June 2, 2025 • 45 mins
On today’s episode of Two Mikes, Dr. Michael Scheuer and Col. Mike sit down with Arron Renn, an expert on American urban development and a bold Christian voice calling out the spiritual vacuum in our post-Christian culture. Renn breaks down the decades-long decline of Protestant influence in America and how our culture's embrace of drugs, abortion, and gambling signals a collapse of Christian moral authority. He argues that while President Trump’s recent victory and pro-Christian stance have created a much-needed “vibe change,” this momentum must be backed by real action—like tribunals for Big Pharma and dismantling the legacy media machine. It's a critical conversation for those fighting to restore faith in a nation adrift.
Follow Maverick Broadcasting Network on Pickax to catch the full lineup of shows and breaking news: https://pickax.com/maverickbroadcasting
Protect your financial future with precious metals! Get your FREE Gold and Silver Guide from My Gold Guy today and take control of your financial destiny. https://mygoldguy.com/mbn
Indulge in the finest quality with Prepper All-Naturals – sous vide, freeze-dried, and ready to savor today or in a decade. Order now using code MBN for a 25% discount. https://prepperbeef.com/freedomfirstbeef
Be ready for anything life throws your way with The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit. Order today using code MBN for a 10% discount at https://twc.health/mbn.
Unleash the spirit of liberty in every cup with Supermassive Black Coffee. Order now using code MBN and savor the unparalleled taste of freedom in every patriotic sip. https://supermassiveblackcoffee.com
Follow Maverick Broadcasting Network on Pickax to catch the full lineup of shows and breaking news: https://pickax.com/maverickbroadcasting
Protect your financial future with precious metals! Get your FREE Gold and Silver Guide from My Gold Guy today and take control of your financial destiny. https://mygoldguy.com/mbn
Indulge in the finest quality with Prepper All-Naturals – sous vide, freeze-dried, and ready to savor today or in a decade. Order now using code MBN for a 25% discount. https://prepperbeef.com/freedomfirstbeef
Be ready for anything life throws your way with The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit. Order today using code MBN for a 10% discount at https://twc.health/mbn.
Unleash the spirit of liberty in every cup with Supermassive Black Coffee. Order now using code MBN and savor the unparalleled taste of freedom in every patriotic sip. https://supermassiveblackcoffee.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Doctor Mike and
Colonel Mike on the Two Mics podcast. We wish everybody
a happy spring. We know you're all into the weather
coming and we want to thank you for visiting our
show at Network Radio dot US, our website, two mics
dot us, and don't forget to visit our website, both
of them. And we got over five hundred shows huh,
(00:26):
five million views on rumble and we're still going. Hey,
by the way, you go to love this next one
coming up. Make sure to tune in every week. Every
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And if you like us, we're not asking anybody coffee.
Just visit the website. Say hellover to the sponsors at
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Speaker 2 (00:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Five four three two one, Hey, welcome back to Mike's
Doctor Michael Schouyer, New York Times bestselling author and Colonel Mike. Hey,
don't forget to visit our sponsors at two Mike's dot Us,
Two Mikes dot US. I know we have to change
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little upgrade. But here, let me tell you who's there.
They're the people that have been with us for years
(01:35):
now are small amount of sponsors who help us out
with the website and some of the things that we do.
And remember, our sponsors believe in free speech First Amendment,
and nobody calls us up and says, hey, you know, no, no,
we don't have any of those kinds of people or
one hundred percent. We're not like X We're not like
a former Twitter or whatever and other other social media
(01:58):
platforms and like Fox News. You know, you can't say
certain things on people like Fox News. You know, News
Max gives you ninety two percent. Another guy gives you
ninety percent, but we give you a row, you know.
So uh, just visit our sponsors and don't forget. We're
going on a fifth year this month, on our fifth year,
and it is here five years right, Mike yep. Okay,
(02:19):
that's over five hundred and twenty shows, five point seven
million people visiting us on the Rumble channel. Now, just
what you know, we were on Rumble under a network
called Freedom First, which is where we started our show
five years ago. And Freedom First has now changed into
their six or seven generation, which is now called Maverick Broadcasting.
(02:42):
So we're going to be up on Mavick Broadcasting. Freedom
First is still up there on Rumble and that's where
you get all the shows, you know, the archive, and
we're going to fix network Radio dot US. There's there's
a little bit of change we're going to make. We're
going to put some storage on two mics, so little
things come down the pipe. And so what we're going
to do is just bring back one of our very
(03:05):
very old special friends, not old in age, but you know,
started out with us radio. Was very kind coming on
when we started the radio broadcast years ago, sixty, I
guess it's sixteen years, no way. Aaron w Ren, Aaron Ren.
How did I find Aaron Ren? Aaron Ren's just a
unique person, a very nice person. I think I was
reading Manhattan Institute and City Journal back in the day
(03:28):
and I kept watching his articles and I said, hey,
I called contact him. I says, hey, why don't you
come on on our radio show with us? And he's
always been kind and he's came and he's a great person.
He really great writer. Been around the states economics, state laws,
businesses and over the years, you know, before COVID, Aaron
(03:51):
was traveling a lot He used to live in New
York City for a time before he went back to
the Midwest and always had great articles. Can tell you
what's happening in columb This, Carmel, Indiana, you know, the
West coast, the East coast. So, Aaron Ren, I don't
have any music to bring you in like we used
to do on radio. My bumper music was great, you know,
(04:11):
we had the producer. But welcome back to the two
mics for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the kind words.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, you're a great guy. So Aaron, why don't you
update us? You know, I always liked the updates for
first you know, just tell the listeners because it's been
a while you've been on. Tell the listeners who you are,
your substack, what you're doing, and you have a couple
of things. You're right. You write about men's issues, Christianity,
you know others. So give us a little bit to
the listener and we'll go from there.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
I'm a writer, researcher, and consultant in the Indianapolis area.
I guess I've really had three careers. First was management consulting.
I was with Accenture for a long time. I was
in that field for like fifteen eighteen years. Then I
switched into urban policy, and as with the Manhattan Institute,
as you know, we're essentially I'm just acting like a
consultant to cities, you know, in a sense, not not
(05:04):
literally as a paid consultant, but just applying the same
sorts of thoughts to it. And then I sort of
pivoted a little bit again to focus. Originally my focus
was sort of men in the church. About a decade ago,
I saw that so many young men were turning to
online influencers looking for life guidance, and they weren't turning
(05:27):
to traditional authorities like churches, parents, teachers, politicians, And I
really felt that this this manispheres they called it. While
there was a lot I didn't like about it, there
was a lot that they actually got right, and men
were turning in their droves, and I wanted to help
churches become more competitive for that, and so you know,
(05:48):
I started writing.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
About that issue.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And you know, if anything, that problem has only gotten bigger,
you know, with people like Jordan Peterson got huge, Joe Rogan, Theovonne,
all these different casters, Jocko Willinks, so many writers, podcasters,
YouTubers with millions of followers are done in one hundreds
of thousands, tens of thousands of followers, and frankly, the
traditional authorities are still missing in action.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
So that's still a problem. But I've sort of become,
you know, a little.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Bit more of a you know, a diagnostition of the culture. Uh,
you know, and I was part of it. I was
very early to calling Trump back in twenty fifteen, not
even twenty sixteen. Twenty fifteen, uh, you know, is a
rocket ship on the way up. And so I've people
have liked my insights on the culture, so I do
a lot of that, although I still do some work
(06:38):
on cities as well. And again, culture and Zeitgeist and
things like that are a lot of the city. So
you can find all my writing at my newsletter Aaronren
dot com.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Ar O n r n N dot com. Go sign up.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
It's almost all free and check it out.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And the substack is the same, correct, that is my
substack yet? Okay, got you all right? All right? So
so Mike, there we go. We started up. So what
would you like to discuss today? Eric? Would you like
to start out what's going on in the church? Would
you like to start out with podcasting. I see substack
as big now. I mean I went on there just
to look, I don't know, about a month ago, and
(07:17):
now it's just taken off. And I don't know which
to read first, if it's the X or the Substack,
because there's a lot of good stuff on both. But
I see there's some serious writing going on on Substack.
I wanted to get Mike to get on there, you know,
because Mike has a great blog and he's been doing
it for years. And you know, if Mike went on
there and did some Substack, I don't know how much
(07:38):
time he has during the day.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeahs is sort of like the return of a blog.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Blogs were huge for a long time, and really it
was Google who killed off the blogs. So back when
I was like a regular blogger, if I wrote an
article about something, it might show up like in the
top five hits on Google. Yeah, if you're searching for
that topic. People love blogs because the bloggers were giving
(08:04):
in depth, thoughtful analysis and the mainstream media didn't like that,
and so they complained to Google.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
And you know, I'm.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Simplifying here, but basically Google changed their algorithm so that
now they will always return major media sites for almost
any any topic. So you're start on something, it's going
to be New York Times, CNN. All of those blogs
don't used to be able. A good blog piece would
(08:34):
actually Google would know this is a better piece than
the New York Times piece, and it would be ahead
of the New York Times. That doesn't happen anymore, and
so substack is sort of the return of the blog.
But even today it's it's very hard to you know,
get good seo. So like Google doesn't really like linking
to substack, and of course Twitter x is in a
(08:58):
big feud with substack, and so they want they basically
punish you if you link to substack or mentioned substack
or put links.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
So it is kind of a difficult environment.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
But substack is in a sense flourishing because they created
a sort of a model that was based more on
email rather than people going to your website. So you
do have that direct connection to your readers in a
way that you didn't.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I like it. It's good.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
A lot of people are coming there, a lot of
you know, mainstream journalists if you gonna call them, that
have basically figured out they can make a lot more
money off of them off substack than they can for
working for a publication. And again, not all these people
are my cup of tea. But you know, Jennifer Rubin
(09:44):
left the Washington Post and went to substack. She started
a substack with norm Issen and in less than a
month they had three hundred and fifty thousand subscribers.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Wow, and how much does that subscribe? Let's say, what
is it? Five ten bucks a month?
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Those that's the free tier subsc So probably the rule
of them is you get four percent conversion on substack.
So but even if you get four of those paying, like,
she's making good coin. And you know, so the people
who have like big existing brands, they can bring over
big audiences.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know they're doing they're doing well over there.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know, Aaron, there was a time when we were
on Rumbled, before Rumble merged with a thing called Locals.
We were doing between sixty to one hundred thousand views
on a show. And then you know, along came this
algorithm thing and all this other magic coopla they did.
But once they merged with Locals, which was some little
(10:41):
thing startup where you could chat kind of thing and
post things, they went through our shows, and there are
shows that we did that are very hard because you know,
it was COVID time and so on, and our our
listeners or our viewers dropped from like one hundred to
(11:02):
sixty thousand to thirty thousand and then just went off
the cliff to like twelve thousand or less. And I
think today all the guys that were on Freedom First Network,
all the guys that are on that are now on
Maverick that shifted over from Freedom First, who started out
with Freedom First, we don't get more than twenty five hundred,
(11:24):
I think tops thirty two hundred views on Rumble. So
we are algorithms out, you know what I mean on
this Rumble thing.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
But what he's doing now is all these social media companies,
So like any of these companies like even Rumble, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok,
even Twitter has gone this direction. Yes, they've basically gone
to an algorithm based feed where rather than seeing mostly
the people you follow or choose to follow, you see
(11:55):
what they decide you should see.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right, And so that.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Means anybody who gets big on one of these platforms,
you know, they the platform can basically cut you off
at any point. And with all those with all of
those platforms, you have no ability. Like let's just say
you had a huge YouTube channel with three hundred thousand subscribers,
getting lots of views on your videos, and one day
(12:20):
YouTube kicks you off. You have no way of even
informing your old subscribers where they can now find you.
This is the advantage of the substack model. Substack is
based on a direct email connection. So yes, you can
surf to my site. Yes, they have an app that
has an algorithm of some sorts, but most of my
(12:43):
people who are watching me, they watch the videos. I
want people to subscribe to my newsletter. Go to Aaronroun
dot com and sign up. Then I can reach you.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I can always tell you what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
I have a connection to you, a direct connection to
my readers, and that means that it's a lot. Even
if even if substack kicked me off tomorrow, I have
backups of my email lift I could go start a
new mailing list, tell everybody, hey, here's my new site,
here's how to get in touch with me, And in
fact I could even add them to a new mailing
(13:15):
list transparently. I could leave substack and take all my
readers with me. Which people have done, and so I
have some fears about the future of Substack. I mean, like,
this thing's not going to last forever. Nothing lasts forever.
I feel like it's you know, uh, it's something that's
you know. I feel like it's a much better model
(13:37):
for people if you are inclined, if you're like a
really really good writer, you know, if you're a radio guy,
is not as attractive a platform because it does do podcasts.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
It's definitely for writers. We've had a couple of guests
that came on from Substack that we put on because
we have another show now on America out Loud dot News,
which is The National Security We're one of five shows
we start on Monday at a pm Eastern and Mike
and I do that show, and we've brought people from
substat to the National Security How people who are you know,
(14:11):
inclined to do world affairs and so on and security
issues and the gentleman that we started with Jeff who
started Freedom First Network at a partner, which I don't
think he's with anymore. He's now a transferred or transition
to what they call Maverick Broadcasting. He started his own
social media because of this algorithm and all this nonsense
(14:34):
of bumping us on Rumble and so on, and I
can't understand that. You know, when when you open a Rumble, right, Aaron,
you see these cheesy commercials. You know, they're selling some
felt flashlight or something. It's not like high end, but
they got the You have to watch two of these
commercials and two of the next commercials, which nobody's probably
buying this stuff. Maybe they are, I don't know. It's
(14:55):
like a bitshoot commercial, you know. And then you finally
get to the of the U to the Rumble and
they and they may bust in with commercials depending on
what they want to do. Now Jeff has created Maverick Broadcasting.
I think this is what Mike five generations have changes
since the beginning. Yeah, and now he's created his own
(15:15):
social media call Pickaxe, which is another First Amendment free
speech kind of thing where you can post your youtubes
or you should look at it and YouTube's video so
on and and and it monetized, it doesn't bump you. Now.
Remember a lot of people ran to Twitter when Elon
bought it because there was monetization before they went into
(15:38):
the algorithm thing. And you had people screaming, oh look
how much money. We've never ever gone on anything, you know,
thinking about money. We just have our podcast and if
people want to buy stuff that we have from our
our sponsors, which is you know, good stuff. I mean
it's we're not selling the hamburger meat or something. You know.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Yeah, you know I have I don't have a huge
X account. I've got like thirty something thousand followers.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Well that's big, and I mostly.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
You know, I mostly post what I you know, I
call high quality content, right, you know, I'm not worried
about what their algorithm does.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I use it for satires this way. You know, if
you check me out, most of my stuff is satire
because I think there's a lot of insane people on
Twitter X, and I think there's people like yourself. But
for the most part, it's like it's in between you know,
Gilbert or what is that the family guy and then
some serious posting. So I just go with satire because.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
The thing is here, here's the thing on Twitter.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
So, like I have monetization, and like my last payment
was pretty good. It was like sixty bucks, okay, so
it's it's buying some it's covering my coffee budget and
things like that. But you know what happens when you
turn on monetization. It's actually made Twitter a lot worse
because now all anybody tries to do is gain the system,
(16:55):
and like a lot of like a lot of these
bot networks and things. So there are you know a
lot of people demonstrated there were networks of people out
of India that were all like interacting with each other's
posts in order to gain the algorithms for monetization. And
so people produce a lot of It's based on like
how many verified users interact with your post, so it
(17:17):
changes all the time. People are like they call it slop.
It's like people are posting stuff just because they hope
it goes viral to exploit the algorithm and get the
monetization and basically their thing with like it is like
I like Elon in a lot of ways, but fundamentally
you make money by being one of Elon's favorite people.
He'll boost you, he'll retweet you, he'll put you in
(17:38):
the algorithm.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
He does follow us by the way. Yeah, what happens.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
What happens a lot of times now is like let's
say you post something and it starts to go viral.
Big accounts will pick up on that and they will
essentially copy your tweet and it will go viral on
their account, much bigger on your account. So essentially people
are engaging in a kind of content theft. And so
(18:02):
I really think that although you know, Elon has made
Twitter better from a free speech perspective, without question, it's
probably on net positive, not all of the changes are good.
The quality of what's on Twitter is way down.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Oh yes, and.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
It's way way way down.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And there's a lot of clown car stuff, which I enjoyed,
some comedy and funny videos and so on, but you're right,
the content is not as serious as it was when
he started out. And remember most of the left or
mainstream media, you know, they just bolted. I think they
have another place that they post stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Now, a lot of what the Blue Sky, but Blue
skuy's cratering. It's not doing very well, and as you
can imagine, it's constant like recriminations and attacks against people.
And you know, a lot left on Twitter because you
basically like it's where it is still the place where like,
(18:57):
if you want to call it public diplomacy, it is
the book square. And so you see like government officials
even in foreign countries, like announce stuff on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, like you're not on Twitter, you know you're missing out.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
No, you're right. The foreign officials they like Twitter, they
enjoy Twitter. But you know, it's a it's a place.
You know, it's you got a little bit mix of everything.
But like you say, the content's down. I'd rather go
to substat looking for content. You have more serious people
and doctor Mike soon. I hope you get a subsett really,
because I think we really do. Well. What's that I said?
Speaker 5 (19:34):
I've been downloading it, but once I downloaded, I can't
find it, So there's something amiss.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Well, we'll just get you that Beatles album, The Magical
Mystery Tour.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeam, I've only been down there for.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
A long time. So Aaron, give us a little bit
about Christianity. Come on, let's hear it. I know you
you were, you were hitting the Protestants a couple of
months back. Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
So yeah, so I'm most famous or coming up with
this model called the three World's model, where I track
the sort of decline of Christianity from nineteen sixty four
to the present into three phases that I call the positive, neutral,
negative world. So positive is sixty four to ninety four,
Christianity is declining, but it's still basically viewed positively in
(20:19):
our society. Ninety four to twenty fourteen, Christianity it's declining.
It's not seen positively anymore, but it's not really viewed
negatively yet either. It's just one more lifestyle choice among
many in a sort of pluralistic public square. Then in
twenty fourteen we had a second tipping point and enter
the negative world, where, for the first time in the
four hundred year history of America, sort of official elite
(20:41):
culture now views Christianity positively or excuse me, negatively, or
certainly at least skeptically. Maybe that's a better way to
put it. If you merely identify as a Christian, it
won't necessarily get you canceled, especially if you're like an
Episcopalian or something, but the content of your Christianity cannot
(21:03):
you know, conflict.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Well, hold on, for the folks that don't know what
an episcopalian is, it's a vanilla Catholic. Continue, ye, thank
you so.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
But I think one of the things what I would
say is definitely with sort of Trump's you know, Trump's
election in twenty twenty four really did create what they've
called a vibe shift in the culture, and it's caused
I think a lot of shifts. You know, DEI is
in retreat. Unlike in twenty sixteen, where basically every instrument
(21:38):
of society, every institution of society declared itself to resistance
against Trump.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
That has not been the case this time.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
And I think part of it is the left went
way way too far with the BLM riots, with COVID,
with this DEI thing, and even like sort of like
middle of the road people have had enough, and of
course bad governance in our cities, with homelessness going everywhere,
high housing price is out of control, crime was up
(22:06):
for a while, you know, quality of life degraded. People
just got sick of it, you know, and so people
were ready for something else. And I think the fact
that Trump won the popular vote really was important because
you couldn't really claim that, oh, it was just another
(22:27):
you know, exploitation of the electoral college, and the majority
of Americans didn't want him. Well, actually he did. He
won the popular vote, So I think that provides a
sort of legitimacy there. And I think as part of
this vibe shift, the sort of overt hostility to Christianity
has definitely declined somewhat, and in fact, we're seeing some
(22:50):
indications that church attendants has sort of stabilized. There are
far fewer people who are sort of abandoning faith, gen Z,
especially gen Z men, maybe attending church more often than
you know, maybe we would have expected. So I think
there are some interesting positive signs, but I definitely think
(23:10):
from a cultural perspective, we are in a definitively post
Christian culture, which is to say, for example, look at
what has happened every time abortion has been on the
ballot since Roversa's way was overturned. Abortion has won one
hundred percent of the time. The only time it didn't
quote unquote when was in places like Florida, where there's
(23:33):
a super majority requirement to amend the constitution. A majority
of the people voted in favor of abortion there, but
they just didn't get enough to hit like the sixty
percent threshold. Everybody clearly wants gambling to be legal. Look
look at how we've just metastasized gambling in our society
and sports betting and all of this, and literally, like
(23:55):
in what I've called the negative world. All the old
sort of moral scheme of Christianity is called. It's not
just the sexual moral schema which everyone wants to think about.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
It's about gambling.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
It's also about drugs, you know, the pot legalization and
just the normalization and acceptance of smoking pot or going
on an ayahuasca trip. Taking you knowsychedelics has gotten big.
I can't tell you how many upper middle class, you know,
professional progressive types you know, are consuming cannabis products or
magic mushrooms or things like that. It's pervasive, it's normal,
(24:31):
and you can even think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Medical marijuana. I can't walk anywhere sometimes in Virginia or
outside of Virginia without the place blown up. I just
can't stomach the stink.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I mean they talked about quote
unquote medical marijuana, but as soon as it was made legal,
the medical you know, discuse went away.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And that is a.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Problem you go into.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
This is one reason, like cities have become unattractive to families.
You know, you walk around down the city now, pot everywhere.
You can't escape it. And so you know, when I've
got like, you know, seven year old son, you know,
we live downtown he was even younger. Yeah, do I
really want to be, you know, my son like walking
(25:16):
through clouds of pot smoke everywhere? No, And so you
come out to the suburbs. It's here too, but there's
much much, much less of it.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
They should have areas fit them to smoke, just like cigarettes.
You know, remember a cigarette was no good, You couldn't
smell the smell and it was cancerous. But you had
an area where you could, you know, smoke a cigarette
and have an ashtray or some big container. They should
have pot smoking areas because it just wafts all through
wherever you like, you say, if you're going shopping, if
you're going, you know, walking around to a restaurant. It's everywhere,
(25:48):
and it's sickney, you know.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Yeah, the idea that you know, when we look at
like how harshly we've treated cigarettes, right, and yet it's
sort of like, oh, you know, you should be able
to smoke all the pot you want, anywhere you want.
And of course, look, the pot thing is, it's negative.
It's very bad for our society. Even the New York Times,
(26:11):
you know, has sort of signaled, hey, wait a minute,
they've done a lot of reporting on these different cannaboid
syndromes that can you know, cause severe health problems, psychosis,
particularly young people who smoke a lot of pot ending
up with various you know, forms of mental illness and psychosis,
which I think has happened to you know, family members myself,
(26:33):
to be honest, and they even admit that, like, yeah,
I smoke too much pot, when this is probably why
i'm you know, I'm bipolar. So there's that, there's a
lot of problems. We know, people are driving impaired and so,
but it's like nobody wants to talk about it, and
it's not it's and it's a gateway drug.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
It's not a harmless substance. And again, I think there's.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
A lot of people who can you know, there's a
lot of people who can smoke it just fine, uh,
you know, and you can say, yes, alcohol, you know,
problems with alcohol too. I'd be the first person to
agree with that. And by the way, there's a lot
of people who are turning away from alcohol. There's a
big no drinking movement. Every restaurant now has a mocktail list.
But I just think I just think pot's back.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I just think they wanted to dump people down the pot.
I think they want to dump people down. And you know,
years ago when it was you know, when we were young,
Mike and I, they used to call it dope, and
it is. It makes you dopey. I mean, there's nothing
about it like people just I don't know if if
it does have any medical uh advantages, but if if
(27:41):
it's so good, they that that CBD thing, just drink
that or put that on you as a salve or whatever.
It is a lotion, you know.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
I just think that the CBD thing is obviously bunk
because everybody claims that CBD cures everything. It's like pot,
it cures everything, you know, like there's no drugs.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
That cure or everything. I'm sorry, you know.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
So it's like this idea that like, oh, you know, CBD,
it may it be cured by depression.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Oh CBD. It helped my back pain. Oh CBD.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
You know, it's like my digestive issues are all better.
Like oh, really, there's like one wonder drug it fixes
all the stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I don't think, so, Aaron, Aaron, go back to prohibition
for a minute. Remember prohibition, and then we had legalization
of you know, and then you had the distillers, and
you had legalization of the alcohol and what happened. So
the government gets involved and as long as they get
their tax on it, like cigarettes, they're happy. And then
in Virginia it's still like the colonial days. The Virginia
(28:41):
runs the alcohol. They have their own it's called ABC stores.
You got to buy the liquor from a Virginia's operated store,
by the common stores.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Not a lot of states in those.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
And then and then and then you have other stores
which give you licenses or whatever. Well they figured it out.
They figured these pot guys are making tons of money,
so why don't we become the pot dealers and we
collect the tax and we can grow it, and we
could give licenses to people who want to grow it.
You know, it's a business. Then it's like lotteries. You know,
(29:12):
remember before it was called gambling, right, and now it's well, listen,
we're gonna build schools, we're gonna build roads, we're gonna
put red lights. We need money for the county. You know,
kids want a swimming pool. They come up with all
the excuses. As long as you have a vice, they
will they will get in there and make you happy.
They're collecting money. It's like property taxes, aaron. Are property
(29:35):
taxes on a home legal? Yes, they made it legal,
But are they fair? Absolutely not. How many schools can
you build? You'll be paying property taxes way after you
own the home, right And what's the benefit. What is
the benefit? It's the county and it's also it's somebody
(29:56):
comes up with I forgot what they call them actual worries.
They come up with a scale and they say, well,
you know, based on XYZ, you know, each home in
your county is going to be this much money based
on you know, zero point three two zero point formula,
and you'll be paying four thousand dollars a year on
(30:16):
your home. And then we'll raise the property tax because
the home value went up. And as the home value
goes up, we'll raise your property. And then a person's
like sixty seventy eighty years old and they're not working
anymore and they may not have enough savings or get
Social Security, and they say, well, you can't pay your taxes,
We've got to take your home. How is that fair?
(30:37):
You know?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah, well, I mean like I'm you know, see where
I differ from your typical like, you know, person on
the political right, is I'm not necessarily an anti taxer
all the time. I want the government to do things,
and I think a local government, like the town where
I live has great local government. I'm happy to pay
taxes now our property. We have property taxes. I think
they're very low comparatively.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
H I was.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
I was comparing my property tax to property tax I
still live in Illinoie lived in Chicago to some very
similar homes in communities in Chicago that are not even
highlight half price three or four times is high property
taxes and double the price of the home and three
to four times of property taxes unless crime.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
So I'm like, yeah, Or you could think about New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
I don't know, I don't know about Virginia, but like
New Jersey, or you know the New York metro areas
like Famas.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Long Island. Hey, hey, let's take Long Island Aaron, Yeah,
a Long.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Island, all that stuff. It's yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
You own like a ranch house and it's like twenty
five thousand dollars a year in property taxes.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah it is. Now you take a nineteen let's say,
nineteen sixties home that's been renovated, right, it was probably
purchased for thirty two thousand, right, and then you know
you did modifications and renovations over the years, and let's
say the value today is about one point seven one
point eight million, right about that. That's about a fair price.
(32:06):
They're paying eighteen to twenty two thousand dollars a year
of tax on that. It's totally insane.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Well, you know, there may be a tax, but like
if you own a one point eight million dollar house,
you're not exactly poor. And you know, so.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
I think there's some legitimate, you know, legitimate interest with
you know, senior taxes and things like that. But you know, fundamentally,
people who are going to pocket massive windfall gains that
they didn't do anything to create. I mean, the person
who bought that house for thirty two thousand dollars. It's
(32:43):
not like I invested thirty two thousand dollars in a
business and that's how I made my money. It's like
I got lucky when I bought real estate in a
place that got hot, and so it is sort of
a windfall gain. And you know, letting people essentially make
one point eight million dollars profit and not pay any taxes, well,
it's one.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Point sixty two, you know, inflation and so on. But
still maybe it's your grandfather's house you're living in now,
or your mother and dad's house, you know, or maybe
you just purchased it out right, whatever that is.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
This is my Contrrian view in general.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
Like, and this is why I really don't want a
lot of senior There's all these like senior only communities
that they're building now. I don't really want any of
them in my community. Not too many of them, I
should say, because what happens is when you know people
you know again, I'm going to be I'm older than
you think. I'm going to be sixty five before you
know it, so I'll be agitating for this stuff. It's like,
(33:41):
don't want to pay taxes, don't think they should have
to pay taxes. Are very hostile to spending on future
oriented activities like educating kids or investing in infrastructure that
they're not going to personally benefit from or at least
don't perceive the personal benefit. And part of the problem
in our country and why we've become such a less
NYE countries.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
We're simply an older country.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
And you know, when you get too many old people,
you know, And again I could join AARP right now, Okay,
in a place they basically become an oppositional force.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
And this is part of the problem that we've had,
why we can't build anything, we can't do anything, And
so I feel like, yeah, you know, we know, we've
also had a situation where empirically, like the boomers who
are basically in that bracket, some of them are poor.
They are the wealthiest community, wealthiest generation by far in
American history, and much wealthier than anybody else. I mean,
(34:38):
the vast majority of American wealth. I shouldn't say the
best majority. Certainly the top tier of American wealth is
held by people in those age brackets, not younger people
who are trying to do different things. I do feel
like there's like there's things we need to balance there,
and we've become overbalan. We have become, in my opinion,
as a society, overly oriented towards serving the needs of
(35:02):
essentially retirees versus young people with families, which is why
our social security is going to collapse because people aren't
having kids, you know, because you can't have kids it's
too expensive, and we're putting too much of our too
much of our resources and policy towards towards towards away
from that.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And well here, let me let me throw this at you.
I think, as a boomer and the Boomer generation, I
think we threw too much money at drug addicts, you know.
I mean the billions and billions and billions of dollars
since the sixties and the drug war, you know, with Reagan, okay,
and the opioid crisis that they had in Ohio and
West Virginia eighty one thousand opioid tablets for a state
(35:45):
the size of West Virginia, it was like eight tablets
per citizen, right, And the Sackler family got off with
a smack and a hand and a fine. Okay, I mean,
and we're still doing it. We're still doing it today.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I agree, there's way, you know, believe it.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
There's way too many people like Feasting at the Trough
exactly should be in prison for the rest of their lives,
uh for for murder. And you know, in fact, my
view on people like the Sacklers is we should just
have a commitment that that you know, you know, if
in the future we have a you know, a better
(36:22):
system in America, they're going to be subjected to Nuremberg
like special tribunals.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Or what's that guy, my Cromwell, right, Cromwell, Yeah, that they.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
This idea that will game the system, and of course
they tried to gain them. I mean, don't you know
the Sacklers tried to gain.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
The bankruptcy laws to make themselves to walk away with,
you know, billions of dollars and wipe away all their
potential personal liability for opioids. And they're probably actually going
to get away with it. And it's like, you know,
when when Purdue Pharma in you know, filed for bankruptcy,
(37:02):
they filed in White Planes, New York, Like, why would
you file in White Planes? Because they have a one
bankruptcy judge in White Planes who is very favorable to
the petitioners I see. And they tried to get a
personal liability release out of the deal, which again they're
probably going to get. The Supreme Court said, no, you
(37:22):
can't do that, but it will probably they'll probably end
up getting it. And I say, yeah, you can game
the system, but justice will find you somewhere. It's sort
of like how sort of like how when you know,
with these like war crimes, it's like Pinochet, we're going
(37:43):
to arrest you. If you go to Europe, we're going
to put you on trial. If you're a war criminal,
you don't ever get to sleep well at night. And
if you are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths
in this country, you should never sleep well at night
for the rest of your life because there will be
special tribunals to bring you to justice at some point.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
From your that's my view on the opioid people.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
No, I mean, no, it's true.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
I'm not saying sim.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
I'm talking about legitimate trials, just like they've given the
Hague right now is what should be done.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
For you know, look what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Well, Aaron, look what they're doing right now in the Hague.
They got the workday there, the former Philippine president who
went after the drug dealers, who went after the murderers,
who you know, however he did it. He cleaned it up.
You know, people got killed. You know, this is the
name of the game in the drug war. And now
they're hanging him. They got him there and in the
(38:44):
Hague they arrested him. They have him there. He's going
on trial. And this guy tried to clean up his country.
I mean, it's upside down. Hey, we'll come up.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
We have already established you know that even even the
left would say special tribunals for certain kinds of crimes
are allowed. And I'm just saying we should do something
like that to the opioid kingpins.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
What do you think? What do you think about media
for people who lied? I mean media lies anyway. They
lie when they tell the truth, But mainstream media, let's
say PBS, the networks, the airwaves. My you know, my
thing is, look, they lied us through the Russia, collusion
with the agencies, with all these foreign governments and intel operations.
(39:34):
Where is the justice? When did they go again?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Lying?
Speaker 4 (39:38):
You know, lying isn't a crime, But I think there's
a big difference between lying in the media and killing
hundreds of thousands of people with opioids.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Oh yeah, no, there's a big difference. But look what
they did. They turned the country upside down. You know,
they said there was no the election, the election was
a fraud, and they said it wasn't. It's you know
that they have to pay some kind of penalty.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well, you know, one thing I'll just say again, and
Trump has done a little of this. You know, there's
nothing that forced thos Republicans to talk to the media.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I mean, if Trump had will love it.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Though, Aaron, don't you notice they love it and they
love going on the weekend shows, meet the mess, press
the meat. You know.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, Trump could easily have abolished the White House Press Corps.
He could have kicked all those people out of the
White House. He could have stopped talking to them. He
could be conducting his daily briefings, his press secretary could
be conducting daily briefings on X and taking questions online
from the general public. Right of giving the ap or
(40:41):
he's been there. But like, I'm not saying he should
do that, But the fact is, at any point in time,
conservatives and Republicans could simply choose to stop talking to
these people.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Podcasts and alternative media help him get back in office.
And what does he do. He goes and use is
Fox's manpower. He hires everybody for his administration through Fox.
I'm just being facetious, but what.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Was that guy like Dan Bongino got hired in the administration.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
He was he was podcasting, so Cash was a big
guest on all the podcasts, so he did was on
Fox and what's her name?
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Definitely brought a lot of the new media people into
the press briefings.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
He does social.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Media days, and so he's done a lot to give
those people access. But you're right, he hired a lot
of people from Fox.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
News before he called him fake news. Now now they're
his employment agency. He just calls him for whoever needs Aaron,
let's wrap it up, Michael, you want to wrap it
up for Warris?
Speaker 5 (41:43):
Come on, Yeah, I just wanted one quick question, Aaron.
You said it was very interesting about the what did
you call it? Vibe change from Trump?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (41:55):
Is there any legs in it? Can it be durable?
And after one term is apparently all he's going to
have left.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
Well, here's what I would say, is I I I
don't know. So if I could predict the future, I
would not be writing on substack. I would run a
gigantic hedge fund and be a billionaire right now. But
what I would say is, I do think some of
it will be durable, But I think how durable it is,
and you know how expansive it is, It's gonna, to
(42:27):
some extent depend on how successful Donald Trump is, and
I think he is not. He's not trying to essentially
create a majority, you know, essentially a solid majority kind
of new alignment. And you know, I think the Trump
(42:48):
administration could easily go off the rails. I think they're
doing a lot of good things, but uh, there's also
a lot of like like this Liberation Day tariffs. You know,
they rolled them all back so they know it was
a mistake. I think if the Trump admin explodes for
some reason, it certainly potentially takes a lot of the
(43:09):
vibe shift with it. So there's you know, the thing
about Donald Trump. That's why I supported Donald Trump in
twenty sixteen. It's a high variance outcome. I said, with Hillary,
you know what you're getting and it's going to be bad.
And if you want change in America, then Donald Trump
(43:30):
is the only candidate. But like a normal distribution, it's
got like fat tails, so it could be good, it
could be also really bad, you know. So it's a
higher risk, higher variance approach. And if you think we
need change, which I thinking, hey, we need change, then
you're going to be more attracted to that. If you're very,
(43:51):
very very successful, you know a person today, maybe you
don't think we need change, and that's there, but I
do think you know, there's a lot of you know,
there's upside with Trump, but there's also a lot of
risk with Trump. And you know, if we end up
in a negative scenario with his administration, major recession or
something like that, or a big foreign policy debacle or
(44:13):
who knows, I'm not don't exactly what it looked like.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Well, we're not lett. I'm not letting you off the
hook because I didn't hear you say anything about the pope,
and I didn't ask you the question. And I'm not
going to close this show until Aarwin gives us his
opinion of the new pope.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Go ahead, Yeah, well I am.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
You know, I'm Protestant, not Catholic. I haven't spent too
much time thinking about it. But of course I lived
in Chicago for twenty years and he's a Southsider, grew
up in Dalton and uh you know, socks fan. Uh so,
you know, very middle class kind of kind of a person.
(44:50):
So I think it's interesting. I think we'll just I
think we'll just have to see, you know, what he does.
But again, not being Catholic, I don't think that it's like,
you know, I'm not obsessing over okay, you know, over who,
over who, the Pope is and again you know he's uh,
you know, we'll just have to see.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
We'll have to see, all right, So let's close it
up with ropid dope and we got a new pope. Mike.
You want to say something.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
Yeah, just thank you, Haaron. It's so good to get
into what you have to say.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Thank you, sir, all right, Haroon, thank you so much
for coming back and keeping touch. Thank you, bye bye
bye bye bye bye
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Doctor Mike and
Colonel Mike on the Two Mics podcast. We wish everybody
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Speaker 2 (00:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Five four three two one, Hey, welcome back to Mike's
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(01:58):
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So uh, just visit our sponsors and don't forget. We're
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(02:19):
that's over five hundred and twenty shows, five point seven
million people visiting us on the Rumble channel. Now, just
what you know, we were on Rumble under a network
called Freedom First, which is where we started our show
five years ago. And Freedom First has now changed into
their six or seven generation, which is now called Maverick Broadcasting.
(02:42):
So we're going to be up on Mavick Broadcasting. Freedom
First is still up there on Rumble and that's where
you get all the shows, you know, the archive, and
we're going to fix network Radio dot US. There's there's
a little bit of change we're going to make. We're
going to put some storage on two mics, so little
things come down the pipe. And so what we're going
to do is just bring back one of our very
(03:05):
very old special friends, not old in age, but you know,
started out with us radio. Was very kind coming on
when we started the radio broadcast years ago, sixty, I
guess it's sixteen years, no way. Aaron w Ren, Aaron Ren.
How did I find Aaron Ren? Aaron Ren's just a
unique person, a very nice person. I think I was
reading Manhattan Institute and City Journal back in the day
(03:28):
and I kept watching his articles and I said, hey,
I called contact him. I says, hey, why don't you
come on on our radio show with us? And he's
always been kind and he's came and he's a great person.
He really great writer. Been around the states economics, state laws,
businesses and over the years, you know, before COVID, Aaron
(03:51):
was traveling a lot He used to live in New
York City for a time before he went back to
the Midwest and always had great articles. Can tell you
what's happening in columb This, Carmel, Indiana, you know, the
West coast, the East coast. So, Aaron Ren, I don't
have any music to bring you in like we used
to do on radio. My bumper music was great, you know,
(04:11):
we had the producer. But welcome back to the two
mics for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the kind words.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, you're a great guy. So Aaron, why don't you
update us? You know, I always liked the updates for
first you know, just tell the listeners because it's been
a while you've been on. Tell the listeners who you are,
your substack, what you're doing, and you have a couple
of things. You're right. You write about men's issues, Christianity,
you know others. So give us a little bit to
the listener and we'll go from there.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
I'm a writer, researcher, and consultant in the Indianapolis area.
I guess I've really had three careers. First was management consulting.
I was with Accenture for a long time. I was
in that field for like fifteen eighteen years. Then I
switched into urban policy, and as with the Manhattan Institute,
as you know, we're essentially I'm just acting like a
consultant to cities, you know, in a sense, not not
(05:04):
literally as a paid consultant, but just applying the same
sorts of thoughts to it. And then I sort of
pivoted a little bit again to focus. Originally my focus
was sort of men in the church. About a decade ago,
I saw that so many young men were turning to
online influencers looking for life guidance, and they weren't turning
(05:27):
to traditional authorities like churches, parents, teachers, politicians, And I
really felt that this this manispheres they called it. While
there was a lot I didn't like about it, there
was a lot that they actually got right, and men
were turning in their droves, and I wanted to help
churches become more competitive for that, and so you know,
(05:48):
I started writing.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
About that issue.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And you know, if anything, that problem has only gotten bigger,
you know, with people like Jordan Peterson got huge, Joe Rogan, Theovonne,
all these different casters, Jocko Willinks, so many writers, podcasters,
YouTubers with millions of followers are done in one hundreds
of thousands, tens of thousands of followers, and frankly, the
traditional authorities are still missing in action.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
So that's still a problem. But I've sort of become,
you know, a little.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Bit more of a you know, a diagnostition of the culture. Uh,
you know, and I was part of it. I was
very early to calling Trump back in twenty fifteen, not
even twenty sixteen. Twenty fifteen, uh, you know, is a
rocket ship on the way up. And so I've people
have liked my insights on the culture, so I do
a lot of that, although I still do some work
(06:38):
on cities as well. And again, culture and Zeitgeist and
things like that are a lot of the city. So
you can find all my writing at my newsletter Aaronren
dot com.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Ar O n r n N dot com. Go sign up.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
It's almost all free and check it out.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And the substack is the same, correct, that is my
substack yet? Okay, got you all right? All right? So
so Mike, there we go. We started up. So what
would you like to discuss today? Eric? Would you like
to start out what's going on in the church? Would
you like to start out with podcasting. I see substack
as big now. I mean I went on there just
to look, I don't know, about a month ago, and
(07:17):
now it's just taken off. And I don't know which
to read first, if it's the X or the Substack,
because there's a lot of good stuff on both. But
I see there's some serious writing going on on Substack.
I wanted to get Mike to get on there, you know,
because Mike has a great blog and he's been doing
it for years. And you know, if Mike went on
there and did some Substack, I don't know how much
(07:38):
time he has during the day.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeahs is sort of like the return of a blog.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Blogs were huge for a long time, and really it
was Google who killed off the blogs. So back when
I was like a regular blogger, if I wrote an
article about something, it might show up like in the
top five hits on Google. Yeah, if you're searching for
that topic. People love blogs because the bloggers were giving
(08:04):
in depth, thoughtful analysis and the mainstream media didn't like that,
and so they complained to Google.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
And you know, I'm.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Simplifying here, but basically Google changed their algorithm so that
now they will always return major media sites for almost
any any topic. So you're start on something, it's going
to be New York Times, CNN. All of those blogs
don't used to be able. A good blog piece would
(08:34):
actually Google would know this is a better piece than
the New York Times piece, and it would be ahead
of the New York Times. That doesn't happen anymore, and
so substack is sort of the return of the blog.
But even today it's it's very hard to you know,
get good seo. So like Google doesn't really like linking
to substack, and of course Twitter x is in a
(08:58):
big feud with substack, and so they want they basically
punish you if you link to substack or mentioned substack
or put links.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
So it is kind of a difficult environment.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
But substack is in a sense flourishing because they created
a sort of a model that was based more on
email rather than people going to your website. So you
do have that direct connection to your readers in a
way that you didn't.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I like it. It's good.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
A lot of people are coming there, a lot of
you know, mainstream journalists if you gonna call them, that
have basically figured out they can make a lot more
money off of them off substack than they can for
working for a publication. And again, not all these people
are my cup of tea. But you know, Jennifer Rubin
(09:44):
left the Washington Post and went to substack. She started
a substack with norm Issen and in less than a
month they had three hundred and fifty thousand subscribers.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Wow, and how much does that subscribe? Let's say, what
is it? Five ten bucks a month?
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Those that's the free tier subsc So probably the rule
of them is you get four percent conversion on substack.
So but even if you get four of those paying, like,
she's making good coin. And you know, so the people
who have like big existing brands, they can bring over
big audiences.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know they're doing they're doing well over there.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know, Aaron, there was a time when we were
on Rumbled, before Rumble merged with a thing called Locals.
We were doing between sixty to one hundred thousand views
on a show. And then you know, along came this
algorithm thing and all this other magic coopla they did.
But once they merged with Locals, which was some little
(10:41):
thing startup where you could chat kind of thing and
post things, they went through our shows, and there are
shows that we did that are very hard because you know,
it was COVID time and so on, and our our
listeners or our viewers dropped from like one hundred to
(11:02):
sixty thousand to thirty thousand and then just went off
the cliff to like twelve thousand or less. And I
think today all the guys that were on Freedom First Network,
all the guys that are on that are now on
Maverick that shifted over from Freedom First, who started out
with Freedom First, we don't get more than twenty five hundred,
(11:24):
I think tops thirty two hundred views on Rumble. So
we are algorithms out, you know what I mean on
this Rumble thing.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
But what he's doing now is all these social media companies,
So like any of these companies like even Rumble, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok,
even Twitter has gone this direction. Yes, they've basically gone
to an algorithm based feed where rather than seeing mostly
the people you follow or choose to follow, you see
(11:55):
what they decide you should see.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right, And so that.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Means anybody who gets big on one of these platforms,
you know, they the platform can basically cut you off
at any point. And with all those with all of
those platforms, you have no ability. Like let's just say
you had a huge YouTube channel with three hundred thousand subscribers,
getting lots of views on your videos, and one day
(12:20):
YouTube kicks you off. You have no way of even
informing your old subscribers where they can now find you.
This is the advantage of the substack model. Substack is
based on a direct email connection. So yes, you can
surf to my site. Yes, they have an app that
has an algorithm of some sorts, but most of my
(12:43):
people who are watching me, they watch the videos. I
want people to subscribe to my newsletter. Go to Aaronroun
dot com and sign up. Then I can reach you.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
I can always tell you what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
I have a connection to you, a direct connection to
my readers, and that means that it's a lot. Even
if even if substack kicked me off tomorrow, I have
backups of my email lift I could go start a
new mailing list, tell everybody, hey, here's my new site,
here's how to get in touch with me, And in
fact I could even add them to a new mailing
(13:15):
list transparently. I could leave substack and take all my
readers with me. Which people have done, and so I
have some fears about the future of Substack. I mean, like,
this thing's not going to last forever. Nothing lasts forever.
I feel like it's you know, uh, it's something that's
you know. I feel like it's a much better model
(13:37):
for people if you are inclined, if you're like a
really really good writer, you know, if you're a radio guy,
is not as attractive a platform because it does do podcasts.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
It's definitely for writers. We've had a couple of guests
that came on from Substack that we put on because
we have another show now on America out Loud dot News,
which is The National Security We're one of five shows
we start on Monday at a pm Eastern and Mike
and I do that show, and we've brought people from
substat to the National Security How people who are you know,
(14:11):
inclined to do world affairs and so on and security
issues and the gentleman that we started with Jeff who
started Freedom First Network at a partner, which I don't
think he's with anymore. He's now a transferred or transition
to what they call Maverick Broadcasting. He started his own
social media because of this algorithm and all this nonsense
(14:34):
of bumping us on Rumble and so on, and I
can't understand that. You know, when when you open a Rumble, right, Aaron,
you see these cheesy commercials. You know, they're selling some
felt flashlight or something. It's not like high end, but
they got the You have to watch two of these
commercials and two of the next commercials, which nobody's probably
buying this stuff. Maybe they are, I don't know. It's
(14:55):
like a bitshoot commercial, you know. And then you finally
get to the of the U to the Rumble and
they and they may bust in with commercials depending on
what they want to do. Now Jeff has created Maverick Broadcasting.
I think this is what Mike five generations have changes
since the beginning. Yeah, and now he's created his own
(15:15):
social media call Pickaxe, which is another First Amendment free
speech kind of thing where you can post your youtubes
or you should look at it and YouTube's video so
on and and and it monetized, it doesn't bump you. Now.
Remember a lot of people ran to Twitter when Elon
bought it because there was monetization before they went into
(15:38):
the algorithm thing. And you had people screaming, oh look
how much money. We've never ever gone on anything, you know,
thinking about money. We just have our podcast and if
people want to buy stuff that we have from our
our sponsors, which is you know, good stuff. I mean
it's we're not selling the hamburger meat or something. You know.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Yeah, you know I have I don't have a huge
X account. I've got like thirty something thousand followers.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Well that's big, and I mostly.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
You know, I mostly post what I you know, I
call high quality content, right, you know, I'm not worried
about what their algorithm does.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I use it for satires this way. You know, if
you check me out, most of my stuff is satire
because I think there's a lot of insane people on
Twitter X, and I think there's people like yourself. But
for the most part, it's like it's in between you know,
Gilbert or what is that the family guy and then
some serious posting. So I just go with satire because.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
The thing is here, here's the thing on Twitter.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
So, like I have monetization, and like my last payment
was pretty good. It was like sixty bucks, okay, so
it's it's buying some it's covering my coffee budget and
things like that. But you know what happens when you
turn on monetization. It's actually made Twitter a lot worse
because now all anybody tries to do is gain the system,
(16:55):
and like a lot of like a lot of these
bot networks and things. So there are you know a
lot of people demonstrated there were networks of people out
of India that were all like interacting with each other's
posts in order to gain the algorithms for monetization. And
so people produce a lot of It's based on like
how many verified users interact with your post, so it
(17:17):
changes all the time. People are like they call it slop.
It's like people are posting stuff just because they hope
it goes viral to exploit the algorithm and get the
monetization and basically their thing with like it is like
I like Elon in a lot of ways, but fundamentally
you make money by being one of Elon's favorite people.
He'll boost you, he'll retweet you, he'll put you in
(17:38):
the algorithm.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
He does follow us by the way. Yeah, what happens.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
What happens a lot of times now is like let's
say you post something and it starts to go viral.
Big accounts will pick up on that and they will
essentially copy your tweet and it will go viral on
their account, much bigger on your account. So essentially people
are engaging in a kind of content theft. And so
(18:02):
I really think that although you know, Elon has made
Twitter better from a free speech perspective, without question, it's
probably on net positive, not all of the changes are good.
The quality of what's on Twitter is way down.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Oh yes, and.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
It's way way way down.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And there's a lot of clown car stuff, which I enjoyed,
some comedy and funny videos and so on, but you're right,
the content is not as serious as it was when
he started out. And remember most of the left or
mainstream media, you know, they just bolted. I think they
have another place that they post stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Now, a lot of what the Blue Sky, but Blue
skuy's cratering. It's not doing very well, and as you
can imagine, it's constant like recriminations and attacks against people.
And you know, a lot left on Twitter because you
basically like it's where it is still the place where like,
(18:57):
if you want to call it public diplomacy, it is
the book square. And so you see like government officials
even in foreign countries, like announce stuff on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, like you're not on Twitter, you know you're missing out.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
No, you're right. The foreign officials they like Twitter, they
enjoy Twitter. But you know, it's a it's a place.
You know, it's you got a little bit mix of everything.
But like you say, the content's down. I'd rather go
to substat looking for content. You have more serious people
and doctor Mike soon. I hope you get a subsett really,
because I think we really do. Well. What's that I said?
Speaker 5 (19:34):
I've been downloading it, but once I downloaded, I can't
find it, So there's something amiss.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Well, we'll just get you that Beatles album, The Magical
Mystery Tour.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeam, I've only been down there for.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
A long time. So Aaron, give us a little bit
about Christianity. Come on, let's hear it. I know you
you were, you were hitting the Protestants a couple of
months back. Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
So yeah, so I'm most famous or coming up with
this model called the three World's model, where I track
the sort of decline of Christianity from nineteen sixty four
to the present into three phases that I call the positive, neutral,
negative world. So positive is sixty four to ninety four,
Christianity is declining, but it's still basically viewed positively in
(20:19):
our society. Ninety four to twenty fourteen, Christianity it's declining.
It's not seen positively anymore, but it's not really viewed
negatively yet either. It's just one more lifestyle choice among
many in a sort of pluralistic public square. Then in
twenty fourteen we had a second tipping point and enter
the negative world, where, for the first time in the
four hundred year history of America, sort of official elite
(20:41):
culture now views Christianity positively or excuse me, negatively, or
certainly at least skeptically. Maybe that's a better way to
put it. If you merely identify as a Christian, it
won't necessarily get you canceled, especially if you're like an
Episcopalian or something, but the content of your Christianity cannot
(21:03):
you know, conflict.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Well, hold on, for the folks that don't know what
an episcopalian is, it's a vanilla Catholic. Continue, ye, thank
you so.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
But I think one of the things what I would
say is definitely with sort of Trump's you know, Trump's
election in twenty twenty four really did create what they've
called a vibe shift in the culture, and it's caused
I think a lot of shifts. You know, DEI is
in retreat. Unlike in twenty sixteen, where basically every instrument
(21:38):
of society, every institution of society declared itself to resistance
against Trump.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
That has not been the case this time.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
And I think part of it is the left went
way way too far with the BLM riots, with COVID,
with this DEI thing, and even like sort of like
middle of the road people have had enough, and of
course bad governance in our cities, with homelessness going everywhere,
high housing price is out of control, crime was up
(22:06):
for a while, you know, quality of life degraded. People
just got sick of it, you know, and so people
were ready for something else. And I think the fact
that Trump won the popular vote really was important because
you couldn't really claim that, oh, it was just another
(22:27):
you know, exploitation of the electoral college, and the majority
of Americans didn't want him. Well, actually he did. He
won the popular vote, So I think that provides a
sort of legitimacy there. And I think as part of
this vibe shift, the sort of overt hostility to Christianity
has definitely declined somewhat, and in fact, we're seeing some
(22:50):
indications that church attendants has sort of stabilized. There are
far fewer people who are sort of abandoning faith, gen Z,
especially gen Z men, maybe attending church more often than
you know, maybe we would have expected. So I think
there are some interesting positive signs, but I definitely think
(23:10):
from a cultural perspective, we are in a definitively post
Christian culture, which is to say, for example, look at
what has happened every time abortion has been on the
ballot since Roversa's way was overturned. Abortion has won one
hundred percent of the time. The only time it didn't
quote unquote when was in places like Florida, where there's
(23:33):
a super majority requirement to amend the constitution. A majority
of the people voted in favor of abortion there, but
they just didn't get enough to hit like the sixty
percent threshold. Everybody clearly wants gambling to be legal. Look
look at how we've just metastasized gambling in our society
and sports betting and all of this, and literally, like
(23:55):
in what I've called the negative world. All the old
sort of moral scheme of Christianity is called. It's not
just the sexual moral schema which everyone wants to think about.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
It's about gambling.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
It's also about drugs, you know, the pot legalization and
just the normalization and acceptance of smoking pot or going
on an ayahuasca trip. Taking you knowsychedelics has gotten big.
I can't tell you how many upper middle class, you know,
professional progressive types you know, are consuming cannabis products or
magic mushrooms or things like that. It's pervasive, it's normal,
(24:31):
and you can even think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Medical marijuana. I can't walk anywhere sometimes in Virginia or
outside of Virginia without the place blown up. I just
can't stomach the stink.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, I mean they talked about quote
unquote medical marijuana, but as soon as it was made legal,
the medical you know, discuse went away.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And that is a.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Problem you go into.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
This is one reason, like cities have become unattractive to families.
You know, you walk around down the city now, pot everywhere.
You can't escape it. And so you know, when I've
got like, you know, seven year old son, you know,
we live downtown he was even younger. Yeah, do I
really want to be, you know, my son like walking
(25:16):
through clouds of pot smoke everywhere? No, And so you
come out to the suburbs. It's here too, but there's
much much, much less of it.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
They should have areas fit them to smoke, just like cigarettes.
You know, remember a cigarette was no good, You couldn't
smell the smell and it was cancerous. But you had
an area where you could, you know, smoke a cigarette
and have an ashtray or some big container. They should
have pot smoking areas because it just wafts all through
wherever you like, you say, if you're going shopping, if
you're going, you know, walking around to a restaurant. It's everywhere,
(25:48):
and it's sickney, you know.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Yeah, the idea that you know, when we look at
like how harshly we've treated cigarettes, right, and yet it's
sort of like, oh, you know, you should be able
to smoke all the pot you want, anywhere you want.
And of course, look, the pot thing is, it's negative.
It's very bad for our society. Even the New York Times,
(26:11):
you know, has sort of signaled, hey, wait a minute,
they've done a lot of reporting on these different cannaboid
syndromes that can you know, cause severe health problems, psychosis,
particularly young people who smoke a lot of pot ending
up with various you know, forms of mental illness and psychosis,
which I think has happened to you know, family members myself,
(26:33):
to be honest, and they even admit that, like, yeah,
I smoke too much pot, when this is probably why
i'm you know, I'm bipolar. So there's that, there's a
lot of problems. We know, people are driving impaired and so,
but it's like nobody wants to talk about it, and
it's not it's and it's a gateway drug.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
It's not a harmless substance. And again, I think there's.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
A lot of people who can you know, there's a
lot of people who can smoke it just fine, uh,
you know, and you can say, yes, alcohol, you know,
problems with alcohol too. I'd be the first person to
agree with that. And by the way, there's a lot
of people who are turning away from alcohol. There's a
big no drinking movement. Every restaurant now has a mocktail list.
But I just think I just think pot's back.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
I just think they wanted to dump people down the pot.
I think they want to dump people down. And you know,
years ago when it was you know, when we were young,
Mike and I, they used to call it dope, and
it is. It makes you dopey. I mean, there's nothing
about it like people just I don't know if if
it does have any medical uh advantages, but if if
(27:41):
it's so good, they that that CBD thing, just drink
that or put that on you as a salve or whatever.
It is a lotion, you know.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
I just think that the CBD thing is obviously bunk
because everybody claims that CBD cures everything. It's like pot,
it cures everything, you know, like there's no drugs.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
That cure or everything. I'm sorry, you know.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
So it's like this idea that like, oh, you know, CBD,
it may it be cured by depression.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Oh CBD. It helped my back pain. Oh CBD.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
You know, it's like my digestive issues are all better.
Like oh, really, there's like one wonder drug it fixes
all the stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I don't think, so, Aaron, Aaron, go back to prohibition
for a minute. Remember prohibition, and then we had legalization
of you know, and then you had the distillers, and
you had legalization of the alcohol and what happened. So
the government gets involved and as long as they get
their tax on it, like cigarettes, they're happy. And then
in Virginia it's still like the colonial days. The Virginia
(28:41):
runs the alcohol. They have their own it's called ABC stores.
You got to buy the liquor from a Virginia's operated store,
by the common stores.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Not a lot of states in those.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
And then and then and then you have other stores
which give you licenses or whatever. Well they figured it out.
They figured these pot guys are making tons of money,
so why don't we become the pot dealers and we
collect the tax and we can grow it, and we
could give licenses to people who want to grow it.
You know, it's a business. Then it's like lotteries. You know,
(29:12):
remember before it was called gambling, right, and now it's well, listen,
we're gonna build schools, we're gonna build roads, we're gonna
put red lights. We need money for the county. You know,
kids want a swimming pool. They come up with all
the excuses. As long as you have a vice, they
will they will get in there and make you happy.
They're collecting money. It's like property taxes, aaron. Are property
(29:35):
taxes on a home legal? Yes, they made it legal,
But are they fair? Absolutely not. How many schools can
you build? You'll be paying property taxes way after you
own the home, right And what's the benefit. What is
the benefit? It's the county and it's also it's somebody
(29:56):
comes up with I forgot what they call them actual worries.
They come up with a scale and they say, well,
you know, based on XYZ, you know, each home in
your county is going to be this much money based
on you know, zero point three two zero point formula,
and you'll be paying four thousand dollars a year on
(30:16):
your home. And then we'll raise the property tax because
the home value went up. And as the home value
goes up, we'll raise your property. And then a person's
like sixty seventy eighty years old and they're not working
anymore and they may not have enough savings or get
Social Security, and they say, well, you can't pay your taxes,
We've got to take your home. How is that fair?
(30:37):
You know?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah, well, I mean like I'm you know, see where
I differ from your typical like, you know, person on
the political right, is I'm not necessarily an anti taxer
all the time. I want the government to do things,
and I think a local government, like the town where
I live has great local government. I'm happy to pay
taxes now our property. We have property taxes. I think
they're very low comparatively.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
H I was.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
I was comparing my property tax to property tax I
still live in Illinoie lived in Chicago to some very
similar homes in communities in Chicago that are not even
highlight half price three or four times is high property
taxes and double the price of the home and three
to four times of property taxes unless crime.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
So I'm like, yeah, Or you could think about New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
I don't know, I don't know about Virginia, but like
New Jersey, or you know the New York metro areas
like Famas.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Long Island. Hey, hey, let's take Long Island Aaron, Yeah,
a Long.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Island, all that stuff. It's yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
You own like a ranch house and it's like twenty
five thousand dollars a year in property taxes.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah it is. Now you take a nineteen let's say,
nineteen sixties home that's been renovated, right, it was probably
purchased for thirty two thousand, right, and then you know
you did modifications and renovations over the years, and let's
say the value today is about one point seven one
point eight million, right about that. That's about a fair price.
(32:06):
They're paying eighteen to twenty two thousand dollars a year
of tax on that. It's totally insane.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Well, you know, there may be a tax, but like
if you own a one point eight million dollar house,
you're not exactly poor. And you know, so.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
I think there's some legitimate, you know, legitimate interest with
you know, senior taxes and things like that. But you know, fundamentally,
people who are going to pocket massive windfall gains that
they didn't do anything to create. I mean, the person
who bought that house for thirty two thousand dollars. It's
(32:43):
not like I invested thirty two thousand dollars in a
business and that's how I made my money. It's like
I got lucky when I bought real estate in a
place that got hot, and so it is sort of
a windfall gain. And you know, letting people essentially make
one point eight million dollars profit and not pay any taxes, well,
it's one.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Point sixty two, you know, inflation and so on. But
still maybe it's your grandfather's house you're living in now,
or your mother and dad's house, you know, or maybe
you just purchased it out right, whatever that is.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
This is my Contrrian view in general.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
Like, and this is why I really don't want a
lot of senior There's all these like senior only communities
that they're building now. I don't really want any of
them in my community. Not too many of them, I
should say, because what happens is when you know people
you know again, I'm going to be I'm older than
you think. I'm going to be sixty five before you
know it, so I'll be agitating for this stuff. It's like,
(33:41):
don't want to pay taxes, don't think they should have
to pay taxes. Are very hostile to spending on future
oriented activities like educating kids or investing in infrastructure that
they're not going to personally benefit from or at least
don't perceive the personal benefit. And part of the problem
in our country and why we've become such a less
NYE countries.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
We're simply an older country.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
And you know, when you get too many old people,
you know, And again I could join AARP right now, Okay,
in a place they basically become an oppositional force.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
And this is part of the problem that we've had,
why we can't build anything, we can't do anything, And
so I feel like, yeah, you know, we know, we've
also had a situation where empirically, like the boomers who
are basically in that bracket, some of them are poor.
They are the wealthiest community, wealthiest generation by far in
American history, and much wealthier than anybody else. I mean,
(34:38):
the vast majority of American wealth. I shouldn't say the
best majority. Certainly the top tier of American wealth is
held by people in those age brackets, not younger people
who are trying to do different things. I do feel
like there's like there's things we need to balance there,
and we've become overbalan. We have become, in my opinion,
as a society, overly oriented towards serving the needs of
(35:02):
essentially retirees versus young people with families, which is why
our social security is going to collapse because people aren't
having kids, you know, because you can't have kids it's
too expensive, and we're putting too much of our too
much of our resources and policy towards towards towards away
from that.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And well here, let me let me throw this at you.
I think, as a boomer and the Boomer generation, I
think we threw too much money at drug addicts, you know.
I mean the billions and billions and billions of dollars
since the sixties and the drug war, you know, with Reagan, okay,
and the opioid crisis that they had in Ohio and
West Virginia eighty one thousand opioid tablets for a state
(35:45):
the size of West Virginia, it was like eight tablets
per citizen, right, And the Sackler family got off with
a smack and a hand and a fine. Okay, I mean,
and we're still doing it. We're still doing it today.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
I agree, there's way, you know, believe it.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
There's way too many people like Feasting at the Trough
exactly should be in prison for the rest of their lives,
uh for for murder. And you know, in fact, my
view on people like the Sacklers is we should just
have a commitment that that you know, you know, if
in the future we have a you know, a better
(36:22):
system in America, they're going to be subjected to Nuremberg
like special tribunals.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Or what's that guy, my Cromwell, right, Cromwell, Yeah, that they.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
This idea that will game the system, and of course
they tried to gain them. I mean, don't you know
the Sacklers tried to gain.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
The bankruptcy laws to make themselves to walk away with,
you know, billions of dollars and wipe away all their
potential personal liability for opioids. And they're probably actually going
to get away with it. And it's like, you know,
when when Purdue Pharma in you know, filed for bankruptcy,
(37:02):
they filed in White Planes, New York, Like, why would
you file in White Planes? Because they have a one
bankruptcy judge in White Planes who is very favorable to
the petitioners I see. And they tried to get a
personal liability release out of the deal, which again they're
probably going to get. The Supreme Court said, no, you
(37:22):
can't do that, but it will probably they'll probably end
up getting it. And I say, yeah, you can game
the system, but justice will find you somewhere. It's sort
of like how sort of like how when you know,
with these like war crimes, it's like Pinochet, we're going
(37:43):
to arrest you. If you go to Europe, we're going
to put you on trial. If you're a war criminal,
you don't ever get to sleep well at night. And
if you are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths
in this country, you should never sleep well at night
for the rest of your life because there will be
special tribunals to bring you to justice at some point.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
From your that's my view on the opioid people.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
No, I mean, no, it's true.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
I'm not saying sim.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
I'm talking about legitimate trials, just like they've given the
Hague right now is what should be done.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
For you know, look what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Well, Aaron, look what they're doing right now in the Hague.
They got the workday there, the former Philippine president who
went after the drug dealers, who went after the murderers,
who you know, however he did it. He cleaned it up.
You know, people got killed. You know, this is the
name of the game in the drug war. And now
they're hanging him. They got him there and in the
(38:44):
Hague they arrested him. They have him there. He's going
on trial. And this guy tried to clean up his country.
I mean, it's upside down. Hey, we'll come up.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
We have already established you know that even even the
left would say special tribunals for certain kinds of crimes
are allowed. And I'm just saying we should do something
like that to the opioid kingpins.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
What do you think? What do you think about media
for people who lied? I mean media lies anyway. They
lie when they tell the truth, But mainstream media, let's
say PBS, the networks, the airwaves. My you know, my
thing is, look, they lied us through the Russia, collusion
with the agencies, with all these foreign governments and intel operations.
(39:34):
Where is the justice? When did they go again?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Lying?
Speaker 4 (39:38):
You know, lying isn't a crime, But I think there's
a big difference between lying in the media and killing
hundreds of thousands of people with opioids.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Oh yeah, no, there's a big difference. But look what
they did. They turned the country upside down. You know,
they said there was no the election, the election was
a fraud, and they said it wasn't. It's you know
that they have to pay some kind of penalty.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well, you know, one thing I'll just say again, and
Trump has done a little of this. You know, there's
nothing that forced thos Republicans to talk to the media.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I mean, if Trump had will love it.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Though, Aaron, don't you notice they love it and they
love going on the weekend shows, meet the mess, press
the meat. You know.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, Trump could easily have abolished the White House Press Corps.
He could have kicked all those people out of the
White House. He could have stopped talking to them. He
could be conducting his daily briefings, his press secretary could
be conducting daily briefings on X and taking questions online
from the general public. Right of giving the ap or
(40:41):
he's been there. But like, I'm not saying he should
do that, But the fact is, at any point in time,
conservatives and Republicans could simply choose to stop talking to
these people.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Podcasts and alternative media help him get back in office.
And what does he do. He goes and use is
Fox's manpower. He hires everybody for his administration through Fox.
I'm just being facetious, but what.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Was that guy like Dan Bongino got hired in the administration.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
He was he was podcasting, so Cash was a big
guest on all the podcasts, so he did was on
Fox and what's her name?
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Definitely brought a lot of the new media people into
the press briefings.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
He does social.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Media days, and so he's done a lot to give
those people access. But you're right, he hired a lot
of people from Fox.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
News before he called him fake news. Now now they're
his employment agency. He just calls him for whoever needs Aaron,
let's wrap it up, Michael, you want to wrap it
up for Warris?
Speaker 5 (41:43):
Come on, Yeah, I just wanted one quick question, Aaron.
You said it was very interesting about the what did
you call it? Vibe change from Trump?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (41:55):
Is there any legs in it? Can it be durable?
And after one term is apparently all he's going to
have left.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
Well, here's what I would say, is I I I
don't know. So if I could predict the future, I
would not be writing on substack. I would run a
gigantic hedge fund and be a billionaire right now. But
what I would say is, I do think some of
it will be durable, But I think how durable it is,
and you know how expansive it is, It's gonna, to
(42:27):
some extent depend on how successful Donald Trump is, and
I think he is not. He's not trying to essentially
create a majority, you know, essentially a solid majority kind
of new alignment. And you know, I think the Trump
(42:48):
administration could easily go off the rails. I think they're
doing a lot of good things, but uh, there's also
a lot of like like this Liberation Day tariffs. You know,
they rolled them all back so they know it was
a mistake. I think if the Trump admin explodes for
some reason, it certainly potentially takes a lot of the
(43:09):
vibe shift with it. So there's you know, the thing
about Donald Trump. That's why I supported Donald Trump in
twenty sixteen. It's a high variance outcome. I said, with Hillary,
you know what you're getting and it's going to be bad.
And if you want change in America, then Donald Trump
(43:30):
is the only candidate. But like a normal distribution, it's
got like fat tails, so it could be good, it
could be also really bad, you know. So it's a
higher risk, higher variance approach. And if you think we
need change, which I thinking, hey, we need change, then
you're going to be more attracted to that. If you're very,
(43:51):
very very successful, you know a person today, maybe you
don't think we need change, and that's there, but I
do think you know, there's a lot of you know,
there's upside with Trump, but there's also a lot of
risk with Trump. And you know, if we end up
in a negative scenario with his administration, major recession or
something like that, or a big foreign policy debacle or
(44:13):
who knows, I'm not don't exactly what it looked like.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Well, we're not lett. I'm not letting you off the
hook because I didn't hear you say anything about the pope,
and I didn't ask you the question. And I'm not
going to close this show until Aarwin gives us his
opinion of the new pope.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Go ahead, Yeah, well I am.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
You know, I'm Protestant, not Catholic. I haven't spent too
much time thinking about it. But of course I lived
in Chicago for twenty years and he's a Southsider, grew
up in Dalton and uh you know, socks fan. Uh so,
you know, very middle class kind of kind of a person.
(44:50):
So I think it's interesting. I think we'll just I
think we'll just have to see, you know, what he does.
But again, not being Catholic, I don't think that it's like,
you know, I'm not obsessing over okay, you know, over who,
over who, the Pope is and again you know he's uh,
you know, we'll just have to see.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
We'll have to see, all right, So let's close it
up with ropid dope and we got a new pope. Mike.
You want to say something.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
Yeah, just thank you, Haaron. It's so good to get
into what you have to say.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Thank you, sir, all right, Haroon, thank you so much
for coming back and keeping touch. Thank you, bye bye
bye bye bye bye
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