Transcribe your podcast
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The brown Pandit's Brown, this is welcome to the Brown Pundit's Brown cast. We have a co-host today myself. We have a from the at the Emissary on Twitter and our guest today is another brown pundit, but a real pundit in the sense of an online and media saga. How do you see your last name? I don't even know where you're from. Getting injured and Jedi. Is that like undera.

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Yeah. Yeah, we're on there, people. All right.

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See, I got that right. So so soccer. Saagar is the host of The Rising on the Hill along with crystal ball. It's a pretty, pretty, pretty awesome show, guys. I mean, I watch it pretty regularly because I think it gives us insight into both. I mean, across the board, I guess in American politics, it's it's not like NBC or MSNBC or CNN or FOX. It's not really tilted towards any sort of particular partisan politics.

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It gives you more of like a ground level understanding of what's going on soccer. So why don't you tell us about yourself and what your background is and how you get into all this?

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Yeah, sure, man. I mean, it's interesting. I don't have, like, a traditional background, so to speak. So, like, I got into this kind of tangentially I started out as a reporter. I actually is a foreign policy reporter. I was working at The Daily Caller, got hired by Tucker Carlson. Right when I literally started graduate school, I was nobody. And he hired me on on a chance and on a whim based on a promise.

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And so I owe that guy for a lot. And basically, I was covering the Pentagon. I was covering the Obama administration. I my views really kind of evolved a lot over time. I started in the business right around twenty fifteen and so it was like twenty fifteen. I definitely had more like hawkish views. I was like a much more traditional, like conservative. It's like pretty embarrassing to go back and look back on it. And what's happened is they happened to be working The Daily Caller right at the time, the twenty sixteen election, which was awesome because I was literally like at the beating heart of the American right.

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And it's like you can see in their traffic, you can like see which stories are resonating, which stories are taking off, like which are the things that you want. And I just was really realizing, like over that time, just how out of touch actually I was. And I'd say the final nail in the coffin for all of that was Trump's victory 2016.

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And I just remember sitting there being like, wow, holy shit, like all of the people I am supposed to listen to and told me that Trump was bad and he was I'm going to get elected. And he was, you know, had no connection with the American people as they had no idea what they were talking about.

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And that was like I still to this day, one of the most liberating experiences of my entire life, because it just let me down a path where I was like, no, I'm going to read this person. Even if it's supposedly bad, I'm going to entertain the idea that we shouldn't be in Afghanistan. I'm going to entertain the idea that we should have like a popular democracy and that our our policy should flow from their wants and their needs, not from technocratic elite.

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So all of that basically being said. I became a White House correspondent at the same time of kind of my awakening. I got to interview President Trump like four different times. But honestly, I hated being a journalist.

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I hated being a White House correspondent or straight news, so to speak, because I had to sit there in that room, like in the White House press briefing room and ask questions.

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And just I mean, you realize, like, the fundamental dishonest of the mainstream media because you literally brushing up against them your shoulders when they're screaming questions at Trump, which is utterly useless and it's all just a bunch of bullshit for their television packages. And that really I mean, just led me down a path where I was like, screw this. I was like, I really didn't want to do it anymore, but I didn't I didn't know exactly what I was going to do.

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And at the same time, my friend Buck Sexton, who currently used to sit in my chair on Rising, he let me in, that he was basically leaving. And I came in and I decided, like I wanted to do this show with Crystal, but we wanted to totally reimagine it.

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It became a show which really tapped into, I think, the populous energy on the right and the left. And I think that what we try to do is kind of be the best versions of what left or right populism are engaged in a good dialogue. And I mean, basically, it's all just about hating the elites more than we hate each other. And so that's what we try to do every day.

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So, I mean, that's pretty awesome. I mean, that really comes through on your on your program that you guys, first of all, respect each other's positions and and arguments and you guys kind of do the steel manning of across the board of people's positions. So but before we get more into the show and your particular views and ideas, what really drove you into, like, I guess wanting to even do politics and and how did you kind of become conservative?

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I mean, quote unquote, conservative because, you know, especially in the South Asian community or in the Indian. Maybe whatever you want to call it, we are tend to be much more Democratic and liberal, but, you know, so but there is a trend nowadays where there's a shift towards more conservative politics. So what kind of drove you towards that?

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You know, man, I have just been the political kid since I was young, a young kid, honestly, like I remember 2000 election, the the election. I was in Texas. I grew up in College Station, Texas.

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Big, pretty big and well, not huge, but like a moderately sized Indian community of people, everybody's parents are professors.

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Surprise, surprise. Both my parents are professors as well, PhDs.

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And so that's kind of the environment that I grew up in. It was generally apolitical. Like you said, everybody's kind of Democrat. But I love politics. I mean, George W. Bush was our governor then the 2000 recount. I remember that vividly. But what really broke the dam for me was Iraq. I you know, that is what made me more politically engaged in anything. And I was living literally I live in the town where H.W. Bush's library is.

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I mean, this is W. country. This was the place where everybody was supporting the war.

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And I was like maybe 11 or 12. And I was like, no, this is bullshit. And, you know, I don't have, like, the traditional lefty view, but like, I knew people on my street who were serving in the military. And even then, you know, after the whole WMD and I was a kid. I mean, it's very illuminating to be like, wow, your government can lie to you. They literally lie you into a war that cost tens of thousands of lives or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives.

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Now, not to who knows how many different American soldiers in Afghanistan. So like I said, I mean, I started out on foreign policy at the same time, like my parents, I got to give them all the credit in the world. They never made me kind of be the traditional, like D.C. kid who's in the athletes or whatever. So I was in the debate team from a very young age. That was something I love doing. And then I moved to Qatar my last years of high school.

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Can do you like model U.N.? Got very into foreign policy more at the time. So that's kind of what my interest was. I still have like a deep, deep skepticism of the national security bureaucracy and more. And that is really my foundational like part of my politics in terms of conservatism. It's really an interesting question you ask because you're right, like Indian American community, brown people like we we grew up here.

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We're a lot. I would say, if you were to take polls on individual positions, that they would generally align with much more socially conservative.

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And if you were even to ask them why they're democratic, it's usually to be with not like the national character. The caricature of a Republican is like a white nationalist identity party or like white politics or just in general, about one party about immigrants are definitely born into that. When I was younger, but honestly moving up here, I moved to D.C. when I was 18, I went to college at GW, George Washington University. That's when I really encountered social liberalism for the first time.

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You know, I grew up in Texas. Everybody is socially conservative. So it's just more about a difference on more traditional culture war issues. But even beyond that, about just like more identity and being Republican is not really rooted in policy. As much as you come up here and you encounter like legit social liberalism for the first time.

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And I was like, oh, man, this is not like what I'm about at all. And I would say that was like the first, like, true awakenings of a lot of that stuff. And the more the Democrats became identity and the more I just said, I want nothing to do with this whatsoever. And so that's kind of my personal evolution. So, Sara, why do you think that that identity aspect is becoming so big and Democrats these days?

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I know there's this whole, you know, Bernie Sanders and AFSC wing who really run with that stick, but they also have this whole economic aspect to them. That doesn't seem right to me. Sometimes it doesn't necessarily need this whole identity and aspect. And I think, Crystal, a lot of times what she talks about, her left populism, I see sparks of that or Andrew Yang, where it's not that crazy, you know, culture war stuff.

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It's just, you know, hey, let's make a party for the working class. Let's do a left populism the right way.

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Yeah, it's a great question, man. I think about it a lot, too. I think it's the university system, honestly. I just do. I think that once you have been indoctrinated and once you buy into many of these mainstream shibboleths around race and around so much more that you just go down this rabbit hole and look. I mean, we've been gasless like nobody wants to be racist. And so the evolving definition of racism just continues to march onward and onward.

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And eventually you either have to break and say no and be willing to risk being called a racist and a fascist. By the way, you can go check my Twitter mentions. People call me that every single day. It sucks, right?

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Like you have relatives or friends or people who are apolitical and they're like, hey, man, like, why are people calling you these, like, terrible names and like, look rightfully like being racist in this country is is like if you're really a racist, like, that's terrible. But the evolving nature of it is just a morphing part of the cultural elite. And it's something that Bernie and AOK, AOC in particular. I mean, is there anything that really distinguishes her from like a traditional Brown University liberal Democrat?

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Like. No, like she has basically the exact same position.

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The part I really love about this is that if you don't know if you guys remember the Ed Markey primary, you know, he's running against Joe Kennedy.

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Ed Markey was put over the top, the so-called progressive champion by Whole Foods, upper middle class suburban moms.

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It had nothing to do with the working class. The working class all voted for Joe Kennedy largely because of his last name. And I think that just tells you everything you need to know about progressivism in the twenty, twenty first century.

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Well, I mean, just on that point, I mean, I tend to be much more liberal, but nonetheless, I do notice quite a bit of like. The reactions that you're probably getting from people on Twitter and manyways in person are very, I think, similar to that that woman in Central Park who who is liberal supported Obama did all this, you know, virtual signaling. But the moment she sees a black guy in middle of Central Park by herself, she she goes into like panic mode and has these racist racist elements.

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Come on. I have a strong sense. Quite a few of these people that tend to attack you will be very similar that way. They would they love to talk about racism as if they're somehow freed of its grip. But, you know, at some level, we have to recognize all of us have some level of this these biases in us. We're not perfect. And I don't understand the large part why we why we assume just because a person is conservative or voted Trump, that they are, by and large racist or deplorable or incorrigible beings.

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Yeah, it's just crazy, man. I mean, and it's like you said, it's amazing how quickly the racism actually begins to pour out, like you're a traitor to your class, like possie. I mean, here's a thing, too, which is that I think this is a deeper thing. I reject the identity and framing that people of color, so to speak, is even a good term.

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I mean, it's ridiculous. Look, India, I say this all the time. Indian Americans are the richest people in the United States. It is insulting to say that we have anything in common whatsoever with the black experience in America.

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It's insulting to say that we have anything to do with the Mexican-American experience in America. We're not a bunch of refugees fleeing, you know, like an oppressive society or maybe, you know, some people will paint it that way. I don't. In particular, it's largely economic migration in search of like the highest achieving parts of a society in search of economic migration. And in order to fill a skills gap here in the US, like let's just be honest about all of it.

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And I think that the problem I have is I have all these like second gen Indian kids who have basically been indoctrinated by the school system in the university system, who are out there talking about how they're my colonial body has been oppressed and I'm just like, shut up.

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Like, literally shut your mouth. Like, you know, have you even been to India? Do you even know like what what actual India is like nine out of ten times? The answer is no. I actually think that I hold this framing because I spent a decent amount of chunk of my childhood in India almost every summer until I was like 15 years old.

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So, you know, you add that up. That's like a couple of years. And my mom is like took me there like during my kindergarten year. So I was there for like an extended period of time.

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I actually speak Telugu. I've traveled all over the country of India. And a lot of these people basically use their Indian American heritage for social cachet in the US, which is, again, just deeply insulting to people who have been actually oppressed over American history. So that's just something that particularly drives me absolutely nuts.

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Yeah, I mean, I'm on the same page with you. I mean, I guess if you're in India, an Indian in India, you could talk about the vestiges of British colonialism, but large part. But in America, most of us, most of us, DC Brown people from Indian subcontinent are pretty damn blessed. We came here because we're we're like educated or have the even if they weren't educated, you ended up owning a 7-Eleven or a motel or whatever it is you had the means to do.

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So you came here not without like, yeah, you worked your ass off. You did all these things you did. Yeah, I'm sure that dealt with racism. And we still do at some level. But it's not it's not the same way that a black experience or Latino experience or exactly like, look, yeah, I grew up like I grew up in white Christian Texas.

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And if you think that was easy, like, you know, I have a bridge to sell you, but I'm not county.

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So it's like it was I was the only Indian guy in and Hindu guy and everything. Right. And look, but I'm not going to analogize that to 400 years of chattel slavery.

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Right. Like, yeah. People said some mean things to me. It sucked. It really sucked. Now I live here. I'm actually doing really well. You know, I'm able to balance that and in my mind and say, yeah, there was racism in this country. I've certainly experienced it, but I'm also not going to put it in the same boat as as the way that black Americans are treated or other Americans. And look, I mean, this is my whole thing, which is that I want to live in a more egalitarian United States because I believe that that root of ignorance and so much more is about oppression and particularly oppression whenever it comes to our economy, and that the way things manifest themselves, hate and so much more stems from that.

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And because I believe in that, I reject that identity and framing.

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Are that you brought up because I know how deeply damaging and corrosive it is to actually wanting to do anything about class in America today, which I really just believe is our chief dividing line.

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Sorry, you sound like a Marxist to me, this, and I know and I know it's another takes that are heterodox, but one data point and I don't have the exact points, but someone could look it up. One point I saw for this past election is that minority voting percentages for Donald Trump shut up. And, you know, these past four years, we know what we heard, you know, is this racism, racism, racism. And then we have these hard data points that point to something completely different.

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I want to get into a few things here. First of all, you say you're right, populist. I want to kind of learn more about that. But I also am wondering, is that different from this phenomenon that we're now hearing? It's called Trump ism. We're hearing there might be a little clash between Trump and these these establishment Republicans, do you think? Right. Populism is around the same as Trump ism or something different? How do you feel about these ideologies and kind of like the forward momentum of conservatism in America?

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Trump is a right populist.

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Trump ism is essentially the same is right populism. You can call it whatever you want. This will be I mean, the media will probably settle on Trump ism, which is fine with me. I don't really care. But you're exactly right, which is that, look, Donald Trump won the highest percentage of the non-white vote in America since nineteen sixty for a GOP nominee since Richard Nixon in the pre civil rights era.

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And there's not a lot that can be there's not a lot of mainstream media explanations out there that can tell you exactly why that is.

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And I think that that is, in my view, one of the most damning things about the kind of identity and framework. I think it's funny, by the way, that you talk about Marxist. I would actually classify as more Trotskyite, but that's I'm just getting specific here. Yeah, know there's always battles about semantics whenever I talk about political ideology or people, but I hate to tell you I hate it. I just want to tell you shut up, because at the end of the day, it's about policy.

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It's about what happens on the ground. And it's up point that you talked about. We saw that voting percentage up. Something happens now. I do want to get into your foreign policy a bit because I didn't know you had that background. And it's interesting how you came from a foreign policy background and kind of funneled into domestic analysis. What is right, populism, foreign policy, or what's your foreign policy ideally going forward? And what do you think a possible Biden administration is going to bring us in terms of foreign policy?

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Yeah, I mean, I'm deeply skeptical of foreign intervention. I'm deeply skeptical of multilateral institutions. I believe very strongly in American borders. I think the American nation is the greatest force for good in the world. But that doesn't mean that should always be the instrument of good or the instrument of enforcing change across the world.

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And I believe, unapologetically, that we should maximize the health and well-being of American citizens above all else. And so I don't look towards collectivism and world government in the idea of norms and so much more that it's our right to defend, so much so that we should risk American blood. All of this really came as a result of Trump's election for me. Is that really realizing how rooted that desire and want and need is in the American populace and how they've been betrayed by the Washington elite class?

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So that's kind of like my foreign policy view. In a nutshell, you can extrapolate that out to everything. Right? So Afghanistan, I think, should get out Iraq. I think we should basically wind down on China. I think we should be ruthless in the way that we approach Chinese policy because they are peer competitor to the United States. And I don't want Americans to do worse than Chinese, American and Chinese people. That's it, period.

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And I think an American ruled seas is better than a Chinese ruled seas. I don't actually care about the United Nations. So, too, to the extent that unless we can use the UN as an instrument of American power. So what I care most about is maximizing American power at all costs.

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In terms of Biden, I mean, look, he's talked a big game. He used to have actually some decent instating instincts on Iraq and on Afghanistan, but there's no indication that he continues to hold that on Russia. He's basically a nineteen nineties relic. He's going to hire Susan Rice and Tony Blinken, the people who advocated for war with Libya. So I would say the future is grim in terms of a Joe Biden presidency and that there thrill of the American people is probably going to be thwarted once again.

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So, I mean, before we get into that aspect, let's talk about the weekend craziness, the election, your your programs cover that pretty in depth.

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So, I mean, what's your basic takeaway for why do you think? Seventy one percent of our 71 million people in the United States voted for Trump and yet there was such a small margin, despite, I guess despite the way it's been going for the past year. Yeah, I mean, look, here's I covered it on the show, and I think I said this most recently, I was like, listen, if Trump wins or if he comes close to winning, it will be because there is a deep cultural reactionary route in America that has been completely underestimated.

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And I think I've been vindicated on that. By the way, I didn't think he was going to I didn't think he would win. I always thought he was going to lose, largely because he did not fulfill many of the promises that he ran on in twenty sixteen, on immigration, on infrastructure, on so much of the economic policy.

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But he still got 71 million votes. So what does that mean?

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I mean, to me, that means that people hate the cultural elite so much that they are willing to vote Trump even when it's just a giant middle finger to the establishment. And I think about the power and the potency of how intense that is. And then I start to dream about, well, what if he did do that infrastructure package? What if he did follow through on the immigration policy? What if he did actually bring troops home from Afghanistan?

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What if he actually did some of the things that he said he was going to do in 2016? And I just see one of the biggest governing coalitions in America. I see something that could actually do some good for this nation and outlast Trump and Biden and these old school kind of political coalitions and build something new the way that FDR was able to in nineteen thirty two.

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You know, it's interesting because you brought up in your program that your primary I mean I mean, not your primary, but one of your main beliefs is that the reason that Trump failed there is this administration field was primarily because of the people that he hired, meaning basically either incompetent people like Jared Kushner or or people that are already kind of establishment types that basically pulled away from Trump's own, I guess, native instincts towards the promises he made. Now, I mean, do you really think that Trump had an idea of what he was going to do or was it kind of like he he just kind of came in there and just spouted crap and then figured that something will stick to the wall?

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So, look, I know it's very tempting for liberals to believe Trump has been saying the same thing on trade for 30 years, 30 plus years.

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He's had the same exact consistent message. This is a rock solid belief. Then there's no other person on Earth who would have ascended to the presidency and could have stood up to a lot of the people around him and actually enacted the trade war against China. I think he deserves all the credit in the world for actually doing that.

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But yeah, I mean, look, and this is what I said on my show today, the day that we're taping this podcast, which is that at the end of the day, the problem for him is that he was the ultimate outsider and he was more interested in the media game. And so at that point, he turned to the GOP establishment and he was like, look, I just won this election. Help me staff up, help me do what I promised to do.

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And they promptly staffed up full of a bunch of people who didn't agree with the single word that he said on the campaign trail. And then they repudiated everything that he ran on in twenty sixteen and basically made sure that he couldn't deliver on his best promises and then made sure that he could deliver on the things that were dramatically unpopular, like the GOP tax bill of twenty seventeen. That's basically the story of the Trump administration, in my view, which is that, look, I think it's fair.

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Like, yeah, he didn't have a coherent governing ideology or governing idea, but that's not necessarily his job. Or maybe it is. I mean, you can disagree, but the way he won the presidency was not by doing that. He turned to the people who he thought in good faith were offering to help him and they stabbed him in the back. And I think that that's something that we just can't look away from.

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So soccer to you. Where do you see Trump going within the next few months and then years, do you think he's going to pull this mother of all reversed cards in the next few months with this with this flip or the flipping of states? And if he doesn't, I'm kind of skeptical on that myself. But it could happen so easily. If he is, I'm not going to get kicked out, but I guess technically kicked out, then what do you think he's going to do for these next four years?

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Do you think he's going to run again in twenty, twenty four? Is it going to make his own camp in the Republican Party? Do you think future Trump is a great question, man.

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I don't know. I mean, look, with Trump and look, it's a tough it's a tough thing in terms of these lawsuits because you don't just have one say you've got four different states and you've got hundreds of thousands of votes, not five hundred votes like there were in Florida. So it's not necessarily a point about recount. It's not really within the margins in a lot of these states in order to be overturned.

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That being said, you know, maybe but again, I just see for imagine four simultaneous different lawsuits with different facts all swinging the way that Trump needs them to in order to win the election.

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I just find that very difficult to see happening. So in terms of Trump himself, look, I do not believe for a second Donald Trump will ever concede the election in the way that the media and Biden want him to. I don't think he'll ever say that he lost the 2020 presidential election. I think he'll probably leave the White House and he'll say, yeah, you know, I've it's been stolen from me. Whether he runs again in twenty, twenty four.

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That's a good question. And look, I mean, there's a part of him which ran because the elite laughed at him and everybody pointed their finger in his face and try to dance on his grave in 2011. And he said, no, fuck you, I'm going to run for this and I'm going to win. And he did. And so maybe that's what happens again. At the same time, he's going to be seventy eight years old in twenty twenty four maybe.

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He really likes four years in retirement where he gets to wake up, watch TV, tweet, go golfing, hang out. I mean he's a billionaire, he's got a beautiful wife, he's got kids and so much more. Maybe that's what he wants to do. I think that's a question that we're only going to know in twenty, twenty three whenever he decides that he's going to run or not. And even if he says he doesn't, you never know.

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Maybe he will. I mean, it to be interesting to me when they do, which I think eventually, I mean, the transition of power, you know, in January, if he's going to be sitting up there with Biden as Biden takes the oath, I don't I mean, that in itself be kind of like conceding. Conceding on his concession on his part. Yeah, I don't know.

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Honestly, I wouldn't put it past him. It would be it's very within the realm of possibility that he wouldn't attend a Biden inauguration. If we get to that point and so much more, I mean, you know, maybe snobbism. Look, the guy's never cared about norms. I think people really need, but they're always like, is he going to change?

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And I'm like, look, we knew what we were getting. You knew exactly what you were getting when Trump became president.

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And nothing has really surprised me. And if he does skip that, I would not surprise me at all if he just skipped town, got on Air Force One and continued to contest the election.

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Again, not surprising whatsoever. So we're looking at the future right now, and I kind of allowed some scenarios, so Surbiton goes through, looks like he's sitting at like a lame duck government. Republicans have a lot of control, it seems. And Mitch McConnell, I think, is the second most powerful man in America for the past, like 10 years, called the dawn of D.C. to be confronted. But he runs it in a way. He's been delaying a lot of stuff.

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And to me, Republicans, they haven't been forward thinking, in my opinion. They just don't I don't know. They don't really create they just delay. They just they don't, like, create a feature. To me. It's just these old these old dudes, these establishment folks that don't create anything. What do you think this new future of this Republican Party is going to be? Is it still going to be these delayers or these people are kind of stuck in the past?

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What's this new alternative or heterodox or populist Republican going to be that's going to maybe clash with these types?

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I look, I wish I could sit here and tell you that there's going to be a grand populist coalition. I have no illusions to that effect. I think you're probably right. I mean, in my view, what's going to happen is I keep saying I hope you're all ready to party like it's 2010, you know, opposition, opposition, opposition in the Senate. And to the extent that they want to work on anything, it's to betray the Republican base and their own voters by talking about debt, reducing the debt and pursuing amnesty, like Lindsey Graham said, literally the day after Biden was officially called by the network.

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So I have no illusions whatsoever that there is some grand populist coalition in the Republican Party or that they're even going to learn any of the lessons that I'm laying out here. I think a lot of them just want to win back these white suburbanites. And I think the rest of them really enjoy being a permanent minority party with a slim majority in the United States Senate because it allows them to fundraise from their base, pretending that they're doing anything whatsoever while they're really just sitting on their ass.

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So, I mean, I'm very black pilled whenever it comes to Washington, whenever it comes to politicians in general, that's kind of how I see it. I don't think there will be any real movement on this front until twenty, twenty three. Whenever the Republican primary starts, that is when things will start to get interesting. But until then, I've basically written off the next three years.

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Why is it going to get interesting that primary? Like, what do you think is going to happen then? That's when it's interesting, right?

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I mean, this is when this is the ultimate test, right? I mean, that's the fun part, which is that then people start voting. No more polls, no more B.S., no more commercials, no more debates.

[00:30:49]

People actually start to vote.

[00:30:51]

So does Nikki Haley's brand of returning to like true con politics, as in like we have to care about the debt and deficit and all that, but with a little bit of Trumpy and flair, does that work? Who knows? I probably say no. Maybe I'm wrong. Does Josh Holli's brand of politics work? Talking about taxes, talking about oligarchs? He sounds a little bit more like me, not a traditional Republican. He says the words working class and he means it.

[00:31:16]

Is that going to be something that we move forward on? What about Ted Cruz? Right. Ted Cruz says that the future of the Republican Party is both populist and libertarian, which I find kind of hilarious.

[00:31:27]

Maybe he's right. Is he going to win? I mean, Marco Rubio seems to be making noise. He's learned a lot since the 2016 election. He talks a lot about economic populism and taking on China. Is he going to win? Maybe. We'll see. This is what I mean. I mean, the real testing ground is when people actually start voting. And those are all the battle lines, as I kind of see them right now. Got it.

[00:31:48]

I want to move our gaze to the left a little now, I saw Aoki's kind of making a list on Twitter of former Trump officials. It's really like Stolle iDesk literally out of Animal Farm or something. But I saw some Democrats kind of responsibility. You know, you need to cut that out and kind of trying to dunk on her saying, you know, we barely won this election. We're still bleeding seats in the House. You know, this isn't a victory of far left politics at all.

[00:32:16]

Do you think we're going to see some civil war in the Democrat camp coming up between the wealthy and the centrists? It's certainly possible.

[00:32:26]

I mean, look, it already has erupted. Conor Lamb versus AOK, Abigail Spane Burger. She's sub tweeting, not even Subway and up calling her out.

[00:32:35]

Look, AOC in their power has always been vastly overstated in the Democratic coalition. She has got seven votes in the House. Nancy Pelosi has like two hundred plus like. That's just not a lot of votes. Seven votes, maybe one in the U.S. Senate, two if you count Elizabeth Warren and even then they have Elizabeth Warren. So there you go. I mean, they're a media sensation and rightfully so, like whatever.

[00:32:57]

I think they talk well and they really know how to get the spotlight. But the truth is they don't speak for the base of the Democratic Party. It's all be B.S. because the truth is the Democratic Party's base, the beating heart of who they are, are suburban white women, people like at the women's march, people who love Rachel Maddow, people who love, like Nancy Pelosi's ripping up the speech or whatever at the State of the Union. That's what those people are all about.

[00:33:25]

And I think they're going to be delivered for in a Biden presidency with Nancy Pelosi and with Chuck Schumer at the helm. I don't think it's going to have anything to do with a lot of the stuff that Eocene them are talking about. I mean, here's a good test. She said you absolutely cannot allow Rahm Emanuel into the White House. Let's see. So if they put him into the White House, that shows you how much they care, what she has to say.

[00:33:50]

That's for sure. I want to kind of dial it back. We've been talking a lot about just politics in general, but I do want to get into the brown part. You know, like we talked about earlier, it's very identity driven these days. But do you think your identity, whether as an Indian American or whatever religion you are. Has that affected your politics or you've mostly kept it separate in terms of your life? Oh, definitely.

[00:34:18]

I mean, definitely. I don't I don't know how how it couldn't write. And I kind of what I talked about, I think the foundation of my politics is all about strengthening American families. And I mean, what's more see than, like caring about your family or wanting to make sure that we have better families and we as Indians, I think we have a lot of the natural benefits of family in the community who care about raising people as a collective.

[00:34:43]

It's less individualistic. I think that these are values that are deeply important across cultures and across societies and something that's really been abandoned by a more decadent west, which is more obsessed with consumerism than it is about real productive outcomes and good social outcomes. So in terms of my Indian heritage, my upbringing, I mean, I think those are the most important, important parts to me about being Indian.

[00:35:10]

And I think about all of the people who are in the Indian community in Texas who root for me every time I go on TV or I think about, you know, the like in Indian families, whenever somebody has a kid and like their mom comes over from India to help them out so they don't have to go to daycare or, you know, somebody in the community makes and helps pick up somebody else's. I mean, these are very bedrock solid foundations of tight knit communities in in not just in America but across the world.

[00:35:39]

And these are the things I want to maximize for everybody in the United States. Now, on the flip side, all of us know that most Indian Americans vote pretty liberally. Myself and I'm pretty sure all of us were born or were here in America when 9/11 happened. That's a fact. You know, I agree with you. It really sucked. And I'm not just talking about the event, but as a brown person in America during that time, that's I think that's when a lot of this fear of Republicans or dislike of Republicans spread throughout a lot of our community.

[00:36:15]

But that's been a long time. And these days, Indian Americans can be very rabidly liberal and locus to the vote I made. I made a thread where I kind of delved into this and it was specifically about Hindu Americans. And it was basically like why Hindu Americans don't stand up for Hindus or why Indian Americans don't really stand up for India. Most of the coverage we see in the media is a lot of bashing of India or Hinduism or whatever political movements in there.

[00:36:46]

If it was written by a white person, I mean, it actually is written by white felicie. And so it's even fair game on that on that spectrum, which is crazy to me. If it was written about like Islam or other races, religions there would be discarded as racists or exurbs. Why do you think there's that path in today's politics? Why do you think Indian Americans do this and they let other people trash India, trust their own people.

[00:37:15]

They don't even stand up for their own people?

[00:37:16]

I think it's a great question, man. I thought about it a lot, too. And I agree with you, by the way. I experienced the vast majority of the racism I experienced. My life was right when I was a kid after 9/11. It's a very defining moment for me and it took a while to get over it. So if you're out there and you're listening and you're like Soga, how can you align yourself with these people? I get it.

[00:37:36]

I get where you're coming from. But I think there's bigger evils. And also it's been 20 years and I think a lot has changed. So let me get that out of the way.

[00:37:43]

The second part of your question is very important. And I thought a lot about this. And I think what it is, is that all of us here, I'm born in the USA.

[00:37:53]

If you guys are to have been here now for so long and have been indoctrinated with an idea of India, this is my our parents specifically and more, which doesn't exist anymore. Right.

[00:38:05]

Like they were really got drilled into their head, the anti majoritarianism, the Dimmock, the more democratic element, the kind of pan ethnic pan religious India, which stands for liberal democratic values, the beacon of hope. And all of that is just so central to their ideology growing up like under the gun, the regimes. And then they kind of drilled that into the heads of the Indians here in America. And then you pair that with university educated white politics, which emphasizes, you know, any Semin, whatever, like so-called oppressed minority is the one that has to be lifted up.

[00:38:43]

And you get the perfect storm of where we are right now, which is that, you know, you have a country, India, which has gone through incredible demographic, domestic, economic, technological change just in my lifetime. I mean, I remember going to India when I was a young kid and like, there's no electricity. Like, you know, it's it was a legit third world country. And now you land there in Bombay Airport. You're like, oh, my God.

[00:39:07]

Like, yes, it's like glass and all this and Bangalore's Hoppen. And I mean, it's not the same country, even in my own lifetime.

[00:39:15]

And I think about how much it's changed. And I just don't think Americans are American Indians in particular are equipped to understand how much that country has changed under their own nose. And also, this is something that I've seen in particular from older Indian Americans who are like anti Modi and like ashamed of India is they're clinging to the India and the heritage, the idea of the country in their head that they knew. And so the new India, which they don't understand, is like very threatening to them.

[00:39:45]

So that's like my meta analysis there. But in general, I obviously agree with you.

[00:39:50]

It's ludicrous whenever you see people writing about the fascism in India and all of this, I mean, this is a democratically elected government with like 80 percent approval rating and actually is a working class led movement.

[00:40:03]

And if you go and you take a look at how the Indian elite feel about a lot of the BJP. So I just think it's a fascinating kind of character study of who exactly Indian Americans are and the things that they value. Yeah, I mean, I I'm kind of on the same page with you on this saga. I mean, one of the ways we connected was over an article I think was Sonia Paul or someone last week, a week before in which there's just this.

[00:40:30]

Almost as if to be Indian American in America, one must naturally hate the BJP Hindutva. And just what India is today, it's I think this the term fascism gets thrown around way too much, as if it's you know, it's such an easy term to use. Right. Like, well, like when people say that Trump is a fascist. Not at all. I mean, I don't you might have authoritarian tendencies or whatever, but fascism is not what Trump is.

[00:41:00]

Fascism is not what Modi is. Right. What would you look at the policies and the history? You can't break away from talking about the politics of a country without looking at the history of the country, looking at the sentiment of the people in the country. Right. A large part of American social upheaval today is the nature of changing demographics, correct? I mean, that's a huge portion of people's identity comes from, you know you know, whether you're white, black or whatever it is, your identity comes from your racial category.

[00:41:27]

In India, I guess the identity comes much more from a religious category. And in that sense, it makes it makes total sense for a country that has to deal with plurality of level does to deal with people along that lines in which they identify just like America does no good. Sorry. Go ahead, ask the question.

[00:41:50]

No. So my question to you is, where do you think this disjunct comes from? American Indian Americans in the U.S. and Middle East, people go back and forth to India to where does this decision come from? Almost a self-hatred of their their native country and the native people in their country, as if these people are stupid and make choices just like like ignorant, ignorant gets no see, that's what it is.

[00:42:14]

It's elitism.

[00:42:15]

It's elite ism above everything else, which is that they despise these working class Indians or these peasants or whomever for believing the fake promises.

[00:42:26]

Right. I mean, this is the same of every kind of Westernized elite across the entire world.

[00:42:33]

Look at the way Hungarian Americans denounce like Viktor Orban or the way that French Americans are. Francophiles in the US talk about Marine Le Pen in France. Like any time you try and reclaim your national identity away from liberal democratic values, which we are supposed to value like here in the West, then that's heresy. Then those people are idiots. And that's a regression of India, like India was better when it was loved and respected. Doesn't matter that its population literally can't eat or the illiteracy rate or the poverty levels or the corruption.

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I mean, they don't care about that. Right. And so to me, it's all about play-acting.

[00:43:13]

And it's really just like a deep internalized Western ism more than anything, which is that they want to maximize this like Western love at all costs.

[00:43:24]

They want to look at they want to transpose what they think the United States is, even though they're also wrong about what the United States is and use that in the way that they look at India itself. And so I think self-hatred is exactly the right word. It's like I said, though, I think a deep part of it, though, is that they know that they are out of touch with India and they just don't want to accept it. And so they have to blame actual Indians instead of being like, hey, you know what?

[00:43:54]

I've been out of this country for 30 something years.

[00:43:56]

Maybe I don't actually know all that much about it. You know, maybe I don't actually understand what it's like to have lived through this tumultuous change and not had some of the promises of the early India B promise. And maybe it's time for a change. They can't empathize with that. So they just think that they're rubes.

[00:44:12]

And just to throw another wrench into this, I you know, this is a thought that's been hitting me for a while. It's as if, you know, even though I am liberal and I have a whole lot of these values, one of the problems I tend to have within the liberal establishment is the sense of there is some sort of universal utopia by which all countries have to arrange and become like right where the national character of a nation, of its culture, its values, its its history is is basically like subsequent to these ideals of a paradise.

[00:44:50]

And I find myself very much pulled away from this as if like it's so disconnected with the nature of of of of of reality in the world. Right. Like in the sense of like the Western liberal mentality towards, you know, like, for example, recently with France. What's going on in France right now is the conversation about what culture stands for within France, French culture versus immigrant culture and how how how they interact. Right. At some level, this comes down to, I guess, the poppa's paradox of, you know, how much tolerance can tolerate country have.

[00:45:24]

Right. And what should what should they give up in order to to be the. Vision of of whatever the liberal establishment wants, but it is a constant conflict. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I completely agree with you.

[00:45:37]

I think France is a good example. I mean, look, McCrone starts reasserting French identity and being like we're not going to be infected by Western Democrat, you know, like the West in America's WOAK politics, because we believe that being French means something. And immediately the entire press turns on him. You know, the he was supposed to be the whole savior of the liberal democratic order. It turns out he's your average Frenchman who's morally superior and believes that their country is better.

[00:46:05]

But, hey, that's why he's a Frenchman. He's the French president. And I would be agog if an American president were ever to bow to similar values. Same thing if I was French. So in general, it's this fetishization of, like you said, tolerance for the sake of tolerance and closing your eyes. And I suppose it downsides. I mean, look, I really just believe that trying to interpose what we have here on the US onto other people is insane.

[00:46:33]

It's ridiculous. It's a failed project and I actually believe in real democracy. So if India wants to govern itself this way, that's fine.

[00:46:41]

Let them be. I mean, I don't know how it's bothering you, and yet they're just never going to let it go.

[00:46:48]

It's a religion like let's just call it like this is a religion and, you know, I think there will be points where we could call it localism or whatever, but there will be points where they'll they'll talk about how it's like, you know, it's all love. And if you go if you look at a lot of these protests, a lot of which I actually agree with, it looks like religious rituals to so much of it. When I look at it, it's literally a religion.

[00:47:14]

They have this utopia like this, that or this paradise. It's it's fantasy. It's it. And I've been talking about this with my friends, and they just can't they can't wrap this around their head. And to me, I think it's I think for a lot of people, maybe because religion isn't important in their lives, which I don't think is a problem at all. But people love to be religious and they use this new brand of politics as their religion, but they just don't recognize it as a religion itself.

[00:47:45]

I think you're absolutely right, this is a point that Ross Douthat has been making for a long time, which is that, you know, look, you know, you can stop being religious, but the impulse for religion doesn't go away. You see people washing people's feet in the protests and you know, how to be an anti-racist is is the top selling book in the country. And I can't even go get a goddamn cup of coffee without the coffee shop saying that this is an anti-racist cup of coffee or whatever.

[00:48:11]

And, you know, it can't go and make a dinner reservation without having these things shoved in my face. I mean, that that's religious iconography, let's call it for what it is and sainthood and all of that, all included with all of this. So I just think that we should be extraordinarily wary of what is being pushed upon us. And look, especially as Indians, as we're powerful people in America, like I have a responsibility to actually to actually understand, like what we are and our place in this nation, in this project and so much more.

[00:48:44]

What are the things that enabled us to become what we are in this country was extraordinary. And on the you could say it about any other minority group in the entire world. And it's a special thing that we got here in the US.

[00:48:56]

Yeah, absolutely. So Soga, what are your final thoughts as to this is we're talking about Wokingham and this entire world. How how can I mean, this is not something the government can solve. Clearly, that's not something our policies can solve. What is a way for people to address this issue or come to terms with it or or if or maybe there's no way? I don't know. I mean, what are your thoughts? A great question.

[00:49:21]

I mean, look, I actually disagree with you. I think the government can solve it plenty. And I think that conservatives need to wake up to the idea that government power is not just OK, but I think it's the last remaining thing on Earth which can possibly save you. I mean, the Trump order on 16 19 is a good idea. Make it so that if you have teach critical race theory in your corporation, you can't get a contract from the federal government.

[00:49:41]

Well, turns out there are huge multibillion dollar organizations which contract to the government and get paid billions of dollars. There are ways to do a lot of this. I mean, you can go after universities and say that if you are going to impose this kind of critical race ideology onto your students and indoctrinate them with this, and you're going to get denied federal funding. But in order to do all of this, you have to believe in using the state as an instrument of power itself, something that a lot of conservatives just don't want to do.

[00:50:10]

And that's if there's one fight that I fight, it's against that it's against that idiocy.

[00:50:16]

Well well, just on that point, I think the First Amendment prevents the government from doing that.

[00:50:21]

Well, it does. I mean, not not on the look, they can't tell a corporation what to teach, but they can say you can't get a contract with us if you're going to teach this.

[00:50:29]

You can absolutely do that.

[00:50:31]

I don't know if that's I don't know because it's not a protected class. It doesn't I mean, there's a whole constitutional analysis that goes into this. And, you know, when I was in law school, we studied this and that was one of the issues. I don't think that that can happen. But other than that, I mean, what are you working on now besides your podcast, besides your show? Is there anything particularly that you're working on that you want to, you know, tell us about?

[00:50:54]

No, I mean, that's that's that's what I spend the vast majority of my time doing, do this.

[00:50:58]

We just had a book that came out right.

[00:51:01]

The book came out about a year ago now that was with Crystal. And it was kind of a preview of the Democratic primary or it was like a post view of the Democratic primary, what to expect and more. It also came out literally right before the pandemic. So, yeah, a lot of changed, but yeah, that's right.

[00:51:16]

You know, thinking about maybe writing another book, we'll see.

[00:51:19]

Yeah, I would love to see that happen. So Soga, thanks for stopping by and talking to us. I know you got a busy schedule. Really appreciate it. Do you have any last words.

[00:51:27]

I mean or anything like I just appreciate you guys having me love the work that you guys are doing. So thank you. Awesome guy. Yeah. Hey tune in next week for the next round from this broadcast. Our guys. Tune in next week for Brown Cast.