Luke Thomas Gets Political (LTGP)

Luke Thomas explains how centrist Democrats from California like Gavin Newsom, Rob Bonta, Karen Bass and Xavier Becerra folded to allow the Paramount-Warner Brothers Discovery merger to go through and further enrich Larry and David Ellison.

#hollywood #paramountplus #lukethomas

Can Joe Rogan redeem himself after endorsing Trump? Luke Thomas says everyone deserves grace, but Rogan laundered the reputation of MAGA's inner circle and helped make ideas palatable that are now wrecking ordinary lives, from mass deportations to the gutting of the university system.

A viewer question about Rogan opens into a broader argument about what the right is doing to the institutions that built American prosperity. Luke walks through the damage: the largest mass firing of PhDs in history, research funding torched, alliances discarded, and a food supply so shaky that a restaurant-owner friend called him personally to warn him off eating beef. The people doing this, he argues, disdain the very things responsible for American greatness because they never rose through them.

Listen to the full conversation over on Luke's Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/

Subscribe for more political commentary, live chats, and paid question segments. Luke Thomas Gets Political is on YouTube, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapters

00:00 Can Joe Rogan Be Redeemed?

00:50 Rogan Laundering MAGA's Inner Circle

01:40 The Cost Of Mass Deportations

02:20 UFC Burning Universities, Research, And Beef

03:40 Advice For Leftists: Don't Hide Your Views

04:30 The Hasan Piker Iran Nukes Freakout

05:20 Kim Jong Un Is Vindicated

08:00 Reckoning With American Empire's Crimes

Luke Thomas: Elephant Graveyard's final Rogan video nails who Joe Rogan is now and his relationship with Peter Thiel.

Luke explains why it hit close to home. Then Dave Portnoy defends billionaires colluding to keep Macklemore off stage, and Luke calls it comical on its face.

A viewer asks whether Rogan is simply not a good person. Luke, having interacted with him for years, is hesitant to go that far, but says Rogan is easily duped and gives little thought to the motivations of the people he platforms, which is his own fault. That leads to a candid reflection on Luke's own slow withdrawal from MMA over the past two years.

Listen to the full conversation over on Luke's Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/

Subscribe for more political commentary, live chats, and paid question segments. Luke Thomas Gets Political is on YouTube, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapters

00:00 Elephant Graveyard's Joe Rogan Video

00:45 Is Rogan A Bad Person Or Duped?

01:30 Why Luke Withdrew From MMA

03:30 Why Luke Doesn't Watch Joe Rogan

05:00 Portnoy Defends Robert Kraft

05:45 $72 Million In Public Funds

07:00 The Israel Lobby And Civil Liberties

Luke Thomas: A Haaretz report says the UAE's leader warned Netanyahu directly before October 7, and that Hamas offered a hostage deal on October 7 and again on October 8 that Israel turned down. Luke Thomas breaks down what this means for everything we were told about the Gaza war.

The reporting, drawn from a book by a veteran Israeli journalist, describes a warning that went leader to leader, not just intel agency to intel agency. Netanyahu's response was to threaten a lawsuit against Israel's largest newspaper. Then the UAE put out its own statement that appeared to confirm the story. Luke walks through the other pieces of the puzzle too: earlier signs that Mossad knew an "earthquake" was coming, the music festival that was reportedly supposed to be held somewhere else, and Yahya Sinwar's calculation that Hamas had no path out of the blockade without forcing a deal.

The part that hits hardest is the hostages. For two years, the argument was simple: release the hostages and the bombing stops. According to this report, Hamas was trying to make that deal before, during, and the day after the attack, and Israel rejected it in favor of maximum damage. Luke asks where the apologies are from everyone who repeated that line, and what it says about a conflict where a child death toll on the scale of Uvalde could have happened every single day since October 7 and still not match the real number.

Listen to the full conversation over on Luke's Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/

Subscribe for more political commentary, live chats, and paid question segments, and hit the bell so you never miss an upload. Luke Thomas Gets Political is on YouTube, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

#lukethomas #israeliran #apac

Chapters

00:00 The Haaretz Report On UAE Warnings

00:55 Leader To Leader: MBZ To Netanyahu

01:40 Netanyahu Lawsuit Threat, UAE Confirms

02:15 Mossad, Sinwar, And The Blockade

03:10 Hamas Offered Hostage Deal Oct 7 And 8

04:20 Where Are The Apologies from Israel?

05:00 What The Choice Reveals

Luke Thomas discusses the latest in political news.

#lukethomas #donaldtrump #hasanabi

NY Mayor Mamdani just released 170,000 pages of 9/11 air quality records proving New York City officials knew by October 2001 that Ground Zero air was carcinogenic. And that the Mayor at the time, Rudy Giuliani, told nobody. First responders, firefighters, and police officers were left to breathe toxic air while Giuliani's administration publicly assured everyone it was safe. Thousands got cancer. Many are dead. And somehow nobody went to prison for it.

The 9/11 25th anniversary comes at a moment when Islamophobia in America has reached levels that Muslim Americans say surpass the post-2001 era. The smear campaign against Abdul El-Sayed for simply acknowledging that the War on Terror caused catastrophic harm overseas is a case study in how the media weaponizes 9/11 grief while refusing to reckon with what came after: a destabilized Middle East, roughly a million dead, the creation of ISIS, traumatic brain injuries among Marines, and a global war on terror apparatus that Spencer Ackerman has documented boomeranging back onto American soil through agencies like ICE.

Meanwhile, fuel prices are surging toward $6 a gallon for diesel thanks to the Iran conflict, Trump's tariff war with Canada is eroding long-term economic relationships that future presidents may never be able to repair, and immigration enforcement is threatening to gut industries like DC-area construction where Salvadorans with TPS make up 25% of the workforce. The damage being done now is just what we can feel today. The damage being set in motion may take a generation to fully understand.

Listen to the full conversation over on Luke's Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/

Subscribe and hit the notification bell so you never miss a video.

Chapters

00:00 Mamdani Releases 9/11 Air Quality Files

01:30 Giuliani Knew and Said Nothing

02:45 Islamophobia Worse Than 2001

04:00 Abdul El-Sayed Smeared by Media

05:30 War on Terror Created ISIS

07:15 Spencer Ackerman's GWOT Boomerang

08:45 Iran Conflict and Diesel Prices

10:00 Canada Tariffs and Economic Erosion

11:30 Immigration Policy Is Ruinous

13:00 TPS Salvadorans and DC Construction

14:15 International Trust Is Gone

Luke Thomas explains why Bob Kraft working to get Macklemore off of Ed Sheeran's tour is a threat to civil liberties.

#macklemore #edsheeran #lukethomas

Luke Thomas: The NBA dropped the BIGGEST punishment in league history on the LA Clippers — five first-round draft picks stripped, a $30 million fine, and Steve Ballmer suspended for a full year. Pablo Torre's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the Clippers salary cap circumvention scheme has been totally vindicated, and the fallout is just getting started.

#laclippers #lukethomas #pablotorre

Listen to the full conversation over on Luke's Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/

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Chapters

00:00 Clippers Hit With Historic Punishment

00:45 How LA Clippers Scheme Worked

03:10 Pablo Torre's embarrasses ESPN

04:20 ESPN Publishes a False Story

07:00 ESPN Gutted Its Own Newsroom

08:15 Corporate Media Serves the Powerful

09:30 Hot Takes vs. Real Journalism

10:45 Billionaire Owners Are Gross People

11:50 What Real Sports Journalism Looks Like

Luke Thomas gets political live!

#lukethomas #lukethomaspolitical #ltgp

Luke Thomas weighs in on the Nazi flags at Duel Arena, Jake Shields cornering a white supremacist, and Milo Yiannopoulos getting deported after cheerleading ICE raids.

What does it mean when an 18,000-seat NBA arena in Orlando becomes a staging ground for open displays of Nazism, and why does this keep happening in combat sports specifically?

The Duel: Arena 1 event at the Kia Center on August 29, 2026 put a spotlight on something that has been festering in combat sports culture for years. A white supremacist fighter with SS tattoos threw Nazi salutes, fans waved swastika flags in the crowd, and former UFC fighter Jake Shields was right there in the corner wearing an anti-Israel shirt. The question isn't just how it happened — it's why combat sports keeps attracting this ideology when you don't see it at tennis matches, softball games, or collegiate wrestling events. There's a deep interrogation here about what went wrong: educational institutions, governments, and the combat sports community itself all share blame for allowing this to metastasize.

Then there's Milo Yiannopoulos, who spent years calling for mass deportation and once talked about wanting to watch ICE raids for personal gratification. He was detained at a Louisiana airport, denied due process, and deported to the UK within 24 hours. Now he says he wouldn't wish it on anyone — but he did wish it on everyone. The irony cuts deep and exposes the fundamental contradiction at the heart of hardline immigration policy: you cannot have mass deportation and due process at the same time.

Listen to the full conversation over on Luke's Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/

If you found this valuable, subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell so you never miss a new upload.

#ufcrightwing #lukethomas #danawhitetrump

Chapters

00:00 Nazi Flags in combat sports

00:45 UFC fighter Jake Shields Corners A Nazi

01:30 Troll Culture is Normalizing Extremism

05:00 Why Combat Sports attracts Nazis

06:45 Luke Thomas regrets Promoting Combat Sports

08:30 Milo Yiannopoulos Deported By ICE