I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy theories large and small.
Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
This is mission implausible. So today's guest is Joe Walsh. He's a political commentator and former radio talk show host. He has a podcast, he's on Substack. He's a regular on TV. You've probably seen him. He was a politician who served in Congress as a former TEA Party favorite. I think even ran for president in you one time.
It was for a brief John, just a brief moment in time I challenged Trump.
There you go.
Well it's more than we did, so God bless you. So let me start out. One of the things you do that I think is really impresses is you travel and speak to groups who don't agree with you around the country. So how do you engage with people who espouse conspiracy theories like about the twenty twenty election or January sixth or Q nine or anything else with that matter.
It ain't easy, John, Jared good to be with you both. Look and I know you know my history. I used to be a really divisive politician. I was part of the tea party class. I went to DC to raise hell and burn it all down. I voted for Trump in twenty sixteen. Boom boh, what was I thinking? And then in twenty eighteen I came out against him publicly, took a blow torch to my career, and then I tried the primary him in twenty twenty. So I'm in
a weird position. Of all the really well known never trumpers out there, I'm the only one that comes from the bowels of the Maga basse. I call myself a reformed maca gang banger. But because I had that start, I still engage with his supporters every single day. And because John, like I was really divisive. I think the countries dangerously divided. People like me help to divide the country.
I'm on a mission the rest of my breathing life to try to do something about that divide, and so I engage on a regular basis with Trump's voters, but everybody, when you.
Engage with them, do you try to change their minds? Do you try to sympathize? What do you find the best way to deal with people who really still are MARGA believers?
You guys are more expert than I am. I will say publicly when I go on TV that my former party is a cult. So these folks, most of whom are good folks, most of whom used to be my supporters, they're members of a cult. And so that's my mindset, John and Jerry going in. I got out of that cult.
I want to try to help them get out. And I've found that the only way to even have a shot to do that is to very slowly and respectfully just continue to put little nuggets of truth in front of them repeatedly until they're kind of up against a wall and they don't know where to turn. And I find that when I can get one of them in a place like that, then the potential for the light bulb to go off is there to one.
Extent, Is this something we've always had or this is something that's being manufactured with entertainment and the news ecosystems that we live in and the news feeds that we consume you're on one team or the other. But what makes what turns it into a cult?
I do think we are dangerously divided, and I felt this way before Trump got elected. I felt this way and I said it when I was in Congress back in twenty ten, twenty twelve. I think America is a married couple on the verge of a divorce.
I really believe that, and.
I felt that way before Trump. I think Trump is just like the ugly consequence of being a married couple on the verge of a divorce. So I think the divide is there. I think it's real. I think this two hundred and forty nine year old experiment in awesomeness is at a weird point. What Trump did was he took advantage of how divided we are and he fed it. Some politicians see were divided, were broken, Our social contract is frayed. Let's try to bring people together. And Trump no,
fuck no, Trump does the opposite. This is how I'm going to win. I'm going to try to further divide us. I'm going to get Americans more angry at each other. So that was something new. And then and I gotta be honest, We've only got two political parties. I come from the Republican Party, my former party. I left it became fully radicalized. I say that often people like me helped to radicalize them. The Tea Party led to MAGA. But the base of the Republican Party has always been
primarily middle age, older white people. And these middle age, older white people, for a long time have felt like everything's against them. All of our institutions, government, the media, academia, Hollywood, all left of center, and there's truth in that. So along comes Trump and he says, man, I'm going to be your guy. I'm going to go after all these things. I'm going to go after CNN, They're the enemy of the people. I'm going to go after Hollywood and all
the rest. And so he enabled this white base to fully, proudly and loudly come out from under their rock and say, we are the Republican Party. Finally somebody's listening to me. We're going to get white Christian nineteen fifty four America. That's what they say to me.
So when you talk to these groups, the ones that listen to you and seem to be taking it on, what is it that resonates. Is there certain issues that sort of matter to them? Is it the economy? Are a culture of things? What things? Do They start to say, I see where you're going to. Maybe maybe I'm willing to listen more.
So I'm not a Democrat and I'm not a lefty. And even though I go on MSNBC a lot, I'm not an MSNBC person. So I come from their family. I come from Mauga's family. I left the family, and in a weird way, like they look at me as a trader because I left the family. But then in a weird way, they'll listen to me because they know I'm not of the left. So I have found I still have a lot of hate listeners. So there's always been a curiosity like, I don't get it, Joe, why don't you like Trump?
Again? And I find that when I.
Focus on relentlessly the rule of law, democracy, you lose a fucking election, be a man and accept the loss. Come on, Billy, that's what we do. That's what you taught your kids to.
Do, right man.
And so it's those kinds of things that kind of make them feel a little guilty. They know I'm not like I'm a big gun guy, a big gun rights guy, so they know I'm not going to come for their guns. So because they know I'm generally with them on most issues, they'll listen to why I most opposed Trump because he's a threat to democracy. And even if they don't agree with me, these are folks who always claim to adore the Constitution. That's what the Tea Party was back in
the day. So come on, Steve, you can't send somebody into a l Salvador jail without any due process. Come on, that's not right. And I find John when you keep putting that in front of them, not pounding them over the head, but just trying to get them to think. Eventually, again, some of them will stay in dialogue.
The cult thing is interesting. It gets thrown around about a lot, and I struggle with it whether that's a good metaphor or not. But when I talk to died in the world democrats, I'm riding with Biden to hell or high water, and then you can hear that conversation about what's good or what's bad about the Democratic Party. But with mega folks, they find it really hard to make even one small concession like the ones you've been talking about Look, I watched January sixth on TV. We
all did like it wasn't a day of love. They were beating the shit out of policemen. That's never okay, never okay, beat the shit out of policemen. And yet getting that extreme, that concession from them is almost impossible. And for me, that's the cult part.
That's actually a fascinating case study. Because I was thinking about January sixth, and I've said this before, it was fascinating. For three maybe four days after January sixth happened, I'm on conservative talk radio around the country. Trump's most die hard supporters for three to four days were stunned and sickened and called in and said, oh my god, Joe, this is bad. There was a window there where even his most hardcore folk said nope, nope, nope, And that's
really interesting. Then what happened. Then eventually Republican politicians started to defend and excuse Trump and Hannity and all the idiots on Fox News. Boom Boo boo went down the same road, and I swear to God, within two weeks all of those hardcore folks were.
Joe yar wrong.
The FBI was behind it. It was the deep state and they were gone. But there was like without the media or the Republican bullshitters in their faces, even the cult.
They even thought.
This is bad, which is interesting because that suggests that a lot of people know what they're saying might not be fully true. But in another way, it's bad because it suggests that the hatred for the other side is so strong that I would rather say something I know to be false than agree with the other side, like what Jerry said with Biden. Like Biden was the president, he brought it at least he brought in some smart people. But he screwed up Afghanistan. It was a complete debacle.
It was terrible. They provided really poor support and way too late. I think for Ukraine too old. He should have left early. He should have just done one to all those things I can say, and I don't think of myself as a Democrat or Republican either, but at least yeah, you don't hear that from the mega side. Is it because they hate the other side too much? You know, we lived overseas working for our country, trying to collect intelligence on Russia, China, Iran terrorists, enemies of
this country. But these people seem to think the enemies are the other party, not foreigners who want to do as harm.
It was a perfect storm, a combination of who the Republican Party base was and how long they felt beaten down, and then along came this demagogue. I can remember John and Jerry when Trump first started running in twenty fifteen, and they had one of the very early debates with Jeb Bush and my Lil Marco and all those nuts. And I remember again, I'm on the radio, I'm on
Fox New and all the smart Republican establishment people. Every time Trump would talk and he'd say crazy, stupid shit, all the Republican establishment people would say to me, Joe, this is a fucking joke.
He's done.
But at the exact same time, his voters, my listeners, my supporters were eating up everything he was saying. So right away then I knew there was something different that was going on. I think this had been building for a long time, the Republican Party establishment, and I wasn't part of it.
They hated me.
They ignored their base forever, and their base has always been really scared about the changing country, the changing demographics, the browning and blacking of America, the open borders, legit concerns where you need to sit these folks down and educate them and tell them how we welcome all God's children, white, black and brown. But they had real concerns about the changing face of America. The party establishment just ignored them.
And then along came tea party people like me, and we inflamed them.
So by the.
Time Trump came along, and he came down that escalator and he said, I'm gonna build a fucking wall, a wall. Remember how stupid that first was when he said it, And I'm going to keep brown and black people out. And everybody laughed, except for Republican voters.
They loved it.
To them, he was the first one, after fifty years, who had heard their concerns. But they dug their finger claws into him at that moment and they've never let go.
So let's take a break to be back in a Roman I struggle with things like like Russia. So just today it's out in the press that the Ed Martin, the guy who's up to be district attorney for DC guy just somehow forgot that he appeared on Russian television one hundred and fifty times and never mentioned it. To Congress. Oh, is that a problem that Artie is an arm of the Russian intelligence services and Russian propagama machines. And how is this being accepted? Like the Russians are the bad guys,
at least they were. And so you've talked to a lot of people, how did they square that circle?
Part of it is because Trump's siding with Putin, because Trump, so, Joe, let's not question it. I get a lot of that the other aspect, and I think you'll find this in our history. And I come from the right. Look, the left has their issues, but there's always been a desire.
For a strong man on the right.
The right in America has always been more susceptible to authoritarian guys. When I was in Congress, I was the poorest member of Congress if I had a dollar over the last seven years, for every time a Trump supporter said to me, Joe, I don't mind that Trump's acting like a dictator, as long as he's given us back the stuff we need, as long as he's bringing America back. So part of it is a yearning for an America where men were men, women were women, and men married
women and women married men. And Oh, by the way, there was that plant in town where my dad worked, and everything's changed, and we forget so many of us forget that even twelve years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton opposed same sex marriage. So to the base, to the Republican bay, this shit's been changing in a nanosecond. And so then you combine that with what I've found, which is they're yearning to have a strong man deliver that America back to them. I say often my party,
they've given up on democracy. They call him the cult. I think it's an authoritarian, embracing cult. They want a strong man to deliver a certain America back. That then extends to Putin, it extends to Erdawan, it extends to strong men around the world, who, by the way, Trump has an affiliation with, and Trump knows that his base is very open to authoritarianism.
I do think there's something in our country about masculinity in America. What's happening to young men and what I see about you and I see with Adam Kinsinger and some other people. They seem to be having some sort of impact on the mega folks because they talk like, you know, again, I'm a sixty year old white guy too.
You know, I played sports and got in fights and stuff like, man up, man, what you're doing is wrong, get your shit together, like I think in some sense, people want someone who has occured to their conviction, says thing they believe. It sounds like when you first talked answered the first question you said, you're having an impact when you say to someone that's wrong, man up. Like that seems Oh, I get that. Like you're asking me to tough en up. You're right, John, I think that's right.
I think that's perceptive. I certainly don't fucking talk like a normal politician. There's a yearning for authenticity in our politics. It's been there now for a while. Trump gives the illusion that he's authentic, which is bullshit because every word out of his.
Mouth is a lie. But there's a yearning for that. This is the democrats big problem. They all sound like fucking politicians, and many of their male politicians sound like absolute whossies. It's a weird thing in that Trump's support among young men has really grown. It's a scary thing. And they listen to a lot of these podcasters like Joe Rogan and some of these other bros. There's a real problem, you guys, know, disinformation and lies that are
spread out there. I believe in the marketplace, I believe in a million different places to go get informed. But man, what a dangerous world it is because you listen, if you get your news from a Joe Rogan or a Tucker Carlson, Hello.
You're done.
But yet they give the appearance of being tough guys. Tough guys. Are they tough guys?
Though? Like I see jd Vance and I think of a high school loser, like I like it a musk. Is he really a masculine tough guy? Tryump? They look like weenies to me. And people are act like they're the toughest guys going.
They're the antithesis of what strong men should be. They lie, they cheat, their corrupt, They never take responsibility for anything they ever do wrong. That's not masculine. But they don't give the appearance of being nerds. They give the appearance of being tough guys. And a lot of it is just through the smoke that they blow this disinformation. It's a real issue, and I'd argue that we've I think
so much of this is just the pendulum swinging. We shit on men like a little bit and kind of shit on young white men a little bit, all good stuff, and we need equal opportunity for black men and brown women and everybody. But there's been a backlash because I think certain elements of the left push too hard on some of this shit, and along comes Trump and says, I'm gonna boom, I'm gonna get us back. So Trump's now going to be a dangerous overreaction in the other side.
But we're living in a po feelus moment, and all that means to me is we need politicians who are fighters. Trump gives the impression of being a fighter and his people do even though John I agree with you, they're bullies and bullies are cowards.
What's your sense now, of course this can change. What are the sort of the ultimate thols of politics now, especially on the right. Right now we're racing towards are already they're a face off with the Supreme Court. Is there a plan do you think inside of like the coterie of folks inside of the White House or inside of Manga Republic Party to like to break that. It's like we're going to go like we're going to disengage from the judicial system, and we're going to disengage from
fair elections. Where does that go? Where does it take us?
Let me sound like a conspiracist. I think the greatest failure of this Trump era to steal the nine to eleven commissions phrase, has been a failure of imagination. Yes, I think that we have not imagined how far Trump would go, how bad he would get. If us three old white dudes were sitting around twenty years ago talking and I'd have told you, you know what, there's gonna be an American president one day soon who's going to lose an election, and son of a gun, he's not gonna accept the result.
Nope, first time he's not.
Gonna do it.
And then you know what, John and Jerry, he's gonna commit crimes trying to overthrow an American election. You guys would have thought I was smoking something. He did that that all happened. So are there going to be midterm elections next year?
I don't know. Put a gun to my head, I won't say there will be.
I firmly believe knowing people around Trump, they are licking their chops at the opportunity to use the military, law enforcement, and the military against Americans. On the streets because they are hoping and anticipating these protests are going to grow and maybe get violent, and they are just dying to stomp down on them. Declare martial law, invoke the Insurrection Act, and if things don't look good in twenty six for Republicans, the tyrant will come out and say, Nope, no elections now.
So crazy talk. I just think you gotta prepare for it. The jackass is beyond joking about running again in twenty twenty eight. Go ahead and don't take him seriously if you don't want.
Wow, that's scary, And I think there's true. I mean he's attacking law firms, he's attacking anyone that can hold him accountable, attacking institutions, education, all those things, and so it is a real threat.
Do they have a plan?
That's true. That's the thing is the way he's totally fumbled the economy. He suggests to me that he likes people coming to him, he likes being in charge, but he actually is not very smart and not thinking ahead very fast. Yes, he wants to be the strong man, but if he's blowing the economy in the process, is he at a risk of losing those people? He would need to support him.
Like Trump, doesn't believe in many things except for Trump, but he believes in two things, both of which should scare us. He I'll say it, he adores Putin. I'll say it. He's a fucking Russian asset. And if he's not man, he's the most effective non Russian asset.
That's ever lived.
His devotion to carrying out Putin's agenda has always been there. And the second thing he's always believed in is tariffs from the time he was a young man. People who are with him believe that he believes with these tariffs there will be some a short term, but he really believes this will get to the other side and things will be great. Most people around him are poor tariffs, and they're trying to talk him off that ledge. That's one issue that could mess up his plans. But play
the devil's advocate and running with conspiracies. If I were a conspirator, tariffs are actually a great way of exercising power because you can pick favorites and punish enemies for corruption, you get exactly right, corruption your ability to exercise power. Support me, you know, elon Musk, give me a quarter of a billion dollars and I'll support Tesla one thing. When we were on the inside at CIA, you know, CIA does not engage in economic espions.
We don't do it. And one of the reasons we don't do it is say we get a revolutionary new widget that the Germans built, Right, we steal it from somehow for some reason. Who do we give it to? Right? Which US company? Right? We can't favor one over the other. And when I saw Trump just with Tesla vehicles in front of the White House doing this, you know that's corruption right now, if he had different there were different US car makers, that would be different, but just favoring
one over the other. But that's power. And the other conspiracy is the press too, is I don't know. You look at Fox News and we're not really having all that big of an economic problem, right, I mean, it's only twenty percenty or four oh one case gone, like that's not a big deal. Who cares, right?
But it is interesting though Trump lies as he breathes. He can lie about anything and everybody believes him. He'll have a more difficult time lying about the economy because we all live it. And even Fox News is going to eventually maybe have to report it. I think the only conspiratorial mindset that's in the White House right now is they want an absolute lock on power. They don't want to lose the twenty six elections. They'll do anything
to prevent the elections from happening being fair. And they really do want violence on the streets. That's part of their equation. They're hoping that happens.
I don't disagree with you. I don't know. At least the national security area that Jerry and I worked in the FBI, the DoD see this way, the culture was such that I don't think people would follow illegal orders. Now that may change. They may have pushed it through. There may be enough people in the military that will follow things like like if we were inside Jerry and they said, okay, we want you to spy on Canada and invade Greenland and stuff, it just is so far
gone people would quit or not do it. Although that's not you know, those are foreign policy decisions, and they're maybe stupid and you may not want to do them, but it's different from violence on the streets in America and going after Americans. That's a really it's a really dangerous thing. And what do we do.
It's really dangerous.
But look at the bad people he put in charge of Defense and the FBI and Justice.
But are they smart enough to do this? Like, Okay, so we worked in a big bureaucy in the CIA. You put Ratcliffe in charge, he's a dummy. He puts some he brought a deputy in who's never been an intelligence. They really just don't know how to pull those strings. I mean, the big organization, there's a lot of people.
You don't just give some sort of order. You probably don't even they don't even know how to give an order through the system, like it's it's a professional organization with lawyers and people in different areas and different offices. So yes, you got bad people in charge, and eventually that could lead to really partisan institutions. But I don't think it's there yet.
They could be wrong, John, but they think among rank and file, say in the CIA, they've got more support than we might think. They've told me that in the FBI,
in the CIA, in Defense, in Justice. I don't I worry that it's there yet either, agreed, But I think part of the whole equation here is just to create chaos and then blame the left, like imagine a situation where things got really ugly next year and Trump did declare whatever, and our military was out on the streets and Donald Trump said, with all of this going on, man, we can't hold elections now. And some my home state, Illinois, a Democratic state.
JB.
Pritzker comes out and says, screw that, we're holding elections in Illinois. But then there's confusion in Illinois and half of the election workers don't want to work in Illinois, and you could envision just utter chaos where we couldn't have a functioning midterm election.
Okay, shut it.
All done, shut this.
I'm just gonna excuse me. I've just poured myself a shot of whiskey here and in the morning.
This is why I drink taki legit irish.
You gotta drink. You gotta drink whiskey.
Hold on, let me ask quick question while you're thinking for good for it. The one thing is, yeah, you create that chaos inside so that you are in charge and you're more powerful, But in the meantime you are weakening the state. There are others out there. The one thing about the terrorists, for example, going after China, I think Trump's view of China is like a twenty year old version of China that he thinks they can manipulate them and they need to come to us to sell things.
China has moved way ahead. They have incredibly these dark factories that don't have lights in them because it's all run by robots. Like they are moving ahead. They're becoming powerful. They're starting to become powerful militarily. These games that we're playing. Trump says silly things. His people may think that's oh yeah, maybe that's true, but it's not working. On the rest
of the world. All of these other leaders are saying, this guy's an idiot, and we are making ourselves weaker visa each China in these other places in the meantime, and that can't be a good thing for United.
I think because of that, John, I think ultimately Trump's gonna back down on all of this terrriff stuff and save face because I just I know the smartest people around him are anti tariff. So I can see a scenario where he walks away from tariffs and claims that some sort of victory.
Let's pass for a second, we'll be right back.
So you came from a Republican party that thought different things, right, So free trade was a good thing, all those type of stuff. The notion that you could invade Greenland, you can. We can probably get minerals and work with the Danes to get whatever we need from Greenland. We could put we used to have five or six military bases there, and we say we need it for defense. I'm sure we could build five or six military bases there if we wanted to. We don't need to take it from
anybody to do that. You're saying the people believe in isolationism. If you're a former Republican, you don't believe that. So when you talk to those people, how do you talk to them in a respectful way? Would they start to say, oh, I see, we do need the rest of the world. It sounds nice to say we can do things ourselves. Totally get it, but that's not the world we live in.
And here's why, John, that's a more nuanced conversation with the base, and I don't have as much success with that.
Like I.
We'll get into a conversation and okay, guys, you want to retrench from the rest of the world and leave Europe alone, And okay, fine, But when somebody invades France in the UK in fifteen twenty years, we're gonna have to do something about You can walk them through that history. They don't think that far ahead. It's a movement and a base that believes, damn it, take care of ours right now. Fuck the rest of the world, Fuck all these treaties, fuck NATO and all the alliances.
Man, take care of ours.
And like so he invades Greenland like that wouldn't even they wouldn't care about that. That's just that's fucking kicking ass. We're kicking ass. That's now part of America.
One of my core concerns about the mega Republican Party is it doesn't have principles so much as it can be led anywhere. Pro galization, anti globalization, pro tariff, anti tariff. These things can change on a dime.
All of my former Republican colleagues in Congress, and all of my former right wing media people, they've all made a practical decision to support him, advanced their career, stay
in the game. All of that get elected. But the average Trump voter out there, I still believe most of them believe in certain basic things, and their devotion to him, their leader and they're they've been waiting decades to finally get a shot at revenge to everything that's been punching at them has blinded them to their I do believe most of them. When I can get them down on a conversation about the Constitution, most of them still will
admit they fundamentally believe the Constitution. But they've put this over here for now because Joe. Sometimes Trump has to break the rules. Fuck do process, get these people out of here. But it's not constitutional, Steve, Joe, I believe in the Constitution, but right now Biden let way too many of them. Man not to excuse them, but I still think they have the potential to have the basic good belief there, most of them, not all.
When you meet these.
People and you're not talking politics, yeah these are Oftentimes they are nice people. We share a lot of common things. We share sports teams, we share living in America, we like to eat at the same restaurants, and all those kind of things. I think it's what Trump has done successfully, and it started like didn't start with the people like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Is they create a false straw man, a false story, and then they attack that
and tear it down. And so yeah, if you tell everybody that you know you're suffering because of those people, then yeah, you hate those people. But the problem is the first story wasn't true. Trump at the end of the day, if you actually look at what he's doing, it's not helping all those people that are so angry and they want the government to help them.
And there's always but John, here's the beauty of what they do. And I used to do some of this when I was an idiot on the right. There's always a little bit of.
Truth in what they say.
Like, oh my god, five years ago, there was a grammar school in South Dakota that decided we're not going to sing religious Christmas carols. You can only sing Rootolph the Red Nose Reindeer. And you go on my radio show or Fox News that night. Oh my god, you can't sing religious Christmas songs around America anymore. So they take one little thing, blow it up. Oh, the Democratic Party wants to defund the police. No, a couple crazy
leftists said that. So there's always just a little nugget of truth that they can grab onto and blow up.
I mean, because you can live in Idaho and be upset about foreigners or that trans You've never seen a trans athlete in life, but it's, oh my god, that transience. It's like every rated these stories like I don't care about trans athletes, and I don't want criminals runn around our streets either.
But you know, it's fear, John's it's fear I find at its core. That's at the bottom of every conversation I have with a Trump voter. And I love these people, but there's a basic fear that Trump's been able to pound.
So we're talking about one size, I'll say it. The Democrats suck. It was like, really, that's all you can come up with, And I look at what the Democrats produce, and unfortunately only have two choices. It's like, really, they're pulling out the Toledo mud hens right to play the Yankees, and I don't know what to do about that. In fact, that's the opposite of a conspiracy. They fucking couldn't conspire to do anything. They can't make a plan.
Yeah, Jerry, it's a real problem because and someone like me now for the last seven years, in essence, I am a Democrat temporarily, and they're a real problem they're a mess. Look for three months last year, I campaigned every single day in a battleground state for Kamala Harris, and everywhere I went, again, we're talking about regular people. Regular people would tell me, Joe, I know Trump's an asshole, but the Democrats are snobs who look down on me.
I heard a variation of that everywhere I went. So regular working class Americans who aren't weird like us, they think about this stuff maybe once a month. They had a choice between an asshole who at least said he was going to do something about these Haitian migrants that are eating cats and dogs, or the Democratic Party that's utterly ignored the issue of immigration. So they went with the assholes. So the Democrats problem is, what the fuck you snobs, you elite us, wake the fuck up. You've
lost touch with working class people. If they stay that way, oh my god, no matter how bad Trump is, they could keep winning.
So they need assholes on the Democratic side.
You know what, Jerry, they need fight, Hey, they need.
Fi people could fight. Ye many people under the age of seventy five.
Bernie's a fighter, but he's like eighty three. When I went to Congress ten years ago, college educated people sent me to Congress voted Republican. People without a college degree voted Democrat. It's utterly flipped. In the last ten to twelve years, the Democrats have become out of touch and elitist.
The challenges this country faces and the challenge that the world faces at this time are so complex that one party really doesn't have the answers. There's no one politician that's going to be able to solve all these problems for people. And which goes back to your original tough guy thing is like sometimes Americans they say they're upset that the government's not helping them. More like, well, tough enough. Some of these things are not going to be solved
for you. We have to work together to make the best of it for ourselves. And at the end of the day, as bad as we think it is, we live better than every generation for the last two thousand years. Americans for the most part are not starving. They're not scraping through the streets or not yet shooting each other
in the streets. They have enough food. A lot of people have the world strongest computers in their pockets, so we didn't have to figure out we have to redo the narrative to suggest, yes, there's things that we need to figure out what are bad and we need to fix. We have to realize the rest of the world is moving forward. We can't just sit here. But the government's not gonna solve some of these problems for you.
So you talked about a pendulum. Okay, we've swung too far to the left, and you're right. You know, gay marriage, like twelve years ago, my grandmother Irish immigrant, she couldn't have thought of she was hand to marry Irish. She had to marry Catholic. My parents like they had to marry Catholic, but they didn't need to pa they could marry Italian, you know. I you know, my parents just wanted me to marry a woman, right, you know, they didn't care whether it was a you know, and my kids, like,
I don't get a HyET. I just hope they're happy. So that's a huge amount of change. But the pendulum did swing, So it's swinging down to the right. Are we gonna naturally Is there a law of gravity or fit political physics that's gonna bring us back towards the middle, or are we like freaking stuck on that is the ticker is like stuck on the right.
Now, fuck that. I'm a dark irishman.
You're not gonna get rosy scenariot of me. I think the jury's out. I know the pendulum has swung now far in the right. I don't know how long it's gonna stay there or close to over there.
A lot of people voted.
For Trump who are not part of his do or die base, and I remind Democrats of this every single day. They have already factored in how bad he is, in the bad shit he does. But I do think, I really do think we're at this moment where the country has to decide if we want to stay together. And I think we've been in this period now for eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve years. I think we're gonna be in this period for a while. I think things are gonna get violent.
Can't help but get violent, because we ultimately have to decide if we want to stay as one union. And I don't think we're close to that decision yet.
It's tough because it doesn't break up geographically very nicely. It's neighborhood to neighborhood and those type of things. Joe, next time we want to slid our throats. We'll have you back on the show.
And I told you this wouldn't be happy.
Actually, thank you for what you're doing. Because you are out there, You're getting attacked from both sides. But I'm glad you're doing it, and I hope a lot of other people will start to do it because I think this country and the people live here are worth it. You know, it's at the end of the day. I think some of the people are going to come around and realize, hey, we looked at politics as entertainment too much, and we need to actually start thinking about it as
solving problems. It doesn't solve all our problems, it doesn't entertain us, it doesn't make us kill off our enemies, but it needs to be able to solve problems. And so I thank you for what you're doing, Thanks for coming on with us, and we'd like to have you on again.
I hope, Thank you, guys.
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, Jon Seipher, and Jonathan Sterr.
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures for iHeart podcasts,