The China Thucydides Trap? + Venezuela, 51st State?

My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You've got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a turning point USA college chapter. Go start a turning point to say high school chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life and I encourage you to do the same. Here I am. Lord, use me. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is, noblegoldinvestments.com. Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. It is Thursday, May 14th. We are here at the Y-ReFi Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome, Blake. Hello. How are we doing this morning? Oh, we're doing splendid. Wonderful. Well, we've got a lot of things going on internationally today. Of course, President Trump is in China on a much-celebrated trip to meet with President Xi Jinping. He was greeted with a red carpet. We talked about it yesterday. More and more pomp, more circumstance, more celebrations, lots of, I would say, shows of welcoming. However, underneath the surface, it appears that the fault lines between these two nations are becoming more and more clear. There was a lot of speculation before this trip to China. What would be the central fissures or fractures between the two countries? We understood that there's the Iranian war. U.S. wants to lean on China to pressure Iran to open the strait to give up its uranium. But what would the Chinese expect in return? Obviously, there's also, they're calling this, by the way, the Boeing, it's the three bees, the Boeing, the beans and the, I'm forgetting one of the others. Bigwigs? Yeah, probably, something like that. Oh, beef, Boeing beef and beans. Anyways, so. There's a lot of trade issues that need to be iron out. Tariffs. There's the fentanyl precursors that are flowing from China to parts of the world where they make fentanyl and try and pour it into our borders. President Trump has done a great job limiting the incoming fentanyl to the United States, but it still remains an ongoing issue. So what are the big fault lines? Well, it's becoming more clear that... Turns out, Taiwan is top of mind for the CCP. And Xi Jinping is offering a warning on Taiwan as he and President Trump strike a positive note, but underlying this, it's very negative. Now,

What is the Thucydides? Thucydides. Thucydides. I almost got it. Thucydides. Fucydides. There it is. There it is. It's an ancient reference to the Polypennesian wars in ancient Greece. And Blake, being our resident historian, is going to break it down. But it was a term coined by... By Harvard Academic. Yeah, Graham Allison in about 2011. But it's a lot older than that. It's a lot older than that. But here's what's interesting. China has been referencing it, Blake, since as early as 2000. Yes. Well, so China at least... China at least does read Western history, Western thought. A lot of their leaders are certainly more educated in our history than most of us are in Chinese history. Which is common around the world. I will just say. But it is revealing. China has... But we should just be frank. China is authoritarian, but it does mean most people who rise to the top are very smart in a way that doesn't always happen in the U.S. with us appointing people to things and all of that. But Thucydides trap. So that's a reference to ancient Greek historian, Thucydides. If you've heard of him at all, you maybe picked him up in a college course about political science. He wrote, he wrote not the first historical text, but... Probably the first one that's... On war. First one that's really scholarly that reads like an academic history you might read today. And he wrote it about the Peloponnesian War. It's a war between ancient Greece, the city of Athens, and Sparta. If you've seen the movie 300, it's those guys. And they fought a war for dominance of Greece. And the reason we have a thing called the Thucydides Trap, in his history... Thucydides theorizes that the cause of the war was that Athens was becoming more and more powerful. It was becoming the most powerful city in Greece. And so Sparta feared this. And so they declared war to stop Athens before they became too powerful. And they were successful. They actually won that war. Now, the idea is that this recurs throughout history and our biggest, most cataclysmic wars are between... a rising power, and then the power that they are threatening to supplant, which is frightened of them, the ruling power that is frightened into acting before it is too late. And so if you want a classic example of this, the one people point to is World War I. World War I was Germany as leader of the central powers, and they fought against France, Russia, and most notably Britain. Britain was the most powerful country in the world. They had the biggest empire. And the idea is Britain was afraid of Germany because Germany was getting colonies. Germany was getting a bigger economy. Germany was building a giant navy that could threaten the Royal Navy. And so in Germany, and Britain at this time, they actually had a big fear. One of the most popular genres of literature was invasion literature where Germany or a country that resembles Germany but won't be called Germany. They invade Britain. This is like the romantic chicklet of the day, except they were all reading these books about Germany invading Britain. They were afraid of them. And so they ended up getting dragged into a war with Germany and tens of, you know, over 10 million people died. Similarly, the idea is when we fought Japan in World War II, part of this was motivated that Japan was becoming more and more powerful. So FDR and the U.S.

We're taking steps to contain Japan. Don't let them take over China. Don't let them spread in other places. Japan feels that we're holding them down. So they attack Pearl Harbor. We get that war. And there's other examples throughout history that we don't need to dive into. Professor Allison identified 16 times in history that a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. And according to his tally, which is subjective, 12 of the 16 rivalries end in kinetic conflict war. In 2015, President Xi Jinping did say there is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides. Thucydides. Thucydides. Thucydides. Trap in the world, said Mr. Xi Jinping in 2015 before an audience that included former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. It was on his mind again. I'm reading from the New York Times. On Thursday, speaking before Mr. Trump in the Great Hall of the People, Mr. Xi Jinping said the world had reached a new crossroads. Can China and the United States overcome? this trap and establish a new paradigm for relations between great powers now i think it's more interesting that china keeps referencing this as opposed to the united states guaranteed the united states actors here are very aware of this dynamic but it's a it's a a soft flex because they're basically saying that we are now on par or en route to being on par. They are saying, yeah, China is 100%. When they say this and can we avoid it, they are saying 100% China is rising and is poised to overtake the United States. Can we allow this to happen peacefully without the United States declaring war on us? That is what China is saying when they say that. Now, to be clear, there is leverage points on the United States side here that China is. very reliant in many ways on energy flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. Now, they're the biggest buyer of Iran's... energy. So you could say Iran is more relying on China than China is on Iran. I certainly think that's true. But after you take Venezuela and Iran's energy off the board, it does put pressures on China. Now, China also has weak domestic demand when you think about their economy. They are an export-driven economy. If you make energy and production of goods more expensive for China in general, it will drive up costs. It will hurt their economy. And they... seem to be probably in the midst of a sluggish, I think you could safely say a sluggish economic situation right now. There's differing accounts of how sluggish that is, how endangered their economy is. But they do seem to be putting specific pressure on Taiwan. They want to exert... maximal influence and control over Taiwan. And as you said before the show, they believe that Taiwan is theirs by right. 100%. They think it is on par as if someone had yoinked Maine or Washington or Hawaii off of us, and they want it back.

So a little history lesson on Taiwan. So in China views Taiwan as we've mentioned before, an inseparable part of their territory. It calls it reunification. So nationally, that is the term that they use. Even though Taiwan does not ascribe to this, China and Xi Jinping, they see it as reunifying Taiwan to the nation of China. Well, Taiwan does ascribe to this. You know what Taiwan's actual official name is, right? Yes, I do, actually. Republic of China. Yes, exactly. Their claim is they are the one government of all China. In fact, they claim more territory than the People's Republic does. I think the Republic of China may have, I might be wrong here, but I believe they've never recognized the independence of Mongolia. So they still claim Mongolia as part of Super China, which it was part of China way back in the day. Well, Beijing has never ruled Taiwan, so that's... First thing we need to say, they claim it as a breakaway province since the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 when the nationalist government retreated there. So that's kind of the point you're making. So the nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. They set up shop in Taiwan. That's why they claim to be the legitimate power over the mainland of China. And I guess to your point, even more territory than the CCP claims for itself. But nevertheless, there's a lot of things that are going on there. It's obviously historical and ideological. It's military. It's a strategic military outpost because it sits as the first island chain. It would allow China to project its strength out into the Pacific, which would complicate matters for the U.S. obviously and some of our allies like the Philippines and Japan. would secure China's eastern flank, if you will, out into the Pacific. But there's also what we talked about, economic and technological matters to be considered as well. Taiwan is the global leader in semiconductors. TSM produces approximately 90% of the world's advanced, most advanced chips. It's really a huge complicator because we've supported Taiwan for... 80 years at this point. We've backed up their government against China. But it was most, for most of that time, a lot of that period, Taiwan was not that wealthy, or at least it was just wealthy in the same way Japan was. And so we supported them for sentimental reasons, for anti-communist reasons. But now, now over the past 30, 40 years, they have become the most important choke point of the world's most important technology, which when we say semiconductors, that is... That is the stuff that goes into the chips that you put in your computer that you put in it's driving AI. It's driving It's the stuff you put in missiles to make sure they work correctly. It is the most important technology in the world. And the most advanced fabricators that make the best chips, the fastest, are in Taiwan. And China would love to have them, but they'd also love to have Taiwan for the reasons we mentioned. It was a part of China back when they were an imperial monarchy. They lost it as part of the Civil War. They, it is...

hard for us to grasp how psychologically important it is to the Chinese. You grow up learning about this as the rightful Chinese province that was snatched away by these pawns of the West and they want to keep a spark. That's the narrative they're told. And there's self-interested reasons for them to push that. But. That doesn't mean they don't really believe it. It's safe to say that Taiwan from a tech talent standpoint, and obviously this TSM, which produces 90% of the world's most advanced chips, makes Taiwan an incredibly important chess piece on the board of geopolitics. And I think it's also important to understand that... What makes Taiwan so powerful in this respect, yeah, and you'll see there, there's U.S. clears H200 chip sales to 10 China firms, and this is a big part of the storyline here, Nvidia's chief CEO, Jensen Huang, is they picked him up in Alaska. in route to China. So they picked him up there and he's flying with them. He's looking to secure these big deals. I don't love this candidly because President Trump is surrounding himself with people that have self-interest in expanding the market in China. President Trump is... acting as their chief salesman and trying to open up markets for the U.S. firms, obviously that's important because we opened up the U.S. market to China for 25 years and got absolutely ravaged by it. We got our industrial base hollowed out. What did we get for? We got a bunch of cheap goods, plastic rubber crap that ends up in the trash in the waste bin. So we got to open up China for sure, but there's so many strings attached that I don't love it. And one of them is that you've got people like NVIDIA's CEO who has self-interest in China. Now, the H-200 is the second-gen. It's an older chip. It also might be a slightly degraded version of it. So you get them hooked on our chips so that they don't produce their own or don't get more incentivized to invade Taiwan and take it over. Now, we have a TSM... production facility, a chip making facility here in Arizona that was built. It's this massive, massive thing. If you drive out to Lake Pleasant, you'll see it out in the distance. But what I've been told by people in the space is that, yeah, we can build the facility here, but we don't have the tech talent. We don't have the same type of people. There's something... unique about Taiwanese people that seem to be uniquely gifted at making these chips. They don't have social lives. They don't take time off. They just make chips all day long. And it's hard to replicate that type of technology and that production capacity domestically here in the United States. So while we do have some chip making...

abilities in the united states it doesn't match taiwans taiwans has the top top chips okay so now it complicates everything which now it makes a lot of sense why china is putting maximal pressure on this particular fault line so here's the big stakes we'll boil it down for you just like this China is probably willing to help us with Iran if we're willing to change our diplomatic posture to Taiwan. And I don't think we're willing or ready to do that just yet. Charlie used to talk a lot about Angel Studios and what they were building. And as you know, I've been a longtime fan of it for the same reason. So I wanted to share some of my favorite films and shows on Angel and I put them all into one easy-to-use watch list. This is content that's actually worth your time, not just noise or recycled talking points, but stories that go a level deeper and ask better questions. That's what stands out about Angel to me. They're willing to put out films and documentaries that don't just follow the usual script, especially when it comes to politics, culture, and the... the bigger conversations you and I should be having. So on my watch list, you'll find picks that lean into those topics. But there are also solid options for family or just something meaningful to watch at the end of a stressful day. If you want to check it out, go to angel.com slash Charlie and take a look at the watch list I put together. Joining us now is Rich Barris, Big Data Poll, and he's the author of a new book, by the way, called Burn It Down, What the Poll Say Young Americans Really Want. Welcome back to the show, Rich. Oh, poll of a book shout-out, brother. Thanks for that. I appreciate it. And thanks for having me, as always. People definitely should go out and buy that book, Andrew. You know, I was inspired to... you know, promo your book, Rich, because I just saw your tweet where you're talking about books on China and war and conflict that people should be reviewing. It almost looked like you were attacking me, but I know better than that, Rich. No. Not to have you on this show. I knew you fired it off quickly. But you're absolutely right. People need to get educated on the history of war. I'm going to play this clip because I haven't. This is Xi Jinping on Thucydides Trap. 19. The whole world is watching our meeting. Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe, and the international situation is fluid and turbulent. The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the United States overcome the Fucydides trap? and create a new paradigm of major country relations. Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world?

All right, so Rich, before we get on to this CIA story that I got to cover, what's your take on what you're watching? Well, I about fell out when I heard that. That's not good to hear that. And for people who don't know what it is, Graham Allison popularized the term the Thucydides Trap. I actually, on that tweet that you were just referencing, I actually told people to read the origins of the origins of major war by Dale Copeland, who wrote before Graham did. But the bottom line is it speaks to an emerging power, the situation in the international system, when an emerging power rises to replace and displace the existing hegemon. And Graham looked at 16 case studies. Copeland looks at more modern. liberal nation state, which is interesting as well, but it usually leads to great power conflict. And for Xi Jinping to say that out loud is bad. It's not good because for many, many years, the Chinese have always tried to tell the United States, we're actually not going to do that. We're not interested in that. And this time, what he said is, this is on you, you know, the current situation that we're in right now. He said, can the U.S. avoid the trap? Guys, it's a reference to the Peloponnesian War. This is just, it's exactly, if you're an international relations theorist, it's exactly what you have not wanted to hear from many, many. years. Mearsheimer's written about it. E.H. Carr is another one I told people to go read. I mean, I'm over your pitching other books except for my own, right? But it's true. You have to get, you have to understand why what just came out of his mouth is so important. For many, many years, Americans in the foreign policy blob have tried to tackle an international system that's in their mind. And let's who say this is the way. It works. The world works. And then you have liberal internationalists and neocons who have been arguing, no, we're in a post-history era. And this is something new, and we're going to somehow be exempt from the laws of nature. We're going to be exempt from the laws of the international system. And realists who have been right for the last 25, 30 years, more since the end of history. They're taking victory laps, you know, one after the other recently. So to hear Xi Jinping say this, This is bad. It's very bad news. Well, and he did bring it up as early as 2014, and in 2015, he said there is no such thing. But I think what you're getting at here is China is asserting themselves as our equal. They're asserting themselves as our equal. We're Athens, baby. Excuse me? That's what he's saying. And he's basically saying, don't come on our front porch and bully us around because, you know. there's the two of us now and you got to deal with the reality he has a point i mean it's

As you said, for a long time, it was China is rising, but don't worry about it. We're not trying to take your stuff. We just want to be rich and powerful. And now, yeah, they are more equal. We should be frank about this. We should not be in denial about this. If go look around your house at the things that are in it. Chances are a lot of them were made in China, especially look at anything advanced. Look at your computers. Look at the parts in them. They're made in China significantly. If you're worried about military stuff, they can make missiles faster than we can. They can make ships faster than weekend. They can make one point whatever billion people. They have four times our population. They are an aging population. They do have domestic economic concerns. They have energy concerns. And by the way, we have successfully under the Trump administration, I would say, blunted their rare earth mineral. dominance. It still exists. We're not all the way there, but we have made strides in that where they can't choke us off from rarers like they could. Still got to make more gains there. So it's both and I think President Trump is a realist. I think we need to be frank about it. What we want out of this is we want them to buy our soybeans like they said they were going to. We want them to fill some of these trade obligations so the farmers are looking at this. We want them to buy Boeing planes. We want them to help get us the uranium out of Iran. and then help us open up the Strait of Hormuz. All these things are doable, but if the price of admission for all those things is you got to let us take over Taiwan, that ain't going to happen currently. So we might be at a stalemate. And by the way, I just want to make one final point here before we move on to the CIA story, Rich. This is the first of about three meetings. So don't expect this huge... you know, accords to be reached at this meeting. This is sort of an opening act, all right? Everybody just hold their horses, let this process play out. Let me just play this clip, because this happened last night, and I actually tweeted it. And, you know, I've, let's call that. Yeah, so here we go. I'll play it. This is a, it was a breaking news story last night on Jesse Waters. He since deleted it. Sot 20. It's just in, John. The CIA just raided. Tulsi Gabbard's office. Agents hauled out dozens of boxes, files on the JFK assassination, and MK Ultra, the CIA mind control operation, which she was in the process of declassifying. All right, so this was obviously, I mean, the tweet, when I tweeted it, I'm not trying to, you know. mention my Twitter or something here, but it went viral really quickly. It's since been community noted, but I got contacted by friends. They were like, hey, here's a new statement from DNI spokesman, spokeswoman Olivia Coleman, said, this is false. The CIA did not raid DNI's office. And then essentially, a lot of this originated with... Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who was scheduled to come on this show today, but then had to cancel because she is actually at the CIS. I guess she's meeting with the CIA currently. She's tweeted that out. That's public. So the point is she had gone on with Katie Pavlich on News Nation talking about this.

not raid now that we're told and actually it sounds like the CIA took these boxes a while ago it was not a raid the DNI sort of oversees all the intel agencies so that it none of it made sense actually when you kind of break it down she could just tell them to not do that in theory she could just yeah Tulsi Gabbard should have just been able to say you can't take these boxes so something else obviously was going on I'm being told this didn't happen the way that it was originally reported. And as I mentioned, Jesse Waters has taken down his show's tweet. And I think he just got out over his skis. This does seem related to some of the testimony that we heard yesterday regarding Anthony Fauci. I think the CIA is not happy about this quote unquote whistleblower. There's a lot of disagreement about the nature of this person who testified. Rich, tell us what you know. Look, here's what I know. All right, outside of what you just said, which is the same thing I'm hearing. However, Andrew, you know what bothers me? You always listen to with the CIA, there's always this, like, little caveat in the back of my mind because there have been these identical stories, and they have played out very similar in the past, only to later find out that everybody kind of circled the wagons and came together and said, oh, it's not really like that, but then it was, right? So I, I'm always. Something's going on, Rich. I agree with you. Something's going on. They went and took these MK Ultra boxes and the JFK assassination files. It should all just be released. It should be released. President Trump has ordered it to be released. So what is the delay? I completely agree. But there's obviously some sort of disagreement. And everybody's saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not blow this up into some huge major national news story. It's a little too late for that because I agree with you, Rich. Something weird is happening here. If something in your country is secret for more than 60 years and they can't release it, you don't live in a normal democracy. Just to put a final point on the CIA story, Rich. So Rep. Anna Paulina Luna says heading to the CIA with Rep. Berluson, Eric Burleson, to see the files in question taken from ODNI. So again, apparently these files were taken a while ago. She was tweeting last night that... They were saying you have to preserve these documents. They've been ordered released and declassified. And to her credit, she never said that there was a raid. If you watched the clip back, the original clip in question from Katie Pavlich. She said that they were taken. And it made it seem like they were taken, you know, that, you know, yesterday and it was a big, big to do. Apparently, this was a more orderly situation. She's contesting that people are misrepresenting what she said. So I just want to make a final point on that. It sounds like something weird's going on, but to be fair to Congresswoman, Anna Paulina Luna, she didn't say there was a raid. Yeah, I just wanted a couple of things. One is, let's see, IA has done this before. They didn't kick in Diane Feinstein's office door either, but we found out later that they did break in and take a bunch of stuff that was related to her investigation into torture or enhanced interrogation, right? And so we've seen this. I'm sure they weren't taken last night. I'm sure they were taking the moment Donald Trump signed that order. They got when that he was going to sign that order. I mean, this is what I suspect, like in the back of my mind, I suspect. And here I often say,

that the Republican women on Congress have the bigger, you know, than Republican men. They have spine. They fight. And I'll be honest, I trust Representative Luna. I do. I also trust Tulsi Gabbard. I do. But the problem is Luna's a representative. Tulsi Gabbard is the head of an intelligence. And you know it's no secret. The people's pundit loves him some Tulsi Gabbard. So I'm not saying that she's like covering for anything here, but there is a bit of a song and dance that happens. play within the system that she exists. That's right. Yeah. And if she's coming through like knocking the CIA, that's not going to be taken well. And she's not going to be long for the DC world. So she's got to play the game. We understand that. But something's going on here. And just one other point on the MK Ultra files, most of these were destroyed. There's an estimated 15% of those files that are still in existence. This is what she, Tulsi Gabbard, is tasked with declassifying. And obviously, M.K. Ultra was brainwashing tactics that were experimented on by the Intel community in San Francisco, in villages in Europe, you know, where they laced the bakery with LSD. I mean, it's all kinds of crazy stuff. And, you know, the American people do deserve. to get clarity on what our intel operatives were actually doing. So we want to see these things get declassified and released. So we support Congresswoman Luna's efforts there to get them released. Rich, I want to pivot here a little bit and go to this Thomas Massie race in Kentucky that is coming down in the final stretch as primary. There's been polls released that show Thomas Massie down. There's... at even what are you seeing in your polling and what do you expect to take place here Well, you know, I don't want to blow the markets up here, you know, like we saw happen with the poll the other day. And I think the market's corrected because I'm going to defend him. Look, this is a difficult race to poll. A lot of people when they get into these GOP primary races, they weight boomers so much, Andrew. And this is a great race that underscores Burn It Down, what I'm arguing with Joshua and Burn It Down, which is that the GOP is real danger here. They're governing. They were not elected by a coalition of boomers. governing for a certain kind of boomer and even silent gen. When in 10 years, I mean, the first boomers turn 80 this year, guys. This electorate is going to dramatically change. One thing we have over China is a robust millennial gen block that they do not have. They will be the dominant voting group in the not too distant future. And to just ignore their wishes the way we have has been stupidity. I'm sorry. But Thomas Massie's race is a great example of this. Millennials are going for Thomas Massie three to one. Not two to one, not two and a half to one, three to one. And so when you're deciding as a pollster, do I trust randomization here? Am I underestimating how much younger voting cohorts will make up of the electorate? Or do I not? And in the case of that one poll, he didn't. The problem is, and I've tried to warn other pollsters, Kentucky 4 is not a boomer district. It's traditionally, they're about 36, 38% of a competitive prime.

Mary electorate. That's it. And typically 18 to 29, they could be 8, 10%. In our last poll, we only had them at 6, and Thomas Massie was still ahead. What will be key is what the 45 to 64 do. I don't want to give away too much yet, but Thomas Massie has a slight lead with them. Galrin leads with 65 plus, and it really will come down to how much of the 44 and under show. Here's why, again, I would caution people, be careful of what you're looking at. There is no registration. growth whatsoever in the 65 plus category. In fact, it's been net negative. 45 to 64 is a little bit, so there are potential for elasticity when you're modeling the electorate. It's there. It's not huge. All of the elasticity and uncertainty comes from 44 below, and the reason is, is because literally that's where all of the new registration growth is, particularly among those who are 30 to 44 and have families. And what does that mean? Why does that matter? Because when you have families, your primary vote history becomes more robust than it was before you had a family. It's really interesting. So I just caution some of the other pollsters out there. Be careful because what's going to happen is you may not have given these people enough time. It's literally that they didn't have enough time to build that robust vote history. So when you're deciding who you want to model in your poll, if you wait them out, you're going to end up like pollsters in 2016 who waited out trumps. So I don't know what you think of Qantas. It's a close grace. Yeah, it's very close. Quantis, 908 respondents, 48.3% for Galrin, 43% for Thomas Massie, 8% undecided. The 69 respondents who are undecided, 52.2% of them backed Galrin, and 20.3% would go for Thomas Massie. So that just came out minutes ago from the hill. um so it's a tight race it was done it was done the days ago this is what i want to try to explain to people and we actually did see a period where there was a little bit of response bias going on with younger uh younger cohorts so if your own andrew if you have to wait up because you didn't talk to enough of them it creates more uncertainty in your in your polling we actually have call it rich call it rich who do you think's going to pull out the primary Well, the poll will be out tomorrow. And then we'll do two updates when the early vote comes in to show them. Listen, I think, Matt, if I say it, I'm literally going to move things before I should. So I'm just, I already heard it. There was an M there. There was an M there, Rich. It is very close. It's very close. All right. We're going to see what happens. Okay, we got 30 seconds left, Rich. John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, Texas. What are you seeing? 30 seconds, quick. If Republicans nominate John Cornyn, they risk huge depression in November. There's like 30%, 28% of their GOP primary electorate is telling us they won't even bother to show up if John Cornyn is nominated. He has a cap. He has more consistent mail-in voters that back him, but he does have a cap. And we've even polled this like, what if Trump endorsed John Cornyn. And you know what happens? He goes from 46 to 47. The guy's got a cap. So the only way Ken Paxton loses is if his voters don't show up. Paxson's going to win that, wouldn't you say? I think he's got the edge, yes. Absolutely. Rich Barris, burn it down. Check out his book, what young voters really want. Rich Barris, thank you, my friend. We'll see you again soon. All the best, brother. Hey, everyone. We're excited to tell you about Charlie's favorite supplement. If you experience brain fog, low energy, frequent illnesses, or if you just wake up stiff and achy every day, you've got to try strong cell. Charlie took it every single day.

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lectured by Jamie Raskin. I want to get into that in a second. There was the Texas Public Policy Foundation's AIM and Blair, Rare Foundations, USA founder, Amy Meckleburg. You pulled out all the stops here, Congressman. Tell us what you guys were doing and why it was so important. Well, this goes back to, and again, I don't like doing this, except you guys appreciate it, that the last conversation I have with Charlie was about Islam. And Charlie was one of the few people willing to say what needed to be said, which is that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization. So the purpose of these hearings is not just to sit there in the minutia of the law, which is important, obviously, as someone who wants to be the Attorney General of Texas, I'm... dramatically concerned about Sharia law and what it means for young women, what it means for equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, what it means that arbitration agreements that end run our laws and undermine our civilization for people that are subjugated under Islam. But importantly, it's to elevate this and to highlight the truth. We've imported about five and a half million people from majority Muslim countries since 9-11. That does not count the millions of Muslim that we've imported from non-majority countries. It doesn't count the additional people that came in as family members. It does not count the children that have been, you know, born in the United States to people that came here were naturalized or have visas. So we have an exploding population of people who have no... desire to assimilate or join the melting pot, but instead are in fact called, as Amy testified to, and as Eam and Blair testified to, that are called to wage jihad against the West. And then you pointed out Marco, who did a fantastic job, Hunter Lopez, the 16-year-old student in Wiley High School north of Dallas, who basically schooled Jamie Raskin on the issues involving the questions. And I think, by the way, that Marco was quoting Charlie. He didn't say it. Because I remember when Charlie gave a great answer to one of these questions about where God is in the Constitution. And he said, well, God is four times mentioned in the Declaration. Charlie made the point that our state constitutions before we created the federal government all had references to our Christian faith. And Marco was quoting that directly in arguing with Jamie Raskin, a constitutional law professor that was arguably being schooled by Marco. I was proud to chair the hearing. I called the hearing. I got to tell you, it takes a lot of work. to get people here in Washington and want to take on Islam because they're afraid of being called Islamophobic. I'm afraid of losing America. Yeah. Well, it was such an important hearing. I want to play this clip. I posted it as well and got great feedback on it. This is Rare Foundation USA founder Amy Meckleberg talking about the brutal truth that, as you said, too many are afraid to mention out loud. Clip three. Islam is a hostile totalitarian political ideology using our freedoms to destroy us. To every non-Muslim, it offers three choices, convert, submit, or die. It does not stop until every court, every school, and every government on earth is under Sharia. These networks operate more than 8,000 Islamic nonprofits across America, including 650 in Texas alone.

They built a parallel infrastructures, mosques, seminary, school, Sharia banks, Sharia courts, Sharia clinics, charities, media, and political networks. They have no plans of insimilating. Now, Congressman, a thing that we are hearing about this all the time from our listeners, we get a ton of emails about it, we get a ton of calls about it. It obviously fills a lot of people with dread. But we're also aware we bump up against a core part of America's identity. The First Amendment does guarantee free exercise. How do we... both legally and I think rhetorically negotiate that dilemma, that we're aware. We do have freedom of religion. We're obviously very wary of curtailing that because we know how the left would love to attack Christian churches. But we're also aware this is not a suicide pact. This is not an amendment that makes us just turn our country into a part of the caliphate. How do you negotiate that problem? Number one, the federal government has to stop importing millions of people from countries where we know they adhere to this ideology, and it is a political ideology, and we need to stop doing it. Let's freeze the immigration broadly, like I suggested under my Paws Act. Let's reform our entire system from top to bottom. That's number one. Number two, we've got to have smart lawyers. and obviously I'm running to be Attorney General of Texas, who will go into court and win cases and make the point that this is, in fact, a political ideology with political goals and motives. Their own imams say it. We've got plenty of video, plenty of evidence. We have memoranda from the Muslim Brotherhood. We have an entire plan laid out by individuals and organizations, the hundreds of organizations that are well-funded to drive this agenda to politically undermine the United States. We have to call that out for what it is. And thirdly, You've got to be able to continue to fight and win on grounds that are, I think, more legalistic about how these things are being developed, Deceptive Trade Practices Act and so forth, like Epic City and so forth. But the biggest thing we have to do is to acknowledge that we are, in fact, a Christian nation built on Judeo-Christian principles. And that while we are very defensive and we should be and must be of the First Amendment, we all believe that. The government can't come in and tell you you got to be. church on Sunday, you've got to pay this tax, or you've got to believe this thing. None of us would want that. But we are, in fact, a nation that was bound together by a set of ideals and at the core of it all was our Christian faith. And if we don't acknowledge that,

We don't remember that it says in God we trust above the Speaker's chair in the House Chamber, that Moses is on the backside of the House Chamber looking over us, that we've got the Ten Commandments on the front of the United States Supreme Court, that we absolutely had references to our Creator and to God four times in the Declaration of Independence, and that our founding was built on that. You know, our founders were very, very open about how much our faith was necessary. for this country to work. It is the glue that holds us together. And the reason our country is fraying is because we're moving away from our bound to faith. And number two, we're throwing federalism out the door. You cannot have 330 million people peacefully coexisting when you have conflicting values in faith and when you don't allow local people to make decisions that are best for them under the Constitution. So these are the things I'm trying to fight to do up here. I'm going to play this clip from Charlie, Congressman, and future Attorney General. Sat 23. The spiritual battle is coming to the West, and the enemies are, wokeism or Marxism, combining with Islamism, to go after what we call the American way of life. And the American way of life is very simple. I want to be able to get married. Buy a home. Have kids. Allow them to ride their bike till the sun goes down. Send them to a good school. Have a low-crime neighborhood. Not to have my kid be taught the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school. While also, not having them have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. That's important. We want the American way of life, which is, by the way, Christendom. Amen. I never did get him to get christened them right. Yeah, it gives me chills, listening to him. It's amazing. It was so clear. It was so morally clear. And so Congressman, you're running for Attorney General in Texas. I've heard from a variety of sources that say that the ads going back and forth. It's like, well, I'm more pro or this guy's more pro Islam and that guy's pro. And so it's become very central to what's happening in the primaries right now in Texas. Why do you think that is? I mean, is it just a visceral reaction that Texans are experiencing walking their neighborhoods? There's just a very visible increase in mosques in the Muslim population. What's going on here? Well, it's an important question, and I really appreciate that quote from Charlie, or that clip, because he says it with such moral clarity, like you said. And what we're seeing in Texas is 330 mosques, more mosques being built in Texas than every day than any other state in the union. We've seen a massive explosion in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in particular, all by design by the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and its various organizations. And I have to tell you guys,

is that, you know, there are a number of reasons that I'm running for Attorney General, not the least of which is my family and the ability to be a husband and father back in Texas rather than traveling back and forth to D.C. But the biggest professional reason is my commitment to what Charlie just said and why this issue of stopping the march of Islam is critical to preserving Texas, the crown jewel in the American Republic. If we lose Texas, we lose the nation. And right now we're on a path where Texas is in trouble. And we've got to stand up and protect that American way of life that Charlie just said. And so I'm talking about it. But I'm not just talking about it. I'm doing something about it. I'm holding hearings where I declare affirmatively that Islam is incompatible with the West. And it's not going unnoticed by care and a bunch of those that have concerns. But importantly, my opponent has never practiced law. And I'm not going to get into it too much. I don't like to get personal. But you have to know what you're doing. I've run the Attorney General's office. I've been a federal prosecutor. I've been a constitutional lawyer. I've been the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee in Washington and Congress. You have to know what you're doing. My opponent introduced legislation last year in the name of religious liberty that would have made it easier for mosques to create Epic City and to create these massive housing enclaves and communities that are Sharia-compliant and Islam-centric. You've got to be ready for the battle. We are at an... Point in our history where we're at war and you have to acknowledge the war if you want to win it. So those of us who have been in there taking the arrows, fighting the good fight every day, that's who you want in leadership positions like the Attorney General. The most important legal job in the nation for conservatives is Attorney General of Texas, particularly if we don't have control of the administration. You've got to have someone there who can fight. And this issue of Islam is front and center. There are other things securing the border, dealing with criminals on the streets. Charlie just rattled off in that clip, the Marxists, the woke brigade that are all out trying to. target our state. All of those things are attacking Texas. We've got to deal with those. And one last point are the corporatists who are trying to come in and they buy up our land and they put data centers in every corner. They want to say, oh, don't have state standards on the AI. We'll have one big federal standard and we'll preempt states. No, we're going to allow the people to be able to defend our kids from the march of the corporatists as well as the Islamists as well as the Marxist. Yeah, it kind of underscores Blake's earlier point that we're up against this religious liberty concept that is central to the American value system. We, obviously, our founders created that thinking about, you know, Presbyterian and Anglican and Quakers. They weren't thinking about Muhammad. How do we overcome these fundamental religious divides? And so you've got to your point, if you're going to fight this an illegal front.

Congressman, you have to understand the law. You have to be able to be creative. You have to find workarounds. You have to be able to exert influence power politically, socially, culturally, in ways that don't undermine our system, but that preserve it. And so you have to understand the technicalities of the law, what you can win on, what you can bring suits on. And so to your point, that is so critical to being able to fight this fight. And I, by the way, you mentioned the corporatist. Last time, I think I, maybe I mentioned this to you, that I flew into Dallas. I actually drove three hours up to Oklahoma. And it was like one farm after the other, after the other, getting just like demolished. And just like, it was, candidly, it was really gross to me because it's just all these like crappy homes that are being put up in this beautiful farmland. I'm not anti-growth. But man, there are forces at Texas that are like ripping out the heart and soul of the people that made Texas, Texas. And there's got to be a balance here somewhere because it's just happening so rapidly. Well, 100%, and I'll bring up a point that's directly related. There's a pack in California that ran a million dollars of ads against me in the first primary, and now they're running hundreds of thousands more now with the stated objective of killing my political career, which, by the way, my life isn't going to be defined winning or losing an election. My life is defined in my faith of Christ and my family and serving my country wherever God puts me. I'm putting my... self out there to be attorney general because I think I'm the best man for the job. But this PAC wants to take me out because I was successful in delivering for President Trump repeal of half of the great new scam subsidies a year ago. I had to threaten taking down the big beautiful bill for a few days to get it. But we got it done. And so now they want to take me out. Now why does that matter? Because all of these corporate cronies that are taking government money, they're using it to buy a plan to put up solar panels and wind farms. They want to use similar kinds of things to go put the data centers in place. all without regard to the homes that people built over centuries in this country, who built communities, who built up farms. And I get... I'm with you. I'll say it the same way as you did. I'm not saying I don't want growth. I'm not saying I don't want affordable houses. I'm not saying you can't sell a farm that's enclosed to Dallas that you can then go build houses on. What I'm saying is what you're saying, we need to protect this great nation, this great state. We need to be thoughtful about how we're doing it. We've got to be mindful about having good technologies and good input from local government and citizens so they don't have a bright light in their night sky in a small Texas town and their water isn't getting sucked out and their grid isn't getting... drained while the price of electricity goes up. Also corporations can make a lot of money with a quick sale with private equity.

in New York. Yeah, that's exactly right. There has to be a balance here. Yeah, and by the way, I actually, I actually love the idea of taking dilapidated land or old malls and using that land, you know, put that, yeah, reuse some of the underserved, underutilized land that we already have. Support Chip Roy for Attorney General. He's the man for the job. Congressman, it's great to see you. We'll have you on again soon. God bless you. Thanks, guys. God bless you guys. This Mother's Day month, You can help make motherhood possible. If you've ever joined us providing ultrasounds and saving babies with preborn, thank you. There are babies alive today and mother celebrating this year because of the gift of an ultrasound that helped her know the truth of the baby that was growing inside of her. Today, you can help another young woman choose life for just $28. And that is just the beginning. The start of a two-year-long mentorship that includes services like free maternity clothes. baby clothes, diapers, strollers, cribs, formula, and so much more. And it all begins with that ultrasound you provide today. Because pre-born separately fundraises for administrative and overhead costs, 100% of your gift goes directly to providing ultrasounds. So call or click right now and join us in saving babies and moms so that next year there's even more to celebrate. Call 833850 Baby, that's 833850229, or click on the preborn banner at charliekirk.com. All right. Our next guest is a guy that we just had on recently, but he was so good breaking down the numbers when it came down to, comes up with our midterms that I wanted to have them on again because there's been a lot of news that's been going on with the redistricting fight after the Supreme Court ruling relative to the state of Louisiana and how it would impact all the rest of the states. Annoying news. Annoying news. Ryan James Gerdesky joins us now. He's got his bio is too long. not even going to get into it. Not this time. Maybe on the other side of the break. It's just too much. It's too much. Yeah, it's fine. He hosts a show. He's got multiple packs. He's got a substack. Ryan, give us the latest news on the redistricting fights because it was looking like we were going to run the table here and we've had some setbacks. Well, I actually did a whole episode of this for my podcast, A Numbers Game on I Heart Radio. The, the, here's what happened. So in South Carolina, five Republican state senators join all the Democrats to block the redistricting effort in South Carolina. So right now, Tom Claiborne, Jim, sorry, Jim Clyburn's seat is safe for him. The governor said he's going to bring into a special session, which would redistrict that one seat in South Carolina. The governors over in Louisiana and Alabama, however, are leaving Democrats with one seat each. as of now, Kay Ivey has been very adamant behind the scenes I've been hearing that she wants to protect one of the Democratic seats, the black majority seat in Alabama 7. Over in Louisiana, the governor of Louisiana is seemingly to, he's seemingly trying to settle political scores because certain people who he's not very friendly with are not getting the seat or not creating a seat that they could possibly run in. So.

That's over in Louisiana. So that would be still a net positive of two seats. Florida, obviously, they just changed four seats, but it's in the middle of a heated legal battle. Tennessee did redistrict their one seat. It is also in a legal battle, but that's... likely to be in favor of Republicans. And Maryland has said they're going to open the award door to redistricting the one Republican seat in Maryland and Andy Harris's seat. So Republicans really kind of drop the ball over in Alabama and Louisiana. Oh, and I forgot Mississippi, they announced that they are not redistricting this year. They're going to redistricting next year. So that'd be for 2028. That's the lone Democrat seat there for Benny Thomas. Governor Brian Kemp. surprise everybody saying he he will redistrict i'm going to bet that's probably also another one seat but that's also in 2028 so for us 2026 goes you have one seat in tennessee a possibility in south carolina and two out of louisiana and alabama but it's a net positive three instead of many many more that people expect it well it's a little uh unfortunate uh you I got to say it's frustrating to be a part of a political movement that you have to share with a bunch of like Southern Country Club Republicans that don't understand what's at stake here. Give us the overall math here, Ryan. Where do you see the numbers? So if you had to go Republican strong seats, Democrats strong seats and tossups, where does this leave us now? I think Republicans probably have a two, if South Carolina does get their redistricting done, which I think they will. The governor seems pretty strong about it. They'll probably be about 210 Republican likely seats and about 200 and maybe seven or eight Democratic seats and then maybe about the 2019 leaning independency, not independent, but toss-up seats. It depends on what you classify as a toss-up. Definitely the seat in Florida probably is more of a toss-up. The deputy Watson and Schultz seat even. it's now leaning Republican, the seat over in North Carolina where the incumbent congressman has had those allegations of, of, uh, of, uh, misconduct with a staffer. That could be a toss of eventually. Maine. Second is a very big one in New York's third congressional district, which is the one that's the sleeper race. That's a Trump plus five seat out in Long Island, the former George Santos seat. A guy named Michael Petrie's running there, a very strong campaign against Tom Suozzi. The Marcy captor seats very important over in Ohio. So overall, Republicans need to probably win half of all the toss of seats to maintain the House majority, which is much better position they were in, even just. a few months ago so how many one one final question i want to throw it to blake how many uh seats are we leaving on the board here that because of the inaction or the failure to act of these southern states how many do we at at least at least three that's on my head one mississippi which will come oh sorry sorry more than that

Five. Two in Georgia, one in Mississippi, one in Louisiana, one Alabama. The Louisiana-Alabama ones are the most egregious ones because the courts just gave them the light, the game the okay. Mississippi is hard. They already had their primary, so that's why they're saying we don't know. Brian Kemp is Brian Kemp. He's kind of, you know, he does his own thing. But the ones in Louisiana and Alabama, especially Alabama 7th and the one in New Orleans for Louisiana, that is egregious. The Republicans really should have. every district in both those seats to bring them Republican seats. So, I guess... How much, how likely do you think it is on the basic situation? We're talking a couple of seats worse, a seat here, a seat there. What are the odds this ends up proving decisive for the house itself this fall? Like what sort of majority are we looking either way? Do you think it's likely to come down to two seats either way? Or do you think this matters much more going forward after the selection? Let's say Democrats run the table. It's like gas prices stay high. The economy doesn't pick up. People are still mad about AI and a bunch of other things in the war. uh, Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries will probably have a seven to eight seat majority. So he's basically in the same kind of hell Kevin McCarthy was in, uh, not only, you know, just two years ago. We're very little looking at done. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is very empowered. The squad's very empowered. That's kind of the situation they're in. There's just so few toss of seats. We're not looking at a 2018 style election wave anymore. There's just, it's just not the way the math works. If Republicans can win half of the seats available to them, they'll probably, end up with the same situation there in right now, which is a one to two seat majority. Maybe at most. Maybe they can win a third. Who knows? But there's not a lot. There's really a very little wiggle room either which way, unless a party kind of blows it out of the water and seats that are likely Republican flip Democrat or likely Democrat flip Republican. All right. So let's fast forward a little bit. Set our sights on the census 2030. How does the population shifts from these blue states into the sunbelt primarily, a few other states? How does that change the electoral math, Ryan? I mean, it basically, going from 2030 to 2040, if a Republicans can just hold Florida, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Arizona, you don't even need a Nevada. Republican will win the presidency every time. They no longer need Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin. They no longer need, you know, they don't need Nevada. They don't need New Hampshire or Minnesota, all the lean Democrat states that are just always out of reach, New Mexico. As long as they keep those like six Sunbelt states, they can't lose the presidency. George is obviously going to be very difficult. North Carolina will be very difficult. Those are very small margins that Republicans have won by. So they'll still be important Pennsylvania, Michigan.

Wisconsin, all the rest of them, but they're not essential to win. The only states that are essential to win are the Sunbelt states plus Ohio. Something that comes to mind, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but this increasing, what's just called maximalism about house seats where you're seeing states gerrymander to get as many seats as possible, is that going to make the census more important? Because I know in the past, the GOP would pick up these seats, but they are often... you know, immigrant groups who then you create house seats. And so you might get a Democrat house seat, but a new Republican electoral vote. But now we're just seeing these blue states are, they're shedding a seat that they were going to gerrymander to make blue no matter what. And we're gaining a seat that will probably gerrymander to make red no matter what. And so the census is becoming an even bigger deal now than it was just with the presidential states. Yeah, there's obviously some examples where that may not be true. Like if Georgia gets this extra seat, it'll probably be in Atlanta. That might be a Democratic seat. You know, if Austin is growing very big and Texas gets four seats, one may be a Democratic seat out of Austin. It will also alleviate pressure out of the Republican seats not to stretch so thin. So not to have a dummymander. That could all be possible. But yes, in a large part, it is essential because of the 12 seats Democratic states are expected to lose as of right now. I mean, maybe 10 would be automatic Republican seats. And add 10 to 210, a number we have right now as a safe or lean Republican, and you're at 220 and you're the House majority number. So, you know, California may be able to knock out one more Republican seat. Illinois or knock up one more Republican seat. New York could obviously knock out a bunch. But nonetheless, and yet still, that makes it more important. And another thing that no one's paying attention to, it makes the state legislative elections super important. Republicans have to keep... the state senators in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania to keep those Republican seats, make sure they don't go in full Democratic hands and really start competing in other blue states to try to save some Republican seats. Ryan, I'm going to play a clip for you. And we're just going to, we're going to deal with this impending reality. Stop five. When I was talking to the president this morning, it was just before the Oval Office event, he kind of surprised me a little bit because he said, John, I just want to tell you, I'm very serious about this. So you can talk about this. I'm serious about beginning a process to make Venezuela the 51st state. All right, Ryan. Break it down for us dead serious. How many electoral votes is Venezuela going to have in the 28 election? And is it a swing state, a blue state, a red state? So Venezuela would get as many electoral college votes as Texas. Now, I want to remind you something, even though we would add two U.S. Senate seats, we would not add any house seats to Congress. They would still have 435 house seats. So. A lot of red and blue states would all lose congressmen to go to Venezuela. So Venezuela would have 38 congressmen and they would come from all over the country, including out of red states. So that's a big, big caveat. How do they vote? That's a big question. So Venezuela and Desporia, both in the United States and in Argentina, the two places I looked at were big backers of both President Trump and Javier Milei over in Argentina, the libertarian president of Argentina.

of desporia are tend to be wealthier than those who live in Venezuela. Venezuela, if it were to come a state, would have one tenth the GDP per capita of the state of New Hampshire. It would be... more than twice as impoverished as American Samoa. It would have an average of $8,900 per year per person and income. So a generous welfare state is going to sound very alluring to those people. They had not had a free election since they voted for a communist. That being said, maybe they learned their lesson. Who knows? However, there is certainly a very pro-communist wing of that country that still exists. So it is not safe to say that they will. vote any which way, given that a lot of people who despise communism have already fled the nation. I was going to say, so the big thing you got to think about with Venezuela is that the diaspora, as you said, that we see in Florida or Argentina. It's selected for people. That's selective. That is not representative of the people that remained. The people that remained are the poor, less well off. You said they may have learned their lesson. But they may not have learned their lesson. And that is the difficult thing to gauge here is because we haven't had transparency in Venezuela. We have no idea what that electorate is like. We know that there was accusations with Maduro's last election that it was rigged, that his opponent actually won that election and that they rigged the elections in his favor. So maybe they would vote that way. But I mean, do we have any historical precedent? Even under the fair election estimates, Maduro still received 40-something percent of the election. So it wasn't like it was 99 to 1, like the fake election results. Maduro has a sizable level of support, maybe one and three people living in Venezuela. I don't know about you, but to get 38 new congressmen and have a third be all squad members, that's not a great deal, especially when you're taking congressman from Alabama, from Ohio, from Pennsylvania, from Texas, and you're sending them over to Venezuela. Not a really big fan of that idea. Plus also, I mean, we've had a very tough time securing our own border with Mexico that has a river and mountains, securing them in Venezuela border from the millions who would easily flock through the jungles into that nation to be counted in this election would be, would be pandemonium. Yeah, and, you know, obviously we're being a little cheeky here, but I think another thing to keep in mind, we have, America has annexed formerly independent countries before. We did it with Texas. We did it with Hawaii, but Hawaii had. tremendous immigration from the United States. Texas was clearly just founded, settled by Americans who wanted to join the United States throughout that period. We've never, we would be annexing a country that has, speaks Spanish, has a long history of independence. They have an identity as Venezuelans. And so when we're discussing how that would go politically, they wouldn't, I don't think they'd be thinking what's best for America because I am now American. They would be thinking,

How do I help Venezuela, my country that has perhaps just temporarily, attached itself to this country that's decided to be at Sugar Daddy? And so, for example, in politics, it might just reduce to who's promising us the most money. And I think we all know which party loves to promise people money for doing nothing the most. It's important to remember Venezuela. Yeah, it's important remember Venezuela is poor. The average Venezuela is poorer than the average Western European after World War II. So what we had to do in World War II to build up Western Europe, we would have to do at a larger scale to build up Venezuela while we are broke and while Americans really are resenting. one, foreign policy, you know, adventurism, and two, money not being spent within our own country. So that would probably be very, very dicey. I don't think Donald Trump needs to do this to make it part of his legacy, to have a wonderful legacy. So, but what about the oil, Ryan? We could just fund it all with the oil. What say you? Yeah, allegedly, but the oil would then be owned by private companies. So are we going to increase taxes on oil? Is that what Trump's going to do? I mean, we're just going to increase taxes left and right. We can increase taxes on AI and spend a lot and pay for a lot of things. But we don't do that either. Like, they're not going to want to tax. If Trump has a good friend purchase an oil company in Venezuela, he's not going to push higher taxes out of Venezuela. It's just not. Like, there's just no way that that's going to happen. So no, it's going to come out. of the American tax law. We're going to borrow from China to spend in Venezuela at the increase of the lowering purchasing power of the American dollar for people in red states throughout the country. It's not necessary. Here's my most important question. So we already have one Spanish-speaking, you know, territory in Puerto Rico. How many more bad bunnies could we get out of Venezuela? That's really... That is really the question that needs to be asked. It's a cultural question. It's a rhetorical one. Ryan James Gurdowski, you have so many things here. I want to make sure I get it. You have the home pack. Hold on. Homeland Pack. Homeland Pack for immigration restriction. Check it out in a numbers game podcast. Those are the two. I'll plug. Everything else you can. Napop or substack. National popular. Yes. Okay. Ryan, great analysis. Thank you, my friend. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

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