The Forecast

Arun Chaudhary (00:20)
And just before you start recording, I do think that we should take time because like, you know, I know you're probably going to ask me a lot about Donald Trump and like whatever's happening and all that is a thing, but we are about to get America's best first lady back. Who is Melania Trump?

Keegan Goudiss (00:35)
Well, I'm actually already recording, so welcome Arun Chaudhary to your forecast.

Arun Chaudhary (00:39)
The things that

women have done for Christmas and maybe even done against Christmas are just, I mean, it's art. It's art and we respect it. That's the Slovenian.

Keegan Goudiss (00:49)
It is pretty amazing. I also enjoy the the fact that she likes Gavin Newsom and and Trudeau much more than her husband. You can actually see her

Arun Chaudhary (00:59)
That's like a type thing because they are a type actually. Newsome and I didn't know that she likes hold them particularly, but she likes the sort of slick hair, which I guess Trump was more in his younger years, the kind of Gordon Gekko kind of. Yeah, she might have bad taste in that.

Keegan Goudiss (01:01)
Light up.

No, definitely a type. has a type.

There

was actually something I saw going around online. It was comparing Baron to Trudeau and questioning whether Trudeau was the father.

Arun Chaudhary (01:26)
I think the joke there is the Castro, the Castro Trudeau thing.

Keegan Goudiss (01:29)
Yeah, for sure. Well, welcome. Thank you for taking time. It doesn't look like you're calling in from your usual closet studio.

Arun Chaudhary (01:36)
No, I'm not in West Berlin.

I am in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, which is Europe's youngest and unfortunately poorest nation. And we have a middle of an election here. So actually in two days, the incumbent Prime Minister Alvin Kurti, who I advise and who is a friend and a friend of yours as well, will be running for reelection after finishing the first time any Kosovo Prime Minister has finished their mandate.

Keegan Goudiss (02:03)
I have a great photo of him where I am extremely red faced because it's extremely hot at the conference I saw him at and I ran up to him and I was like, I know a run and he looked at me like what? Only time I've ever run up to a prime minister of any state, country, any head of state.

Arun Chaudhary (02:16)
He's one of the most approachable congressmen,

I would say.

Keegan Goudiss (02:21)
He was very kind and appreciative. We had a great conversation about how amazing you are. We had that in common. Mutual affinity. All right, next thing. the election's looking good. How are you feeling about Kosovo?

Arun Chaudhary (02:34)
The election's looking good.

I mean, I don't know how much we want to get into it with the audience. But like the situation, you know, is that of course he will win as we hope and expect. This is how you ward off evil spirits in American politics. You say we hope and expect our candidate will do well this November. And the problem is though he has to win an absolute majority. They can't enter in a coalition government because this is a media landscape dominated by oligarchs. A lot of things that you can imagine are happening. And so the fact that

Kosovo has progressed so far and it's anti-corruption stuff so far in its development is because you actually have a bit of a hegemony coming from the left national party, Vipindosia, which is Albanian for self-determination.

Keegan Goudiss (03:18)
Great. Well, if you don't mind, we can come back to this, but I'm eager to talk to you about About Merka and what's on everybody's mind right now.

Arun Chaudhary (03:23)
But Merka.

America is where I keep some of my stuff, so I'm happy to talk about America.

Keegan Goudiss (03:30)
Yeah, well, Elon Musk is actively doing things. He has his team of of I. I'm not sure. I'm not familiar enough with Gen Z, but like.

Arun Chaudhary (03:39)
Like

giving us the name of some little kids, you know, in big suits who are doing it. I have no idea if that's real or not, you know.

Keegan Goudiss (03:47)
Well, so are you familiar with terms Sigma boy? Like my kids are always like watching YouTube videos where they're like talking about Sigma voice.

Arun Chaudhary (03:52)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, It's the opposite of the alpha male, you know, or not the opposite, the alternate, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (03:58)
Yeah, it's like a lone wolf.

But I think I think you can use it in pejorative as well, but I think it's generally a good thing. I'm not sure I'm confused by at all. I would call them incels, but like that's just me. I don't know what the words are these days to use, but either way they're doing stuff and they have access. A lot a lot more access than I actually thought they would get so quickly, but I guess it's pretty.

Arun Chaudhary (04:10)
But this is how you

Yeah, yeah,

I'm surprised by that.

Keegan Goudiss (04:21)
And you know one of the things that they've been doing this week that I'm curious to your take on, especially with all your international work as they've completely frozen USAID and they're out there. You know their minions online or are like they found $50,000 for trans operas and they're paying for Sesame Street in Iraq. And I'm like me. I'm like why is Elmo about? Elmo is a good ambassador for for for Iraq children. I don't I don't know, but like you know I was struck by.

the fact that all of his minions and all of the acts they had, they found about like 100 million, you roughly less than a percent of the USAID budget that they think is awful and waste. But no one's talking about the billions of dollars that actually goes to good things that they just shut off. I'm curious, like what your take is from Europe. What are you hearing there?

Arun Chaudhary (05:04)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I think in Europe, everyone asks the same question that independent minded people in America are asking, which is sort of everyone in America seems so slack jawed and flummoxed by like Trump and Musk and all of this stuff. And, you know, you can't win every battle, you should pick what you're going to fight, but you shouldn't make this easy and sort of being so

be puzzled by everything all the time is sort of, is not really helpful. So I do think people need to get in there, they need to fight and they need to not again have a real narrative, right? Like, know, USAID does some great things, USAID does some questionable things, USAID is an expression of American power abroad, right? Like,

like raw political power, right? Sending people food is sometimes more dangerous than sending them the army, you know, like, and I think when it's understand to be a tool of soft power that actually isn't about being nice or mean, it's about getting America what it wants, whether or not you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, like that's what the apparatus America does, you know, so the correct accusations, I think, you know, would be like the, I'm going into the MAGA world now.

Right, so we have a spectrum that goes from Musk to Bannon.

Keegan Goudiss (06:29)
Yeah, put your MAGA hat on.

Did you ever see that Larry David where he wears the MAGA hat? So people don't bother, I love that.

Arun Chaudhary (06:37)
Yeah, totally. Yeah,

yeah, That is actually, that's what the classics don't kind of style. That's all we'll say about that. So you have a spectrum, I think, that goes from Bannon to Musk. And I think the Bannon argument would be, we're not interested in projecting that kind of power anymore. It will almost be the Arun Paul argument, right? It's like, this is actually aggressive. This is aggressive stuff. And that's not what we're doing. You know, the kind of isolationism wrapped up in a dove. like, that's just not what America is about anymore.

Instead of this sort of culture war that I was explaining this to a friend having lunch in Pristina and I was talking about and I say this to you because you're a New Yorker of a similar generation. It reminded me of Robert Mapplethorpe's Pissed Christ photo where, you know, it was a black and white photos. You couldn't even tell what the fuck it was in, but there was a cross in like, you know, what was piss.

And this was all anyone talked about when it came to funding every museum in like, you know, New York state. It was like, what's happening in this one play in this one painting photograph rather. And I think that's similar now. But like, let's be real, there's going to be any number of stupid things in every government thing. And so if you're doing the playbook of let's flood the zone with the stuff we don't like, then the stuff we do like is going to get lost in that.

But we should be very real about what it is we want to defend and we should, you know, and what it is that we don't like, you know, Trump is last time around, I did describe him as sort of a bull in a china shop breaking everything. And what was useful about the last Trump presidency and what was and what makes me a bit angry that it wasn't done.

is you let the bull loose in the China shop once, you saw which things he broke, you saw which things he came too close to, there were no guardrails put up. And this whole like last minute Joe Biden pardoned a bunch of people, this is not guardrails. This is, yeah, as you know, this is like a descent into something much worse, you know? And so whether it's just making abortion part of the law, right? Like you could have just done that. Like whether it's like, you know, actually making some of these things that are just feel good.

costumes, you know, that we've inherited from the British non-constitution actually codified them, put them into law, you know, exercise some power, what people like about what Trump is doing. And this is not his playbook and this is not the Orban playbook. know, it's something, it's the Malay playbook. You know, this is, you Malay is the, is as if a Bitcoin came to life and sprung sideburns and became the president of Argentina and was secretly in love with his sister.

Keegan Goudiss (09:12)
That's a very specific example.

Arun Chaudhary (09:13)
this.

Yeah, this is him. And he has this chainsaw. He's just getting rid of departments. He is the example all these guys taking of your economy might be okay, if you cut everything and Argentina is showing the first something I forget like budget surplus and like, you 500 years or something. That's an exaggeration, but some absurd amount of time. And it's obviously just a trick and it's not good for the people.

But the same way that's not a trick and that's not good for the people. We can't pretend, your life's better because we measured the GDP. I'm still having that argument people, you know, you're like, when inflation goes down, the prices don't go down. People who were poor, people who are working, people who are striving are still struggling that if not more under worse conditions and they're not idiots. So I do think there's a rush to save a stack. Why are we being saddled?

with the status quo because it's undefendable.

Keegan Goudiss (10:11)
Well, and I think one thing that they're doing is smart. I was talking to his hockey dad the other day and he and he was going a little bit like conspiracy theory. He's not a Trump voter. He's definitely an independent. He's one of those like socially liberal fiscal conservative types you run into in the DC area all the time. And I like talking to him, but he was like, he was like, well, there's a reason why they're going after USAID first because it's you know, there's all sorts of shady money.

tied up with the intelligence industry and he's not saying this is like a bad thing but he feels like well it's part of Trump going after

Arun Chaudhary (10:42)
It's where the color revolutions

come from is these things. Like, you know, we can talk about this openly. Like, this is American foreign policy. Like, to get the things, you know, to keep prices down to all the things. Sometimes countries should be overthrown. Sometimes we don't like them. Sometimes they're bad. You know, like, but that's the active work of soft power is to, like, help make that happen.

Keegan Goudiss (10:46)
Ma-

Well, but like Elon and Trump are trying to cut like two trillion. They're trying to clear the way ultimately. They want to get rid of the federal government. They want to cut at least two trillion so that they can pass more tax cuts for their wealthy friends. This is $50 billion. What?

Arun Chaudhary (11:14)
Also, they've made

they've made they've also just want to say they did they want to say we had a goal and we achieved it. Because I was going to say, you know, with the Malay and all this, people don't necessarily expect results are just enjoying the energy. Somebody did something in this fucking country. No one ever does anything somebody did something maybe it's not even absolutely going to give it a chance people are absolutely

Keegan Goudiss (11:32)
Yeah, no, I even though there'll be unintended consequences for sure.

No, and that was the energy I was picking up on. And it was interesting because I was like, it's really hard to defend the federal government. Like to me, USAID was started by JFK. It was an admirable goal. It does a lot of great work helping in like after after environmental crises, helping minimize the spread of of epidemics in poor countries.

Helping us like compete with China on the global scale like all things that we could talk about but ultimately, you know, it's

Arun Chaudhary (12:02)
And then

let's see, I'm a cynical, lefty, whatever. You get a little, when you are in some place that's really like having a hard time, I was in Haiti after the earthquake or recently in Ukraine and you see like actual food that's come from America, you're like, right on, man, that's cool. It's never bad to send someone something to eat.

Keegan Goudiss (12:18)
Yeah, no, it's great. It is good.

And my point is it's not that much money. Actually, think USAID, I mean, I have no data to back this up, but USAID might actually be less wasteful.

Arun Chaudhary (12:29)
The everyone

throws around 1 % of the budget or something. Yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (12:33)
Now, well.

Arun Chaudhary (12:36)
And that's 1 % of the whole.

Keegan Goudiss (12:36)
I'm curious as we could you

mentioned something I want to come back to you know, especially around Biden, but there are others to everybody. No one did anything the last month. We were all just kind of depressed and frozen and I get those feelings. Yeah, there was more that we could have done. And now everybody is

Arun Chaudhary (12:51)
He was trying to figure

out a new playbook, but they didn't even do the new playbook that we all like knew was the thing to do. You know, like everybody knew more.

Keegan Goudiss (12:58)
No, so let's let's talk about it people

who are listening to this. You I'm hoping there are number of folks in the establishment within the Democratic Party who will hear this episode and maybe we can inspire them. like let's you know, you're great at crafting narrative. Like this week right now, the week of of what today's February 6th when we're recording this, right? So like this is at the peak of an assault on

federal drama federal bureaucracy you know there's all sorts of awful things happening here in the states what would you focus on what would you build a narrative around.

One thing I've been dying to ask you is, like things seem to be coalescing around like Elon as the enemy, right? Like we, as you know, in any narrative, we need a bad person to go up against. And it's been Trump for so long. I think that a of people are just tired of, Trump being the bad guy in every message that they hear. So it seems like we're gravitating more towards like Elon Musk is the evil doer that we're.

Arun Chaudhary (13:47)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (14:06)
unifying against. Do think that's something useful or should we focus on Trump?

Arun Chaudhary (14:12)
or none of them. don't know. You know, recently I was at a Congress, Congress, a conference, and I got a chance to meet an amazing person whose name is Claudia Ortiz. And she is like one of the only opposition people against Bukele in El Salvador. I don't know how much you know about Bukele.

But he is one of the, you know, he is, he was the one who just offered to take over American's prisons for a little bit of money or whatever. You know, he's a very kind of, built on this anti-crime tough guy, good messaging, but like kind of muscular can do. And people really admire him, especially in South America, but all over. and she.

is that blue dot, right? Like on the thing, you know, voting against voting against. But she makes those things mean something, right? So again, even though if you're not going to win, you're representing people and you need to make sure that they feel represented. But then she says, I don't concentrate on him. You know, there's something that needs to get done. And so I work with a union who's doing it and somebody else is doing it. And I really don't talk about it that much. And I kind of, you know, gain some wins. I mean,

You know, Trump is not this huge authoritarian popular guy. He didn't win big. He won quick, which is very hard to do and a remarkable feat and, know, and much, much credit to him. But I think everyone's like, we got to throw out everything we know and all the techniques. Let's see if it gets back to something we were talking about before. We need to throw all of this out and everything we know, but nobody actually ran any kind of a new campaign. mean, all the good campaigns I thinking about Poland and France were like innovative and organic and doing things.

Democrats, unlike any corporation you can think of, like spent more money on paid advertising and less on organic and digital, you know, just made spent like it's sort of incomprehensible. So I do think like in this moment, we need to like not throw out all of our techniques and do the things we know how to do. And we know ordinary people, ordinary people have problems. Maybe politics is the way to fix it. And once you've convinced them of that, we're the party who will do that.

Republicans do. They'll take 40 years. You know, you have the right to work in your state. You know, yeah, you're right. I do. You know, unions want to stop you from that. Yeah, my god, that's terrible. And then it's like Scott Walker is that guy. It's not like he's brilliant. Like Scott Walker is just some guy who looks like Nixon and you know, and like was running for president. Like, people built him up in their minds because they're like, how are you convinced progressive Wisconsin to go against the unions and he didn't. He's just the clown who gets you to buy the car.

He didn't tell you what model you needed or where you had to go. So I think Democrats like no, not to concentrate totally on Trump or, know, but they can't help it. But does that mean to shift it over to Musk? Don't worry, I'm answering the question. Does that mean to shift it over to Musk? I don't think so. I think things come in threes when it comes to candidate personalities. And this is also what you want to set up when you're a candidate. There's the person.

Keegan Goudiss (16:55)
I I think we're going.

Arun Chaudhary (17:08)
And then there's the hype person and then there's the hatchet person. They're both H's, that was pretty good, right? Actually, if I make it human, then they're all three H's. I just changed that right now, it's three H's. So it's the human, the hype human and the hatchet human. That's actually working very well, because it's five H's altogether. Now, you embody your authentic self and then just like James Brown,

Like there's nice things about yourself you can't say about yourself. So you have to have another person who says nice things about you. This is a bit Trump and Elon. They compliment each other very aggressively. They understand that they're not in competition because they have become some kind of a unit. And so I do think, you know, we're thinking of as a target together. It's not one or the other. It still might be ignoring. And that's why Bannon is sliding so well into this universe because he's the hatchet man.

Keegan Goudiss (18:00)
Yeah, but I don't think he likes Elon that much, or is that all an act?

Arun Chaudhary (18:02)
No,

but it works for Trump as controlled opposition. He needs somebody who's always out there fighting it. So he doesn't have to not get along with Elon because he has somebody who's not getting along. It's almost like he's hired, you know, why should I fix my own toilet? I can hire somebody to do that.

Keegan Goudiss (18:11)
Yeah.

But which one is Smithers and which one is Mr. Burns?

Arun Chaudhary (18:22)
That's funny. What if they were both Smithers? mean, don't you? Strong has strong Smithers energy, to be honest with you.

Keegan Goudiss (18:25)
Because I think of, think of like.

yeah!

Arun Chaudhary (18:32)
like strong Smithers energy. I don't know about Musk to know exactly but he feels more servile than in charge. He wouldn't be so insecure. These people insecure. just want them to die in space.

Keegan Goudiss (18:42)
We'll do that, yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (18:48)
or under the water.

Keegan Goudiss (18:48)
There's this thing

that I've saw going around TikTok and it's just a beautiful vista. You're like sitting there in front of a lake and mountains and it's like this view while watching Elon Musk gasp prayer. And it's actually quite soothing.

Arun Chaudhary (19:00)
that's nice. I actually thought

you were going to go with Luigi on there. I thought you was going to say like, where is Luigi in the clouds?

Keegan Goudiss (19:07)
Yeah, no, Luigi has been not mentioned as much here. People still talking about Luigi in Europe. Because I've done a good job. I feel like US controlled media has.

Arun Chaudhary (19:18)
Europe also has like less concentrated pockets of graffiti and more graffiti everywhere. It's more sort of like, you know, of the landscape. And Luigi is honored all over. I especially have seen in Spain, Portugal, Italy, especially Southern Europe. mean, you know, portraits, slogans and people think about it.

Keegan Goudiss (19:25)
Yeah.

What does this mean by here but I think one of the challenges that the Democratic Party has as they the message that has the most residents is not is is goes against their their interests right like they they don't want to run a campaign against corporate America they don't want to run a campaign against. Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (19:53)
Right. They actually don't want to attack capital. And so they are left

with defending a status quo that can only be marginally better.

Keegan Goudiss (20:01)
And I don't think we need to murder more people, but there is certainly an energy of like the elite.

Arun Chaudhary (20:06)
No,

it's the opposite. More people will be murdered if you don't actually take some steam off the top of the kettle. Even if you are a reactionary, even if your job is to keep things in line, it's time to give the people something to make that happen.

Keegan Goudiss (20:24)
The German elections are this month and you speaking of Elon, he obviously has had a lot of fun making hand signals and telling AFD to not be afraid of ashamed of their past, right? What was that? His quote? How are things looking in the German election? Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (20:28)
weeks.

Yeah. Okay, to be proud to be German. I

think people don't understand the AFD. They're not like, all total blonde blue eyed. We love the old Germany Germans. They are

not the inheritors of the Nazi party, which is actually a liberal party. You know, they're not the additional conservatives. They are the alternative for Deutschland until they became so hardcore anti-immigrant immigrants made up a large percentage of their base and still second and third generation, just like in the US also do swell, do swell their ranks. So they should be understood as an anti-establishment party as much as anything.

What was interesting with Musk's involvement, I think it made for a lot of nice memes. I think it's made him harder to even think about selling Teslas in Europe. don't know if he regrets sort of picking fights there at all. Maybe the whole AFD thing is revenge on it, but his influence hasn't been that great. They did a live on X together, Alice Weedle and the chairman of the party and Elon Musk and all anyone said.

in German underneath it was like, why is she speaking English? She's so bad at speaking in English. This is so embarrassing. Like it didn't really, it didn't take the world by storm the way like Joe Rogan and like, you know, and Donald Trump did. but the AFD are opposed to do pretty well. the thing that has boosted these protests, if any of you have sort of seen that and have been a little more hopeful as you should be, you know, seeing that has actually not been the AFD changing anything. It's been the CDU.

who have traditionally been part of the democratic forces who will not work with the far right, did a little bit work with the far right to get an anti-immigration bill passed. And so people were really upset about this. And this maybe is going to give a little spike to some of the parties that we like. I could go more into detail if you want on some of it. I do think I think it's interesting messaging wise. Is that wavering voters for the AFD?

are actually most attracted to very simple, generic social democratic messaging. Yeah, that's what they want. And they'll even take it from Schultz, like if they have to, which is crazy because the man is unpopular.

Keegan Goudiss (22:48)
Shocking.

Now does it like, right? So there's still a lot of energy. Tell me if it's changed, but like.

Arun Chaudhary (23:02)
So the CDU

will come in first, that's the conservative, you know, Christian party. And then right now it's a race for second, before AFD was in second, now that there is more of the protests and there's new polling coming out today, so I even feel bad saying anything about it. But it's a bit of a mess between then the SPD, the Socialist Party, the Greens, who are doing actually fairly well for the Greens. And I think...

Keegan Goudiss (23:06)
Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (23:27)
with Last Time Did Quite Well and are hoping to come in second and maybe be kind of the responsible partner in the coalition. And then, DeLinka, the left, who have been sort of left for dead have had like a mini surge. like some polling even has them up to eight before the threshold's at five and they were at four. And actually some of the best social media is them celebrating these small victories. And actually that was what we're talking about, Claudio Ortiz.

That was one of the things she said also. She's like, you got to take time to celebrate like small victories because like it's actually more fun and you can actually sort of even be a bit sarcastic in your joy of like, there's so much more to go.

Keegan Goudiss (24:01)
You know here I just don't feel like there's anything to celebrate right now but I feel that sentiment and one thing that. Yeah I'm curious if there's any parallels between Germany and the states. Is around like the anti immigrant frame like is there anything there that is sort of. Like the right here and I assume in Germany like they've gotten so good about telling you what to care about right like I call.

Arun Chaudhary (24:28)
Yeah, no,

it dominates. It dominates the discourse, the political discourse. What I see because we have so many different countries, you know, having elections all the time that I think is instructive is that there's almost no place in the world where immigration ranks as anyone's number one, really. Like when you actually get into the kind of real numbers of it, the only reason immigration is number one is because they don't believe any party can do anything about

Keegan Goudiss (24:32)
So still dominating. there anything that like you see on?

Arun Chaudhary (24:56)
education, healthcare, all the things that they think about safety, security. They think everyone is so hopeless on all of this. At least somebody's got a realistic plan, you know, getting them out of the country about one thing. But no one is actually as obsessed with this as they think. That's destructive. Number one. Number two, it's not just Democrats who just line it up and do it every, you know, however many years. Have I showed you the Kamala ad where she says she's going to be better on the border than Trump? Like ridiculous.

You have to sign the Greens are doing this maybe now in Germany. So let's take a look as happens again. This happened in Finland. This happened in Sweden. This happened in almost every election is the center left meets the immigration messaging halfway. Yeah, we're to be dicks, but not as much. Yeah. Fewer people. Yeah. Don't come here. You know, that kind of thing. and your opponents don't believe you and your friends are pissed off because you've stabbed them in the back, you know,

It's so number one, it's like, people should be, I think, at less strains to talk about it in their terms. And when you talk about it, just use new narratives. What are some new narratives? We should all be working harder on lots of new narratives too, that have done quite well. And some in testing and some in reality, Poland, Italy, some other places is number one, sorry and thank you. You know, it's like, Hey, there's 40,000 new people in my town of 200,000 people. can't catch the bus.

The answer can be, well, you're racist or the answer can be, man, that sucks. And I'm sorry about that. but thank you. It's actually really important. Like what the fuck are these people going to do? It's like, we don't really know, you know, and we're not doing a great job. So maybe you could actually help us. We do know that when people actually have a voice in how people are settled, they actually become much more attached to the success of the project, but that's not narrative. That's actually a policy and functionality. And we won't talk about such things.

Keegan Goudiss (26:43)
This is strictly a narrative conversation.

Arun Chaudhary (26:45)
No place on the forecast. And then the other one is reverse psychology, which no matter if I can, know, half of what I do that people say, my God, he's so smart is I just think of the opposite of what like the idea is, you know, and so people you're mad that people are moving to your country just make something about how you're mad that they're not going to stay in your country. So actually, you know, was telling in a focus group, you know, folks in Italy, it wasn't me was someone who was being Italian, obviously.

Keegan Goudiss (27:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (27:13)
to it.

You know, there's a kid, and it was a real story. There's a kid and he's from Libya. Now he's living in Bologna where I went to universities, Italian is pretty good. And he's a total computer whiz kid. And aren't you excited? He's going to start his dream company in Amsterdam, the internet's a little better than in Bologna. And the answer is no, fuck that kid. And you're like, why? And it's like, ah, because he's Italian. And now he's running off to the Netherlands. You know,

Keegan Goudiss (27:39)
Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (27:40)
leaving us behind and getting screwed against again. And you're like, okay. So you're still angry. But now for the right reasons. That's it. So this is not a perfect fix for every country or whatever. But like, I do think it's about playing around with new narratives that aren't just meeting them halfway, because this does not work anywhere. It's the sort of idea of centrism. There's no such thing. No one ever thought of themselves as a centrist. People who describe themselves as centrists are usually just looking for attention.

Keegan Goudiss (28:06)
Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (28:09)
But other than that, like, just describing themselves as being independent. Yeah, they're just saying, I'm not one of the assholes that wears a t-shirt.

Keegan Goudiss (28:11)
People like to think of themselves as independent, though, which is not the same as being centrist. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, even then I would argue that like you're not actually independent most of the time. You just like to say you are.

Arun Chaudhary (28:24)
You have an ideology that you may or may not acknowledge. Yeah, I think that's the case.

Keegan Goudiss (28:30)
I just remember that there was a mini doc during the some prop one of the prop battles in California where it was a day without immigrants. What one also towards and so you have been talking to folks right now about like what what is. What is the imagery that's going to work in this moment because millions of people are rightfully understandably terrified right now they don't want to leave the house.

Arun Chaudhary (28:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (28:58)
Even even if they're they have papers right like they're like it's very confusing times on who's going to get rounded up and how long it will take for you to like even if you are documented you know like.

Arun Chaudhary (29:02)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I know.

Yeah, yeah,

you might be months some crazy place, you know, like.

Keegan Goudiss (29:12)
Yeah, yeah,

so people are terrified. People aren't showing up to work. I know like everybody talked to in California like folks are not going to the fields. Like they're not. They're not picking the field.

Arun Chaudhary (29:21)
I mean, I do

think economic impact is something that people will notice and rising prices will be hard, especially in that to cover up. think I suspect

Keegan Goudiss (29:28)
Do you think that

we can lean into that on the left to talk more about like, you know, the human aspect of these people who come and work grueling jobs for not much money that Trump voters aren't running, they're not running into the fields to go pick for $5 an hour. Like that's not happening.

Arun Chaudhary (29:39)
It's so cool.

No, that's true.

That's true. But I think that messaging has been used. you know, to the extent that it's worked, it has worked, to some extent, I do think that the reality of food production not feeding you is probably going to be more powerful than the than the moral argument, unfortunately, because just we have because just because we have seen it fail. but like,

I think it is not inconceivable that in the face of those rising prices, that Trump and his crazies are going to figure out a way to bring in new immigrants, not illegal, because they've deemed they're not illegal, to do those jobs somehow with his blessing. And all his people are like, look, he's made substandard citizens. This is so much better than when we had all those illegals in our country.

And I worry this might be so popular that it then gets copied other parts of the Anglo world. I'm looking at you Australia, I'm in the UK.

Keegan Goudiss (30:39)
Yeah, no, that's that is I hadn't thought about being worried about that, but now I will. Thank you.

Arun Chaudhary (30:45)
Because Trump's always

brought people in to do his stuff. know what mean? was when Musk was like age one, Trump's immediate reaction was like, yeah, that's a great one. I use that one all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that one. That's a solid one. know, Dan is like, no, no, no, that's a, you know, I'm the ideal, I'm the chief ideologist. That's not, that's actually not what we believe, man. And it was so not what he believed that Trump, with the few times Trump really did take something back, he's like, yeah, I don't know what I was saying about all that. says, who knows? I was drunk. He didn't say that.

Keegan Goudiss (30:48)
Yeah, no, he's big.

That was a pretty good schism.

What,

Well, I mean, this is going to be interesting to see evolve my my my big hope and prayer is that folks start making some content because like I can tell you from, you know, I monitor all sorts of things that establishment organizations anti establishment like there. It's starting to warm up the most. The most that I see right now is we need lawyers. Lawyers save us pay us for lawyers and I'm like, well, yeah, I agree that is in theory something that could help us.

I don't think that's a narrative that's going to win over. Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (31:44)
No, that should be the background music, right? It's everything

that you should be painful and it shouldn't be easy, right? And you should let people know that you're not making it easy. And I think you probably will be able to raise money for the lawyers. Trump was able to raise money for lawyers, you know, people who really didn't mind. They're like, no, pay the lawyer there. That lawyer is like fighting for me. so

Keegan Goudiss (32:00)
reminded of one of my favorite run quotes from back in the day. We should only be so lucky to be sued. Maybe that's not verbatim. Might be paraphrasing.

Arun Chaudhary (32:06)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is 100%. That is 100%. We should be so lucky. And I still feel that. So I do think there's a need for lawyers, no, generally they're just, yeah, there needs to be more content and like, you know, not to be specific, but it needs to be vertical video flooding the vertical video spaces where everyone is and where you can still get people to see political content. That's not

Keegan Goudiss (32:28)
And there are a lot

of people who make great verbal videos that are not being hired right now. So I hope that changes. And if anybody listen, listening to this has millions or billions of dollars, I would invest in more, more content right now. That's, that's desperate.

Arun Chaudhary (32:40)
And there's a certain kind

of video you get that will get on TV. And that's how you get on TV. Don't buy your way on TV. Think your way on TV. TV is important. I'm not here to say TV is not important, but think your way on TV. You know, people who do some of this like, you know, disinformation or like information work, right? You know, leads to disinformation. You have changed some of the methodology in a way that I appreciate, which is the question no longer is do you get your information from the TV? Because everyone's like, no.

Keegan Goudiss (32:52)
good advice.

Arun Chaudhary (33:07)
You know, and it's is the television on in your house? Because the television is on in your house, you're actually getting that message. Even if you're not listening, either. It's just your crazy uncle or your mom's got it on the kitchen, whatever it is, like you're still getting, you know, that information. Unless it's in an ad, you won't hear the ad, you're actually able to tune out the ads and tune back in because you have trained yourself to do this your whole life. Maybe younger people have a harder time, but I don't think so because not everyone has YouTube premium that shit's expensive.

Keegan Goudiss (33:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, especially younger people.

Arun Chaudhary (33:36)
You know, so like, we know how to behave when an ad comes on and we can't help but listen in when we know it's the aria, not the recitative, you know?

Keegan Goudiss (33:46)
Yeah, well, I would argue the same thing with Facebook ads like unless you're 60 or older, you just you just like as much as I love Facebook ads for certain things is really older audience. One Facebook's are turned into like the mall, right? Where it's mostly just random old people wandering around getting angry about things and and but even though there are still younger audiences using Facebook, they are very good at at tuning out the ads like they just they scroll through this. Yeah, no.

Arun Chaudhary (33:57)
Thanks.

Yeah.

Yeah, and there are a lot of them are in private groups,

Like, actually, that's what people use Facebook for. I wouldn't even be on it at all if there wasn't school stuff or neighborhood stuff coming through.

Keegan Goudiss (34:22)
Yeah, yeah, I used to catch up with family and friends and place ads and that's it. Otherwise it's pretty much assessable and it's gotten even worse.

Arun Chaudhary (34:28)
But placing ads is your thing.

you should be the final word on this. But when people ask me now, I do encourage them to spend most of their online spend on YouTube pre-roll. It's the one thing I still think is kind of, is still, it still gets in front of you.

Keegan Goudiss (34:43)
Well, and YouTube shorts is actually, you know, cause you can't run political ads on TikTok. So it's the next best thing and it works really, really well. know YouTube is always my first choice as well. There's a lot of other options that you can spend your money on. if you, you know, I want, yep.

Arun Chaudhary (34:58)
YouTube is where people go to get persuaded. Everywhere

else, you just go to get confirmed. So if you're going to mobilize, go other places, but YouTube, that's a lot of there's still open minds on YouTube. More is the thing. It's all full of, you know, steel beams and Jordan Peterson. It's not, it's not.

Keegan Goudiss (35:07)
Well, and it's also one of those places where you can.

As you know, like

longer form content is really what moves people. There's great options for short form, but to me it's it's it's a bread crumb to the longer form content. I don't know if you remember like Bernie back in our Bernie Sanders days like was was did a speech on socialism at Georgetown. Remember that and I was just really curious. So I ran the entire speech as an ad on YouTube just to see.

Arun Chaudhary (35:30)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

Keegan Goudiss (35:37)
And there was a shocking number, like I think it was like 15 % of people who served the ad watched like an hour of the video. They were like, huh, Bernie Sanders talking about socialism. I'm not going to skip. just going to keep watching him on YouTube. It was amazing. Like, right. So it was just a small test and I'm sure it didn't really change that many viewpoints about social.

Arun Chaudhary (35:44)
That's actually a great idea.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of long

form content. It's interesting about the breadcrumbs, because I should think about it that way more. I actually, the way I've been thinking about it is the runway retail model, which is for every like nice, you know, beautifully made couture dress that you have out there. Like you have 500 t-shirt versions that you got to move at Target.

Keegan Goudiss (36:15)
Well, so I'm curious as this is your forecast to run, what are some things you see happening this year, 2025?

Arun Chaudhary (36:21)
Well,

you know, I think people, here's the prediction that I'd like to make. Especially with with how you introduced and have been focused and how could you not be there's a lot going on and you live in America, you know, I'm out here in Europe. Like, and that's the crumbling institutions pushing things to the limit, etc, etc. People keep saying like, will you predict this will be the last election? You know, like is you know, Donald Trump said it's the last time you ever need to vote for anybody like all this stuff.

Keegan Goudiss (36:34)
unfortunately.

Arun Chaudhary (36:50)
And I don't think that. I think it's a misunderstanding of the moment and a misunderstanding of the system that we've created around ourselves. And I think much like, you know, Marx described the crisis of capitalism, not as, you know, a descending depression, but as a series of cascading boom and busts that the hits shorter and shorter together and that never quite reach the same highs, but always find a new low, you know, like any proper drug that this is.

what I see American democracy being, and maybe it's not a bad thing to have the next act be someone acting as muscularly as Donald Trump and his hype man Elon Musk are, but for the forces of good. That would be interesting. But I do think you will see a lot of, you do this, I wipe this out. You do this, I wipe this out. I think we may not see another two-term president ever.

You know, or like in the conceivable future. I, that, that I think it's B it'll be much more of this instability. And I think that people will become sort of more used to that, you know, and I, and there are parallels to this. can talk about sort of when it's the Gracchi and all these people in the kind of mid to like, it wasn't like the Roman Republic, like descended into the empire and this like one fell swoop. was like, no, first it was like too much Republic and then it was not enough Republic.

I think that will be the same, potentially.

Keegan Goudiss (38:13)
Well, right, like

for the Roman Empire, there were wild swings before it finally crashed and burned, right? You know, there was, Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (38:18)
Yeah, but I mean, even before it became the empire, know, like, so

yeah, so when it was still ideological and actually not.

Keegan Goudiss (38:25)
No, that tracks. I mean, who

knows, maybe they'll find a way for Trump to run for third term and then possibly it be Obama versus Trump, although I'm not sure Obama will beat him, which is the sad thing, but it'll be an interesting contest. you like zooming out little further since you're talking about terms? Is there anybody in the 2020 field that you see is promising?

Arun Chaudhary (38:36)
And I don't think he.

I

get this question a lot in Europe and like they have very unrealistic views of AOC and Michelle Obama particularly where you're like everybody just slow down.

Keegan Goudiss (38:58)
too unrealistically

positive or they're too negative?

Arun Chaudhary (39:01)
unrealistically positive, like they would win, right? This would be great. And you're like, yeah, you know, that's hard. One doesn't want to be a politician and one doesn't play West of the Hudson, you know, but,

I don't have a name for you. And if I did, would already be talking to them, I think about how they could do it. But when I sort of see some of the

Keegan Goudiss (39:16)
Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (39:24)
work. And this is another answer to your question from before, actually, it's like, you know, how do we solve some of this immigration stuff? Some of it's not a messaging thing, as much as it's giving people a project together. So they're doing something together. You know, having like, even in a campaign, people normally don't get along like on the Obama campaign, we people who are like Trumpy people, know, like those were our people. That's how we won in like, know, 2008, like getting along with super woke people, like, because we all had a project, you know, I do think that, you know, just

Keegan Goudiss (39:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (39:54)
making the projects works. But now remind me your question, because I was wanting to get that in. Remind me your question.

Keegan Goudiss (39:57)
more. No, that was

a really good point. I was asking if there are any candidates, but it's fine. I think generally,

Arun Chaudhary (40:03)
So the thing that

I get excited when I see are some of these Southern candidates from medium-sized towns. Some of them are going to become mayor or the head of the city council. I think these people have chops. Sometimes they're Black, sometimes they're white, but they're always part of a multiracial Southern coalition that's been built outside the Democratic party because the Democratic party didn't give a shit. And so I actually think that sort of these people have potential to become the outsider insiders.

that bring new narratives while having unassailable credentials as people who have built these multiracial coalitions. And they can't be like, you don't know how to do this. They can be like, no, no, no, we've done it. We've done it. Take a look in Alabama. Take a look.

Keegan Goudiss (40:43)
What? No, it's a good point.

I think about this a lot because it's you mentioned this way way way in the beginning of our conversation. But like you know people are tired of things not happening right like that's that's part of what is feeding this and then I have this conversation ad nauseam with Trump. Loving relatives and they're like well if Democrats were so great like San Francisco wouldn't have people pooping in the street all the time and like you know and their point like and they're like ridiculous about what their.

telling me, but they also have a legitimate point in my view, which is that like a lot of heavily run by democratic machine areas are not doing so well on a variety of fronts and they haven't, they're not, they don't have the faith that like Democrats can govern. And they, you know, they, they see like Trump as someone who could potentially get things done. So I think to your point,

Arun Chaudhary (41:30)
Yeah. And they're right for the wrong

reasons. know, like, you know, it's like, what makes these things so hard is the anti human policies that are still in place even in cities like San Francisco. You know, you can get human breast milk in your coffee, but like, why don't they just house the homeless people? You know, like built a couple skyscrapers, put them in there.

Keegan Goudiss (41:40)
Yeah.

That is a great question, and I think that like your point, the candidate that can demonstrate that locally is going to have a half a leg up. I'm not sure who that is either right now. I'm hoping if you find them, you'll tell me there's a scene in West Wing where. Uh, were you West Wing fan over we talked about this? I feel like you weren't a West Wing fan, right?

Arun Chaudhary (42:07)
No, no,

it was too much collapse rap for me, but I can understand the appeal. It was the last gasp of high budget television network television. I think that was also very comforting to people. It was like, this is like a properly made show. It's not a fucking 30 minute like reality horror.

Keegan Goudiss (42:12)
Yeah, I just like I like so I like to the there's like when the president

Well, I won't go down this path anyways, but there's a scene that I'm thinking of where you're going to come up to me and bang.

Arun Chaudhary (42:32)
I found a guy, found a woman, I found a... yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (42:33)
Yeah, I found the next person.

I do think AOC is trying very hard to look more presidential in this and I hear from people who are like very happy that she is out there on her like Instagram live. Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (42:46)
She's building power. mean, she's doing the

same things you need to do to be Speaker of the House, I would say, which I think is absolutely a realistic path. There's no reason why she shouldn't be a constitutionally mandated, powerful person in the United States. It's just the path we have to the presidency is, I will say, and I actually said this of Kamala Harris in 2017, impossible.

Keegan Goudiss (43:13)
You know that always there was like a voice I would hear remember our conversations back when Kamala was a client many years ago and I you you and I talking about this because you know I won't I won't name him former former colleague who was betting it all on Kamala's presidency right and like stabbed a bunch of us just so he could get that that Kamala account and you and I were sort of laughing like have it good luck it's not gonna

Arun Chaudhary (43:35)
I mean, and I'm

sure it will be a great boon and beneficial. This was, like a big campaign, like, know, structural things that will prevent her from connecting with America have like always been there. You know, this is a...

Keegan Goudiss (43:40)
yeah, I mean they got a lot of business off of it for sure.

But do you think that is sexism or like so like I my theory is that like is if Elizabeth Warren hadn't run as a grandma.

Arun Chaudhary (43:53)
No. Your hometown can't hate you. You know what I mean?

If your name of your band is Boston and they don't like you in Boston and you live in Boston, that's a problem. It doesn't matter how much they like you in Milwaukee. So the fact that she's so unpopular in California with black people, like it was my first indication, especially like working, you know, being on the trail a bit and like Oakland and stuff. And it was like, okay, I see something. I see something that's going on here. You know, something that does not, that's something that's like you are not connecting.

with the community you should be connecting with the most and therefore, like, the rest of it will not co-exist magically. Like in Chicago, people would stab you to death if you said something bad about Obama in Chicago, right? Like even if they didn't like the guy, you know what I mean? It's like, and if in your hometown they're not willing to stab for you, like, you're not gonna get all the way.

Keegan Goudiss (44:28)
Yeah, I think sexism definitely plays a part though.

I want to jump to Elizabeth Warren real fast. don't know why I'm just meandering around different female candidates, but there's just a point here I'm trying to make that I want to get your take on. well, you remember when we did the run Warren one run that was one of my favorite projects.

Arun Chaudhary (44:50)
She ran. If she'd run a 2016, she would've won it cleanly.

Yeah, you know, we were all against

it. It's like, yeah, move on. Kate, all right, Hannah and Eric's against they all the fucking like, you know, like,

Keegan Goudiss (45:05)
But they

somehow they convinced Elizabeth Warren to run as a grandma, which I'm like if you want if you're paying attention on 2016 Hillary Clinton did not come across to not track as a grandma like you remember, you know. Well, no, so I'm yeah, I'm jumping back and forth. I'm saying 2020 Elizabeth Warren ran as a grandma, right? They're like let's like you know and what I'm saying is you know the Hillary Clinton is my abuela bullshit didn't work in 2016. So why didn't anybody learn from that?

Arun Chaudhary (45:14)
You mean in 2020?

Two man is a grown up. pretty old.

Keegan Goudiss (45:33)
to be like, yes, sexism plays a role and no one wants to like grandmas are not seen as presidential, right? Period. And that always frustrated with me because frustrated me rather when when like Elizabeth Warren just mopped the floor with Bloomberg, I was like, this was this is this was it. Imagine if she had run like this the entire time. I think she would have won. She was the Lisa Simpson that we needed.

Arun Chaudhary (45:36)
course.

Yeah, mean, look, when she attacked Bernie, this was a tactical mistake. And I would also say a moral failing, like, you know, that's debatable. But this was a huge tactical mistake and it can only be done by somebody who all of sudden thought they could win. People do bad things in presidential races when they think they can win. When they don't think they can win, they actually do the things that they believe and then everyone loves them.

Keegan Goudiss (46:23)
There was some. Did you ever think Bernie was going to win in 2016? Am nervous. There was there was there a moment where you thought we were going to do it. He would have won the general for sure.

Arun Chaudhary (46:32)
There's,

look, I come from the Annie Weinberg School of Politics, is the science fiction view that there is a planet in which your candidate wins in some way. Maybe lightning strikes the other one, who knows? I don't know. And those paths narrow as time goes on. At first, the universe is infinite and then it becomes less infinite. I think our

Not great showing on Super Tuesday was the beginning of the idea that this wasn't really going to work. Making it painful for her, I think did make sense up until and including California, you know, to try to actually, you know, there are positions that she was running on that she wouldn't have changed on that actually helped her. You know, like dropping TPP was helpful. Dropping the no-fly zone in Syria was helpful. So like actually like, you know, forcing those things out in the same way that I'm sure she would say, like, you know.

Keegan Goudiss (47:13)
Yeah, no, I didn't.

Arun Chaudhary (47:24)
making Obama acknowledge guns and guns or whatever horrible thing she said in 2008. know, like it was helpful for Obama as a candidate. But I actually did feel uncomfortable for a couple of weeks where I was like, ah, it feels like we should drop out. I'm not really sure. Like that we gain authority. And then I thought, I'm not a Democrat. So I think me plus the rest of the country, including...

rank and file people, we don't give a fuck what's in your platform because you all don't do anything that's in your platform. So like the idea that there needs to be a big like fight about the platform and that this somehow is like, it's like.

It ain't about that. If you want to have a platform that matters, have a real party. Have a real party with real members who have a real influence. Let them vote on what's in it. You know, like, and then it actually becomes a manifesto and a mandate. But it's not that it is just like the daydreams of some 485 rich people who like to hang out in Northern Virginia and Maryland.

Keegan Goudiss (48:22)
I did also struggle at the California point. was, I think you and I have talked about this before, but I'm going to say it again anyways, like you haven't heard this. you know that we would monitor like donors emailing back, you know, we sent out emails and you can't read all of them, but it was a good, you know, just kind of quick view. Yeah, it's a good focus group of what people feel the need to email or text back after they get communication from Bernie Sanders.

Arun Chaudhary (48:23)
enough.

It's a good focus group.

Keegan Goudiss (48:50)
There are so many people who are like I I live on fixed income. I live off Social Security. My life is awful. I'm giving my last $5 like I'm not buying lunch today so that Bernie can win because he's our best hope to like make my life better and it would like wrecked me because there was. Zero chance of him being the nominee at that point and I was like, can we stop asking for money at least you know right like that was my take like we're not going to win, but no, they had to pay for things they wanted to make sure that they

Bernie, you know, someone I don't really wanted to go all the way to DC and I got that. But I'm like, can we just maybe do it like with less money and stop asking people to support the campaign? Like that was a huge schism for me and it took me a long time to wrap my head around it. But there's just like there is this this this culture within the Democratic Party that I feel like we have to change if we're going to start doing well again, which is.

Raise money at all costs. Tell them whatever they need to hear to raise money. And I'm like, for what? It's not like we win with that money that you raise. Obviously there's some people who make good money off of it. And I'm good for them.

Arun Chaudhary (49:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. Yeah, it's not even just

Trump. We had, you know, presidential candidate in Romania win spending almost no money and just doing everything on TikTok. at first, anyway, I can go into it, but there was another false flag like the Russians didn't actually do much of it. But they were accused of it. And the whole thing was a mess.

Keegan Goudiss (50:10)
Yeah, it's a

It doesn't take as much money as people think. to your point, I haven't heard you say this before, and I agree very strongly. I think you should keep talking about this more. It's like, people need a project to work on. Like lot of the best things that Bernie did were powered by volunteers who were just so passionate about his message and his authenticity. Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (50:29)
And people just got something to do together. Yeah, this

is amazing. This is how you build community. You know what mean? Like hostess swap meet, you know, people bring books, bring clothes, bring it, you know, just something that's actually, you know, make sure there's a band there. You know, have some light snacks. This is something that the left and the right both did throughout like the middle to the end of the 20th century, you know, whether you're a communist or a fascist, you knew what the barbecue was, and the kind of present professionalization of politics in the 80s and 90s.

Keegan Goudiss (50:34)
Exactly.

Arun Chaudhary (50:58)
has led us here.

Keegan Goudiss (50:58)
Do you think maybe we were

too focused online, right? Like it's harder to build community online. there, is it's not impossible. It certainly happens. Bernie was a great.

Arun Chaudhary (51:04)
We need things that

we need. We need online things to reach people and then bring them to a place where they can meet other people, preferably in a way that is safe, actually. It's actually still not totally safe to bring people together. And that has been hard for the left community because there's actually the largest growing group of voters in America are the disabled. And I think actually the first political party who figures out

how to treat them with respect, dignity, and to unleash the potential, will find not only moral satisfaction, but a huge electoral gift.

Keegan Goudiss (51:42)
Plus plus. Well, we're almost an hour here. Arun, do you want to leave our listeners with any words of wisdom? From the global, the Europe, the states lens.

Arun Chaudhary (51:54)
I am like professionally cynical, you know, that's sort of like the job. so sometimes like I find myself in this moment where everyone is so, again, like, taking a back and flummoxed all this stuff. I find myself pointing out the things that make me hopeful more often, which is number one. I do think especially in Europe that there is appetite to regulate tech. European market is still big enough.

that that is worth it to the bottom line to try to curtail some of that. Every little bit that helps gets better. But I think that should be a major focus of people. And then the other one is a sort of the awakening of the new working class. So that's, know,

delivery drivers and everyone anyone who's ever driven an uber, you know, and not only that right it's babysitters, you know, like it's occupational therapists. It's everyone who is not being coddled and sort of we're finding a lot of resonance with this message. Generally, it's like look, it's not it's sexy when it's miners and factory workers, but that's actually not what we're talking about. We're talking about everybody who works paycheck to paycheck. We're talking about middle managers in companies rocking people who do white collar work.

that actually you are part of the working class now. Like, I'm sorry, we got rid of the middle class. So I do think that whenever I see an Amazon or a Starbucks unionize, I'm like, this is just making things easier. This is actually a force that actually is an accelerant in the other direction. So people don't know what to do. Try to get money out of politics. Try to regulate the fuck out of tech.

and keep unionizing workers and actually those things just make everybody else's good ideas easier and better.

Keegan Goudiss (53:30)
So I run Troth 3 not on the side of 21st century robber barons wants to regulate more tech. think it's an admirable campaign that we use. Like I mean, it's not happening up here in the States and yeah, I mean that yeah, Europe is really like the best part for it. Yeah.

Arun Chaudhary (53:39)
nationalized. No, and it won't. mean, literally once inauguration, you know? Yeah.

Keegan Goudiss (53:47)
That's why we have to deal with Zuckerberg staring at Jeff Bezos' fiance's breasts, you know, so he can look like he's masculine in front of Trump so they don't regulate him. That's my theory.

Arun Chaudhary (53:57)
I don't want this

video to be censored for me mentioning Luigi Mangione twice, so I won't.

Keegan Goudiss (54:01)
I will on that note thank you, Arun for your time. I'm hoping that we can do another one of these at the end of 2025 as we just will look back on this conversation and make some predictions for 2026 assuming there will be a 2026.

Arun Chaudhary (54:14)
I would love that. Good luck with the forecast. It's great.

Keegan Goudiss (54:16)
All right, thanks, Arun.