Shawn Ryan Show: SRS #269 with Nick Shirley (Transcript)

I love meeting him. I tried to go to his office but he wouldn’t let me.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you really?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I tried to go to his office last time in Minnesota, and his guy came out and they’re like, no, Tim’s not here. And my guy David was telling him, no, we have questions to ask him and how come you’re allowing this to happen? And the guy who’s running his desk was like, no, we just can’t talk today.

Questions for Tim Walz

SHAWN RYAN: What questions were you going to ask him? Anything specific that you were just dying to ask him?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. Because he had been talking about how there was organized crime inside of Minnesota. And if you’re a state representative or you work for the government of Minnesota, by law, you have to notify the authorities that there are laws being broken inside of your state. And he didn’t do that.

So there’s a statute that he’s liable to tell the government about, but he didn’t do it. And he knew the crime was happening, but he kept letting it go on.

SHAWN RYAN: How do you know he knew?

NICK SHIRLEY: Because he said in a press conference, organized crime is why some of this stuff has happened. And so he knew about organized crime, but he never did anything about it. So he admitted to it.

Will Anyone Be Held Accountable?

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think he’s going to be held accountable? I mean, if you look at Polymarket, there’s a whole lot of different percentages here, but will anybody be charged over daycare fraud in Minnesota by certain dates?

Percentages make it look like it’s definitely happening at some point. But you know what happens if nobody’s been charged? 22% think that we’ll see somebody held accountable or charged for the daycare fraud by the end of the month in January, 76% say in six months, and 83% think it’ll happen by the end of the year. Those are some of the most promising percentages I’ve seen. What do you think?

NICK SHIRLEY: I think they will. It might take a little bit more time because I think we want them to come with all the evidence. So it’s literally impossible for Tim to escape. Or whether it’s Tim or Ilhan Omar, or if it’s just one of the fraudsters who’s running these daycares, we want the evidence to be so solidified that they can’t escape.

And so it might maybe take a little bit longer, but there has to be accountability because the fraud is so open and blatant. I mean, they already charged somebody for Feeding Our Future. She was a white woman, too, so this isn’t about race. She was a white woman. She got charged.

And then they also did charge somebody just a few months ago who was a Somalian for $7.2 million for Medicaid fraud. But after being charged and found guilty, the judge overturned it and let the guy walk.

SHAWN RYAN: What?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes. So that’s how bad the government is inside of Minnesota. And so that’s why it’s so critical. By what I just did, not only did we expose fraud, but we also just exposed how corrupt and how that government is not working for the people, for the Minnesotans.

Official Introduction

SHAWN RYAN: Well, Nick, let me give you, we’re going to dive into this pretty deep. Let me give you an introduction here.

Nick Shirley, a bold 23-year-old independent journalist who’s taken the Internet by storm with your fearless on-the-ground investigations. Known for exposing stories the legacy media won’t touch, from immigration debates to government waste.

Recent bombshell video uncovering alleged massive fraud in Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded programs racked up over 126 million views. Literally broke the Internet. A fearless patriot who goes to where the stories are. And you’re the youngest guest I’ve ever had on this show. And once again, thank you for the hoodie.

So, a couple of things, Nick. I’m worried about your safety. So, you know, I got some buddies over at Sig. One of them’s name is Jason and he’s the VP of marketing over there. I told him you were coming on the show. He’s like, “I f*ing love that guy. You got to ask him if he’s carrying.” Which I did. You’re not. So now you are.

NICK SHIRLEY: No way.

A Gift for Protection

SHAWN RYAN: So I got you a little something. Me and Jason. Little something to protect yourself out there on the streets. The mean streets of Minnesota, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Paris. Well, you’re probably not going to get it into Paris, but…

NICK SHIRLEY: No way.

SHAWN RYAN: So that is the Sig Sauer P365 Legion. Don’t point it at yourself. I know, but it’s unloaded, so you’re good. Hold 17 rounds in the magazine plus one in the pipe. So that’s 18 rounds. They got their brand new carry optic on there. A little red dot.

And then if you look at the slits at the front of the barrel there, that’s to help with your recoil management. But that is the Cadillac of subcompact EDC guns, pack pistols, so…

NICK SHIRLEY: Whoa. Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome, man. You’re welcome.

NICK SHIRLEY: Actually, so I’ve never been gifted something like this, so thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, now you have. You’re welcome.

NICK SHIRLEY: This is pretty epic.

SHAWN RYAN: And if you think that’s cool, you’ll really think this is cool.

NICK SHIRLEY: The Gummy Bears Vigilance League.

SHAWN RYAN: Gummy Bears, buddy. Legal in all 50 states, made right here in the USA in Michigan. Maybe you can hand those out to Somali toddlers that are in daycare, maybe in the learning center.

NICK SHIRLEY: Wow, thank you so much, Shawn.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, you’re welcome, man. You’re welcome.

Question from the Community

And then lastly, before we get on with the interview, I have a Patreon account. If you don’t have one, you should. But I’ve turned this Patreon subscription account into quite the community. And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. They were f*ing pumped that you’re here.

So this is from Brad Campbell: “Nick, it takes courage to take on politics and politicians, especially when bringing potential fraud to the forefront. What was your personal motivation to move forward, to uncover and what drove you to be so relentless? Lastly, do you have ambitions for other stories of similar involvement?”

Personal Motivation and Future Plans

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I think when you see just the corruption, when it’s just so obvious. For instance, with the border, I saw people literally get trafficked over into the United States. And now you’re seeing people too afraid to call things out for what they are and enable fraud to happen inside their state.

Meanwhile, Americans are suffering and yet these politicians are too afraid to be called a racist or Islamophobe for saying that 89% of the population is committing fraud inside of their state. So I think it’s just more so standing up for the people that actually represent you.

And it’s necessary because if somebody, there needs to be somebody to do it. If it takes a 23-year-old to do it, that’s my responsibility, is to show people what’s actually happening. And I do have plans to go to other locations in other states.

And I’m a YouTuber at the end of the day too, so I have to keep posting videos. Now it’s a lot more dangerous. I have to, right now I have 24/7 security with me because pirates are after me essentially. I didn’t piss off the best group to be pissing off.

SHAWN RYAN: Been there, buddy.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: So never goes away once it’s here.

NICK SHIRLEY: Now I have that. And it’s just harder to plan stuff. But it’s necessary. So I will continue to do it.

SHAWN RYAN: Good man. Good. It’s important. It’s really important what you’re doing. I am curious. Have you seen, have you, do you think you’ve inspired people? Have you seen, I hate to call them copycats, but I don’t know what else to call them. I mean, are you inspiring, are you seeing any people getting inspiration from what you’re doing and getting out there and starting to uncover more and more stuff?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I think usually I’m always kind of ahead of the stuff. So, like, for instance, I was ahead of this fraud stuff. And now after you’ve seen other people go and do that, which is great. It is a little worrisome because you don’t want just a bunch of people going knocking on daycares. Like, I did all my due diligence with the man David before I went and did it.

SHAWN RYAN: Doesn’t sound like you actually knocked on any daycare.

NICK SHIRLEY: I mean, we’ve knocked on, we try to talk to people, but no one was there.

SHAWN RYAN: If there’s no kids, is it a daycare?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, well, that’s true. There wasn’t any daycares. It was just buildings.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, Jeremy brought up a good point. He was talking about, I can’t remember how many kids you have, but he’s like, if you have four kids and I have four kids and I watch your four kids and you watch my four kids, there’s two daycares. That’s $25,000 a month per person.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: I was like, holy shit. So let’s go to the very beginning. How did this pop up on your radar?

The Minnesota Investigation Begins

NICK SHIRLEY: So I knew about the fraud happening because I went to Minnesota last June to do a video on the rise of Islam inside of America. And I had heard that it’s growing super fast and that mosques are popping up everywhere inside Minnesota. Christian churches are turning into mosques. And I started talking to the people. And everyone kept telling me, well, you need to look into the fraud. And I said, well, how do I look?

SHAWN RYAN: Who’s everybody?

NICK SHIRLEY: All these Minnesotans, they started reaching out to me and they knew I was in their state.

SHAWN RYAN: Went up there to talk about the rise of the Muslim church, the Muslim religion in Minnesota?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And talking about churches being converted into mosques. I mean, are you seeing, was there a lot of that happening?

NICK SHIRLEY: A lot of it, yes. I mean, there’s entire communities that have been completely pushed out by Somalian communities. Like there’s places like Cedar Riverside, for instance, right next to a college. There used to be a bar there called Palmer’s Bar. Last June it was there. I went back last week. It’s not there anymore.

They have entirely pushed out white people, anybody that’s not Muslim or anybody who’s not Somalian. They’ve pushed them outside of their communities.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s it look like inside those communities? Is it clean?

NICK SHIRLEY: No, it’s not clean at all.

SHAWN RYAN: Is it safe?

NICK SHIRLEY: No, it’s not safe. In fact, in June I was with my mom. She helps me film a lot of times. They jumped me and my mom, they jumped over me, grabbed my camera, they took it from me. And then my mom, she tried to go like all mama bear and step in. I was like, mom, stop.

And so I actually kind of stopped bringing my mom with me after that because the Somalis tried to attack us and they were about ready to punch me and smash my camera. And then I had my mom coming after me, like trying to defend for myself and I had to like get my mom out of the situation.

And then I had this like 6 foot 4 Somalian man with 3 other guys and he’s going in the back of his car to grab something and my mom’s freaking out and I’m just trying to get my camera back. And then they finally give it back and then they follow us all the way out.

SHAWN RYAN: No shit. So they’re pissed that you’re there.

NICK SHIRLEY: There’s entire Somali gangs that control these locations.

SHAWN RYAN: What are the names of the gangs? Do you know?

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t know the names of the gangs.

SHAWN RYAN: How big are the gangs?

NICK SHIRLEY: I’m sure they’re just friend groups because that’s what kind of gangs are in the United States. For the most part it’s just a group of friends that walk around armed like they’re little militias. And whether it be 10 friends, 20 friends, 30 friends, or entire organization kind of varies depending on cities here in the United States.

But there’s entire just gangs. There’s like, you can look it up on YouTube. There’s gangs inside, like Somali wars going on inside of these areas.

SHAWN RYAN: So who was telling you, you’re going around looking at it, how Minnesota’s changed and everybody’s telling you to look into the fraud. I mean, when did it start?

Uncovering the Daycare Fraud

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, so I put on my Instagram story that I was in Minnesota and this lady by the name of Jennifer, she messaged me. She’s like, I’m a real estate agent here. You wouldn’t believe what’s happening. Our property taxes are going up. They’re putting in these daycares and these adult centers right next door to the house I’m trying to sell and I can’t even tell the seller.

I can’t even tell the buyer that the house next to it is an adult daycare center or else I’ll be breaking a law.

SHAWN RYAN: You’ll be breaking a law?

NICK SHIRLEY: Like they’re not able to let people know that. That’s what she told me. They’re not able to let people know that they’re running these adult centers or these adult home health care facilities next door.

SHAWN RYAN: Breaking a law?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. Like, they cannot. And she’s in the government. For instance, if a person is a PDF or a predator, the state’s not, it’s not necessary for them to tell the neighbor next door that they’re moving in or that if that real estate agent is then selling that house, she can’t tell the client who’s living next door.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit.

NICK SHIRLEY: And their property taxes have gone up a ton, too, in Minnesota. Like, there’s a lot. Like, the corruption’s really bad.

SHAWN RYAN: You looked into that law. Is that a law or was she mistaken?

NICK SHIRLEY: I just looked for a word that…

SHAWN RYAN: Says you cannot disclose that there is daycare next. I’ve never heard of any. I’ve never heard of, it’s a commercial business, not a…

NICK SHIRLEY: Well, these are private ones. They have, like, private daycares and private adult daycares, private home healthcares. And like, they’re just normal houses. People living next door and they are taking care of four people that need their assistance, and they’re just collecting checks from the government.

And that’s not only happening in Minnesota and Washington state. There’s all these just neighborhoods, there’s just a random house that’s a daycare or an adult daycare or assisted living or home healthcare.

SHAWN RYAN: How many of the, like, if you had to put a percentage on how many people knew this was going on up there, what would the percentage be?

NICK SHIRLEY: At least 50% of the population.

SHAWN RYAN: So this is common scuttlebutt talk around the town. At the barbershop and the restaurant, people are bitching about this. And in grocery store, everybody knows. This is, like, common knowledge. It’s the rest of the country that didn’t know.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Even so, this is, police departments had to know about it. The governor. Everybody knows about it.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes. I mean, Tim Walz said in 2019, he was fighting fraud. In 2017, there was videos of people bringing in millions of dollars through the TSA airport and moving that money back to Somalia. 2015, there’s FBI footage of daycares giving cash to the moms inside the daycares.

Like, that fraud’s been happening for so long, but nobody had actually brought to a national level to the point where people could physically see with their eyes that there’s nobody inside the daycares. And these people can’t even give you a brochure to enroll a child.

Like, okay, maybe it doesn’t matter if the kids in the daycare, but at least give me a brochure to enroll my little boy Joey so it could look a little. But they can’t even do it.

Meeting David

SHAWN RYAN: So when did you make the switch? When did you go from looking at churches that converted into mosques to, I mean, where did you start? Who’s David?

NICK SHIRLEY: So I did that video back in June. I was just there for two days. I couldn’t really make a video. I didn’t want to just go and slander a group of people if I actually didn’t have any proof other than just taking it for people’s word around the community.

And so I had been doing my own research trying to make this video and it took me a couple of months. I wasn’t really getting too far. Like I needed the physical numbers from the state capitol.

And then I randomly get this message from this guy named David on Instagram and he says, “Nick, I have all the proof, all the money people, someone from inside the capitol has given me this information and there’s nobody inside these daycares. Come to Minnesota and I’ll help you expose the fraud.”

And I usually don’t respond to DMs because I get so many of them. And I was like, alright, send me your number, let’s hop on a phone call. So I get done with the gym, I give this guy a call and he was super charismatic, super cool guy. I was like, alright, this guy would be awesome.

And he tells me all the information and I told him, alright, I’m coming to Minnesota around December 16th.

SHAWN RYAN: How many years has this guy been diving into this subject?

NICK SHIRLEY: He’s been looking at it for years, upwards of seven years. And he’s also been fighting corruption since he was around my age as well. Like just fighting to keep the, he kept, he fought to keep the Twins inside of Minnesota, the baseball team.

And so he’s kind of been like a lifelong, like he just wants the truth to be out more than anything. And I was the only person who actually gave him the opportunity to present his evidence and go out and do what we did.

The local news, they have been reporting on fraud for years. But they weren’t able to get it pushed to a national level because these news organizations don’t know how to reach new audiences. I mean, there’s a video from…

The Local News Connection

SHAWN RYAN: But this is where the news always starts. It always starts at the local level. It starts at the local level and then it goes to mainstream. And so mainstream had to have seen this and refused to pick it up. And that’s both right and left, by the way.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes, and Tim Walz was also selected to be vice president. And within just a day, he raised the most money than any other candidate in history, actually.

SHAWN RYAN: I didn’t know that.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, you can look that up. Kamala Harris picked him. There’s actually really no reason to pick Tim Walz. Nobody really knew him. He’s a weird guy who vouches for tampons in boys bathrooms. And he ends up raising the most amount of money than any other candidate in U.S. history within a day for a campaign.

SHAWN RYAN: Where do you think that came from?

NICK SHIRLEY: Maybe a little bit of the daycare. It’s just so obvious. And so I really do hope they crack down on it and prosecute Tim Walz.

Starting the Investigation

SHAWN RYAN: So where did you guys start? You and David, you go up to Minnesota, you meet David. Where do you go?

NICK SHIRLEY: I go to his office and he goes, “Well, I have these daycares just literally right by my place where I work.”

SHAWN RYAN: How many daycares are out there?

NICK SHIRLEY: Oh, if you drive around Minneapolis, within just a few blocks, you’ll start seeing adult daycares, daycares, autism centers, home healthcare places, transportation vehicles. The whole entire city of Minneapolis is plagued by this fraud. You can’t go a mile without finding one. You wonder why there are all these daycares.

SHAWN RYAN: How many did you go to?

NICK SHIRLEY: In one day we went to seven. But inside of some of those locations, there were three or four inside of the same one.

SHAWN RYAN: So you went in one building. Wasn’t there like 10 daycares in one building?

NICK SHIRLEY: In one building there was 14 healthcare companies. Another one, there’s 22 healthcare companies mixed with daycares. And then in one building specifically, there were three daycares inside the same building, all receiving money from the government.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay, so when you’re talking about these buildings, are these a business suite where you’re in suite 102, you’re in 103, you’re in 104? Or are there three daycares all within suite 102?

NICK SHIRLEY: Both.

SHAWN RYAN: You gotta be shitting me.

NICK SHIRLEY: In my video, I go inside one building with, I think it was 14. And they all had their own rooms. But for instance, in room 7C, there were three healthcare companies operating inside the same one. And if you’re trying to make a profit, why would you have all these competitors surrounding you? It doesn’t make any sense.

SHAWN RYAN: Because it doesn’t matter.

NICK SHIRLEY: Because it doesn’t matter. And nobody’s checking up on them. And even if they do get checked, for instance, Quality Learning Center, they have received over 90 violations over just the past few years, yet they keep giving them $1.9 million a year.

And then the lady has photos with her and Ilhan Omar. And then that same lady is also taking the mayor to her other daycare in a video. And then that guy who comes out and says that I’m the fraud is partying with the mayor of Minneapolis after he wins the election. It’s just complete fraud.

The Media Backlash

And for them to come after me, I actually never even gave my opinions on the Internet. However, my hand was forced to start giving my opinions because they came after me. They came after my family. They doxxed my entire family.

SHAWN RYAN: How did they come after you? Be specific.

NICK SHIRLEY: Well, they tried to come after me. They tried to debunk my whole entire story.

SHAWN RYAN: Who’s they?

NICK SHIRLEY: All the news.

SHAWN RYAN: Just get more specific.

NICK SHIRLEY: CNN.

SHAWN RYAN: Who within CNN, CBS? Who’s the reporter?

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t even know her name because she’s irrelevant. Nobody knows who she is.

SHAWN RYAN: We’ll put a clip of it up. Did you come during their normal operating hours when you came to visit?

NICK SHIRLEY: I came at 11 a.m., I believe, and I also came the following day, later in the day. The point of it is not whether or not I came at the right time of their operation hours. The point is, blacked out doors, they can’t give you any information. You call that number, no one answers.

I wasn’t trying to go inside. There should be a way for somebody to actually be able to call that number and somebody to be able to answer. These aren’t real businesses. But surely you don’t think a daycare should just be unlocked?

SHAWN RYAN: You shouldn’t be able to just walk into a daycare reception.

NICK SHIRLEY: No, every daycare is locked. And so, okay, you bring up fair point then. But why can’t they actually give me information how to enroll a child? How do you know that all the allegations that you’re making are true? How do I know that they’re true? Well, we showed you guys that. We showed you guys what was happening. And then you guys can go ahead and make your own analysis. Are you 100% sure you’re true? Yeah, I am 100% sure I’m true.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re saying that this is a fraudulent daycare? There’s kids being dropped off right now.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes. The commissioner of children literally said a week ago this place was closed. They’re showing face right now. And she seemed like a very nice lady when I was talking to her. And I actually even gave her the opportunity to interview me live because she had her live booth right there. She wouldn’t do it.

SHAWN RYAN: She wouldn’t interview you live? Why? I wonder why.

NICK SHIRLEY: I wonder why. And so I knew as soon as I had done my interview with her, I was like, well, we’ll see what she puts out. And I actually ended up looking very good because I said, “Well, yeah, I gave you guys evidence. Go ahead and make your own analysis.” But I did give her the opportunity to interview me live. She wouldn’t do it.

The Death of Legacy Media

SHAWN RYAN: It’s so painful. I mean, it’s, I just…

NICK SHIRLEY: The…

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, man. They have… Legacy media has clung to the baby boomer generation, and they will die with the baby boomer generation. Will never change that generation’s mind. I mean, they’re bought and sold on legacy media, but when they will die with the baby boomer generation, it will be a glorious death. Yeah, I can’t wait.

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t know who’s even watching. Who’s going to continue to watch them after my grandparents are gone?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I’m telling you. They’re going to die with the baby boomer generation.

NICK SHIRLEY: Fox News is probably the only one where I feel like they provide actually a good quality show. If you watch CNN, it’s very boring. Fox News at least keeps it interesting for you to watch. But it’s going to be interesting too, with Fox News. Will they eventually just drown out as well? I don’t know.

I feel like they’re maybe doing a better job than other news organizations, but they also have their own biases as well. Each organization has their own bias. But if you watch CNN, it’s so boring. If you watch MSNBC, a lot of their stuff just on Zoom. But if you watch Fox, you’ll notice how much higher quality it is.

And if you get invited on, they treat you a lot better as far as bringing you on. They make sure you’re good to go. They check you out. All these other ones are like, “All right, hop on the Zoom and okay, sound’s going.” And then after you finish your shot, they just drop you. You don’t even know what to do next. But Fox is the most professional by far.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re leaps and bounds ahead of all of them, man. Congratulations.

NICK SHIRLEY: I’d like to think so. Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. And an embarrassment for every single one of them.

The First Daycare Visit

So the first place you go to, how many times did you strike out before you actually found one?

NICK SHIRLEY: We went to the first one, Mako Child Care. And Mako is also connected with another childcare inside the same building. So inside the same building, two daycare centers were receiving separate money.

And I thought we were just going to go and open the door and talk to the lady at the reception about how can I enroll my child. And I get there and all the windows are completely blacked out. And above me the sign says open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. I ring the doorbell. The doorbell doesn’t even work. What’s going on?

You guys just received millions of dollars, over $5 million the past few years. Who can I talk to? No one’s there. And finally, a Somali pulls up and I ask her, “Where are the children at? Can we talk to somebody about enrolling our child?” She goes, “I don’t know.” She hadn’t even seen them.

The Scale of the Fraud

SHAWN RYAN: Do you know how much money has been sucked out of the Minnesota government for this stuff? Is this all state funding?

NICK SHIRLEY: It’s state and federal funding. So CCAP funding is Child Care Assistance Program, which is state and federal money. That’s why you saw the HHS freeze $185 million in funding. Because some of this money is federal money as well. But just over the past few years, the guy came out and he said anywhere upwards of $9 billion.

SHAWN RYAN: We have people dying on the streets, homeless veterans with a suicide epidemic, the biggest fentanyl crisis the world’s ever seen, and we’re sending $9 billion to fake daycare accounts so that they can send it right back to Somalia.

We’re sending $40 million a week, up to $87 million a week to the Taliban, which I fought for damn near, well, about 14 years. And the country fought for about what, 21, 22, 20 something years.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, it’s a disgrace. And it’s such a slap in the face of all of us.

The Tax Strike Discussion

SHAWN RYAN: It is. I mean, what do you think about, you’ve seen all the hype around this tax strike, haven’t you? What do you think about that?

NICK SHIRLEY: I mean, what the Boston Tea Party did, they had a tax. They did what they did over just a few percentages. And we’re paying upwards of, some people are paying 50%.

SHAWN RYAN: So obviously none of it’s coming back.

NICK SHIRLEY: And none of it’s coming back.

SHAWN RYAN: None of it’s coming back. It’s all going to some other country and some other land. And it sure as hell ain’t coming here. That’s very obvious.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. And it’s like, why are we funding this and why are we funding all these other programs too? I mean, lots of moms are paying up 30 to 70 grand a year to put their kid in daycare center. Meanwhile, you don’t see one single white person coming out of any of these daycares.

SHAWN RYAN: You think this tax strike is going to, you think it’s going to spread?

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t know. We’ll see.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you want to see it spread?

NICK SHIRLEY: I think it’d be cool, but I think they might arrest people. I mean, if you mess up on your tax bill, they’re going to put you in jail.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, they can’t arrest all of us. Unfortunately for people like us, you’re going to get arrested, I’m going to get arrested, and anybody else with a microphone is going to get arrested.

NICK SHIRLEY: But yeah, I hope maybe it makes the government listen and tells the people, tells them, “Okay, we gotta figure this out.” I had a lot of respect for Elon for, and I understand why it was so hard for him to do what he was trying to do with DOGE. Because the fraudsters complained the loudest.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: And I mean, he tried to do America such a service by going and cutting out some of this fraud. And what’d they do to him? They burned down his businesses, they attacked him and they tried everything possible to try to stop the man.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, man. Well, how much, what do you think is going to… Have you seen the Minnesota government do anything yet other than Tim Walz?

The Political Fallout and Investigation Response

NICK SHIRLEY: They’re all very worried about reelection. They’re all very upset. There are some people inside of Minnesota, for instance, there’s a fraud committee and they’re trying. They’ve labeled it out, they’ve made it very obvious. They have the charts of who’s getting the money and everything like that.

And with HHS freezing the money, all these businesses have the opportunity to prove they’re legit. As of now, not a single business has submitted to prove that they’re a legitimate business. If you had children to feed, how quick would you be submitting your form to get your money back? You’d be doing it immediately.

SHAWN RYAN: How are the mainstream media outlets attacking you? What are they saying? What are they doing?

Media Attacks and Labeling

NICK SHIRLEY: You’ll notice the first thing they say is MAGA YouTuber, right wing influencer, conservative.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s the first thing they do, is put you in a bucket.

NICK SHIRLEY: Anything but journalist. They’ll say quite literally anything. 23-year-old, like, okay, cool, I just did a better job than you at 23. But they try, they’ll try to say conservative, MAGA, Trump. It’s like, no, I just showed you guys the facts.

SHAWN RYAN: All the buzzwords.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. It’s actually pretty funny because I’m like, you guys are so stupid. You have the opportunity to maybe show people you’re a little bit more legit.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: Instead you’re taking the fraudulent side. Yeah, they’re taking the wrong side.

SHAWN RYAN: So awesome. They’re going to die on that hill. I can’t fing wait. We got about maybe 20 years left before they’re completely fing dead.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I agree.

SHAWN RYAN: But, well, what else are they doing? Because I thought they were calling you racist, all that kind of stuff too. Did they bust out the race card?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: Real original.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes. Tim Walz has called me a white supremacist. He’s called me a delusional conspiracy theorist.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you a white supremacist?

NICK SHIRLEY: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you sure?

NICK SHIRLEY: I’m sure.

SHAWN RYAN: How do you know?

NICK SHIRLEY: I just know. Okay. Not a white supremacist.

SHAWN RYAN: All right.

NICK SHIRLEY: I got black friends too.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. Me too.

NICK SHIRLEY: So for them to say that, it’s just ridiculous. They’re trying to do everything they can. For instance, by calling me a MAGA influencer, calling me a right wing influencer, calling me anti-immigration, which, yes, I am anti-illegal immigration. The word’s illegal. Anti-Islam. Then they call me conspiracy theorist. They’re trying to do everything. They call me a fascist. They’re calling me Nazi.

They’re trying to do everything they can. So when the moment somebody tries to do something, it’s justifiable for them, man.

The Overuse of Buzzwords

SHAWN RYAN: You know, it’s actually, I hate to say it like this, but it’s actually kind of cool that they’ve gone through every derogatory name that they can think of and they’ve abused it so much that none of it holds any weight anymore.

NICK SHIRLEY: None of it.

SHAWN RYAN: It really holds no weight. Racist holds no weight, nothing holds any weight because they’ve overused it. They’ve over-abused all of the buzzwords. They mean nothing now, which also sucks because somebody that actually is a f*ing racist, it’s not going to carry the same weight because it’s just like the little boy that cried wolf story.

Yeah, you’ve done it so much that nobody f*ing listens anymore.

NICK SHIRLEY: Somebody told me once, the moment somebody calls you a Nazi is the moment you can discredit them for whatever they’re about to say next. How can you call me a Nazi?

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a damn good point. It’s a damn good point.

NICK SHIRLEY: That’s just how misconstrued some of these people’s minds have become.

Accountability and Next Steps

SHAWN RYAN: What would you like to see happen?

NICK SHIRLEY: One, accountability. And you’d like to see people be happy that you just showed fraud. And you’d want to see people out there defending it.

SHAWN RYAN: Who else do you think needs to be held accountable other than Walz? There’s got to be a lot more people.

NICK SHIRLEY: Oh, yeah. All the people inside DHS who are cutting the checks. The judge, for instance, that one judge who let the guy walk free of $7.2 million in Medicaid fraud. You’d like the Somalis to go out and say, okay, 89% of the fraud being committed by us is, 89% of the fraud being committed in Minnesota is by us Somalians. Let’s talk. Let’s figure out how to not commit so much fraud.

And they’ll even say it in my video in part two I have coming out. They’re like, “Are we the only community that commits fraud?”

Nick Fuentes and Political Commentary

SHAWN RYAN: Do you follow Nick Fuentes at all?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: He just posted this. He posted, “All of the complaining about Somalians will result in nothing. No mass arrests, no mass deportations, nothing transformative. We all know that.” What do you think about what he’s saying there? When you hear that, what do you think is actually happening? Do you think he actually has a point there?

NICK SHIRLEY: I think you’re seeing the government, they’ve never done anything. They’ve never launched a full investigation, multiple investigations within just a few hours of a video being released. So right now, the Trump administration has a lot of things on their hands right now. They have Venezuela. They had the whole entire Epstein screw up that looked really bad. And you’re having mass deportations and people.

They might not be deporting as many people as people would like. I just threw them the biggest layup ever. If they really wanted to go in and get everyone back on board, this is a great opportunity for them. So they better go and do it.

SHAWN RYAN: I hope they do. I hope they do. You’re 23 and you’ve watched how fast your own reporting could move online. Why is Fuentes able to gain traction with young audiences? And what does that tell you about how Gen Z decides who to trust now?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, Nick Fuentes, he’s extremely entertaining to watch. He’s actually like a comedian when he talks. He’s pretty funny. And you can’t say he’s not. If he wasn’t, millions of people wouldn’t be watching him now. Do you agree with everything he says? No. Do you agree with everything Dave Chappelle says? No. Is there some truth that Nick Fuentes is saying? Yes.

Gen Z and the Search for Truth

SHAWN RYAN: What about you? I’m saying that millions and millions of people, I think the question is, what is it about you guys that Gen Z is just going nuts over? Yeah, it’s this raw, real, well, for you, in the weeds. It’s just stuff that nobody’s doing anymore.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. And growing up, it’s hard to go out and say what you want because you’re worried about people coming after you. And so when you have people like Nick Fuentes who are just saying things as he wants to say them, people are going to get attached to that.

And for me, if I’m going out and showing people things for what they really are, and I’m not censoring people out of the conversation, people are going to like that because they want that realness, because they want to feel represented. They don’t want to feel like they’re having one conversation with their friend in the car and then they have to go out to the dinner table and have a different conversation.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m curious to hear, do you think Gen Z is as tribalized as the older generations? Or is Gen Z solely interested in just the truth? They’re just so tired of all the bullshit from both sides. They’re just interested in actual factual information, not opinion pieces, not any of that. Just facts and people with the courage to put it out there.

NICK SHIRLEY: I would say once they graduate high school and they realize how hard real life really is to make real money and to be able to get into a house and to be able to provide for yourself, yes. They just want the truth cut and dry. That’s why you see so many of them kind of either feeling very defeated or people are actually rising up to the battle that we’re facing.

Because a lot of these kids are starting their life behind the starting line. They go to college, the bank will give them a $100,000 loan. They start their life off $100,000 in debt. And so a lot of people are wondering, well, why actually are we doing that?

And that’s why, whether it be Nick Fuentes or whether it be Charlie Kirk, we’re all kind of trying to share the same message at the end of the day, that go chase the American dream because you’re capable of doing it. Question yourself, question the people you listen to. We all serve our own roles in this atmosphere of politics or just commentary.

Your role is different than my role. Nick Fuentes’ role is different than me and yours. My role is to show people what’s happening from the ground. The news is to try and show people whatever they’re trying to do. And then you have people like Charlie Kirk who’s going to talk to the kids at colleges. You have people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens who are stirring up the pot.

And then you have people on CNN, I don’t even want to say their names because I don’t even want to give them credit. But they’re also stirring up the pot on that side. And there needs to be a way where we can all kind of come together on common ground. And that’s what Gen Z is kind of looking for, is just kind of to feel represented in a way where they have some hope.

SHAWN RYAN: So you’re saying they want to see the bickering stop and results start to happen?

The American Dream for Gen Z

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I would say we just want to have the same opportunities that our parents or grandparents had. A lot of kids aren’t getting married, myself included. I’m 23. I’m not in no rush to get married. But a lot of you just feel like, wow, why would I get married when I can’t get into a house and I’ll be suffering with my wife and living in some junky apartment?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what it is, huh?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. It’s like you see the TikToks of old America. When you see just people out in the street with their family and their kids and the epic music, the American flags. And then I hate when I see the next flip. The next scene is when you’re seeing just people strung out on fentanyl on the street corners, and you’re seeing people getting into battles over race and religion. It’s just like, that’s not what this is all about.

California’s Crisis: Homelessness and Missing Billions

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Nick, let’s take a quick break. When we come back, let’s dive into some of the other stuff you’ve uncovered.

All right, Nick, we’re back from the break. I got a correction to make. Apparently the media did cover this a little bit. You already said that some of the local media covered it, but I guess the New York Times also covered it early on. But I’ve seen them be a lot more persistent with a variety of other topics. You would think this one would be right at the top of the list.

But anyways, so just had to correct myself there. I hate putting out bad info, but we were talking about all the people that rallied around the video.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: How fast did that happen?

The Video Goes Viral

NICK SHIRLEY: I posted the video, I go to the gym, I get on X, and I didn’t even have time to start posting clips because everyone else had started posting clips of the video. I was like, oh, I got something here. Because to me that was just a normal weekly upload. Because I been doing a weekly upload every week for more than 104 weeks.

And so I’m seeing the video go mega viral. I’m working out with my brother. I’m like, wait, what’s going on? Like, I got to get back and post my video because I hadn’t even posted on X yet. Oh man. I was like, I have to go post it before somebody else does.

So I hurry, go home and I post the video and then within just few hours, just boom, boom, million. And then Elon retweets it. And then JD retweets it. Not only do they retweet it, they then quote it. And then not only do they just retweet it, then they come back to the retweet and they interact with it.

Wow. So you have the biggest account in the world, Elon Musk. He’s the biggest platform on X. He’s retweeting the video. Then he’s also interacting with it. He’s saying stuff like “prosecute Tim Walz.” You have J.D. Vance saying this dude has done more than all the other people who won. I think it’s called like the Pulitzer Prize or something like that.

And then you just had mega. All these big accounts interacting with it. And then you just have the overall general American population. It’s so funny because people are like, oh, is this an inside job? I’m like, no. It got shared by over 240,000 Americans who also retweeted this video.

SHAWN RYAN: 240,000.

NICK SHIRLEY: Shit. And so it’s like when people say, like, are you… That’s insane numbers for X. And over 600,000 people watched it or… No, 600,000 people liked it. And it got over 135 million views.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

NICK SHIRLEY: Wow. Most viewed that. Most viewed video by anyone whose name is not Mr. Beast on a video over 10 minutes.

Addressing the Critics

SHAWN RYAN: And for a damn good reason. You know, I’ve heard a lot of the Internet trolls out there saying that there’s a possibility that you’re some type of an Internet plant. What is this? What’s that all about?

NICK SHIRLEY: Been uploading videos since I was 15 years old. Consistency and hard work.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s the rumor? Are you even aware of this?

NICK SHIRLEY: There’s so much stuff, but like, I know people are like, oh, who’s putting him in here? How’s he getting this? How’s he doing that? I’m like, I’m just out working, you guys.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: Like, if you’ve made a YouTube video for a hundred weeks and you have big videos, you have ones that don’t do so well, you’re going to hit eventually.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s funny how everybody makes it seem like you just fell right into success, isn’t it?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, it was pretty funny.

SHAWN RYAN: So, of course you have to be a plant. But, well, let’s talk about some of the other stuff that you’ve done.

NICK SHIRLEY: Done a lot of stuff.

SHAWN RYAN: I know you have, man. Let’s start in California.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. So California, it’s probably like the worst managed state in America. Like, the fraud’s bad in Minnesota, but California could even be worse.

SHAWN RYAN: What’d you see over there? I mean, you’re out… I mean, it’s like you’re everybody’s eyes and ears, you know, and so I don’t go to California. I have no business there, have no reason to be there or don’t want to be there.

But, you know, I see all the stuff on the news about people raiding, you know, raiding whatever, Target stores and all kinds of shit. The fentanyl crisis, is it as bad as it is as the media makes it out to be?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, California, it is as bad as media makes out to be. You have just inside of Beverly Hills alone, you have homeless people sleeping outside of mansions, like literally within just a few blocks. You have homes, people setting up their own homes, encampments in the street. You’re walking across poop.

Like this isn’t an exaggeration. Like I’ve done it, I’ve shown people what’s happening. You obviously have skid row there, that’s been a big issue for years. But then you have $24 billion that just went missing for the homeless that went unaccounted for. What have you not heard about that?

SHAWN RYAN: No. Over $24 billion went unaccounted for to fight homeless.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you saying million or billion? With a B.

NICK SHIRLEY: Billion with a B.

SHAWN RYAN: $24 billion went missing.

NICK SHIRLEY: Went missing. And meanwhile, Gavin Newsom’s buying a $9 million mansion in the Bay Area. Did he really? Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: I didn’t know that.

NICK SHIRLEY: I got to start putting some allegedly’s out there so they can’t come after me. But allegedly he bought a $9 million mansion. Shit. And so the corruption’s bad there between the homelessness. I mean the homeless people literally get handed to them the needles, the paraphernalia, the rubber bands. They even get handed out to them the crack pipes to do their drugs. And then they’ll be like, okay, here’s this and then here’s some Narcan in case you kill yourself.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, in Maine they’re handing out free boofing kits.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know what a boofing kit is?

NICK SHIRLEY: No, what is a boofing kit?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, man, I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask me this because I didn’t know what it was. When Steve Robinson told me what a free boofing kit was, I said, what’s a boofing kit? It’s like, it sounds like some type of a balloon that you put the fentanyl in and then you just shove it up your ass.

NICK SHIRLEY: What?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, because it’s so… It’s for when your veins are so f*ed up that they can’t take any more heroin or fentanyl. You just put it in this little capsule and shove it up there. New effect.

NICK SHIRLEY: Dang. Yeah, that fentanyl that fetty be hitting.

SHAWN RYAN: You haven’t seen any boofing kits out in your adventures, have you?

NICK SHIRLEY: No, I have not any of that stuff. Anybody putting up their bum. I may be. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: So now there you go, Nick.

NICK SHIRLEY: And now I’ll be looking up.

SHAWN RYAN: You learned something today. Now you can go get… No, go to Maine and get a free boofing kit to inject your fentanyl with.

NICK SHIRLEY: I hear Maine’s an interesting place.

SHAWN RYAN: It sounds like it, isn’t it?

NICK SHIRLEY: It really does.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve been up there many times.

NICK SHIRLEY: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: I need to go and do.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s actually a beautiful state. You should go check it out.

NICK SHIRLEY: I imagine it’s much like Washington state.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve never… I’ve been there.

NICK SHIRLEY: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: How would you see in Washington?

NICK SHIRLEY: Washington?

SHAWN RYAN: What’s your favorite place that you frequent, Nick?

NICK SHIRLEY: Oh, my favorite place. Well, I don’t know, because I’m going to a lot of like, the Belly the Beast places. Seattle’s really bad. Really, really bad.

Kensington, Philadelphia: The Worst of the Worst

SHAWN RYAN: Worse than Cali. What’s the worst? What’s the one that you thought was like, shit, I knew it was bad. I didn’t think it was this bad.

NICK SHIRLEY: Kensington, Philadelphia.

SHAWN RYAN: Really? Let’s go there. What are you seeing there?

NICK SHIRLEY: You have entire… You have this entire community. And it is just actually zombies. Like, the people are so hooked on the drugs that they could care less about what’s going on, and they’re just slumped in the fetty fold.

It’s the most tragic thing to see ever, because you see all these people, you can go and have conversations with these people. A lot of them are really good people, nice people, but they just got hooked on fentanyl.

SHAWN RYAN: How did they get hooked? What kind of conversation should you have them with them?

The Fentanyl Crisis in America’s Cities

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. So a lot of these people there got hooked on drugs when they got injured in an accident, and then they were maybe heroin addicts, and then they just tried fentanyl once. And because fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin, by the time they want to switch back to heroin, because fentanyl is so powerful, heroin doesn’t do anything to them.

And so they end up just living out on the street looking for the next hit. And what’s interesting is people want to talk about, oh, how Joe Biden was like, the border wasn’t a big deal.

Well, people in Trump’s first term, I talked to a man in San Francisco who’s on drugs. He said in Trump’s first office, it cost about $15 for a fentanyl pill because there’s multiple different ways to take fentanyl. So for a Blue, it was $15.

Joe Biden gets into office, they open up the borders, it cost the addict only $5 for a hit. And so in places like Kensington, Philadelphia, where it’s also a liberal city, they just have enabled it to happen.

And meanwhile, you have little kids getting off of the train, having to walk through, walk over dead bodies.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you shitting me?

NICK SHIRLEY: Not a joke. And the little kids are, like, laughing about it. They’re like, “Yeah, one time my friend came up and he just punched one of the guys. He had no idea what happened.” It’s like, for these little kids to live in these communities, it’s just, like, a part of it which is sad.

SHAWN RYAN: Like, that is sad as f*, man.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, it’s actually sickening. And so this is, like, the shit.

SHAWN RYAN: I saw overseas that I never wanted to. Wow.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. American.

SHAWN RYAN: That bad. Little kids are walking past dead bodies, kicking them and punching them and joking about it like it’s a, it’s. That means. That means this is an everyday.

NICK SHIRLEY: Watch the.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s every day. That’s not. These kids walked over that one day. This is every day.

NICK SHIRLEY: Every day watch the little kid in San Francisco walk over a dead body with his mom, and his mom’s grabbing him. The little kids freaking out. Meanwhile, the guy’s passed out and overdosed on Fentanyl.

The addicts are around him like, “What do we do? What are you doing? What are you doing?”

SHAWN RYAN: What do we do?

NICK SHIRLEY: And then I’m having to run over to go get a person to try to give him Narcan. And all the addicts are freaking out, not knowing what to do in their friend’s dying on the ground.

And that happens every single day in every major city in America, whether it’s San Francisco or Kensington, Philadelphia. That shouldn’t be happening.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you save that guy?

NICK SHIRLEY: No. You couldn’t. I mean, I ran over, grabbed the guy, and he did give him Narcan. And by that time, all the addicts had pushed me out because I had my camera. And they were so angry at me for having my camera that I didn’t get to see what happened to the guy.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn, man.

NICK SHIRLEY: But so, like, I had to run over and get the guy to give him the Narcan. And then the addicts, they’re so delusional in their brain because all they’re thinking about is the next hit that they end up getting, moving me out of the area. And then I don’t know what happened to the guy.

SHAWN RYAN: Are they threatening you?

NICK SHIRLEY: I mean, they’re so out of it. They’re just yelling and stuff. Like these addicts, like, you used to think like homeless people when you’re younger. Like, actually homeless people.

When I was younger, it was like, “Oh my gosh, like, let’s help this guy.” I remember giving him $10 when we’d leave the jazz stadium after going to the basketball game and giving the homeless guy $10, and you wish him a good night.

But now they’re, these guys are just on fentanyl, just slumped, moving back and forth, and they don’t even care what happens.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, when you’re talking about all the, all of the rest of the addicts, you know, we’re up in arms about this guy getting ready to overdose and die. I mean, how many addicts are we talking here?

NICK SHIRLEY: Probably 10 of them, all around them. Because they all just get in this little circle. And there’s multiple ways to do fentanyl, whether they’re taking the blue or if they’re lighting it on foil and just smoking the fumes, they’re all just right next to each other.

NICK SHIRLEY: Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: Feels pretty good, right?

NICK SHIRLEY: Shawn, real quick, where can people keep watching?

SHAWN RYAN: Patreon, baby. Nice.

NICK SHIRLEY: Three for three.

SHAWN RYAN: Nice.

NICK SHIRLEY: We started off really bad, but thank you, coach. We’re doing better.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome. We got, we got quite the learning center here.

NICK SHIRLEY: We are learning a lot out here.

Interviewing the Addicts

SHAWN RYAN: How do you strike a conversation with them?

NICK SHIRLEY: Usually they’re pretty nice. They’re not really looking for anything. They’re just sitting there doing their drugs. And you just go up and say, “Hi, how are you doing? We wonder if we could just ask you a few questions, what got you into this and how long you’ve been out here for?”

And usually they’re pretty happy to tell somebody their story because I try not to pay people for interviews. A lot of people walk around with $5 bills and I don’t like doing that. If someone’s going to talk to me, they’ll talk to me. And if I have to pay them and then the interaction is not the same. So I always try not to pay people.

SHAWN RYAN: What else are you learning from these people?

NICK SHIRLEY: Just the fact that they’re somebody else’s son, daughter. And you do see, like, I think there’s potential in these people if you could get them off the drugs. A lot of these people don’t have.

SHAWN RYAN: Any potential left in them because I know there’s potential. My best friend f*ing got killed by that shit. He was a Navy SEAL and then contracted with the CIA with me, one of the brightest, brightest people I’ve ever met in my life.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. There’s so many people like it. And that’s why I get so mad when I see these politicians getting so mad at Trump for trying to do something about it or for killing a narco boat. I don’t care if they killed that narco boat, because American people are dying. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

And that’s also why I don’t respect the left wing media at all, whether it be the TikTokers, YouTubers. They never leave their desk. All they are is just talking points.

SHAWN RYAN: Mm.

NICK SHIRLEY: Meanwhile, I’m going out there and because I’m going out there, they label as me as a, label me as a MAGA or conservative. No, I’m talking to the person strung out on fentanyl. I’m talking to the protester. I’m about talking. I’m talking to the president.

Political Alignment and Values

SHAWN RYAN: Do you consider yourself to be MAGA?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I support Donald Trump. I think right now you kind of have, you have to. You have to decide. All right, maybe if you don’t 100% agree with Trump. And when I say I’m talking to Trump, I’m saying like with my briefing I gave to him, I’ve never talked to him behind closed doors or anything like that.

But yeah, I support Trump because I think what he’s doing, he doesn’t really have, there’s not really a reason why you not to support him if you’re, if you believe in what he’s trying to do for America. And the opposite would have been Kamala Harris.

And so you might, you have to kind of pick and choose your battles with Trump. Did he totally mess up on the Epstein stuff? Yes. Is that something that’s hard to look past? Yeah. Is there probably something weird going on there? Yeah.

But is there big issues with drugs inside the United States, with illegal immigration, affordability? Why are other countries tariffing us and we can’t tariff them back? I think you just have to pick your battles. And if you want to succeed, you have to at least be supportive of somebody and also be critical at the same time.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I’m with you. I think people need to really align themselves with the values and not with the individual. That’s what it should be. It should be. I, I agree and I align with this initiative, not who’s putting this initiative out. Well, then I can’t support it.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, it’s actually crazy because just think about what happened with Maduro. Biden actually had a $25 million bounty out for Maduro.

SHAWN RYAN: Did he really?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes, Biden and Kamala did. No, they put out a $25 million bounty during Biden’s presidency. And so then Trump goes in. So far, no casualties have been said that we know about. He goes and captures Maduro and then the left comes out advocating for Maduro.

Like what are they doing? And meanwhile, Venezuelans are celebrating all across the world because they’ve finally been liberated. Over 7 million people left Venezuela. Maduro is the largest exodus of a group of people since.

SHAWN RYAN: California in New York.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. And so I just can’t side with anything the left’s doing right now. Like I can’t side with any of their leaders. I can’t side with anything that they’re pushing because I don’t think they have America’s best interest in heart.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, well, I think a lot of people have felt that for a pretty long time. But where else did you go?

Inside El Salvador’s CECOT Prison

NICK SHIRLEY: Been to El Salvador.

SHAWN RYAN: How was that?

NICK SHIRLEY: Very cool. I’m the first ever American to do it.

SHAWN RYAN: Were you really?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn, Nick, that’s crazy. F*ing killing it, man.

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t even know how I got that opportunity.

SHAWN RYAN: How did you get your way into there?

NICK SHIRLEY: I went to El Salvador because I was doing videos on illegal immigration and I was trying to join a caravan to go up and go from Central America up to Mexico. And I was looking at the map and I thought, “Oh, they have to pass through El Salvador.”

And I get to El Salvador and I’m like, “Okay, where are the migrants at? I’m trying to join a caravan.” I’m talking to locals because I speak fluent Spanish. And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t have migrants here.”

Like, “What do you guys mean? This is like perfect spot for the map for them to cross over.” They’re like, “No, we don’t have them here.”

SHAWN RYAN: We’re not migrants till we get to your country, Ned.

El Salvador’s CECOT Prison Investigation

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, yeah. I was like, what’s going on? They’re like, wait. They’re like, we actually have people coming back from America. I’m like, what’s going on? And then everyone started telling me about Nayib Bukele and about CECOT.

And so I get there, my whole entire video had to shift and I make a video about how this country has kind of solved illegal migration. And I ended up interviewing one of the mayors. And from there I just kept being super persistent about messaging any account I could possibly get my hands on to on X that had anything to do with the government. If I could just find somebody to give me that contact to then message going to CECOT and eventually just some random person said, this is the number of the secretary.

And I messaged the press secretary of El Salvador and she said, oh, no, not right now. Messaged me again in a month, messaged her again, she said, ah, not right now, message me again in a little bit. And I finally messaged her like six months later and she’s like, alright, here’s your date to come inside CECOT. We’ll see you there. Boom. That was my big break.

SHAWN RYAN: Nice. How was it in there?

NICK SHIRLEY: Crazy.

SHAWN RYAN: What did you learn?

NICK SHIRLEY: People advocating for those people who need to really question who they’re advocating for. But the moment you walk in there, you just feel like any sense of goodness in your body just leave and your body is just filled with emptiness. And then you look at the prisoners. In their eyes, they’re completely empty. They’re hopeless.

Whatever wasn’t possessed, whatever had possessed them, had taken control and they had been defeated. And they just look at you with this blank stare, just like nothingness. Like you look into their eyes and nothing. You start walking around there and you just feel like literally nothing.

And then you look at their tattoos they have. They’re just from top to bottom, just full of MS-13, Barrio 18. And then actually they’re like, no, Nick, you can’t interview anybody. I was originally set to interview one of the prisoners. And then they’re like, we’re running behind time. We can’t interview them. But we’re going to ask the guys to take off their shirts so you can see all their tattoos.

And so I get, like, pretty close to almost face to face with one of these guys. I’m like, are you still proud to be a gangster? He’s like, yeah. I was like, wow. We really. And then other guys in the back were just like, we messed up. But some of those people killed hundreds of people.

And it’s just very eerie. There’s no lights. Very eerie to look at those guys in the eyes. And those guys, they have no darkness. It’s always lit up in that room. It’s just like a Costco, essentially, with prison cells. And the lights stay on 24/7. They eat the same meal every single day. They get no protein, like, they get no meat, like, no pork or chicken. All they get is a tortilla, rice and beans. I think they get, like, yogurt or milk.

And then so these guys are just, like, hopeless. They got no books. All they can do for a workout is once a day they get to take them out, they go do their toe touches, push ups, sit ups, and they’re all in white. And then they either get to do that or they get to listen to some preacher inside of that prison.

But those guys deserved it. They killed and made it so families couldn’t go from street to street to go visit their other family members. So that was very interesting to see that. And it was very cool to see how then you leave there, you leave there, then you go out to the streets of El Salvador. And people are just so excited to be living normal lives because for years they couldn’t go out and go to the next neighborhood. They couldn’t go out and hang out at their neighborhood. So it’s like the first time you’ve seen this group of people, a lot of these people, in years, that they’ve never had that feeling of freedom.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow.

NICK SHIRLEY: Very cool.

Paris and the Scammer Crisis

SHAWN RYAN: That is really cool, man. How about Paris?

NICK SHIRLEY: Paris? Paris.

SHAWN RYAN: What did you see in Paris?

NICK SHIRLEY: Well, Paris, I got attacked by scammers. Scammers there are rampant. I mean, I didn’t. I wasn’t expecting too much of Paris. All of Europe’s kind of messed up right now, just due to the facts of mass migration, and they’re just very leftist there. So Paris, I wasn’t expecting too much, but I didn’t expect it. As soon as I got off the subway, just to see a bunch of scammers running down into the subway, it was kind of wild.

SHAWN RYAN: What was it?

NICK SHIRLEY: All these African migrants from Senegal and from East Africa, they go to Paris and they start selling these Eiffel Towers or. And it’s just this big scam. They’re all working together on this, and you show a camera there, they freak out.

And I was. I brought my mom with me on this one, too. And it’s so funny because I brought my mom and I have her, like, kind of like, acting as, like, the bait to go talk to some of these scammers. And African scammers, they got just so mad when I was just filming, and the guys came up to me, and these guys are big. They’re like 6 foot. They got big muscles. I’m like, getting them off, moving around like, nope, nope, get over here. Get away.

And then you also have the gypsies who are trying to get money from donations. And while they’re trying to get money from donations, they got somebody who’s trying to pickpocket you. And this is at the Eiffel Tower, one of the largest tourist destinations in the entire world. And they’ve just let it get controlled by scammers, overtaken by scammers, by foreign scammers that aren’t even French.

SHAWN RYAN: What did you go there for?

NICK SHIRLEY: To do a video on immigration inside of France to see what was going on. Because people kept telling me it was bad, and it was bad. I mean, the scammers, one, they had taken over there, and an entire, I think they call it districts in Paris were completely Paris. People had been pushed out. The French people had been pushed out.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you talk to anybody over there?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I did.

SHAWN RYAN: What were they saying?

NICK SHIRLEY: They’re mad, too, because they’re like, us French, we can’t even get houses here in Paris. But they put the migrants in the houses here in Paris. And how can anybody say this is good for us? So it’s just. And then in Europe, you go to.

The Migration Debate in Europe

SHAWN RYAN: Is there anybody that’s on the opposite, though. Is there anybody that is like, yeah, we want this. We want all these people here?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes, there is.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay.

NICK SHIRLEY: In my video, I speak with. I go. I meet up with this guy, he’s kind of like a local journalist in the area. He kind of takes me around. And then it’s always the white liberals who are sympathetic to this mass migration, and they’re sympathetic to criminals.

And I’m talking to this girl who’s in college probably, and we’re right next to this migrant camp where all these migrants are just living underneath of the highway. And I say, do you think it’s good to bring masks? Do you think illegal immigration is good? Something along the lines of that. She goes, yeah, we’re all migrants our own way. I’m like, so this is good? She said, yes.

And meanwhile, this is all happening in illegal migration. It’s one of the most inhumane things, not only for the people who are originally from that country, but from the migrants they bring over. A lot of these people get trafficked over, a lot of them get assaulted, a lot of them lose all their money, a lot of them never see their family again. Yet these politicians want to keep walking them in.

In fact, the EU is fining countries like Poland and Hungary for not accepting migrants. So it’s all this coordinated attack on western civilization.

SHAWN RYAN: What would you say the percentage of people that are pro migrant versus anti are in France?

NICK SHIRLEY: I think it’s getting probably more towards 50/50, because people originally, just like in Minnesota, people were acceptance of the refugees. They’re happy to take in Somalians from the war torn country, but then they start imposing their cultures, they start taking away what was once the life of the people from that area. And they don’t feel like it’s their town anymore. They don’t feel like they’re the ones being represented.

So people are waking up. That’s why you also saw 3 million people go out to the streets of London to stop mass migration.

SHAWN RYAN: You going to head over there? Did you go there?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You were there?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I was there for that.

SHAWN RYAN: How was that?

NICK SHIRLEY: It was awesome. It’s awesome.

SHAWN RYAN: What are those people saying there?

NICK SHIRLEY: They want their country back.

SHAWN RYAN: How are they going to get it back?

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t know.

The UK’s Free Speech Crisis

SHAWN RYAN: You know what’s interesting about UK is I just don’t see anybody speaking up about anything except our buddy J. Cal.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. They imprison him.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s that?

NICK SHIRLEY: They imprison him like Tommy Robinson.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s why I’m asking you, you know?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How are they going to do anything?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. Because I mean, they’re throwing people in jail for tweets. Like every day more than 10 people are getting put in jail for putting tweets out, putting post on X. And they tried, they’ve tried to imprison Tommy Robinson multiple times.

And you might not like Tommy Robinson, you might not have a perfect past, but, man, that guy knows what he’s talking about. When he saw his siblings and his aunt, his family members getting raped by Muslim grooming gangs, and he spoke out against it and the government tried to hide it. The exact same thing we just saw in Minnesota. They’re too afraid to be called the racists and Islamophobes for the fraud that was happening.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: And then they try to go and imprison Tommy Robinson. Not just once, but they’ve done it multiple times. They put him in solitary confinement for more than 100 days for speaking about, for showing people what was happening inside his country, man. And I know why it’s happening.

SHAWN RYAN: Why is it happening?

NICK SHIRLEY: Just for purely votes and to keep people in power. And it’s also, I kind of knew what was going to. I kind of knew this was going to happen in the United States after I’d gone to Europe a couple times, do videos on what was happening.

Because Tommy Robinson, I had a sit down interview with him. He goes, the reason why the Labor Party, the Democrat Party in UK, the reason why they’re able to stay in power is because they’ll tell these Muslims they can go ahead, do whatever they want. A Muslim actually should be more conservative than they would be a liberal because they don’t stand for a lot of that progressive stuff. Not pro LGBTQ, they’re pro family. Right.

And so he goes, well, it doesn’t matter to them because they have Sharia law, so that’s above anything. And so if somebody goes to that mosque where a thousand people go, they tell the mosque leader, we’re going to let you guys do whatever you want. Just make sure you guys vote for us. So then when it comes day to vote, the leader of the mosque, everyone in the mosque will then go to the voting centers and go vote for that candidate.

That’s why in London, the mayor’s Muslim. A lot of the towns around it are Muslim as well. And they actually have courts that are practicing Sharia law. And so I kind of knew that was going to happen inside of America as well.

You have Mandami, for instance. Another thing Mandami advocated for when he was running was making childcare more affordable. What do we know about childcare now? These daycare centers, they’re complete frauds. And so I kind of knew what was going to start happening now. You’re kind of starting to see it happen here in America, so.

And now after they kind of forced my hand to start giving my opinion, which I wasn’t doing, they asked for it. People are loving it now that I’m kind of speaking out against stuff. But I was originally just going to keep asking people questions, but now they’ve kind of turned my journalism into activism in a way where you forced my hand. Now I’m compelled to do this. Now.

SHAWN RYAN: Be careful. Don’t let them force you into something that you think they don’t want you to do.

NICK SHIRLEY: Like what?

SHAWN RYAN: Like what you’re doing.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, they’d rather have an activist than a competitor, I can tell you that much right now.

NICK SHIRLEY: Well, I don’t think sharing facts is wrong.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t either. I think what you’re doing is amazing. I’m just telling you, be careful. I mean, they will manipulate you into doing something that you think they don’t want you to do. You do it to piss them off and then they f* have you where they want you.

NICK SHIRLEY: I do need to be a little bit more careful. And it kind of stinks. I’m only 23 years old. Like, dang. I got a lot more life to live. I got, like, at least three more of my life to live.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, think about how much more wisdom you’ll have when you’re my age. Because you started at 23. So, but what do you got coming up next, Nick?

NICK SHIRLEY: Got a lot more stuff coming, but I got… What? Bad answer. My bad.

Venezuela and Election Fraud Investigation

SHAWN RYAN: Very early on this, but I’ve been hearing a lot of grumblings that a lot of these Dominion voting machines in the election fraud is coming from Venezuela. Have you heard this? I’m going to send you some stuff. Maybe you can dig in. I’m getting ready to dive in on that, I think, and could be a huge, huge story.

NICK SHIRLEY: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know if it’s legit. I’ve just been hearing grumblings. So we’re just…

NICK SHIRLEY: I would like to go to Venezuela.

SHAWN RYAN: Would you?

NICK SHIRLEY: Oh, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Maybe we’ll go together.

NICK SHIRLEY: Do you want to go? I’m down.

SHAWN RYAN: I might.

NICK SHIRLEY: I don’t know how we do it now, but I think it’d be a great video. The Venezuelan people are very good people. Like some of the best people I’ve met because I did this two year mission trip for our church. A lot of people I’d spend my time with were migrants from Venezuela, and they were just some of the nicest people I’d ever met.

SHAWN RYAN: Really?

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. I remember I spent time with this one family, and when I left, the whole entire family was just bawling because I just spent so much time with them. And I called them once they captured Maduro, and they’re all crying. They’re all celebrating. Meanwhile, you have liberals in the streets calling for Trump to release Maduro.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, man.

The State of the World and Free Speech

NICK SHIRLEY: You guys realize what he just did to that entire country? Maduro. You have people out at the border selling bags of Venezuelan dollars because they mean absolutely nothing. They’re using their dollars for product, for material.

We’re living in a crazy world, Shawn. Just think about everything we got going on. We have Trump as our president. He is the character. He’s an icon in a lot of ways as far as being the billionaire that he is, having all his properties. He has a freaking castle to go to on the weekends, Mar-a-Lago. He’s good buddies with the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.

Elon Musk gave us free speech again on the Internet. What I just did would not have been possible without Elon Musk. The video would have done well on YouTube. It would have got a million views. It wouldn’t have created any change, though. But if it wasn’t for X, you wouldn’t have seen any of that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: I went breaking the combat with…

SHAWN RYAN: This Tim Walz on X, man, you really crushed it.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. I had no other option.

SHAWN RYAN: You crushed it.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah. It was crazy. Everyone was just coming after me, and I wasn’t… I’d never gotten into any Internet beef with anybody. They keep coming after me. Well, I guess I’m going to come back with you. You got to fight fire with fire. I finally understood why people like Trump and Elon always are out there talking and defending themselves. Because you just can’t let someone slander your name for no reason.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s right.

NICK SHIRLEY: Especially if you’re in the right, like you and your boy Crenshaw.

SHAWN RYAN: Hey, can’t let people f* push you around in this world.

NICK SHIRLEY: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Or they will just continue doing it. So good for you for standing up for yourself.

NICK SHIRLEY: Exactly.

Guest Recommendations

SHAWN RYAN: Way to f* be, man. All right, Nick, if you had three people to recommend for this show, who would they be?

NICK SHIRLEY: Three people I would love to see. Nayib Bukele. That’s somebody I want to personally interview as well. I’m really interested in leaders of the world. I think Nayib Bukele would be really cool.

Got to think. Have you done John Fetterman? I think he’d be interesting to talk to.

SHAWN RYAN: All right.

NICK SHIRLEY: Because I think he’s one of the only Democrats who has common sense right now. I think he’d be good. I don’t know anything about George Bush, and I’ve never seen him do anything. I think that’d be interesting.

SHAWN RYAN: That would be really interesting. I got a lot of questions for him.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yeah, I’m sure with your past, you have a lot of questions with him.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, yeah.

NICK SHIRLEY: I’ve never seen him do any interview. My generation knows absolutely nothing about George Bush other than 9/11. So I think that’d be an interesting conversation.

SHAWN RYAN: We’ve actually been kicking that around, so maybe we will pursue that. Well, Nick, hope to see you again. Thanks again for the sweatshirt. And let’s go blow some s* up.

NICK SHIRLEY: Yes. I’m excited. Thank you, Church.

SHAWN RYAN: No matter where you’re watching Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you’re feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.

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