SIO28: The Discussion With Dave Rubin That Never Was (and more bad news....)

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 26, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Well guys, I have pretty much nothing but bad news today. Oh man, I thought it would take a little longer for this to happen, but you may have seen on social media, I announced Dave Rubin has already withdrawn from the conversation we were going to have at Mythicist Milwaukee. Walk yet, it's called Myth Information, September 30th. He's, he's already canceled. The reason I've been given is that, uh, despite the fact that he's been working back and forth with those guys scheduling for quite some time, he apparently let them know just today, as I'm recording this, that he, uh, because he was so busy, he double booked himself, so he can't make it to the event, some, some family thing.

0:01:17 Thomas: So I'm not here to, you know, I I'll take him at his word. I'm not here, to, to accuse him of, of anything, uh, other than it's just disappointing that the result. So that's really unfortunate. I want to talk about that and I want, I want go into that a little bit and what may be happening there and just give some opinions on, on the whole thing. I've also got some more bad news. Now this isn't related to me, except I've been pointing to 2018 as the time when Democrats are gonna rally, we're gonna be so mad at Trump, we gonna come out, we turn this thing around. Well, turns out reality, as it often does, has its own thoughts on the matter, and unfortunately the races for 2018, at least in the Senate, are just not looking too good.

0:02:06 Thomas: They're not the ones we would need to be at this time in order to take back control, or are they? I don't know. I'm going to go through them. Once again, hopefully we're going to learn something together, if you didn't already know this. We're goingto learn who's up for their Senate seat in 2018, who we could possibly flip, who on the Democrats could be vulnerable, who could be flipped to Republicans. So we're going to look at whether or not, not only will the Democrats be able to take back control, that's one possibility, or will the Republicans be able to get to a filibuster-proof majority, which I'm sure you can imagine my feelings on the horror of that. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. Oh, So I also want to note from last episode, you know, I may have had an inaccurate picture in my head of just how big of philosophy fans my podcast listeners are.

0:02:56 Thomas: I've heard from you, you've said, like, a lot of you have said that you loved the last episode with Aaron and you love philosophy discussions in general, that is great news because I love that discussion, I love those topics, so your message has been received, I'm really glad, and this is, again, a good reason to comment, participate participate in the show, leave voicemails. I'm really glad to hear that. That's something that I don't know. Maybe I was a little self-conscious of because I just think of it as pretty nerdy, pretty detailed, pretty, I don't know, some people can think of philosophy as a bit useless or philosophy of morality is a bit out there and not relevant. It turns out that was all my being too sensitive. That was all insecurity on my part. It sounds like you guys were incredibly engaged with that discussion.

0:03:42 Thomas: You found that talk interesting. You found the questions I was asking, the answers I was given interesting, and that just makes me so glad. So we're going to pursue other philosophy topics more. I want to go after that a little bit. It's not as though we're gonna run out of them, so we can we can do many footnotes to Plato, but alright, so that said, let's get on with the show.

0:04:11 Thomas: You know, I lied, I'm gonna do a little bit of just basic news items first, because I did see somebody posted something about the health care bill failing, and they're like, "Oh, can't wait to hear the commentary on that." That that never happens, by the way. No one ever says like, "Oh Thomas, what do you think about this." I just wanted to highlight the one time it has happened to me, so that was, that was a nice experience.

Thank you to whoever posted that, but, but no, I want to mention that because I, I did predict it's a chance for one. You know, I don't know how well I'm doing on predictions. I don't know how well you've been tracking my predictions. I'm not going to do it because then I can just say I get everything right. But so you'll have to hold me to account. But I did predict that the healthcare bill would not pass.

I didn't think that it would have the support because no one likes it. And I was right. And it was really funny to see because, you know, it was Trump blaming Democrats when you're trying to do everything Democrats hate, you're trying to get rid of a major Democrat accomplishment, and then, and you have the numbers, you have the numbers in every branch of government, you control every branch government, you can't get it done. It's like, come on Democrats, help me, you know, help me burn down your legacy, like this.

It is like blaming a guy for not helping you burn down his house, like, well, I could have burned down the house, but this guy wouldn't help me, the owner to the house, he just wouldn't hand me, you know, a stick lit on fire to help. No, of course, Democrats are not going to do that. Here's the only thing, here's the only thing I am concerned about. And it's that as Democrats, oftentimes we did blame the Republicans for getting in the way of everything, even when they didn't quite have a majority.

0:05:53 Thomas: So for a lot of Obama's and for for healthcare and for a lot of the things Obama tries tried to do, we do blame Republicans oftentimes for like, well, they didn't, there's obstructionism. They didn't compromise. They wouldn't do anything. So I think we do have to be careful about that. Uh, but, but I don't, I don't worry too much about any sort of hypocrisy when literally the bill is get rid of a major Democrat accomplishment.

It's like, Well, no, I mean, we can't, you can't be expected to, to support that. So it's absurd to blame Democrats for not voting for that. But, let's say that Trump comes up, now this is just, I hate these hypotheticals, because often, sorry for the side note, but oftentimes people will be, do a hypothetical where it's like, well what, okay, let say Trump introduces a bill tomorrow, like he sponsors, but he gets Ryan to put a bill forth that it cleans up the air, and it solves global warming, and like they'll just name a bunch of good things, and they'll be like, what if Democrats don't support it, like you better support it. And it's like Trump would have to be a different human being to do that. It's just not going to happen. I'm not too worried about that hypothetical as a possibility. However, what if he did – I'll pick one more realistic.

So what if they found an issue – infrastructure is a decent example. What if they introduced an infrastructure bill? And because it is something I've been learning throughout our political process here, and I hope you remember as well, and I, I hope I'm not being condescending when I put it that way, but you know, there's, this is complicated.

0:07:29 Thomas: It's easy to forget this stuff. Any bill that's not going to be budget neutral is going to have to get 60 votes. They can pass, they can do their little trick, their reconciliation trick, uh, to pass anything that's going to be allegedly budget neutral, but they can't pass something like a spending bill or tax reform unless it's budget neutral. So a possible hypothetical is that Trump could try to get some sort of infrastructure spending bill done. Now, granted, it's probably going to have a bunch of crap on it. It's probably gonna be, here's infrastructure, it's wall infrastructure. Hey, Americans, I got a great bill for our infrastructure. Did you notice our crumbling slash non-existent giant walls? Well, I've got the bill for you. So if it's something like that, then it's crap.

0:08:15 Thomas: But he could put together, I could almost conceive of him, just because it was a campaign promise, I could almost conceive him putting together an okay infrastructure bill or trying to get that going. However, that's just not in Paul Ryan's interests. So I don't think they'll have him, but let's assume it does. Let's just pretend it did. Then he would need 60 votes and then they would actually be legitimate. It would be a legitimate complaint for Republicans to then blame Democrats because you would need some number of Democrat votes to pass anything. So it's not, I just want to make the point that that's not always an invalid argument. Like there are, there are circumstances where despite Republicans having control of all three branches, they don't have filibuster proof control. Now, if they had filibustering proof control, then, then that's an insane argument, but they don't for now, for now we'll find out later if they may eventually.

0:09:09 Thomas: But so, so it could could be a potentially good argument about certain bills, but not this one. So I hope I cleared that up. That's my thinking on that. But boy was it really fun to watch Trump, who has no idea how anything works, he just thinks because he's a CEO, he's just used to being in charge and just being able to declare things, he just thought he could say, no, do it, Republicans, just do it! And then that would somehow make it happen, like it would just then happen. There's not, he didn't have a plan for how it would happen, he would just apply pressure, because he is a master negotiator, I mean he's, he is, a genius, so he could, he could just just say, get it done. And then he tried to do some tricks. Like he called people out and said they weren't going to get reelected if, if they didn't. And he said he, he wouldn't repeal Obamacare at all if they Didn't pass this bill.

0:09:59 Thomas: Well, that didn't work. And the funny thing is the problem isn't Democrats. Like the, the, again, cause we know this Democrats can't, they don't have the numbers. The problem is conservatives because like the it's the freedom caucus, as you've no doubt heard by now, uh, because the, the Republican party is an absolute mess. They were well set up to criticize for eight years, but they're just, they're not set up to get anything done because they don't agree with each other. Paul Ryan's got one agenda, which is, which as I've said, I think I said this last week, nobody agrees with, I mean, it's an agenda with very, very small constituency was pretty much just Paul Ryan. And then some other people who want to cut taxes on the rich. And that's about it. Like that's what they're are trying to do, cut taxes, kill government. Um, there are definitely some Republicans who like that.

0:10:46 Thomas: Sure. The freedom caucus does want to reduce, uh, taxes and get the government out of everything, but they're so far to the right that even Ryan's bill doesn't work for them. So they're there, they won't support it. And then moderate Republicans don't want to kill healthcare because Trump promised it. And they're, they're going to have to face an angry mob at at their town halls if they kill all of Obamacare and they don't replace it with something better, which they have no plan to do so. So they didn't support it. So basically no one supported this thing. And Trump, I think he just does not understand this. He has no idea because he just told Ryan, like, just do get it. Just do it. Fix it.

0:11:31 Thomas: Like it just is no, he has no no idea how. He just kept saying, do it or else. And then finally, Paul Ryan is like, I am withdrawing. It doesn't have the votes. I'm not going to put it up for votes and then have it fail. It's not ready. We'll do it later. Now, I was a little nervous when they started making changes late last week. I was nervous that they would find some sort of compromise that would get enough Republicans to do it. So for a while, I thought my prediction was going to be wrong. I thought they were going to like adjust it, which would have, I mean, I could have tried to squeak by on a technicality that I did. I did kind of allow for like, if, unless they revise it. But even that, even that didn't work. And I don't know that there's any solution. I don't see how they're ever passing a healthcare bill.

0:12:19 Thomas: Really? I mean because fundamentally there, you get no Democrats unless you do something crazy. And then if you do, you're getting no Republicans and you you can't get all the Republicans to agree on something. So that's interesting. Very interesting what's happening. Last I've heard, it's preliminary. I'm recording this early because of my trip. Last I heard, they're going to move on. Trump's going to moving on to another issue. So we'll see how that goes. He might move on to tax reform. But the funny thing about that, I don't know if you've heard this or did the math yourself. The funny thing is, you need 60 votes unless you're going make it budget neutral. And tax reform for Republicans that's budget neutral is a weird thing. Like, I, I, I understand.

0:13:05 Thomas: Even though I, I pretty much disagree with it, I can understand a viewpoint that is, let's cut taxes, maybe it'll spur the economy in a Reaganomics kind of thing. I at least understand it, I understand where they're coming from, let's come across the board or let's simplify things or let flat something, something crazy, I get that. But if you're going to try to do that and make it budget it neutral, you have to increase taxes somewhere else. So you'd, you'd have to change shift the tax burden, which is already are favoring the rich. I mean, you're going to shift that even more to favor the rich, or you're gonna have to hide the savings. You're gonna have to find savings, but you'll have to hide it somewhere weird, where like, it's like fees on something or, you know, so I don't see how they're getting any tax reform done. So it really is true.

0:13:52 Thomas: I think Andrew mentioned this on opening arguments the other week that like, you just can't pass anything thing in Washington. There's no such thing as laws anymore getting passed for now. So, I mean, we could take some comfort in that. And I just saw this hot off the presses. Trump's approval rating just fell to a new low, 36%. Now, we got to be a little careful with this. Approval ratings go up and down. But we can already say this is lower than Obama's ever got at any time during his presidency. The lowest he's ever got was 38 lowest percentage Obama ever had, uh, lowest for George W. Bush 25. So, you know, things get a little worse for him. Lowest for Bill Clinton was 37. And that's saying something lowest that ever got for Clinton was 30. So he's already lower than that.

0:14:37 Thomas: Uh, and this thing, you just had an embarrassing bill fail. It's possible. This goes right back up, but it's also possible. It doesn't. So I mean, it's, I'm going to keep an an eye on it, but this doesn't mean he's permanently lost all his support is all I'll say because presidents recover some sometimes, but, uh, who knows, maybe not. I mean, he's not, what is he going to have to show for himself? I mean it's been one embarrassing either court telling him he can't do his immigration, uh ban or, uh Paul Ryan telling him we can't do his healthcare bill. I mean what he's going to need a victory. I don't know what that victory will be. The investigations are going crazy. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see how low that can go, because we will hit a breaking point lower than which it cannot go because facts don't matter to those people.

0:15:28 Thomas: So you will hit point where no matter what Trump does, like he said, like that famous quote he said which he was 100 percent right about, he could just go shoot somebody on Fifth Fifth Avenue. I think it was, he said, and some people would still support him. He's that is the never has Trump been more correct in something he said like that, that it was a rare, accurate sort of semi introspective comment from him. I don't think I've ever heard him say something that right on. He was right on, so I think there's a floor beyond which you'll never go because he could, he could kill a guy on camera and tell a certain segment of the population situation that didn't happen with Photoshop. And they'd be like, but, but that only works on pictures. Not as a new, new Photoshop.

0:16:14 Thomas: They did the whole video and then it'll work or they'll blame Obama. Obama killed the guy. It was just that camera angle. Couldn't see, you know, there is a floor. So I don't, I don't, I don't know how low he can go, but it's probably a bit lower than 36. It can probably go down a bit. So we'll have to root for that. But that being said, how Let's move on to another topic.

0:16:39 Thomas: So let's talk Dave Rubin a little bit. I know sometimes people get tired of this, but I'm not, I promise this is not just complaints about Dave Rubin, the guy. I wanted to give him a huge benefit of the doubt. I looked into his liberal guests of the past and turns out he has had a few liberal guests. I took a look at how many, who they were, what they believe, and the response. So I'll put a pin in that and sort of, I'm going to talk about that later. But what happened was very disappointing, so just to give the the full story, uh, Mythicist Milwaukee, the Myth Information Conference that I did my first ever and to date only talk at, I was trying to do more, but it's been hard to schedule them, if you're running a conference, let me know, I will come speak at it.

0:17:26 Thomas: I have some great stuff, I promise, anyway, uh, I did my first talk there, it was a success, uh, I thought so, a lot of people thought so, got voted like the the the fan favorite, so I I was looking forward to maybe going back in the next year. Well, that wasn't happening. There's kind of a curious thing going on over there where I think it's fair to say I'm not talking any crap or anything, but it's fair to say that the people who booked this year's conference, the segment of the group that booked this year's conference, come from a different background. They're more along the Rubin lines. And they have invited some guests that I don't agree with. It. They've invited some guests that are very anti-feminist, a lot of them actually. Uh, and what was going to happen? They had invited Rubin and I was nowhere to be found in that guest list.

0:18:14 Thomas: I was a little sad about it, but you know, things are what they are. Whatever. I wasn't too worried about it. I Wasn't complaining or anything. I just, I just was, was disappointed. Well, somebody from the group messaged me and said, Oh, we're having Dave Rubin. Uh we might be able to have him talk to somebody, uh, just letting you know it should be interesting. And I just said, you know, whatever, whatever I can do if you need anything from me. I was disappointed not to be invited, but what can you do? And that morphed into somehow the idea was Dave Rubin's going to actually talk to a liberal for once. And then it morphed in to Thomas would be a good person for him to talk to. And I was very grateful to the people. I'm not using their names. I don't actually know if they want to be recognized.

0:19:00 Thomas: So I apologize for that. Let me know those who I've I've talked to in the group. If you do want to be recognized, I'm happy to do so, but I don't want to do so without your permission. But anyway, very happy that, uh, myth information proposed that I speak to Dave Rubin. He was going to interview me was how it was pitched to me, which is weird, but, but whatever, he's an interviewer. So I figured we'd find a way to make that work. And it was amazing. I was like, I was blown away that it was going to happen. I couldn't believe my luck. I was super happy about it. I'm very grateful, still very grateful to everybody at Myth Information, despite the fact that it sounds like I'm coming from a different place than a lot of them. But that's okay. I was very pleased that they were going to allow the liberal side to be represented to someone who is anti-liberal.

0:19:46 Thomas: And I was thrilled for the opportunity. So credit to those guys. And that lasted all of, what, a couple of weeks. It was all approved. This wasn't like, you know, it wasn't announced early, nothing, no shenanigans were happening. Everything was above. It was approved by Rubin's people. It was, they were on board for a couple of weeks. It was fine. Nobody said or did anything wrong, but Rubin, I guess, called them up just today as I'm recording this, but it was a little earlier than you're hearing it. And they said, and he said, sorry, I was too busy. I didn't realize I double booked myself. I have a family thing that day. That's what I've been told. And okay, I'm not going to do anything with that. I'm not here to challenge anybody's reasons they can't do something.

0:20:34 Thomas: I am very disappointed that that's the result, but whatever. I'll take him at his word. I am not looking to be uncharitable needlessly. So, that's a bummer. That's a real bummer, I would hope with the amount of prep time that went into this thing that a mistake like that wouldn't have happened, and with the amount staff he has, all that kind of stuff, but, whatever. Very, very disappointing. So, then my approach was this, I wanted to, and I still sort of am doing this, though you'll see the result, I want to reach out as best I could to say, essentially, you know, bummer that you can't come, understandable, schedule conflicts, whatever, how about we have the conversation either on my podcast or yours, and, I get it, I'm not, I got the sensitivity of he's got a giant thing over there, so, whatever.

0:21:23 Thomas: He doesn't have to invite me on his show, you, you know, I wish you would invite somebody, me or somebody to represent the site, whatever. Come on my show. Take 30 minutes, take 30 minutes out of your day to say, hey, you know what? Maybe I will have that battle of ideas that I always allege that I'm interested in. Uh, I'll call some guy's show for 30 minutes. Out of my day. And we'll talk for, for 30 damn minutes. Just, just take that. So I didn't say all this. What I, what I wrote was something very nice saying, I know a lot of people, a lot of fans, a lot of listeners, a lot of anybody on either side of this debate were very disappointed that the conversation was not going to take place, and I shared this on Twitter and I made a plea, hey, since, since this fell through, no big deal, please consider coming on my show or vice versa.

0:22:13 Thomas: So that we can still have this discussion, and I went pretty hard on social media trying to make this happen, and and thank you so much to everybody who has shared it, replied, liked it, tweeted at them. That kind of stuff is really important. I don't know that it will work in this instance, but, you know, we were aiming pretty high, lofty expectations. However, that kind of, I was going to say activism, I mean, it is in a way that kind participation, that enthusiasm and helping out when I'm trying to accomplish something like that, really means a ton and really helps. And I think, you know, if not this time, the next time, you know, maybe it'll be the way to get someone's attention and have a conversation that needs to happen.

0:23:00 Thomas: So thank you to everyone for doing that. Haven't heard anything at all. It's been shared a lot. I mean, it's remarkable for me too, because I don't have a huge Twitter following like he does and like a lot of other people do. It's interesting how podcasting works. Won't go too far off the rails with a side note here, but audiences are weird. I mean, there's some, somewhere there's a big conversion rate for like YouTube to podcast to Twitter, to Facebook. And it's, it's skewed oddly. Like YouTube, if you have a hundred thousand YouTube followers, subscribers, you're probably smaller than me. It's, what's weird. Cause like YouTube is a weird thing where people would just click on subscribe and just don't really ever watch your channel.

0:23:46 Thomas: You can't make any money off of it. Cause YouTube kind of screws its creator. So there's some weird stuff going on. Conversion rates for me in my history of, you know, I've only got like 2,500 Twitter followers or 2,600 or something like that. Not a whole lot compared to my audience, which is, I don't know why, but it's just, it's the nature of the medium to get this many retweets and replies. It blew me away. It was a, it was a lot more than I normally get on stuff and it was valiant effort. Now here's what also happened. It happened to be that around that same same time, Dave Rubin said, Hey, I'm on a flight. I'm doing a live Facebook Q and a. So I said, Oh, okay, shoot. That's good timing. And I posted, uh, I shared the Q and A on my Facebook and I said, hey guys, it looks like he's doing a life Q and maybe ask him about this.

0:24:35 Thomas: Now someone had already beaten me to it, which I love. Like by the time I shared it, it was already too, like he was almost done, but someone, the first question, and I'm going to thank Horatio. I won't use your full full name just in case, but Horatio, uh, you're the first comment that I see on this question. And I think I, I, unless it's doing some weird sorting, um, I think you got there like right away, which is really cool. Horatio asked Dave Rubin, since you won't be doing the interview with Thomas Smith in Milwaukee, will you be scheduling an interview with him or going on serious inquiries only? And then Michael, somebody, again, I just, in case you don't all your names out there. Michael B said that and pointed up. So there are already. Thank you so much, you guys, for getting on him.

0:25:20 Thomas: And Dave Rubin answered. Now, are you curious to hear what Dave Rubin said? Well, prepare for disappointment. Here was Dave Rubin's answer. He said, "I was doing that as a part of the event. Don't really know who he is." Period. And end of sentence, no interest in in pursuing that any further. I'm not, I'm not surprised. I am a little disappointed because later on there are other people who ask him, hey, check out this guest, or do you want to hook up with this guest?

And it's a conservative guest and it's like, oh yeah, tell me who that is. I'll get on right away. I will get him on my show immediately. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not really. Like there are some, you can look at the thread now. If you go to, by the way, go to my podcast, sorry, go my Facebook, facebook.com slash Thomas podcast or the Serious Inquiries Only page, which is facebook.com slash serious pod, uh, You can find this somewhere if you want, but he, you know, there are other places where people said, hey, would you want to get this person on, they're like, oh yeah, let me check him out, do it, but for me, now, don't know he is, and period, that just, and I responded and I said, just someone on the left who would love to speak to you, please get in touch, let's, let's have an exchange of ideas, uh, got a few likes, but no response from Dave Rubin, so very disappointing.

And here's what I want to say, guys, because I get this complaint from time to time when I talk about Dave Rubin. People say, well, you know, you're trying to get on a guy's show who's got a lot more followers. It's true. He's got, he's got giant Patreon. He got, hey, it's that, it that free speech money, man. It really does, it is profitable, that free-speech money. But anyway, and he's got a giant YouTube following.

0:26:59 Thomas: And he's, yeah, he's by any objective measure has a gigantic following. And that's why I talk about him a lot because he represents a huge audience. And he, a lot of his audiences, some of them are my audience, actually, despite the fact that I complain about his, you know, I take issue with things he says. I appreciate that people still listen to me. I try not to overload on it too much. But I get it, I'm a small time thing, that's why I was saying it would be nice if he at least called me for 30 minutes and did a thing, it doesn't take that much time, but I get it, there's a lot of small potatoes out there like me, it's not that small of a show by the way, but it's certainly small potatoes to someone like Dave Rubin.

0:27:44 Thomas: I get it. I don't think he has to entertain every person of my following size. But what's frustrating about this is it's so consistently one way. What it is, is him complaining about a lot of things on the left, saying the left is ruin free speech, saying, making the typical trigger warning comments and bullshit safe space jokes and all that, and ridiculing it, and never, ever, ever having someone to defend that point of view.

0:28:17 Thomas: Simultaneously, there's three prongs to why this is such an annoying thing to me, and hopefully I can outline that. Because if you notice, I don't go around complaining that Dennis Prager is not having me on his show or Glenn Beck or some other conservative. Like, I do not waste my time with that. You know, you do not hear me complaining, hey, why are you not talking to me on your conservative show? I am a liberal. No. It is a specific thing.

So, he complains about all that stuff that I have established. He also is very high-minded and preachy about the fact that he's having the hard nuanced discussions that no one else is having, that he likes a battle of ideas, that he believes in all sides and like hearing all sides of all that.

And the final icing on the cake is that he represents, he misrepresents himself in my opinion, and his show, he represents himself as a liberal of some kind, like a true liberal, a more libertarian kind of guy, whatever, like he has some left-wing views, he's kind of in the middle, not on either side, and he represents his show as a forum for hearing about all of his ideas, when you actually look at the guests who are on his show and you look at what the content of what he says, it's all right-wing. Wing. He has a couple of liberal views. He always goes to, it's the same go-tos every time, by the way. It's, oh, well, I'm pro-marijuana and pro-gay marriage. Oh, congratulations.

So are a lot of Republicans. Like there are a Lot of Republicans who are probably pro those two things. That doesn't mean they're not Republicans. And when you're spouting right-wing propaganda all the time, which he does, I am going to go to examples. You are a right- wing outlet. So it is those those three factors that make this really bothersome combined with the fact that we share an audience or, or, well, I, that flatters me too much.

0:30:05 Thomas: I, I my audience overlaps with his gigantic audience a certain extent. So people whose opinions I care about, because I care about listeners opinions. I really do. I,I, I want, I'm trying to affect change in a positive way, any way I can. And so I care, I care about what my audience thinks. I really do, are taken in by this, and I think that they are incorrect in how they view Dave Rubin, and that bothers me, so that is why I talk about it a lot.

The most frustrating thing to me is how, again, high-minded he represents his show as, and yet, if you look at the details of who he invites on, it's virtually 98% motivated by following, so if someone has a huge following, no matter how insane their views, like Alex Jones or Glenn Beck, whatever it is, no matter who it is they can come on the show, and they almost always share at least one thing in common, which is hating the regressive left, like virtually every guest. Now, there are some exceptions. I I won't say it's every guest, but it's virtually every guest. Now, I wasn't going to talk about this, but somebody in that same Q&A asked him, hey, why do you never have liberals on?

Hey, Dave Rubin, why did you never talk to liberals? And he answered, and he said, here are the liberals I've had on. It's probably not an exhaustive list, but it's probably close to an exhaust list. List. He rattled off like six, I think.

0:31:38 Thomas: And then he said, in addition, some other classical liberals like Sam Harris and a few other people who were follow the same pattern of thinking of the regressive left is essentially ruining everything, but they are liberal. I mean, I'll give, give him credit. Sam Harris is at least, it was at least a Hillary supporter. So it wasn't like a Trump supporting, uh, you know, person, but anyway, he gave a list of some liberals and I took a look at that list. And I thought, okay, maybe I've been too hard on Dave Rubin. Let me check out these names. And, I, I looked every one of them up that he named in, in his first little section of liberals. If you, if you happen to check out the comment, and I didn't, I didn't know a lot of these names actually. And I looked up the episode. I looked up what they thought.

0:32:24 Thomas: Uh, and I looked up some other stuff and it's, it's interesting results. The first of which is that there's only six names. In addition to the Sam Harris Majid, he did a second group of people that was kind of different group, but he's only got six names, now maybe this is not an exhaustive list, but considering that these six names go all the way back, they go from just the other month, so a couple months ago, to all the back in his third show ever, they cover the whole spectrum of his show, and because he's asked this question so much, I have a feeling this is close to all there is. Is. And these aren't even good examples. There's a few good examples, and I'm going to give them credit for those, but half of them are not even really the kind of liberals that would challenge him at all.

0:33:10 Thomas: They're liberals who hate liberals, essentially. So here's what I noticed about these videos. So the names here are Jimmy Dore, Areva Martin, John Fuglesang, Michael Ian Black, Hilary Rosen, and Margaret Cho. These have like no views. His channel is... 427,000 subscribers, and again, this is a weird thing about YouTube, they don't all watch every video, and this is the current number, where some of these videos date back, but for the most part his videos range for anywhere from tens of thousands to like millions, like two million, million? And these liberal guests range from low average to way below average, so that's an interesting thing already, his audience doesn't like these, so it could be one reason why he doesn't do it, and if you look at the likes and the dislikes, the disliks are crazy on these, they're more than the likes on most of them, if you you look at any of his other interviews, that's never the case.

0:34:10 Thomas: And if you look at the comments, they are hilarious. I'm gonna go quickly through this checklist, is like, it's like, it almost is, some of my best friends are liberals version of, you know, like defending his show, here's his hit list of his six liberals that he did, real quick. Jimmy Door, now this one is, was the third show, of this was Rubin Report, third show ever. So on his list of liberals he's interviewed is someone from September 2015, this has 43,000 views, so it's actually not here, that's that's on the low end, but it's not, it's it's not as low as some of these, but consider his third show ever, so that should have more times worth of views factored in. But this was way before Rubin went full right wing. And you look at the interview, he's sort of more in the middle and he's kind of just asking questions and it really has almost no resemblance to his show today.

0:35:01 Thomas: So, I mean, it's hard to count that. They talked a little bit and sure, Jimmy Dore is liberal. Dore, I don't know the guy's name, but he's liberal. Role, but there's really not much going on in the way of like, is this guy defending safe spaces or is he defending feminism? Nothing like that. And the funny thing is, if you look at the comments, all the top comments are people who hate Jimmy Dore and like, I can't believe you talked to this asshole on your show.

A trend that we shall see continue. So very funny. The next was Areva Martin now This was in January 2016, so still, but it's still an example that goes back 14 months or so. I have to give him credit for this interview because she is amazing, Areva Martin, I didn't know who she was, saw the interview, she's amazing, she certainly liberal, she is a genuine liberal unlike some of the people on this list, and she defended a lot of liberal views, and the funny thing is he actually challenges liberals on his show, he doesn't challenge conservatives at all. And he just said, I'm just asking questions, but he challenged her a lot. And he always phrases it like, hey, some people say and some people say whatever.

I mean, I guess I'm kind of splitting hairs there, but it is kind of funny that he can't just come out and say that he thinks these things, but whatever. But he always challenged, hey some people say Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization and then she'll defend it. And this was in response to Larry Elder's interview. So he had just had on Larry Elder, who's a black man who just says that racism doesn't exist.

0:36:37 Thomas: That video, by the way, so that video on his channel, 226,000 views. And that was just before this video. Her video, the liberal video responding to some of these charges that Larry Elder did, 17,000 viewers. And it's all downvotes. Larry Elder's video, tons of upvotes, like ridiculous amount of votes. Everybody loves it. Her video, tons of downvotes. Every comment is how she's like horrible stuff about how dumb she is and that, that she's, she's racist for defending black lives matter. So this should tell you something. Next on his list was John Fuglesang, this one shouldn't count because he literally has a quote in the interview where he says, Democratic Party, which I'm not a member of, independent always have been.

0:37:28 Thomas: And then he's also, he also has another quote that is, every time you disagree with liberals, you're a racist, you are a homophobe. That was Rubin asking him that. And he says yeah, that's one of the reasons I've never joined a political party. So he, John Fuglesang, not not a Democrat, somewhat liberal, kind of in the middle, also agrees with him on the regressive left crap. So somewhat I mean, not full on, but but he when when asked about it, he agreed. So that That doesn't count. That's someone in the center, essentially, who has some liberal views. Not a bad interview. I actually don't mind John Fuglesang or anything. And by the way, I'm not saying that's not an interview you can do or something. Great interview, John Fuglesang. Interesting guy.

0:38:13 Thomas: I liked it. You can't count him as like, oh, I had a liberal. It's this guy who says, I am not really a liberal, I'm not really conservative, I have nothing. That's his whole theme of his show. So that doesn't count. Michael Ian Black in July of 2016 is the next one. This was a good one. Michael Ian Black did stand up for some liberal values. I remember I this was back when I still was following Rubin and had some some hope that maybe things would change because he had Michael Ian Black on. And I watched this at the time and I was really happy that that he fought back. Oh, by the way, the Areva Martin won 17,000 views. John Fuglesang 24,000. Michael Ian Black, who's somebody with quite a following, only garnered 41,000 views. This will be important when I talk about some other videos later on.

0:39:01 Thomas: So this one I count. I give him credit for having Michael Ian Black on. They got into it a little bit. And the funny thing is, here's what I noticed about this one. I think it's particularly funny. Every single comment, if you look at the top comments, there's like, and you can just keep scrolling down, it goes on and on.

Every single one is people hating Rubin for not arguing enough with Michael Ian in Black, or the only other kind of comment is, guys relax, we all know that Michael Ian Black is full of shit, but he just interviewed him to kind of get his thoughts, you know, so yeah, that's that's that's interesting, this reveals something about your audience.

Next one was in October 2016, Hilary Rosen, this seems like an actual liberal, totally, and very few views, 19,000 relative to his channel, And the comments are horrible misogyny, one is, oh look, another dishonest Hilary, and there's some name calling in it that I won't go into, because, whatever, I'll keep the show kind of clean, so pretty, she's an actual, she counts as an actual liberal, though, so I'm kudos for having her on the show, so that that gets it up to three, three actual liberals, none of whom really talked about safe spaces or trigger warnings or anything that, uh, that I would want to talk about, and then the last one he includes, which is Margaret Cho, that's the most recent one by far, that was in January, it's a 20 minute interview, and they barely even talked about anything, like, she is a liberal, but they just talked about, out, and I say anything, I mean, in terms of liberal versus conservative, they just talked about whitewashing in Hollywood, which is her pet issue.

0:40:43 Thomas: And that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. But it's not like, oh, I had a liberal on to hash out these things that I always accused liberals of. None of that. They didn't really cover any of that at all. So of his liberal hit list, where someone asked him why do you never have liberals on, he said, here's the ones I've had on, maybe there's others, I don't know, but it's six, only three count, only three were actually anything like an interview with somebody who actually disagrees and expresses different views, and they have no views and everyone hates those videos, so in some ways I sort of get it, I sort were to, I get what he's done. I don't, I say sort of, I absolutely get what he's doing. I get why he's doing what he is doing. It's because it's what yields the most viewers. Now, you heard the numbers I was talking about before, like 19,000, 20,000 up to 40,000.

0:41:32 Thomas: Margaret Cho and these are people, Margaret Cho, Michael Ian Black, they're celebrities with millions of Twitter followers, so even they can only garner 45,000 people, with a billion views on Rubin's channel, Adam Carolla, Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Glenn Beck. Those are the ones who have tons of views. We're talking 200,000 minimum and all the way into the millions for those ones, and the reaction is all universally, I shouldn't say universally, the top comments and the majority reaction and the likes are all positive, this is not people hate watching, this is your audience, and that's the point I want to get across. If he just admitted, and all his followers who chirp at me for having a problem with this, if you guys just admitted it's a right-wing show, the audience is right-wing, the host is right wing with a couple of left-wing views, that's fine.

0:42:31 Thomas: I'm not demanding his head, I'm saying stop representing yourself in the show, and not just him, he doesn't listen to my show, listeners who maybe are Rubin fans, that is fine. You're on the right wing. If you like that shit, like if you watch it and you find yourself agreeing with the guests, I got news for you. That's a right wing outlet. You probably more right wing than you think, or maybe you're all the way on the Right Wing. That there's nothing wrong with it.

You be that that's fine, but just be honest about it. I am a left-wing show, I have liberal views, I try to get dissenting opinions on all the time, I am going to speak to a guest who disagrees with me on the Jordan B. Peterson thing, if all goes well, been exchanging emails with somebody, I know I'm going on vacation so it'll have to be put on pause for a couple weeks, but that's my plan, I was going to speak to Rubin, I would speak to him on my show any day of the week, I'd speak to to a Rubin clone who doesn't even have a show but has all those views, I would speak to right now because I'm interested in these ideas. I'm actually interested in arguing with somebody and discussing and enlightening and whatever it is with people of different views.

And, by the way, before you start thinking, well, oh, this is just a neutral show, and he's always neutral, but he just only, he mainly has on conservative guests, cause, uh, that they get more, uh, audience or whatever, in the Glenn Beck episode, go watch that one, the direct message segment, which is, he does that before some of the interviews, which is where he just speaks about his opinion, usually it starts with, I always like nuance, and I'm a genius, and listen to me, something like that, uh, nuance, battle of ideas, free speech, that kind of thing.

0:44:12 Thomas: He starts with that. And in this particular episode, if you look at the Glenn Beck episode, it's a word for word Trump apologetics about how it's not actually a Muslim ban. Like, that's how he starts the episode. He says, this is not a Muslim band because it doesn't literally ban all Muslims. So that's that. I mean, you're a Republican when you're an apologist. And that's, again, we can have that debate. I don't mind. Again, I'm not complaining about right-wing shows. You can have a right-wang show. Everyone can have their own show. Who cares? Just stop pretending it's something it's not. It drives me nuts. And I apologize, but that's something I am a fan of honesty in this life. That is something I value a lot. Not representing yourself properly, being sincere. And this is a personal thing of mine that drives me crazy. And he has a killer following, a huge following and it's right wing. It's a right wing audience. It is a right-wing show.

When you have Rudy Giuliani on TV saying, "Trump called me and said, how do we do a Muslim ban but do it legally, and then that's not it, that doesn't count," but then you look at it and it doesn't literally ban all Muslims, so therefore it's not a Muslim band, so stop overreacting, everybody, that's apologetics. I mean, that's party line apologetics that you're engaging in. Admit that you doing it. That's it. That all that's all I ask. So the end of the story is the the talk with Rubin is not happening. He doesn't give a shit about talking to me.

0:45:44 Thomas: He, he, he set out a list at one point a few months ago, or maybe a month ago, of a Twitter thing of, "Here's liberals who I will talk to on my show. I would like to talk to you." And they're all, it's like Sarah Silverman. It's just people with massive followings and whatever. He's a businessman. He wants to grow his, his brand. I get it. That's, but just, just recognize that that's what he's interested in first and foremost.

And he engages in right-wing apologetics, like, uh, like saying, saying it's not a Muslim ban, uh, and trying to split hairs because it doesn't ban literally all Muslims, because, by the way, that's because Trump made exceptions for all the countries that he has business ties in. That's that's why it doesn't ban all Muslims, but uh, but anyway, watch that. Up, just watch the beginning of that. Just do it if you're somebody doesn't think he's, he's on the right. Just do it.

But, anyway, the conclusion is, I'm still planning on being in Milwaukee, I believe they were planning on me being there and they still want me to be there, which thank you, that's great, thank you to everyone, Mythicist Milwaukee, and they want to find somebody to replace Rubin, so I'm not going to mention names because they're reaching out to different people who might be along those same lines, opinion-wise, so we're going to still try to get this conversation to happen, and that's great because it would be a good conversation to happen.

So despite the fact, oh, I didn't say this, I should have. Despite the fact that he's had of the six liberals he mentions, he's at three that were actually liberals. He is never that I've seen in the research I've done. And it's not I can't watch literally every minute of Rubin. Apologies for that. So I could be wrong. But I went from his own the horse's mouth of which liberals he's talked to.

0:47:21 Thomas: If you have a correction for me, send it to me. I will make a correction. I have never heard him talk to someone who defends trigger warnings, who defends safe spaces, who talks, who will actually fight back and say that the left is not destroying free speech. Besides maybe a couple of those three interviews, I've never heard them do that at all. I've never heard him talk to somebody who defended trigger warning safe spaces at all, so that's something that has never happened. It's a conversation I would love to have happen. So that's where we stand. The team that is pro free speech and conversations and battle of ideas is not doing it. It's not happening. Okay, guys, I'm moving on, you've suffered through another Rubin rant of mine, I apologize, it was very relevant, because I thought the conversation was going to finally happen, and I wasn't going to say a word about Rubin on my show, really, like, I wasn' gonna get into it until that conversation, because it was going to happen.

0:48:20 Thomas: It's not going to happen, I've said my piece on here, unless I get somebody who wants to argue with me about this and represent the other side, because I can't get the person themselves, I'll give it a rest. Apologies for going heavy on this topic. It's been on my mind a lot. It's something I'm really sad about. I wanted to have it happen. I wanted finally get my side represented in this debate. Didn't happen. I'm disappointed. But I'll give it a rest. Let's move on to an even more depressing topic, which is the 2018 Senate race. Let's see how that looks.

0:49:19 Thomas: You know, I'm getting low on time, but it actually doesn't matter. I thought this was gonna be... I thought that this was going to be more interesting than it is. But it's just bad news. And it's not even interesting bad news, it's bad news! But here's what's happened. This whole time I've been thinking, you know what, we're gonna get our shit together as Democrats. We're gonna be motivated. Trump is a disaster. 2018, we are going to get out there. We are going vote in midterm elections, which we never do. And we are gonna take back control. And we're gonna go all around and I have to do the uh the the scream after this I'll have to do the Howard Dean Scream. No, but I thought we're gonna maybe, the goal was, I wasn't making predictions, but my goal was you know what, no matter how bad this is, in two years we can recover.

0:50:07 Thomas: We can take back some seats, we can start holding these people accountable, holding Trump accountable. Well, here's the bad news that I just didn't think about, because, unfortunately, this is one time where my being a little newer to politics is really biting me in the ass, because there are 33, actually 34 seats up, I think one of them is special election, but there's gonna be, with 100 senate seats and 6 year terms, there's going to be, roughly speaking, 33 every 2 years.

Of the 34 that are up in 2018, 25 are Democrats, sorry, 23 plus 2 independents who caucus with Democrats, so technically 23 and 2 independents, but 25 essentially Democrat seats, and only 8 are Republican, So that already is a huge uphill battle. That means, you know, obviously in order to make progress you'd have to win back all 23 or 25 seats and then hopefully eat into the Republican ones a bit. Now, there's another factor. So that already gives you fewer targets. So that's bad, just odds-wise. The other factor is how secure are these seats? I mean, what states are these and how far one way or the other are they?

Because maybe I don't know, these are these are maybe there was 25 secure Democrat seats and some questionable Republican ones, and then you'd say, well, the news isn't so bad, maybe if we get turn up that turnout knob, get everybody out there, make some progress. Well, there are several, there are about four incredibly secure Republican states that we're never gonna get close to, of the of the eight. There, that's Alabama, Wyoming, Tennessee, Utah, we're not getting anywhere near those.

0:51:53 Thomas: And, oh, by the way, so there's nine Republican seats up because one, the one special election is a Republican seat. So eight technically, but then nine, so that gives you 25 technically Democrat and nine technically Republican. So of the nine, four, we are never getting anywhere close. Three more we're probably not getting any where near, most likely, and these are in the range of 57% Republican wins in 2012. And those are Mississippi, Texas, Nebraska. Now, there is some talk of challenging Texas. Now I remember, if you remember on election night and up to the election, there was like, Whoa, can, can Hillary flip Texas? It seemed like a crazy thought, but there was something to that. I mean, it went a little closer than you might've thought.

0:52:38 Thomas: So who knows, maybe we can get Ted Cruz out of there. It would be nice, but he is up in 2018. 18. So that's a possibility. But for the most part, I've just described seven seats that are pretty darn safely Republican of the nine. The two left are Arizona and Nevada. Nevada is looking pretty good. That one went Democrat for Hillary. So, that's an actual candidate. But at the same time, the incumbent is Republican and the incumbent has a huge advantage. Same goes for Arizona. The The incumbent is a Republican as well. Going to be an uphill battle, but it's potentially a winnable one given turnout and given Trump's extraordinarily low approval rating. It's a possibility.

0:53:23 Thomas: Now here's the bad, bad, bad news. If it was just that, if it was only those nine seats, you'd be like, oh, maybe we can bite off two of those, maybe, and positive result. Now, we got a lot of Democratic seats up. We've got some secure ones. We got New York, we've got Vermont, Bernie Sanders not going anywhere unless he, you know, he's a hundred years old, but other than that, he is not going to anywhere.

We got Delaware, Minnesota looking solid, Rhode Island, well, okay, hold on, Minnesota, not as solid as you might have thought. Very solid in 2012, 65 voted for the incumbent Democrat, uh, but that actually, that could be close, so I I put a pin in that one because Minnesota is somewhere where Republicans could challenge, so that's already bad because that that was uh in this election was very close by in a tiny margin, like around a percent, percent and a half at most, so that's a close one right there, but the incumbent won by a lot in 2012, so it could have a good chance there, but then you got Rhode Island, Hawaii, California, Washington, those should all be solid.

Maryland should also be pretty solid, Connecticut also quite safe, Massachusetts. Massachusetts, New Mexico. It's interesting. People are, experts are calling this a safe Democrat election, but in 2012, it was 51% Democrat and the 2014 PVI, which is like the, the, the rating that you can find to see how partisan it is. It is only D plus four, but it is rated as safety. So we'll go with that. It is curious, but maybe the incumbent has, is very popular or something. I do not know what they are basing that on, but that's pretty much it for the safe democrat seat so if we do some counting here We've got 12 safe seats, arguably,

0:55:07 Thomas: 11 or 12 pretty very safe seats so out but that's that's only 12 out of 25 so what's what do we got with the rest well we've got some likely ones we got some ones that are rated is somewhere in the likely toss-up maybe some say safe some say toss-up so who knows who the hell knows that's gonna be West Virginia New Jersey Michigan Pennsylvania Virginia those are very close Those are very close. Should hopefully be able to win those, but you never know. Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, also somewhere in those range. Now, North Dakota, Montana is interesting because those are Democrat incumbents in incumbents in very Republican states. But so hard to say, you know, I mean, incumbents have again have an advantage, but but who knows?

0:55:59 Thomas: So that's they're in very, very Republican states there. And then the very bad news is we've got some battleground states. We've got some battleground states that are Democrat incumbents that are gonna be threatened. You know, we've get Indiana, Ohio, Maine, Florida, Missouri, you know. Those are, those are, and Angus King is independent from Maine, by the way. That's a Democratic state, but it's a weird, it's also a weird one. It almost, it almost went over. Trump ended up with one electoral vote from Maine because they do things oddly, but still pretty Democrat, so who knows, but but it's very close, and and that's that's gonna be a total battle there, and Ohio, Indiana, these went for Trump in 2016. They've got a Democrat incumbent who is up for re-election.

0:56:44 Thomas: So when, when all is said and done, here's how it breaks down. As I said, nine Republican seats, two that we can target, the rest are pretty much safe, all the way in the safe range, I mean, very, very unlikely to challenge, so that's, we can't make any progress there. And then of the 25 Dem seats, we've got 12 safe, we've got five that are very iffy, very iffy, and then we've got the the rest, the balancers would be eight that are, you know, whether that lean pretty well Democrat but not but are nowhere near safe. So there is way more that Republicans can challenge than we can, than Democrats can see. I said "we" because I'm not afraid to admit I'm a Democrat, and I'm looking, I don't agree with everything on the left, but I'm, I'm looking from a Democrat perspective.

0:57:36 Thomas: That's where I come from, especially in today's political climate, by the way. This is terrible news. Now, let me try my best to put some spin on this. Those battleground states are where, obviously, they're called battleground states. They were very close. Now they pretty much all went for Trump in 2016 somehow at the same time. It was very bad, but they were very closed, and all of Trump's policies thus far, I won't say all, a lot of Trump's policies, and specifically his stance on health care and the proposed bill that failed, um, those would threaten the very people who voted for him in these battleground states. And with him being so unpopular, it's possible that that things will just kind of stay the same, that neither party will gain, it would be unlikely that the Republicans are going to pick up enough to get that supermajority.

0:58:28 Thomas: They would need 8. They'd need 8 to get to 60. And as I said, refreshing your memory on these numbers, there's 5 that are iffy. So, who knows. And, you know, maybe we'll claim 2 of the Republicans, 1 or 2 of those, so you trade some here and there. That takes you from 52 to, who know, mid 50s, maybe 57 seats, something like that. But, I mean, there is a worst case scenario where there's a lot that are within reach for Republicans, and they could lock down that 60. But if they have an incredibly unpopular president, I don't know. I mean, my only silver lining is if we show up and it's going to take a lot, it is going to take. A lot of voters showing up, a lot of liberal voters showing Up for midterm election, something that doesn't happen, you know, there's something that just hasn't happened, but if we show up, and furthermore, not only if we show up, there is another side of that, which is Republicans stay home.

0:59:23 Thomas: Now, this doesn't happen as often because they're all old and all they do is vote, but they might. I mean, there could be a lot of Republicans in 2018, if Trump continues as horribly as he has been, that are just like, nah, I'm not voting. It could happen. So, silver lining is, don't panic. I don't think we should panic. I think we Should stay the same amount of panicked we are, which is, actually, we should. I take it back. Everybody panic, but don't lose hope. That's what I want to say. I'm sobered by this 2018 picture. I didn't realize that the electoral sort of schedule going on, the electoral map of 2018 so heavily favors Republicans in terms of how many seats they can challenge.

1:00:08 Thomas: But I wouldn't say it's impossible for Democrats to keep all the seats and then earn two and take it to 50-50. Now, that's a hollow victory because all it does is make it so Mike Pence has to vote every time. But who knows? Maybe we get really lucky. We all show up and we kick Ted Cruz out of his Senate seat. That would be ideal. And we grab three seats. That would be really cool. And with an immensely unpopular president and with a liberal drive to make change happen and not get lazy, it could happen. Who knows? Now, would I bet money that this would happen? No, I probably, uh, looking at the numbers, I would not. I would bet that if I were a betting man, if I'd put money on it, and don't put too much stock in me, I'm not an expert, I am just looking at numbers here, I bet the Republicans will go like plus 2.

1:01:00 Thomas: I bet they'll go from like 52 to 54. Which, you know, not great, but it's not going to be terribly threatening to what's going on. But what it does do is it maintains the status quo. 52 to 54 seats means Trump still gets away with effing murder. He, Jared Kushner doesn't matter. The fact that that totally violates the law, everything he does, you know, no one's holding him accountable. So maybe at a later date, we'll look at the House races. That's enough for this episode.

We've, we've, uh, we were right at the right time here. I hope you, well, I would say enjoyed. I don't know that there's much to to enjoy. This episode was bad news and bad news. But I feel armed with knowledge now. I feel that it's even more important than it was to vote, because there is a very real possibility of losing way more seats and actually giving the Republicans 60 votes, which would be a nightmare for women, for gay people, for trans people, every group that I care about that I worry about being marginalized in our society. 60 votes for Republicans is a nightmare scenario for me. So we need to show up. And I'm going to continue to do everything I can to motivate, to keep us motivated, to keeps Democrats motivated to vote in 2018, especially in these states. Hey, are you in Indiana, Ohio, Maine, Florida, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, West Virginia, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Texas?

That's going to to be a lot of you. You need to vote. You absolutely, you really do. I wish I could do more, but I'm freaking California. I can't do anything. I'm still going to vote, I'm going to, don't get me wrong, I can wait, but it's not going to do anything, everyone in the states I just mentioned, it's vitally important, and do what you can, mobilize, and I'm gonna do everything I can, so

1:02:53 Thomas: Thank you so much for listening, that is a sobering picture, I am concerned, but optimistic, optimistic. We can do it. This president is historically awful. So there could be a historical 2018 midterm election. It could happen. That's what happens when people are historically bad. Who knows? One more bonus to this, let's say we can take back the majority in the Senate, that means we could stop Trump from getting any more Supreme Court picks, we could limit the damage to Scalia merely having recomposed himself into another human being and staying on the Supreme Court, essentially, because we could just say, no, screw it, you did the alleged Biden rule, which wasn't even a real thing on us, you You did the... Mitch McConnell rule of no Supreme Court justice within a year of election.

1:03:42 Thomas: Well, guess what? We're gonna do the whoever happens to be the Senate Majority Leader if we can take back the majority in 2018 rule, which will be Trump doesn't get any more Supreme Court nominations because of all the crap he's already done. That's horrendous, horrendously illegal and wrong. And the fact that he, the Russians may have handed him this election is getting a little bit wordy, but that's what the rule is going to be. That could happen. I mean, we could, we could make that happen. Democrats could make that happen? It's only a, what is March? March. It's almost April. Oh man, time is going too slowly currently. We're only a year and eight months away from that. I think RGB is going to hold out that long, hopefully, you never know, alright, that's enough of me, thank you so much for listening, I want to thank my new patrons this week, over on Patreon.com slash SeriousPod, thankyou so much supporting me, and they are...

1:04:34 Thomas: Rick Sytsma, Robot Overlord, David Ackerson, Kim Chapman, Jesse Rabinowitz, and Grant Cosper, thank you so very kindly for becoming new patrons to the show, much appreciated, it makes the show go on, it's vital, and it means the world to me, I promise you that, and I also need to thank my top patrons. And they are Travis Peterson, Matt Garrett, Dale, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger Metcalf, Adam Hicks, Matthew Maxson, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, Matthew Staton, John Bodley, Esq, Ian Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse, Sakashite Fukasumi, Michael Rops, Michael Schaefer, Hunter, Ash, and Sammy, and I would like to say guys, patrons, I definitely, because I'm going on this trip, I've done done interviews ahead of time.

1:05:26 Thomas: So there's going to be lots of early patron only content coming in the next few weeks. So if you'd like to get your hands on the next episodes early, make sure to go to patreon.com/seriouspod pledge today. All right. Thank you so much for listening. I hope to see some of you in Europe very soon. Uh, thank you for coming to those events. Those who are deciding to check them out on facebook.com/thomaspodcast or slash serious pod. All Right. That's enough for me. Have a great week. See you next time.