Vivek Ramaswamy, Nick Fuentes, and the Future of Republican Politics

Robert and Gare sit down to discuss Garrison's fellow zoomer, Nick Fuentes, and what Vivek Ramaswamy represents to the insurgent right.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to it could happen here a podcast about
things falling apart, And you can't spell falling apart without
Republican Party, or at least several of the letters fall
in the party you use that for that are also
in this garrison. Hello, how are you doing good? Well,

(00:26):
good arrison in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, yes, I just got back from a visit in
Portland where we watched many upsetting things. Bak, we didn't.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Watch a lot of upsetting things.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, probably the most upsetting of which was the first
of the twenty twenty four Republican primary.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, boy, it sure was nice. Watching those Indonesian war
criminals reenact their crimes really cleared my mind after watching
the Republican debate.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, that was a really gooder.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
So, you know, this is not the most timely thing
because we didn't want to just like do a reaction
podcast where we talked about here's what we thought about,
you know, the vec's answer or anonymous white Man number
four's answer to you know, these various questions.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
I thought Chris Christy was very put together.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Very on.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Message.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Now we wanted to look at like wait for some
polls to come out and and actually kind of both
talk about what happened and kind of what worried us,
and also how it seems to be playing with the
bass and the American voters in general, because all of
this matters, because again, the Republicans are I mean, we
are all a little bit the architects of collapse here

(01:48):
and in our in our lovely society. But the Republicans
they like to they like to really pump that ship
into a higher gear. So, you know, I think the
thing that kind of stuck out to both of us
most and the thing that's been one of the primary
kind of takeaways that one of the main things people
have talked about after the debate was Vivek's performance. Vivek Ramaswami,

(02:12):
who was prior to I even made a little comment
prior to it that I didn't I didn't know much
about him or think he was much of an entity
in this because, you know, in part because that's true,
he was somebody who is just kind of coming onto
the scene in politics. I wanted to talk a little
bit about how he started that because there was some

(02:33):
stuff I was unaware of here prior to him announcing
his candidacy. He's one of these guys who kind of
started because he comes out of biotech. He's a quote
unquote entrepreneur, and specifically he's the kind of shitty entrepreneur
who like has managed to get rich largely without actually
contributing anything, like primarily buying up patents for drugs in

(02:56):
development that he profits on but then later are found
not to work. Is a big part of how where
his fortune comes from. And he started kind of about
really about a year ago, I think, trying to brand
himself as a kind of political influencer, specifically through like
social media, and he had been getting a lot of

(03:19):
attention like as a result of the success of his
because he's one of these guys he's good at using
social media. He gets up to, you know, he's had
a couple of hundred thousand followers when he announces his candidacy,
and prior to announcing his candidacy, he had done well
enough at kind of building a brand for himself that
in twenty two or twenty twenty two, early twenty twenty two,

(03:41):
he and The Daily Wire start putting together a contract
and they want to bring him on presumably for like
a frightening, like a deeply upsetting amount of money to
do something that they haven't really done before, which is
just kind of launch a like a show based around

(04:01):
him that's like a news and politics show, which was
a little bit different kind of than a lot of
the deals that like they've had before, where it's more like,
you know, here's Matt Walsh's podcast where he's going to,
you know, try to get people killed. Here's Been Shapiro's
podcast where he's going to get angry at the Barbie movie.
This was like, we're launching a news and culture like
a news and politics podcast, and Vivek's going to be

(04:24):
like the face of it, right, Yeah, with.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Like attempts at actual like a political analysis, mostly from
a libertarian perspective.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yes, yes, And so that's the idea. And kind of
midway through, after you know, a significant amount of time
in development, and according to kind of what Jeremy Boring,
who's the CEO of a Daily Wire, said, after they
had spent a bit of money kind of working on
sort of the concept for this, he backs out rather suddenly.
Boring later said his priorities were changing and we could

(04:53):
have chosen to be aggressive about it. We did spend
a little bit of money on the prep that we've
been doing. Like so, I think there's a little bit
of bad blood there actually between them. But he bounces
from this deal with the Daily Wire to announce his
twenty twenty four campaign run. And this seems to have
kind of started in early part, like earlier on in

(05:14):
this year, start of twenty twenty three, when he has
this meeting with a small group of who were described
in this ABC News article as conservative operatives to discuss
his exciting plans. I'm going to read a quote from
that article. I'm going to run for president, Ramaswami sat
on the call. Ramaswami pitched himself as a candidate who

(05:35):
could make serious waves in the Republican primary at the meeting.
When met with some skepticism, Ramaswami argued that his candidacy
could also dissuade Florida Governor Ron De Santis from entering
the race. According to a source who was on the call.
In the lead up to his announcement, Ramaswami would tell
several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran,
it could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability

(05:56):
as a candidate if he did enter the race, Sources
said his campaign had turbocharged Ramaswamis social media presence, with
his number of followers on Twitter known as x nearly quadrupling,
ballooning from a little over two hundred and thirty six
thousand prior to announcing his candidacy to now nearly a
million followers just six months later. And so, you know,
there's a couple of things that's interesting to me about that.

(06:17):
One that he's sort of he pitched himself as I
can stop DeSantis from running. And it's a little unclear
to me if these are guys that specifically like hate Dysantis,
or if it's more they don't want him running against Trump.
They don't want like a fight between those two guys. Yeah,
I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Postpone his political trajectory a little bit.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
And it was also, you know, before the debate, it
was kind of looking like because he was he was
creeping up on Dysantish and like the last couple of
polls before the debate taking and beating him in a
couple of states, which was was interesting. You know, it
was kind of looking like it was working. And then
in the aftermath of the debate, we'll talk more about

(06:57):
Poles later and we'll talk about other candidates, but it
looks like he's kind of either plateaued or lost a
bit of support, even though a significant number of Republicans,
most in some polls think that he won the debate,
which is interesting to me. Now, when you and I
watched this, kind of the thing that concerned us was

(07:17):
that we both saw him as sort of messaging to
the Nick Fuintes crowd. And what I mean by that
is young conservative activists who are at least willing to
dance with explicitly white nationalist ideas and who have some
sympathies with the insurgent right, including with acts of violence

(07:38):
committed by the insurgent right, you know. And obviously Vivek
is not He's not Nick Fuintes, he's not a Nazi.
He's not going to make jokes about the Holocaust. But
he does talk about certain things in a similar way,
particularly this idea of like the fact that immigration is
altering our national character.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
He tational identity national.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, which is something you hear a lot sometimes in
more explicit terms from these like basically these Nazis, right,
So it's it's kind of a he's taking this term
and he's washing it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, I mean he throughout the debate, he definitely was
like very quick to betray himself as like the most
conservative person on stage whenever there'd be a question about
like like how extreme are you on this topic? And
they didn't praise it that way, but that's essentially what
they're asking. He was the first person to raise his
hand every time, and he did it very enthusiastically. Many

(08:31):
of the other people on stage had a lot of
like half raised hands. Yeah, we both noticed that Dysantis,
before raising his hand on a certain question, looked both
ways across the stage to see who else was raising
their hand before he raised his. But every single time
Vivik was the first guy to like jolt his hand up.
He was very it was very very intentionally positioning, positioning

(08:55):
himself as the most extreme option on the on the
table there. And it wasn't just I think the content
of what he was saying that that made kind of
parallels between him and people like Nick Fuentez are just
kind of younger, younger conservatives like content creators and influencers.
It was also like the way he talked, like his

(09:15):
his his speech pattern, how fast he was.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Very high school debater.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, yeah, it just it's it was reminiscent of all
of like the horrible shit that I watched for my job,
like whenever I've watched through a whole bunch of like
like like zoomer conservative content creators. It was. It was that.
But now on the debate stage. And this is something
I even like kind of talked about in the last
uh the Santis fast wave thing is like where we
are about to hit this big wave of conservative zoomers

(09:45):
who are going to be starting to run for office,
who were raised in this media environment, and they're going
to act like all of these kind of commentators that
we see on like YouTube, that we see on Rumble,
that we see on Twitch. They're gonna be emulating that style.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I'm want to put a pin in that, because we're
gonna come back to this with a with some audio
from Nick himself that expresses a similar opinion. But I
want to note a couple of the things that he
specifically expressed that I found, we found very fascy and
that I consider to be really concerning. Top of the
list is the fact that he has openly stated his
desire to bomb Mexico, that is a real problem.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
And the degree to which a significant number of folks
on that stage weren't completely willing to put that off
the table is deeply concerning. That's not great, that's a
that's a Now. The upside is that, like, maybe that's
crazy enough that there's no chance Independence will vote for it.
But you never fully want to say that in America.

(10:40):
There's no way to know, no way to know whatsoever.
The other thing is that, you know, he has so
Nick and a lot of these guys on the fascist
youth right, they're huge into removing people from being able
to vote. You know, Nick himself is basically a monarchist
right like he wants a Catholic monarch.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
He's like a Catholic monarchist fascist.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
And by the way, this is not a fringe opinion.
Michael Knowles, who is one of the major personalities that
The Daily Wire, one of the largest conservative news organizations
in the country, has just recently went on a rant
talking about all the benefits of monarchy and protecting freedoms,
by which he means the property of rich people.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Knowles is also a tradcath justice Yeah. Those.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Knowles is also a Catholic traditionalist. Yeah, and so these guys,
you know, they both talk about that. And the thing
that Vivek is doing that is sort of the more
acceptable because you can't get up on stage yet at
a Republican debate and talk about the need for a
king right, but you can talk about the need to
cut people out of the franchise right. You know, Nick

(11:43):
being much more extreme and having the freedom to be
more extreme, talks a lot about repealing the Nineteenth Amendment,
taking the right to vote away from women. Vivek is
not going to say that, but he did say this.
Young people don't value a country that they just inherit.
That's why I've said every high school senior, I believe
she'd have to pass the same Civics test that an
immigrant in this country has to pass in order to
become a voting citizen of the country, if that eighteen

(12:05):
year old wants all the privileges of citizenship as well.
This is deeply concerning for a number of reasons, including
the fact that any barrier you're put to voting is
going to reduce the number of people, specifically people who
are likely to vote for Democrats who do it. But
number two like who gets to determine those tests. Well,
we're already seeing the way in which the state positions

(12:29):
and like states like Florida on education are fundamentally changing
the amount of information kids are allowed to get. They
also theoretically would have the ability to fundamentally change the
nature of this test, you know, so that you know,
you have to express certain opinions and be inculcated in
certain opinions in order to be able to vote. This
is a real problem, you know, concerns us both for

(13:01):
this again. We will talk about his kind of popularity
in a second, but I wanted to because when we
we we both kind of felt, you know, this is
a guy who has a lot of that Fuintes energy
he's bringing. And so I looked, like, what is Nick
been saying about this guy? And uh, I found this
video from a website you're gonna hate called Zoomer National
News Garrison. It's a substack that just yeah, it's like

(13:28):
a lot of clips from yeah Nick Show and stuff.
So we're gonna we're gonna start watching this Zoomer National
News clip because there's a couple of points that he
makes in the first couple of first few minutes of
it that I think are are unfortunately worth listening to
and then discussing and then being unhappy.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Yeah, the only person that is gonna be good for
is Vivak. It's bad for DeSantis because he can't confront Trump.
It's bad for everybody else for the same reason. The
only person that's good for is who's going to get
a bigger stage. And that's what I wanted to talk
about tonight because it's interesting about the Veak. He's an
interesting phenomenon. He's a child of immigrants from India. I

(14:15):
think his parents are from India and they moved to
Ohio and he became a self made nearly a billionaire.
I think he's got an eight figure net worth, nine
figure net worth. I read on wikipedi he's got nine
hundred and fifty million dollars. So he's a self made,
nearly a billionaire, first generation Asian immigrant who as far

(14:38):
as I know, didn't really have a much of a
public profile or any kind of a political presence, and
just took the country by storm with a viral social
media campaign. I think people just like what he says,
at least that's what it appears to be, and he's
been controversial. I think a lot of people like him.
I think even people that don't like him have commended

(14:59):
him on his campaign, which has been successful. He's competitive
with DeSantis. DeSantis had a bigger war chest than Trump.
He had a bigger war chester than any governor in
the United States has ever had. I think he had
raised two hundred million dollars in the last cycle, and
he had the support of the Jews in Israel and

(15:20):
his money and governor and back maybe the next best
known politician in the race next to Trump, and governor
of a major state. And so in other words, he's
got all these advantages and that this other guy who
really started from scratch is now competitive with him. And
I'll say too, it is unfortunate his look because you know,

(15:45):
I know that probably a lot of Republicans are not
totally on board with like Hindu Indian And I'm not
making any kind of comment on that. I think that's
just how things are, Just like with Bobby Jindal or
some of these other guys that ran. When I see
an Indian guy running with a name like Vivek Ramaswami,

(16:05):
let's not pretend I think that's that's also a disadvantage
for him, probably because the Republican voter base is all white.
It's ninety percent white. And I know that they're they
undertake great pains to convince the world they're not racist
but or xenophobic or something like that. But you know,
I'm sure they are not in love with that idea.

(16:27):
Quite frankly, I'm not in love with that idea. I
want a Christian to be president, not a Hindu. And
I also would prefer a president whose name I could pronounce,
like Joe Biden, not Vivek Ramaswami.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Now, all right, that's quite a line from Nick. I
think what he's actually saying there, Like, I think that's
that's a.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Juke question, right, That's quite a line from Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Think he's making He's making a little bit of a
bit there. I don't think, yeah, but uh, And that
becomes a little bit clear a bit later on because
he he talks about, you know, he's talking about they're
kind of both how impressive, you know, objectively, the success
of avex campaign has been, and how it points to
the fact that he has done some stuff right. Even
while he's saying I don't think he can win with

(17:13):
the Republican voter base the way that it is, which
I think is you know, partly shown by kind of
some of these polls that come out showing him losing support.
But he he comes in a little bit later, a
couple of minutes later, and he talks about why he
likes the bake, what he finds intriguing about him, and
I think that this is kind of valuable to hear.

Speaker 4 (17:31):
It's really more like an advertising pitch. It's like a
marketing pitch. It's the it's the perfect stereotype of like
a canned used car salesman political pitch. That's what they're
all like, Mike Pens, Chris Christy. You could say they're
like full of shit, like that's how it would characterize it.
They're like another full of shit conventional, polished politician. And

(17:55):
they also all went through the steps there on statewide elections.
You know, they're all governors or senators. Chris Christy, Nikki Haley,
Asa Hutchinson, Bergham, DeSantis, they're all governors. Tim Scott's a senator,
and they have that canned, full of shit polished political thing.

(18:16):
Both Yang and Vivek not only are they not white,
they're Asian children of immigrants. But there's also something that
characterizes them that they're kind of like a new type
of campaign where it's super smart. When you listen to Vivek,
it sounds a lot more like a podcast. It sounds
a lot more like a polemical commentator like me or

(18:38):
like Tucker or like whoever, like Alex Jones for that matter,
although that's a specific sort of thing, but maybe you
understand what I mean. They're they're almost talking like they're
talking to American people who have a higher IQ.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
So sure, sure, buddy, your average podcast, So listen your
everage high IQ podcast.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
This sounds smart like a podcaster, right, you know, we
all know that about podcasters.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
It's it's it's super interesting that he made the exact
same uh like observation that we did well when watching
the debate, we like turn to each other. He's like, oh,
he's doing Nick flood tests.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah no, and Nick flood Test has has a similar
idea about him, So you know, I think he's he
really does worry me. You know, as we've stated his
his polling isn't better in the wake of the debate. Yeah,
but his personal brand has never been better and that
he's everywhere. Every big network's been having him on to
talk about shit like this has increased his visibility not

(19:45):
just on social media but as a political commenter and
kind of the things that he's saying, because they are
so much more extreme than stuff, you know, even a
guy like Pince was willing to say, I think that's
a real problem. I think it's a problem that's going
to be with us for a while. Because he's very young.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean based on some of the poll stuff, Like,
I'm not worried about him as someone who I think
will be president. That's not my concern. My concern is
how he's going to be both influential and he's yeah,
he's setting himself up to be influential, and I guess
even even more so, he's like an indicator of what
the future of the GOP is going to be. And

(20:23):
that's the big thing that is like causing me concern because, Yeah,
it's the type of thing I've been thinking about more
and more the past year as we've had our first
wave of like zoomer candidates and also you know millennial
candidates that are they starting to fill up Philip offices.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, and I you know, I looked into I went
to Nick's telegram too, because I kind of wanted to
see is there more that he's been saying, and he
has actually been sharing a lot about Vivec. One of
the things I found was just like Vivick has called
specifically for Fuintes to be unbanned from Twitter. Nick is
one of the few people Elon is like, I am
not willing to truck with this motherfucker. Keep him off

(21:01):
of my website U and Veks is really not okay
with that, which does point to, like you don't specify that,
like most Republicans kind of prefer to believe pretend that
Nick doesn't exist in public. So the fact that he's
going to bad for him like this does point to
the fact that he sees value and he sees a
political future and the people that Nick speaks to for himself, right,

(21:26):
this is.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
He's like very aware of this side of the political interests,
Like he knows what their talking points are, He's familiar
with how they speak, like he he's he's able to
understand that this is like an actual like political contingent. Yes,
they may not be as reliable in showing up to
the polls, but it is, you know, as more and

(21:49):
more boomers, uh die off Sorry, yeah, no offense. Some
of these are the people that are some of them,
these are the people that are gonna, you know, start
filling in the voting gaps.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
The other thing that he shares a lot from Vivic
and there was like the specifically a clip from the
debate where Vivec talks about like cutting aid to Israel, right,
And obviously Nick being the guy at the we're not
we're not pro the Israeli state. So I'm not against
that from a certain point of view, but I'm not
for the same reasons that Nick. Very different reasons. Yeah,

(22:27):
but it is worth noting that, like that's another reason
why Nick likes this guy, right, So uh yeah, that's
that's kind of the core of the Vivic stuff I
wanted to talk about. The next thing to bring up
is sort of how shit polling after this? Now, as
we've noted, there's been like, you know, I found in
an MSN article that was a I believe it was

(22:48):
actually just them republishing a Washington Examiner article. Really solid
to hear that Washington Examiner is kind of a right
wing rag. They analyzed five polls taken just before and
after debit. Trump saw a decrease in two of those
polls and no change in the other three. This decrease,
it's not insignificant that the two poles show him both

(23:09):
Bush him down something like six points, which is not nothing, right, Yeah,
but that he's still up by around forty So it's
also not.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Like a seed change.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
You know, it does suggest a couple of things. One
of the things that suggests is that there is value
to him, especially since it looks like he has lost
some of his ability to message and some of his
ability to rile people up because of the way social
media has changed. He doesn't really use Twitter anymore. You know,
he made a post recently, but.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
He made the first posting in years.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, got Elon very excited. But he can't really and
and he you know, he he loves to rant on
truth social but it doesn't break through the same way
stuff on Twitter did. And it's possible nothing on Twitter
can break through that way anymore because of how much
changed it is. You know, it's not the same Twitter
that he wrote.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Absolutely, it's not the same Twitter it was in twenty fifteen,
twenty six now, not even the same Twitter it was
in twenty twenty, like it is no then severely altered
as a platform, and how it affects real so real
world events.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
I think the thing that you're seeing here is that
he does have his core, which is, you know, a
third or more of the GOP who will be right
or die for the rest of their lives, presumably, but
there is a softer chunk of support that is eroded
by him the fact that he's not in the limelight,
the fact that he wasn't up there, you know, slinging
mud and arguing and you know, talking with these other

(24:35):
candidates and so yeah, this is this is kind of
a thing you could It's probably a mistake. I'm not
saying a mistake from a point of view being good
for the country, but a mistake in terms of like
his campaign, that he wasn't up there, which is kind
of worth acknowledging and probably worth continuing to study. And
it may be it may have the effect of pushing

(24:56):
him to take part in some of the other debates.
DeSantis has said he thinks Trump will be at the
third debate. Who knows in terms of how everyone else did. Uh,
DeSantis went up a little bit about a two point bump,
which is, you know, not terrible, but it's also not significant,
especially given the size of Trump's lead. It's not the
kind of given the amount of cash burn he's been

(25:18):
going through, it's not the kind of rays he needed
to keep his campaign vibe.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
It was what he did not do a performance that
people were kind of expecting him to do. And I
think everyone kind of assumed he would try really hard
to come out as the as like the obvious front runner,
and he kind of flopped at the debate in at
least in my opinion, he came off as very like
uh muted, very like low key. He didn't He didn't
really say much one way or the other. He was

(25:43):
so obsessed with with what other people like, trying to
make sure that what he was saying was okay based
on what everyone else was saying on stage. It was
very weird.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
It was very weird and not the kind of energy
that suggests I am building a political machine, right, yeah,
and carry me into office. Pince went up by about
four points to seven percent of voter support. Uh, Nicky
Haley jumped about five points, And I would say I

(26:12):
think DeSantis and Pence and probably Haley have are in
here because they really think they can win. You know,
there's a couple of those governors and stuff whose names
I've I've already forgotten that, so nobody knows.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yeah, is like everyone knows Chris Christy is not going
to be the president, like we know, and he's not.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
He's not really, He's running to get a TV show
on MSN, right, maybe a book deal too. I guess
it's possible that's part of Haley's ambition too. I don't
really I don't have his great as sense for what's
going on.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, it's how they're all treating Trump is interesting because
they're also all like kind of auditioning to be vice president,
but some of them don't want that job because they're
they're they're being like very like like anti Trump. On stage,
the most most people were soft to Trump.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, And I think Vivek was both auditioning for like
the future of his political I don't think he reasonably
expects to be president this election. I think he may
think he can win that in the future, and I
think he sees this as look, I'm young and I'm
going to start building. Yeah, and if that's the case,
then he has done the first thing that he would
need to do to be a real candidate one day,
which is make a national name for himself as a

(27:21):
guy in politics. I think he may be auditioning for
vice president. And Trump recently commented like, yeah, you know,
I'm not against the idea necessarily.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, he said he was like impressed with his performance
at yeah, the debaters or something along those lines. Yeah,
And I mean the immediate reaction from almost almost every
kind of big like influential, millennial gen x kind of
right wing content creator person. They were all saying that
the VEC like very clearly won. Yeah, like all of

(27:54):
all of all of the Daily Wire people were very
we're very pro the VEK and kind of riding that train.
Ye Musk recently, even even even even before the debate,
switched sides from from being the Dysantis guy to being
the Thatch guy. So it was a lot of a
lot of like the intellectual dark right type type stuff

(28:17):
of like like online tech conservatives. They were all very
quick to jump on the xtrain and based on his
performance at the debate, they were happy with with his
overall demeanor and messaging.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, and uh yeah, so you know, again, as it
kind of stands, has anything changed, Well, yes and no.
Like the overall sweep of the primary, Donald Trump is
so far ahead that it does seem unlikely that he's
going to lose. But we all we've also seen it's

(28:53):
possible for him to bleed support, and if you remember
far back to twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, when he was
in these debates with the other Republican candidates, he didn't
really bleed support, like he was very consistently moving forward.
So that is interesting. That does suggest some things about
how the situation has changed. And uh yeah, it's also interesting,

(29:19):
you know, Poles kind of show that that voters did.
And maybe one of the reasons why Vivic's performance didn't
boost his campaign overall is that he entered into it
with the highest expectations of any of the debaters among
like Republican voters. Probably this is because you know, in
the speeches and stuff he's been given before, he's a

(29:40):
debate guy, like that's obvious about him anytime you hear
him talk. So I think people weren't expecting him to
do well, and so maybe it didn't. You know, if
people are expecting you to perform well and then you win.
It's not as impressive as a you know, if you
kind of come come out or left field there. So
maybe that's part of why he's not seeing stuff. One
of the things that's interesting to me is the stuff

(30:02):
that was talked about at the debate compared to what
actually Republican voters care about. The thing that came up
first in the debate is the thing that is number one,
getting inflation or costs under control. Obvious that that's going
to be top of the list for a lot of voters.
Of Republicans consider controlling immigration to be a primary concern,

(30:26):
which did come up a bit. One of the things
that pissed off a lot of the Daily Wire crew
is the fact that there wasn't really a lot of
talk about wokeness or trans people during the debate, because
that kind of shit is not like fighting liberalism and
wokeness and President Biden like it all gets kind of
like lumped together about a third, you know, of the electorate.

(30:47):
That's their their big concern.

Speaker 5 (30:49):
Among Republicans, it's primary for it's primarily for like online
clicks and for driving engagement on whatever Facebook thing you
want to do to harass the school board, and it
is not the.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Prime focus of the presidential.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yes, and like the issues with trans people and stuff
on its own does not come up here as like
a major It's nobody's primary concern among Republican voters. Like
it's these weirdo freaks on the internet, Which isn't to
say that they have good attitudes towards that, but like, yeah,
it makes sense that that's not going to be what
you put front and center in the debate. One thing
that's interesting to me is that both election security and

(31:28):
limiting abortion, which are huge issues and we're big parts
of the debate, are very much minor side show issues
for voters. About ten percent of voters consider of Republican
voters consider election integrity their primary concern. About six percent
considerate a limiting abortion a top priority, which is teeny right,
Like it's not a popular thing. They just have to

(31:50):
because of that hardcore of the base, they have to
signal for it.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
The Veck was the only person on stage to claim
that climate change is not real.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yes, yes, yes, which was interesting, especially as this hurricane
batters Florida. And that's that's deeply negative to right. The
complete denial of reality. The it doesn't take long and

(32:23):
Vivek did not do this, but it's not a long
journey to go from I don't believe climate change is
real to I think those fires were started with lasers
from space, you know, and there and versions of that, right,
which is deeply concerning to me. But uh yeah, that's uh,
that's you know, the Republican debate and and Vivek Ramaswami,

(32:45):
that's kind of uh, our our thinking on him as
he embraces Nick Fuintes thought, boy, I don't love saying that.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, no, but like that my main my, my main
takeaway from this debate was that this was based on
the VEX performance based.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
I'm just gonna cut out, have Daniel cut off from that,
my main performance. My main opinion was this was based
and then yeah, there we go. Garrison's debate analysis, thank.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
You, based on the Ve's performance was that this really
was like the first glimpse of the types of like
long term results of the al right era in like
actual like organized politics. It's it's it's, it is, it is.
It is our first peek at like this upcoming online

(33:34):
conservative wave of zoomers and millennials who are you know,
between my age and Robert's age, who are gonna be
running for office in the next ten years who were
heavily influenced by the online al right era And that's
very worrying. I mean, we saw a little bit of
that with DeSantis' campaign staff sharing son videos videos that
were approved by like a lot of people in his staff.

(33:57):
It wasn't it wasn't just one guy. We we we
have s found out that those videos were like approved
like in a in a in like a specific like
propaganda like chat that these people had I think, I
think on signal. Yeah, So like it is, it is.
It is part of like this this this wave that
we're just starting to see glimpses of here. And it's

(34:18):
not great, no, you know it it it It remains
to be seen like if these things will actually like
pan out in elections, though, I mean, like it doesn't
seem like the Vac's gonna do very well as an
actual presidential candidate during this race. Previously, when when when
when when Republicans have kind of ran on these very
kind of online topics, like back in the twenty twenty

(34:39):
two midterms, it it it failed to give them kind
of the return on investment. So it's will still kind
of see how how kind of viable this strategy is.
But I mean, we're only going to have more and
more zoomers and millennials running for office. Like it's yeah,
as we saw today, Mitch McConnell's literally disintegrating before our

(35:01):
very eyes. Yes, and more and more of these kind
of old guard of neocons or Trump guys are going
to age out in the next ten years, twenty years,
and you know it's it's gonna we are. We are
really going to see this new wave of politicians come in.
It is interesting how much of jen X just has

(35:22):
not been a has not been a generation that occupies office.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
No, well again, Garrison, you have not watched enough Mike
Judge cartoons. But that was made very clear in the
cartoon Daria. Wait, yes that is true. Yes, so I
I think so I kind of want to end I
think the uh Nope, that was not Mike Judge. What
what was I thinking? Why did I say that I'm
an I'm a I'm a fool. Oh wait, because it's
a spinoff of Beavis and Budd d Yes, that's why. Okay,

(35:49):
all right, I solved that mystery. Thank God. Now the
mystery I haven't solved. And the thing I want to
bring you to is, like we've said, I don't I
don't think I there of us think his presidential campaign
has electoral shot. But what about him is VP? Do
you think that's that's likely? Personally?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
There's certainly a chance, there's a chance. Trump has indicated
that that that there's a chance. I believe Trump said
he's a very very very intelligent person. He's got gergi
and he could and he could be some form of
something great, great Trumpian dialogue. I'll tell you, I think
he'd be very good as as vice president. So yeah,

(36:30):
it's which, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
I think the fact that his his his overall numbers
aren't trending up might hurt him in that although maybe
it'll make Trump feel more secure that he's not gonna
like take anything from him, you know, although maybe the
fact that he has gone so viral it would would
upset Trump because he kind of seems to have preferred
having a non entity as his VP.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
I don't know, because it is like, yeah, my previous
prediction was that he would try to get Herschel. That
maybe kind of out of date now Yeah, that is
certainly another one of these guys that that could be
in line. Certainly out of out of everyone else on
the debate stage, he was, Yeah, I think the most
the most Trumpian and the most like Trump friendly guy. Yeah.

(37:15):
The one other election kind of restriction that he proposed
that we have yet to mention is to raise the
voting age to twenty five. Yes, on top of having
those uh civics tests. But yeah, I mean I I
think it's possible, but it's it's a little too far
out to say for sure.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well that is uh, I think
where we're gonna we're gonna bring her to an end
for the night.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, this has been it could happen here until certainly,
it certainly could happen. Certainly could uh you know, stay
uh a little concerned.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
It could happen here As a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com. Slash sources. Thanks for listening,