, and all the rich people, I think we could have done some real damage.

far as you know. It gets more complicated with Trump, obviously, as a billionaire himself, but at the same time he came from that system, and he was then looking as an outsider, saying, you know, there's that classic moment in the debates where Hillary was like, Donald Trump, like, cheats more on his taxes than anybody else, and he's like, yeah, that's why I'm the best person to know how bad it is, because I just, I just played the game, and I know how

the game is played, right? And so, yeah, I did it because that's, what your system that you created allowed me to do.

Like, one schmoozer is going to look at you in the eyes and make you feel like the biggest guy in the room, and the other one can be looking around for more important people who are in the room than you. And I'm at the Senate live after party with all of these, you know, big famous people, and Trump was looking right at me. And I don't want to give away the story, because it's pretty hilarious, but he totally made me feel like the biggest guy in the room. So, you know, it is what it is. I'm a

middle brother. I know what it's like when somebody's like, manipulating you emotionally, and he bumped off.

because of that article. So is your are your followers more independent, kind of moderates? Or do you have followers of both from both sides? I

the right. Here's who bought it. Here's how much was paid for him. But the, like, all my left wing friends are like, wow, I didn't realize all that stuff, like, because they had basically, you know, are being told that it's a party like, atmosphere, and that it's mostly peaceful for that entire period.

So the summer alone, yeah, and so, you know, I was, I was worried about it, because it is, it's critical of the of the BLM Movement, as far as, like, what it stood for versus what it actually was doing, and what actually came out of it. But I think if you come at it, like the in the book, I'm not like, Hey, I'm the guy who's going to tell you everybody's right and everybody's wrong. I'm just like, hey, I experienced this.

This is where I come from. This is, you know, where my politics were, and I'm really just wrestling over it, along with a reader of like, I've been trying to figure this out for years, and it's not so much. Every Trump era book is like, here's why my side is right and yours is wrong. And I'm just like, hey, I was there. Here's a lens into what I experienced, and I'm still trying to figure it out.

And, you know, just like the videos that I recorded on the ground, I'm going to put that, put it out there and let you decide for yourself.

just stood down right? Like, I'm in Arizona, Scottsdale, we have a mall that it's like, literally down the street from my house, and it's like a mile away. It's the mall that my girlfriend, she grew up here, and she and they completely looted it and destroyed it and wrecked it. And what's the fucking that asshole, Jake Paul or whatever, I think he came, yeah, videotape and stuff, and, like, the police just they asked, I think, I think Trump even said, like, Hey, do you need, like, help?

And our stupid governor was, like, No, everything's fine. Like, yeah, that's what

I mean, obviously there's always going to be, like you said, the actual white supremacists and the actual far left communists, like they're probably going to stay in their lanes, but I would say for majority of Americans, is there a way that we can all come together? Is there a protest that we could all. All do together, because then that would be really powerful if Republicans and Democrats went to the same protest.

the same as most people. I think there's good and there's bad, but I think some people think he's the savior and he's amazing and he's gonna save everything, and then other people think he's a Hitler, and I don't think either one of those. It's the same with written house. He's not a hero and he's not a white son, yeah,

dude is losing it. I mean, you saw that during the debates in 2020 so because I think it wasn't even him, it was a whole team, yeah, it was like two people behind him. So it wasn't even Joe Biden being the president, because he really lost. And I say that with sympathy, because I watched my dad die of degenerative brain disease. And it's not, it's something where the person themselves is actually not even aware of their of their degeneration, and it's a very

sad thing to see. But the fact of the matter is, is he was getting taken advantage of by his wife and by the all the people who were accessing power through him, and so they were juicing him up and telling him, you know, you're good to go get out there for that debate. Obviously he wasn't.

school. And you know, that's why he was a hard ass, because he wanted to protect us from that.

And then also, like, I realized that all of my friends who had divorced parents, they came over to our house even though it was always crazy and we're always the brothers were always fighting, and, you know, our house is chaotic, it was fun because we would all sit down at the dinner table together and we'd all, you know, have our have our talks and like, we'd hash it out and we anything went at the dinner table was Always intellectual debates and debates on politics and debates on

whatever. It wasn't about whether you had the right opinion right or left. It was about how well you could argue for your opinion at the dinner table. You know, so it was your argument was based upon its merits rather than its virtue. And now I think everything's been flipped around. But

because I understand. Why do you think the I mean, I've had super conservative Ted Nugent on here two times, and I just had some very liberal musician who the conservative people gave me a bunch of flack for having him on. I'm like, Yeah, well, you're both sides. I Yeah, interesting.

which I do try to do. And I try to be a fly on the wall, rather than like somebody's going to shout my ideas down their throat and say, Oh, don't you know it's illegal to smoke weed in the Capitol, or don't you know it's illegal to try to smash down the doors of the house floor, you know when the votes are being encountered, or don't you know it's illegal to try to break down the fence and burn the federal courthouse in Portland. You know that's not my job.

That's not my lane. My lane is to go out there and ask questions of these extreme people on both sides. And if you go into that. Like, I'm going to win an argument with these people. You're not going to do your job, which is to ask the tough questions. So, like, it's you're much better off using the Socratic method with your friends who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Like, oh, so you know you think this, but why do you think that?

And then what do you think about, you know the fact that x, y and z happened. And you know, the people that you voted for didn't exactly do what they said they were going to do or whatever. You know, if you, if you ask questions, rather than try to cram your ideas down their throat, you're much more likely to get a consensus than if you, if you do the latter, yeah, I

and be left alone. You want to be able to express your religious or your you know, I don't know what with the left, the LGBTQ philosophies. I don't know it's not a religion, but whatever you know they believe is their thing, and they want to be able to believe that, not be persecuted for it.

It's like, yeah, you want all your friends to be voting the same way as you. I mean, that's

two time periods. It's, it's two completely different pictures. So I do think that our political parties do ebb and flow according to what the demands of the population are. It's just like a big ship that it this happens in decades and not single presidential cycles. So the ships are turning right now. We don't really know where they're gonna end up, but they're turning.

frizze is right wing. But, you know, I think the mentality of, like, working hard, and like Gary Vaynerchuk and guys like that that are, like, you know, trying to motivate people. I think there's a movement for that. And I hope that that would be something that would be common for right and left wing, you know, that people that, like, I said, like the lady that wants to protest in front of the abortion clinic. Like, you know, be a mentor, do something good

for the world. I wish we all had that mentality versus, like, let's go out and burn a Tesla. I don't Yeah. Man, can dream, yeah. So, all right, well, thank you so much for doing this. The book is out now, and then the second one is coming soon. You'll have to come back on the show, and I will again. Thank you so much. All right, bye, bye. Every topic, one of a kind, from the rockers to the wise men. You.