The video of Tony Hinchcliffe & Snoop Dogg they forgot to delete — it changes everything



When the vultures came for comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, they thought there was a lot of meat on the bone.

Circling from above, media watchdogs and political operatives thought they had him, and Trump, dead to rights.

'We'll change the narrative.'

But they forgot something.

It was October 27, 2024, when Hinchcliffe appeared at Donald Trump's campaign rally at Madison Square Garden. Jokes about Puerto Rico being a floating pile of garbage were deemed racist and insulting.

For weeks, the joke police wanted voters to believe that Hinchcliffe is a monster whose ethos is a direct descendent to Trump and his then-possibly incoming administration.

Fast-forward two years and Hinchcliffe was in the crosshairs again for his roast jokes, this time at a literal roast. Jokes about George Floyd during the roast of Kevin Hart were deemed as "not even a joke" by Wanda Sykes, while Floyd's foundation labeled Hinchcliffe a "racist comedian" in a series of insulting statements.

There's a problem with these accusations though. There was a lot of footage they forgot to erase.

The smokeout

Despite constant backlash in the media, Hinchcliffe has always refused to back down, punch after punch, year after year. Perhaps the reason is because Hinchcliffe knows he has the tapes to back himself up.

December 10, 2016, 10:00 p.m.: The "Snoop Dogg Smokeout" airs, ironically, a month before Trump takes office for the first time.

Snoop Dogg, Mike Epps, Terry Crews, LL Cool J, and ... Tony Hinchcliffe.

In front of what Snoop described as an "all-black crowd," Tony did what Tony does.

"Hello everybody, you're all under arrest," Hinchcliffe began.

Soon, the then-32-year-old told comedian Luenell she looks like she needed "two seats on the Underground Railroad."

This was followed by Hinchcliffe saying comedian Michael Blackson had his makeup done with a "charcoal briquette" and that Snoop's estranged kids would love to smoke weed with him if they ever met.

No one was offended; in fact, other comedians were literally falling out of their chairs as audience members waved towels and screamed.

RELATED: Joe Rogan & Shane Gillis say we're never going back — and young men should listen

Snoop was the most impressed. Within the year, he had Hinchcliffe on his own podcast to reveal what today would be highly controversial news: The allegedly racist comedian was writing a movie for one of the most iconic rappers of all time.

Total recall

In more forgotten footage, Snoop spoke more about his friendship with the Ohio comedian years later on "The Joe Rogan Experience."

"He's the s**t," Snoop said about Hinchcliffe.

Airing just four months before the MSG debacle, host Joe Rogan said he was ready to go all-out in support of Hinchcliffe's career. Snoop and Rogan went back and forth praising Tony, declaring him to be one of the best roast comedians of all time.

Snoop then directly addressed Hinchcliffe's racial comedy at his own roast, saying, "I seen him at an all-black [show] with an all-black crowd steal the f**king show."

Rogan said he had "all his chips in" on Hinchcliffe as the two contemplated how to make him a star. Spitballing ideas, the duo came up with show ideas for Hinchcliffe, with Snoop himself saying that a roast battle format mixed with musical performances could force a monumental shift in pop culture.

"It would make the sensitive people, to comedy, be nonsensitive because now you have two comedians talking s**t about each other."

The audience couldn't possibly be sensitive to jokes after seeing that, Snoop asserted.

"We'll change the narrative," Snoop said. "That's my guy."

RELATED: Boys will be boys: Shane Gillis' record-breaking Philadelphia show was more than just a comedy set

WWE/Getty Images

The media illusion isn't strong enough to convince most audience members or comedians that Tony is racist. That includes Kevin Hart, who was the butt of many of the allegedly harmful jokes months ago.

Hart has explained that he was never actually offended by the roast jokes, saying he is always going to "appreciate humor," even when the humor is about him being "on a slave ship in a bottle."

Even through-and-through Democrat supporter Jon Stewart defended Hinchcliffe through the ordeal.

It's not likely that anyone short of Chelsea Handler will think of Hinchcliffe as a "racist comedian," when in proximity of him, it's actually difficult to do so.

Hinchcliffe's wildly popular "Kill Tony" show features an all-Mexican horn section, a Mexican drummer, a blind black guitarist, and a black keyboardist. A lot of the show's most popular regulars are definitively not white, so are some of his closest comedian friends.

If these associations still aren't enough to convince progressives, Hinchcliffe's answer is simple:

"I apologize to absolutely nobody. Not to the Puerto Ricans, not to the whites, not to the blacks, not to the Palestinians, not to the Jews, and not to my own mother, who I made fun of during the set."

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Joe Rogan & Shane Gillis say we're never going back — and young men should listen



A night of drinking in Belfast gave Joe Rogan an epiphany: It's never going to be that way again.

Joking with fellow comedians Shane Gillis, Mark Normand, and Ari Shaffir, the quartet were going through their usual roundtable of anecdotes when — as usual — some sage advice poked its head through.

'Cameras have ruined young people.'

Just the flip

Rogan was recalling a night on the town in Northern Ireland, telling his friends about a literal drunken Irishman who was rambling about being willing to fight anyone. That experience, known only to him, is foregone history now thanks to modern technology.

"I miss those days where I could just go to a bar and just just pull up and just get lit. It was fun," Rogan said on his podcast.

"It's too hard" now, the comedian continued; it's all about the phones.

"So this is like 2007 ... there's no cameras. There's no phones. Nobody. There's no iPhone yet. So it's like people were just hanging out."

Then even Normand, who is usually a sunglasses-wearing fly on the wall who provides inappropriate remarks, was in lock-step with how smartphones have caused generational issues for the youth.

"Cameras have ruined young people, [they] can't cut loose."

Rogan concurred, "Phones ruined everything in terms of like, people's connection with each other."

The 59-year-old has lived a long time in the spotlight; whether it was reporting from early UFC events, hosting "Fear Factor," or doing stand-up tours, he feels confident pinpointing the exact place in time young people should be trying to replicate.

"The old phones, that was as far as we should have went. The flip phone that you could text on, and the texting sucked."

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Scroll models

Rogan's message been clear over the years: Put the phone away or face being "stuck," only if for a few days.

"I've pulled back considerably like I was saying, over the last three months. ... I just decided enough is enough," Rogan continued. "I don't like how I feel when I just scroll through doom."

Having previously stated that he doesn't want his phone anywhere near him while driving, Rogan, along with Gillis, has been signaling to young men that being disconnected from one's phone can not only serve as an advantage, it can be a relief.

The dreadful feeling was Gillis' angle, who felt like his decision to disconnect was thrust upon him, as opposed to a conscious move like that of Rogan.

Mirroring lawsuits against popular social media companies, Gillis said his exodus from platforms isn't a choice, instead he "got lucky enough that I can't look at it anymore. I can't. It's just negative."

"It's not like I'm like making a disciplined choice to be like, 'I don't want to look at this anymore,'" Gillis added. He hasn't looked at Reddit in years, and he can't even bring himself to look at X.

"It genuinely makes me feel bad," he stressed.

"I don't want to click on it anymore."

RELATED: 'House' star Hugh Laurie responds to claims he supports men in women's sports: 'Firstly, f**k off'

Anna Barclay/Getty Images

Bro breakthrough

The four horsemen of "Protect Our Parks" represent the advanced status of a group of friends from different backgrounds who made it big.

The reflection men see in them is obvious; it's like bros in a basement. This is specifically present when Rogan says things like, "There's a UFC in L.A. If you guys want to take over the Comedy Store for a weekend," as if they're heading to the bar.

But in that commentary comes lessons for the next generation of young men:

"You don't want to live in their world," Rogan said of influencers and phone addicts.

The truth bombs culminated:

"You don't want to be in their head, and they don't want it either. And the only way for them out is to not do that. And if they keep doing it and keep living in that f**king same swamp of ideas, they're never going to change."

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Cancel culture fired Shane Gillis — America hired him back



In July, Shane Gillis made comedy history, selling more than 77,000 tickets and setting records for the largest audience for a comedian and the most tickets sold for a solo stand-up act. The achievement put him past names like Kevin Hart, Steve Martin, and German stand-up Mario Barth.

It also came just seven years after cancel culture nearly killed his career.

Shane Gillis did not beat cancel culture by becoming less offensive. He beat it by becoming too successful to cancel.

In 2019, shortly after Comedy Central named him an “Up Next” comedian, Gillis landed the job every comic dreams about: a spot on “Saturday Night Live.” Then old clips surfaced of him doing a mock Asian accent and using a racial slur. Other clips featured supposedly unacceptable jokes about gay people. Within days, SNL fired him. Gillis later described the experience as painful enough to make it hard to “trust people ... for a while.”

The timing was brutal. Gillis was fired during what we now recognize as peak woke, when careers could vanish because somebody with a Twitter account dug through 10 years of jokes and found the wrong sentence.

He was hardly alone. Sarah Silverman faced backlash over an old blackface bit. Dave Chappelle was attacked for mocking Michael Jackson’s accusers. Kevin Hart’s old tweets were dragged back into the spotlight. Suddenly the internet had discovered a tremendous new power: If enough people pretended to be offended at once, they could get somebody fired.

For a while, almost everyone played along.

That was always the secret of cancel culture. It was never a magical force. It was a consensual ideology. It worked because institutions submitted to it, employers feared it, and ordinary people convinced themselves that refusing to obey would make them the next target.

Words became temporarily unsayable. Leftists rewrote definitions and then declared that only certain people were allowed to use them. “Gone with the Wind” was pulled from streaming. James Gunn and Gina Carano lost jobs. People learned to keep their mouths shut because being called racist, sexist, or homophobic could cost them a career.

The woke mob did not win because everyone agreed with it. It won because too many people were afraid to laugh at it.

Now, two presidencies removed from peak woke, the whole thing looks much sillier. Plenty of celebrities once declared untouchable have returned to the mainstream. Land acknowledgments and pronoun rituals have become punch lines. “Culturally insensitive,” the kind of phrase that helped sink Gillis, sounds increasingly like a relic from a very stupid age.

So people post offensive jokes, recycle old podcast clips, and celebrate that “woke is dead.”

I would not start planning the funeral.

Cancel culture isn’t dead. It’s hiding.

Conservatives have every reason to feel confident right now. Republicans control Congress and the presidency. The administration has attacked “diversity, equity, and inclusion” throughout the federal government. The Supreme Court has handed down major victories protecting women’s sports. It can be tempting to believe the culture could never slide back to 2019.

RELATED: BILL PILLED: Maher warns fellow Democrats that they're headed for woke-tastrophe

Shannon Finney/WireImage/Getty Images

But Donald Trump was president in 2019 too.

The first and second Trump administrations are very different, but Trump’s presence by itself does not prevent a woke resurgence. Cultural power does not live only in Washington. It lives in entertainment, universities, corporations, HR departments, newsrooms, and the countless people who decide whether the mob gets rewarded for showing up.

Gillis’ comeback is encouraging precisely because he did not wait for those institutions to forgive him.

Podcasts gave him somewhere else to go. After SNL fired him, Gillis joked that he could just appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast and everything would be fine. And he was right. Audiences increasingly learned that independently produced shows could be funnier, more honest, and less filtered than legacy television.

That shift reached well beyond comedy. Podcasts became a major force in the 2024 election. Trump and JD Vance used long-form appearances to show voters their humor and personalities outside carefully managed television interviews. Kamala Harris’ refusal to sit down with Rogan only reinforced the contrast. In the peak-woke era, scripted liberal slogans might have been enough. By 2024, they sounded canned.

Comedy is often the canary in the coal mine because comedy requires tension, risk, and the possibility that somebody will be offended. A culture that cannot tolerate a joke will eventually struggle to tolerate an argument.

Gillis rebuilt his career, but comedians are still testing the limits. Jerry Seinfeld said the “extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy,” then later walked that back by saying culture moves and a comedian’s job is to adapt. David Spade criticized L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom for “killing Hollywood” and took heat for it. Nate Bargatze was slammed simply for attending Trump’s UFC event at the White House.

RELATED: Colorado fire department employee FIRED over Snoop Dogg doll that ‘evoked’ history of ‘racial terror’

Heidi Gutman/Bravo/Getty Images

That is what hiding looks like. The old cultural reflex is still there, waiting for institutions to become afraid again.

Woke politics will not return because somebody waves a magic wand. It will return one concession at a time: one employee fired to stop a controversy, one joke declared beyond the pale, one institution deciding it is easier to surrender than tell an angry mob no.

That is why conservatives should resist the temptation to declare victory and go home. Free speech survives only when people keep using it. Comedy survives only when comedians keep telling the joke. Culture stays open only when institutions refuse to hand professional hecklers a veto.

The late, great Norm Macdonald understood this better than most. Early in his career, he joked: “People were beginning to talk about me, and that’s always good news. As Adolf Hitler once said, all publicity is good publicity.”

Shane Gillis did not beat cancel culture by becoming less offensive. He beat it by becoming too successful to cancel. That’s worth celebrating. It is not a reason to stop paying attention.

Gorsuch Abandons Originalism (Again) With Claims America Isn’t A Christian Nation

Justice Gorsuch keeps insisting America was founded as a religiously neutral nation, but the founding-era record tells a very different story.

Vance’s path to 2028 just got much more complicated



Until late 2025, the Republican Party appeared likely to carry the MAGA coalition more or less intact into the 2028 presidential election. No successor can reproduce Trump’s personality or political style. But the coalition he assembled — working-class voters, growing numbers of Latinos and other former Democrats, and disaffected liberals such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — seemed durable.

JD Vance also appeared ready to clear the field. Marco Rubio, the only other plausible heir with national support, said just a few months ago that he would back Vance in 2028 if the vice president ran. The nomination looked less like a contest than a succession plan.

Much of the base may share Vance’s instincts, but the right is far from unanimous. His victory in an open contest cannot be assumed.

When I wrote my book, “JD Vance and the Future of the Republican Party,” the first sustained examination of Vance’s political thought and his place in the post-Trump GOP, that outcome seemed nearly certain. Vance would declare around the 2026 midterms. Rubio would endorse him. A few marginal candidates might enter, but none would reach double digits.

That scenario remains possible. It is no longer inevitable.

Two related developments have changed the equation: the fight over the U.S.-Israel relationship on the right and the war in Iran.

The first does not implicate Vance directly, but it has fractured the political world he must lead. Far-right podcasters and pundits have fixated on Israel and Jews for years. The dispute moved from the fringes toward the center when Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes on his podcast in October 2025, one month after Charlie Kirk — one of the right’s most effective coalition builders and gatekeepers — was assassinated. Influential voices soon moved beyond debating the wisdom and limits of the U.S.-Israel alliance to entertaining conspiratorial claims that Jews themselves threatened America.

The conservative movement has never been intellectually uniform. Libertarians, social conservatives, anti-communist liberals, nationalists, and other factions have long competed under the Republican tent. But the past nine months have produced something more corrosive. Positions on Israel, American Jews, and even individual media personalities have become loyalty tests. Conservatives increasingly sort themselves into camps and excommunicate dissenters.

Every presidential nominee must unite competing factions. Vance faces an unusual version of that task because he entered politics through the world of conservative intellectuals, think tanks, and media. He has friends and allies across rival camps. Preserving those relationships without appearing captive to any of them may become one of his hardest political tests.

RELATED: JD Vance reveals opinion on Epstein files, explains ‘demon’ alien theory, slams ‘full of s**t’ Gavin Newsom with Joe Rogan

Nathan Howard/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

The war in Iran has made that test harder. Trump’s coalition has always included incompatible foreign-policy factions: George W. Bush-era interventionists, advocates of a restrained and more hemispheric strategy, and hard-line isolationists. The alliance held as long as the administration avoided wars that lacked a clear connection to the American interest.

Iran forced the disagreement into the open. Will the Republican Party continue military campaigns in the Middle East, or will it reserve force for direct threats to the United States? Republicans answer that question very differently, and the war has split the party. Any 2028 nominee will have to navigate the divide.

Vance is no isolationist, but his instincts favor restraint. He is also more willing than many senior Republicans to question the scope of U.S. commitments to Israel. Those positions may appeal to much of the base while alarming interventionists, pro-Israel conservatives, and establishment donors.

Can Vance maintain relationships with controversial figures such as Carlson, reconsider American commitments in the Middle East, and still hold the Republican coalition together? A competitive 2028 primary would force those questions into the open. Much of the base may share Vance’s instincts, but the right is far from unanimous. His victory in an open contest cannot be assumed.

Rubio remains the likeliest challenger. He has said he will not oppose Vance if the vice president runs, but supporters continue to promote the popular secretary of state as a candidate. Rubio’s greater acceptability to establishment Republicans and his more interventionist foreign policy would turn the primary into a direct contest over the party’s future. He could expose every fault line Vance must bridge.

One factor may matter more than all the others: Trump’s endorsement.

RELATED: The GOP’s 2028 ticket math is already brutal

Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images

After the Iran war, Vance is less likely to coast through a genuinely open primary, especially if Rubio changes his mind. But Republicans may never receive an open primary. Trump still commands the party he reshaped, relishes the role of kingmaker, and will want to choose his successor.

An unequivocal Trump endorsement of Vance could end the contest before it begins. Other candidates could run, but they would struggle against a Trump-Vance succession. If Trump chooses Vance, the vice president may become the 2028 nominee by anointing rather than competition.

Trump has spoken more than once about the race to succeed him. Once he speaks definitively, the question may no longer be whether Vance can win the Republican primary. It may be whether the party is willing to hold one.

If Trump names Vance, he will likely become the future of the Republican Party. Trump will decide whether the party gets a primary or an anointing.

‘Need a cop? Thank socialism’ is dumb — but dangerously effective



Zohran Mamdani ran a brilliant campaign last year by promising to make New York City affordable through democratic socialism.

Now the bill is arriving.

Firefighters are good. Firefighters are socialism. Therefore, socialism is good. That is the intellectual caliber of the movement now ascending in American politics.

New York’s new pied-à-terre tax took effect this month. Almost immediately, the luxury real estate market tanked. Wealthy buyers, it turns out, are not livestock. They can delay purchases, move money, change residency, or simply decline to participate in Mamdani’s experiment.

This elementary fact appears to have surprised the people running America’s largest city.

That’s the trouble with democratic socialists. They are forever astonished when human beings refuse to behave like figures in a budget projection.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has a solution: Make the argument so stupid that nobody can discuss socialism seriously at all.

Appearing recently on “The Dean Obeidallah Show,” Ellison announced that police departments are socialist because taxpayers fund them.

“You call the cops; guess who pays them. Your tax dollars,” Ellison said. “Guess what that is. That’s socialism, pal!”

He threw in fire departments, water inspectors, and public works for good measure.

No, pal. That isn’t socialism. That’s just government.

Ellison wasn’t offering a forensic definition, of course. He was performing a cheap semantic trick for people he assumed would nod and applaud before thinking.

Police are socialism. Firefighters are socialism. Roads are socialism. Public schools are socialism. (Well, yes, kind of.) Once every government function becomes socialist, socialism no longer requires a defense. You already support it. You have no choice. Unless you plan to extinguish your own house fire, arrest your own burglar, and pave the road yourself, welcome to the revolution.

Joe Rogan has been repeating the same dumb line for years, I’m sorry to say. Last year, he again called the fire department socialist because everybody pays for it and everybody receives protection.

I like Rogan. He isn’t a malefactor like Ellison. He simply does not know what he is talking about. That is less wicked, but it is increasingly difficult to excuse in a man who has spent thousands of hours interviewing people who actually know things.

Millions hear Rogan and think: Well, gosh, that makes sense.

No, it doesn’t. It’s flat wrong.

Worse, Ellison and Rogan smuggle in the same fraudulent choice: socialism or chaos.

Either government employs police officers and firefighters, builds roads, and inspects drinking water, or every citizen must hire his own private constable, buy his own fire engine, and fill the pothole at the end of the driveway.

That is not the choice.

RELATED: The media’s Democratic cover-up is collapsing

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Socialism concerns ownership and control of productive property. Government collects taxes, enforces laws, maintains courts, fields armies, and provides services. Governments did all of those things long before socialism acquired a name.

By the Ellison-Rogan standard, if we can call it that, every king who collected taxes was a socialist. Ancient Rome was socialist because it built aqueducts. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were socialists because the national government employed customs agents. Louis XIV was apparently waiting for the workers to seize Versailles.

The alternative to socialism is not anarchy. It is limited government.

Conservatives sometimes make the mistake of talking as though government itself were the enemy. It isn’t. Not necessarily. Bad government is the enemy. Unlimited government is the enemy. Government that exceeds its legitimate purposes, devours private institutions, and treats citizens as dependents is the enemy.

But we need government.

We need cops and firefighters. We need courts, armies, roads, and public works — the odd toll road notwithstanding. Somebody must enforce contracts, punish violence, defend the country, and preserve public order.

Ordered liberty requires order.

The American political tradition does not reject government. It recognizes that government is necessary and dangerous and therefore must be limited by law. That is a much older and more serious idea than the facile view that every tax-funded service is socialism and every objection to socialism is an argument for anarchy.

Ellison knows better. That’s what makes him a bad guy. He understands perfectly well that a police department is not socialism. He chooses to speak as though he does not because the confusion serves him.

If cops and firefighters are socialism, then socialism is already as American as apple pie. No need to defend rent controls, wealth taxes, government grocery stores, confiscatory tax schemes, or the steady expansion of public power on their merits. Just offer the child’s syllogism: Firefighters are good. Firefighters are socialism. Therefore, socialism is good.

That is the intellectual caliber of the movement now ascending in American cities.

RELATED: ‘Back the blue’ cannot mean blind obedience

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Ellison is dishonest about words because dishonesty serves his politics. Rogan is careless with ideas because being laughably wrong has never reduced his audience. Mamdani is careless with markets because he imagines moral righteousness repeals the law of supply and demand.

These are not serious people. But they are seriously dangerous.

They hold offices, microphones, audiences, and influence wildly disproportionate to their judgment. They confuse applause with vindication and slogans with thought. They speak with total confidence because none of them expects to pay for being wrong.

The people who do pay are homeowners, renters, workers, employers, customers, and taxpayers who cannot laugh, wave, and leave the consequences to somebody else.

Democratic socialism’s new champions are not merely wrong about economics. They are frivolous about power. They offer socialism or chaos because admitting the existence of limited government would ruin the con.

They are playing with cities and states they are not wise or disciplined enough to govern. Shine, perishing republic!

‘Fascinating’: JD Vance tells Joe Rogan the Trump administration ‘screwed up the comms’ with the Epstein files



For years, the Epstein files have fueled endless speculation, conspiracy theories, and demands for transparency — which have resulted in widespread disappointment among Americans demanding to know the truth.

Now, on the biggest podcast in the world, Vice President JD Vance is offering one of the administration’s most direct explanations yet for why the highly anticipated document release left so many Americans frustrated.

“The Epstein files were supposed to be released,” Joe Rogan said to Vance on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “And there was a tremendous amount of resistance to those files being released. That concerned a lot of people because if you’re talking about very wealthy, powerful people that were engaged in crimes.”

“So you’re basically saying the fear is that whatever’s in the Epstein files was used to blackmail the administration into doing the Iran thing,” Vance replied.


“Or, at the very least, the people that were involved in the Epstein files that didn’t want them coming out had undue influence,” Rogan said.

“I say this with all candor, we absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files. Like we just did. But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something? No,” Vance explained.

Instead, Vance believes the reason the administration “screwed up the comms” was that former Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed the client list was on her desk.

“So, what was the purpose of that performative display of the Epstein files, and she was saying there’s tens of thousands of hours of film?” Rogan asked.

“I don’t know what the purpose of it was, but I know that the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort,” Vance answered, noting that he believes Bondi was “trying to respond to the political moment.”

Vance called himself one of the “OG Epstein conspiracy theorists” and admitted to going “down every single rabbit hole.”

“The original sin of the Epstein investigation, and obviously I’m biased here, but it was not what Donald Trump and the administration did in 2025. It was, you have to go back to 2007, 2008, the original Alex Acosta investigation of Jeffrey Epstein where he basically dropped the federal charges,” he explained.

“You go to the original warrant back in 2008, what was he looking for? What was he allowed to look for? What were they collecting? It was not looking at a broader conspiracy,” he added.

“That’s fascinating,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever find out the truth,” he adds, “but that was fascinating.”

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

'I don't care': Meet the man building Britain's new populist, anti-immigration right



The name Rupert Lowe will probably be unfamiliar to many Americans. To look at him, the former Reform U.K. member of parliament is the quintessential English gentleman — a farmer who breeds pedigree cattle amid the rolling hills of Gloucestershire, looking every bit the part in a waxed jacket and muddy Wellington boots.

Behind the pastoral image, however, lies one of Britain's most controversial political figures.

Restore proposes what Lowe describes as 'the most ambitious program of mass deportations ever seen' in Britain.

No friend of Farage

Reform U.K. suspended Lowe in March 2025 over allegations of workplace bullying before eventually expelling him from the party. Lowe has always maintained the allegations were politically motivated, arguing he was forced out because he took a harder line on immigration than the party leadership. He has since accused Nigel Farage of running Reform with a "messianic" leadership style that sidelines anyone viewed as a threat.

Following his expulsion, Lowe spent the next year sitting in the House of Commons as an independent MP for Great Yarmouth. During that political exile, he quietly laid the groundwork for a comeback, launching Restore Britain as a pressure group before registering it as a political party in early 2026. On March 23, Lowe officially entered parliament as Restore Britain's sole MP.

The new party occupies territory to the right of Reform, embracing policies — including mass deportations — that Farage has been reluctant to endorse.

That split soon attracted one of the world's most influential political voices.

'Weak sauce'

After initially expressing support for Reform, Elon Musk publicly broke with Farage, saying he "doesn't have what it takes" and describing his leadership as "weak sauce." Musk instead backed Lowe, dramatically increasing Restore Britain's online profile.

Within months, the party claimed more than one million social media followers and roughly 130,000 members — surpassing the Conservative Party's reported membership. In July, Lowe became the first British politician to appear on "The Joe Rogan Experience," introducing his movement to millions of viewers outside Britain.

If Reform seeks to channel public frustration, Restore Britain aims to dismantle the political consensus that has governed Britain for decades.

Its central objective is reversing what supporters call the "Boriswave" — the surge in migration that followed Brexit. Between 2021 and 2024, roughly 2.6 million people arrived in Britain. Under current law, many migrants become eligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain after five years, opening a pathway to welfare benefits and eventually British citizenship.

Ready to remigrate

Restore proposes removing access to state benefits for ILR holders in an effort to encourage voluntary departures while also promising what Lowe describes as "the most ambitious program of mass deportations ever seen" in Britain. The party's proposed "remigration" policy would prioritize deporting foreign nationals who commit crimes, rely on welfare, cannot speak English, or live in social housing.

Restore also advocates ending voting rights and eligibility for public office for foreign nationals at every level of government. Supporters argue the proposal would reduce sectarian politics and ensure elected officials remain primarily accountable to British citizens rather than recent immigrant communities.

The party points to cases such as Labour MPs Tahir Ali and Mohammad Yasin, who urged Pakistan's prime minister to support construction of an international airport in Mirpur, as examples of lawmakers prioritizing overseas interests while representing British constituencies.

Kissing cousins

Restore also pushes beyond Reform on cultural issues.

One example is cousin marriage. Although Farage has expressed support for bans adopted elsewhere in Europe, he has stopped short of proposing one for Britain.

Restore explicitly supports banning the practice. The party argues that cousin marriage reinforces clan-based social structures, slows integration, and contributes to elevated rates of inherited genetic disorders within some communities. Critics of the practice frequently cite data from the Born in Bradford study, in which researchers have documented unusually high rates of certain inherited conditions associated with consanguineous marriage.

The party has taken similarly uncompromising positions elsewhere. It supports banning the burqa and niqab in public and ending religious exemptions that permit halal and kosher slaughter without prior stunning, arguing both policies are necessary to strengthen national cohesion and reinforce what it considers British values.

RELATED: Pakistani cousin marriage has no place in UK

Bloomberg/Getty Images

'I don't care'

Another issue that has helped define Restore Britain is Britain's long-running grooming gang scandal, in which organized groups of men sexually exploited and raped vulnerable children. Many of the country's most notorious cases — including Rotherham, Rochdale, and Huddersfield — involved gangs of men of Pakistani heritage.

Although the government's statutory inquiry followed Baroness Louise Casey's independent review, Lowe has sought to make the scandal central to Restore's political identity. The party funded its own inquiry, pressed ministers to preserve evidence for the official investigation, and argues that years of institutional reluctance to confront the offenders' backgrounds reflected a broader failure of Britain's political establishment. Supporters credit Lowe with helping keep public attention on the issue, while critics contend Restore has used it to advance its wider political agenda.

Such positions have predictably drawn fierce criticism.

The Daily Mail and the Telegraph have both published investigations into Restore Britain's candidates and supporters. Critics argue the scrutiny reflects legitimate questions about the party's leadership and membership. Restore supporters see something different: an establishment campaign designed to halt the movement before it can gain traction.

Academic and former Reform candidate Matt Goodwin likewise dismissed many of those leaving Reform for Restore, describing them in an interview with Spiked as "the wrong kinds of people, who hold the wrong kinds of ideas." He characterized many critics of Reform as "amateurs, egomaniacs, zoomers with very little political experience."

Lowe's response has since become something of a rallying cry for his supporters.

"I don't care."

GONE IN 60 SECONDS: Why Conor McGregor's loss to Holloway marks the definitive end of his career



Conor McGregor is many things, but boring has never been one of them. The wild years between his major bouts dissolved into a blur of court dates, shattered bus windows, and enough marching powder to send a bull elephant into cardiac orbit.

He lived like a man trying to out-party Hunter S. Thompson while trying to convince the world he was still an elite athlete. He posted midnight sparring videos from triple-decker superyachts. He littered social media with unhinged, deleted voice notes. Even so, millions of loyal fans believed that he had the capacity to regain his crown.

Joe Rogan provided live commentary, and his excitement was infectious. He confessed to wanting to believe the former champion could still produce magic.

Cold snap

The first real sign that the legend possessed limits came on July 10, 2021, at UFC 264. McGregor’s tibia snapped against Dustin Poirier with the crack of a dry branch, forcing the Dubliner into a prolonged competitive exile. He traded the daily grind of the gym for titanium rod rehabilitation sessions. That injury became the permanent line between the fighter he actually was and the myth he tried to preserve. The subsequent years became a parade of recovery updates and constant promises of a return.

A return did materialize, though it was destined to be short-lived. Saturday — five years on from that shin-splintering night in Las Vegas — McGregor made his return to the Octagon at UFC 329 inside the T-Mobile Arena.

His opponent was fellow MMA veteran Max Holloway, a man who had spent McGregor’s entire hiatus fighting the absolute best featherweights and lightweights on the planet. The arena held a rather eclectic crowd featuring Mike Tyson, Tucker Carlson, and Vince Vaughn, all paying thousands of dollars to witness what was marketed as the greatest resurrection since Lazarus.

Flicker of hope

The opening bars of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize" echoed through the arena. It was the perfect entrance music for the self-styled "Notorious" McGregor. Joe Rogan provided live commentary, and his excitement was infectious. He confessed to wanting to believe the former champion could still produce magic.

The Irish faithful, both in the stands and back home, shared that exact wish, desperately embracing the possibility of the greatest comeback in sporting history. We needed the Mac to conquer the improbable and completely rewrite the laws of the impossible.

But once the fight began, the delusion evaporated in just over 60 seconds. McGregor threw a heavy, wild kick, landed awkwardly on his right leg, and immediately lost his footing. Seconds later, he attempted a follow-up kick, only to wince in agony. The months of promotional hype and international press tours dissolved in an instant.

When the referee stepped in to call a halt to the misery, McGregor sat with his head buried in his hands. Bypassing the microphone entirely, he exited the cage in what felt like a permanent vanishing act.

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Off the cliff

McGregor recently celebrated his 38th birthday. He’s still a young man, but in the 155- to 170-pound divisions of mixed martial arts, 38 is a chronological cliff, where human reaction time slows just enough for elite 20-something killers to take your head off. History tracks a brutal, unbroken pattern of legend after legend refusing to accept this biological reality. The American B.J. Penn pushed past his prime into his late 30s, only to suffer a horrific seven-fight skid, looking slower and more vulnerable with every appearance.

The sport functions as a meat grinder with a marketing department. Tony Ferguson marched straight into his 40s on an agonizing eight-fight losing streak, transforming from the most feared lightweight on earth into a visual cautionary tale for the entire roster. The Brazilian superstar Anderson Silva lingered long enough to go 1-6 at the end of his UFC run, absorbing unneeded damage from athletes who used his name to build their own brands. The sport does not accommodate aging heroes.

Hit the showers

The financial machine will survive the loss of its favorite cash cow. McGregor completely transformed the UFC's economic reality during his meteoric rise. He turned a niche combat sport into a multibillion-dollar mainstream industry through an unprecedented marketing capability that no fighter before or since has replicated.

In his competitive prime, his ability to predict the exact round of a knockout matched his technical precision inside the cage, forcing even his harshest critics to respect his execution and refer to him as Mystic Mac. He made the sport immensely profitable for the executives, generating hundreds of millions of dollars while single-handedly inventing the concept of the MMA "money fight."

The knee injury at UFC 329 closes the door on any future athletic success inside the Octagon. There is no training regimen, experimental therapy, or medical procedure that can restore the fast-twitch reflexes and structural durability required to beat elite, hungry fighters. He leaves the sport as an incredibly wealthy promotional executive and a guaranteed Hall of Famer, but his time as a functional, successful competitor in the UFC has reached its absolute end.

The dark religion behind ‘manifesting’



The power of positive thinking has taken an occult turn. After his UFC victory at the White House last month, Sean O’Malley told Joe Rogan that he had seen the outcome beforehand and manifested it into reality.

Whether he meant those words casually or literally, they reflect an increasingly common belief among athletes, entrepreneurs, influencers, and podcasters. Success is no longer merely achieved through discipline and hard work. It is manifested — even conjured. Consciousness itself creates the future.

Our thoughts influence our actions, but they do not govern reality. We make plans, set goals, exercise prudence, and work diligently. The outcome ultimately belongs to God.

At first glance, this language may sound harmless. Athletes have long used visualization techniques. Coaches encourage competitors to imagine success before a game. Olympic athletes mentally rehearse routines. Quarterbacks visualize throws. Fighters picture victories.

But modern manifesting goes far beyond sports psychology.

Traditional visualization is straightforward. Imagining success can improve focus, reduce anxiety, build confidence, and prepare the body for performance. The athlete does not create reality through thought. He prepares himself to perform when reality arrives.

Manifesting makes a different claim.

It holds that consciousness participates in creating reality. The fighter does not merely prepare for victory; he helps bring it into existence. The entrepreneur does not merely work toward success; he attracts it. The individual does not merely respond to the world; he creates his own reality.

This way of thinking has become so common that many people no longer recognize how strange it is. Yet it represents a significant religious shift in modern American culture.

Ironically, little about it is new.

The roots of today’s manifestation movement extend into 19th-century American religious history and, before that, into occult and hermetic traditions.

One important source was Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy. Christian Science taught that matter is subordinate to mind and that many human problems result from false thinking rather than objective conditions.

Christian Science differs from today’s manifestation culture in important ways, but both assign consciousness a far more fundamental role than traditional Christianity permits.

Closely related was the New Thought movement. Its writers and lecturers taught that positive thinking could produce health, prosperity, and success. The message was simple: Change your thoughts, and you can change your reality.

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Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images

Many modern manifestation teachers merely repackage New Thought for the social media age.

The vocabulary has changed, but the assumptions remain strikingly similar.

Instead of speaking about positive thinking — the scientific language of that era — people now invoke frequencies, vibrations, energy, alignment, and quantum possibilities — the scientific language of ours. Instead of spiritual laws, they speak of neuroscience and mindset.

The central claim remains unchanged: Your thoughts possess creative power.

The fundamental reality, they teach, is consciousness. The awakened self is divine.

This worldview also resembles older occult, esoteric, and theosophical traditions.

Historically, occult systems taught that hidden knowledge gave initiates access to powers unavailable to ordinary people. Reality operates according to secret principles that could be learned and harnessed. The enlightened individual gained mastery by acquiring that knowledge.

It is the promise of the serpent in the garden: You will know as God knows.

Human beings know by discovering what is real. God knows as the creator who determines what is real.

Modern manifestation culture often follows the same pattern. Its teachers claim that reality contains countless possible futures and that consciousness selects among them. Individuals are urged to discover hidden truths about their power, unlock limiting beliefs, raise their vibrations, and learn the principles by which the universe operates.

The pattern appears throughout many nonbiblical religions: You are a higher consciousness trapped in a body and must discover the secret that will restore you to divinity.

The problem is not sin but rather ignorance of your own godhood.

You do not need redemption through Christ to restore communion with God. You need enlightenment to remember that you are God.

That is why modern manifestation can accurately be described as a form of neo-gnosticism.

Ancient gnosticism taught that human beings contained a hidden divine element. The fundamental human problem was ignorance of this truth. Salvation came through secret knowledge that awakened people to their true nature.

Modern manifestation often follows the same structure:

You possess hidden creative powers.

You do not understand your true potential.

Limiting beliefs keep you trapped.

Special knowledge sets you free.

The language differs, but the story remains familiar. And its attraction is obvious.

Manifestation promises control in an uncertain world. It offers success without dependence, power without submission, and meaning without repentance. It assures individuals that they are not subject to forces beyond themselves but possess the power to shape their destinies.

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Yet the system contains a serious flaw: It is self-validating.

When someone succeeds, the success proves manifestation works. When someone fails, the failure is blamed on faulty manifestation. Success confirms the theory. Failure confirms it too.

It resembles the gambler who remembers the one time double zero hit twice in a row and forgets every losing bet.

A theory that can absorb every possible result explains nothing. It merely improvises a new explanation after the fact.

Christianity begins somewhere else entirely.

Scripture teaches that human beings are not creators but creatures. God alone exists from eternity. He created human souls and a material world, and he called that world very good.

Our thoughts influence our actions, but they do not govern reality. We make plans, set goals, exercise prudence, and work diligently. The outcome ultimately belongs to God.

The biblical question is not, “What reality can I create?” It is, “What has God ordained, and how should I respond faithfully?”

That distinction may sound subtle, but it marks two radically different visions of the world.

One places creative sovereignty in human consciousness.

The other places it in God.

So when O’Malley says he manifested his victory, he may mean only that he visualized success and prepared himself mentally. If so, there is little controversy.

But if he means that consciousness itself helped create the result, then he is participating in a much larger religious movement — one stretching from 19th-century metaphysical spirituality through New Thought and occultism into today’s podcast culture.

The language is modern. The temptation is ancient.