Garrison Davis
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult
Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult
Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult
Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Yes.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles
Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
No, because they don't want trans kids competing at all. They don't want trans kids in public life.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
Yeah. They don't care about fairness in sports. This is all about just eradicating transgenderism from public life. Like as, as Michael Knowles said at CPAC like two years ago, like that's what they actually care about.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
And we're back. Okay, we're back. We're back. James, do you want to finish us up here? I do, Garrison. I would like that very much.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Hello.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
This episode, we're covering the week of May 21 to May 28. It was a really busy news week for the latter half of that week, so we're going to be mostly catching up with that. Jesus, yeah. And let's start with the biggest news from late last week domestically, the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., The shooting took place around 9 p.m.
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on Wednesday, May 21st, outside of an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting, the suspect was seen pacing outside of the building. According to witnesses and surveillance video, Jesus. Jesus. He ran into the museum after the shooting. Security let him in thinking that he was a victim. Witnesses say he appeared traumatized and in shock.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
People from the museum event brought him water. And when they asked him if he was okay or if he was injured, Rodriguez requested the police. When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted to the shooting. And according to witnesses, quote, grabbed a red keffiyeh out of his pocket and started free Palestine chants. Quote, there is only one solution, Antifata revolution, unquote.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
While being arrested and taken out of the building, he chanted free, free Palestine. Israel's ambassador to the U.S. claimed that the two victims were deliberately targeted as Israeli embassy employees and that Rodriguez mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that evening before raising suspicion and being asked to leave.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
Although the organization who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee, disputes this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register for their event but was denied entry following a background check. Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun in Illinois and flew with it to D.C. the night before the shooting.
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This event was an American Jewish Committee Access DC Young Diplomats Reception. The description for the event reads, quote, This special event brings together Jewish young professionals aged 22 to 45 and the DC diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity and celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations, and a special guest speaker.
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Unquote. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lisinski, 26 and 30, who met through their work at the embassy. Lisinski identified as a Christian, though he was born in Israel and moved to Germany as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in the IDF.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
There is an alternative claim that he was born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager, but most reporting says that he was born in Israel. In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this as anti-Semitic violence. The acting U.S. attorney said that they are investigating the case as a hate crime and an act of terrorism.
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Dan Bongino, deputy FBI director, said the shooting was a, quote, act of targeted violence.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
The Israeli foreign minister and Netanyahu have laid blame at college protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France, Britain, and Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking about Israel's, quote, supposed genocide and crimes against humanity, unquote, and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel, quote, unquote, incitement.
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Netanyahu said, quote, free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler. Jesus Christ. They don't want a Palestinian state. They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for 3,500 years, unquote.
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It's very hard to flag for a guy specifically like this because there's a lot of them out there.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
Yeah. This act has been widely condemned. Like pro-Palestine commentators have said that this style of like adventurous terrorism does nothing to help the Palestinian people and in fact only hurts them and plays into what like the Israel lobby and Netanyahu have been like wanting to happen for a while.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 184
No, people have used the horrific genocide as a way to channel their general societal frustration and find a way to act incredibly hostile to actual Palestinians who don't share the exact same anti-imperialist TM views that they might have. It's just permission to abuse people online.
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And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as well, as we'll see. Let's talk about that. Let's get a little bit into his background. So he has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account.
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He has an English degree, right? He knows how to write. He has worked as a writer for like almost a decade. Okay.
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The manifesto is titled Escalate for Gaza. Bring the war home. And he attempts to explain the rationale behind his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale of dead Palestinians, writing that, quote, atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification, unquote. He writes about how despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the U.S.
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government has continually refused to rein in Israel and instead moved to criminalize dissent. He talks about armed action, quote, an armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares in many unarmed actions, unquote.
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Yeah, I'll go over some of that background in brief. Yeah. He also talked about targeting government representatives, quote, the impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then tells the story of a man who tried to throw Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea.
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He finishes with his thoughts on the quote unquote morality of armed demonstration, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize the perpetrators of atrocities as a method for us to cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of.
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Quote, this action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during protective edge around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans, such an action would have been illegible. It would seem insane.
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I'm glad that today, at least, there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do, unquote. I did find it interesting that on December 5th, 2024, Rodriguez posted on his Twitter account that, quote, 80% of the country applauds the targeted annihilation of a healthcare insurance executive, unquote.
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As for his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a Maoist third worldist and believes that the global South alone has quote unquote revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described his politics to journalist Ken Klippenstein like this, quote, He was a big proponent of the emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad, Syria.
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He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years, way before 2023. He'd always hated Israel and would call it, quote, the little Satan, unquote. For fuck's sake.
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Yeah, with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by Assad.
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His online presence mirrors what I would call the typical anti-imperialist TM poster, where he airs most of his frustration at the Democrats, sometimes at Republicans, but mostly posts about being pro-Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, pro-Assad, and particularly the past few years, posting a lot about Palestine. With explicit defense and veneration of Hamas.
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This same friend that talked to Klippenstein also said, quote, it's driving me crazy that people are calling it a false flag. This development is shocking, but not completely out of character. He always had strong political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's the same as he was, unquote.
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No, absolutely. This is this is not a false flag attack. That's conspiratorial nonsense.
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Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, back in 2017 and spoke to the media on their behalf. Though he would later regret his association with the group, telling friends, quote, PSL sucks shit. I wish I had just done a misadventure with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization rather than the PSL, LOL, unquote. Yeah.
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Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In 2023, he posted video from a local pro-Palestine march on his Twitter account. Klippenstein spoke with at least five friends of his who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez express anti-Semitic sentiments.
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Now, one of Rodriguez's friends gave Klippenstein access to a years-old private WhatsApp group chat that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day before the shooting. Klippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things, especially Israel and its war in Gaza, unquote.
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And from what we can see of the chats that Kenneth's posted, this matches pretty well. A chat member wrote, quote, I'm almost surprised you're not anti-Semitic, Elias. It usually goes hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong mantra.
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So he's really got a number of reasons he likes Stalin. Yeah. From the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly like a tanky anti-imperialist type. Yes, yes.
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The only time he talked about race explicitly was to lambast white people. Quote, LOL, you probably would have to actually genocide white people to make this a normal country. Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens of millions of white people. Yeah.
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No, this is the first time a tanky's done anything.
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On October 7th, he celebrated the Hamas attack, quote, just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred by Hamas fighters. I-M-A-O. Love checking back in with the news every few hours, like, hmm, I wonder if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly wonder if Israel is over yet, today or not, unquote.
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Yeah. In this chat, he lamented to friends and expressed sorrow at the deaths of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. And sometimes his ire was directed at other members of this leaked chat. At one point, going on an unhinged ableist rant attacking one of his friends for being privileged after they discussed the challenges of having a brother with schizophrenia. Quote, why not just have him committed?
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You can't possibly be gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that. Just put him in a padded room and forget about him. Jesus Christ. If there was a person you loved, he's gone now. Let it go. Can you just chain him in the basement and slide meals under the door? I'm just tired of hearing about this guy. He's useless. We get it. Stop complaining and just dispose of him.
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The last thing I'll say about this is that beyond this senseless loss of life, which is an issue in and of itself, obviously, this also contributes to further loss of life in the way this plays into media capture, right? Now we have a whole week where the news cycle is dominated by two people getting murdered in the streets of D.C. And...
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This does not help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The exact same day that this happened, Wednesday the 21st, 93 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip. And that type of stuff does not really get reported anymore because that's how media capture works. Americans are really good at getting desensitized to this in a large-scale media environment.
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But stuff like this only serves as a distraction and fuels Israel's own motivation for their continued actions.
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And we are back. Another big news item from last week was the passing of the big, beautiful budget bill in the House. We'll talk more about this bill as it turns through the Senate. But first, our co-host Mia Wong has a special report on how the bill targets trans healthcare.
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Yeah. It must be so hard to be Gavin Newsom. It's gotta be tough. And betray your constituents to get the approval of a millennial right-wing...
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Reminds me that Jake Tapper just said his kid's not really into politics. He's just into World War II and gaming. Great.
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This is the problem with people like Gavin whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist. Yeah. So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as swinging against your previously held progressive, DEI, woke, LGBTQ plus values, then you just go along with that swing and you actually don't even care about getting those points anymore because you think the culture is going in a different direction.
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And all you care about is being in the cultural zeitgeist. You don't actually stand for anything. You're just nothing. Yeah.
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Yeah. Or with as little danger as it is possible to do.
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Yes, you can automatically set it to delete stuff over a period of time. You want to, if you're going to use it, turn off the thing where it pushes messages so that you can see on your locked phone. Turn them off, because that'll fuck shit up.
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Yeah, there's a quote from Herman Goering. I think it was from Herman Goering. When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver. And I have adapted that Goering quote to the modern era. When I hear QR code, I reach for my Glock 19. That's right. Do not use QR codes.
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Let's explain what Hoothie's PC small group is for the people. I'm getting to it. So you've got this app. which is normally used by and has been used for a long time by like protesters and dissidents and journalists to communicate with sources because it's very secure. The Trump administration takes office.
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One thing that they are annoyed about is that when you are government employees, even if you're doing top secret shit, especially if you're doing top secret shit, the kind of meetings about national security planning for like military actions that you are supposed to only have in something called a SCIF. And a SCIF is basically a room in the West Wing, I think, or the Pentagon, right?
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I'm not 100% sure where all the skiffs are, but it's like a room that is incredibly secure, and it is the only place that you are supposed to have certain kinds of conversations. And in fact, if you are having one of those kinds of conversations in a skiff, no one, not even the president or the vice president, is allowed to have a phone in there. It is a very strict rule.
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You don't take phones into the skiff because none of them are fucking secure. Yeah. Now, the problem is all these communications, all of this stuff is documented and potentially FOIA-able. Maybe not immediately because there's always security concerns. They have the ability to redact stuff.
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Yeah, it might be archived even if it's not FOIA-able. People who are in charge of our military now didn't like that. And we're like, hey, what if we all just did it through a single group? Right. And they did, to plan for an attack that started March 15th against the Houthis. Now, you will remember the Houthis from the episode James and I did.
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I mean, from other stuff, too, because they're all over the news. From, you know, the Houthis. The Houthis stuff. James and I did an episode recently about a regular naval warfare, and you check it out. That's all still pretty relevant.
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Yeah, better known for their other work. The Biden administration was like, we can probably take care of these guys with airstrikes. And it didn't really work. And the Trump administration was like, we can do a better job of taking these guys out with airstrikes. And at this point, it's too early to say if it worked or not. But I'm going to guess probably didn't. Probably not.
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Just generally given the history, maybe. But they say they killed a lot more high value targets and top missile guys. Main missile guy, quote. I don't know. Yeah.
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i'm not i don't know i'm not privy to the information they're working off of or how much it matters at this point right so we'll see you you're not in that signal chat robert i'm not in that signal chat they have not accidentally i'm in too many signal chats frankly yeah yeah i could be and i might not know yeah we all are in too many i might be in several government ones and be totally unaware of it because there's too many notifications on my phone that shit's muted i'm not seeing that yeah
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So they decide we're going to plan an attack on some Houthis. We're going to be hitting them with stuff. And we should probably all get we need to get all of these different kind of people from different chunks of the, you know, the government together. So we got to have J.D. Vance and his representative because usually Vance is too busy to respond.
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And we got to have the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his representative. We got to have the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, her representative. We got to have the head of the CIA, his represent, you know, that kind of thing. There's a few more people in there. Mark Rubio. Mark Rubio, right, sex estate, you know, and his representative, right? Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller.
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I don't know that Miller had a representative. He feels like he handles a lot of this stuff on his own, but... Yeah. On his phone too much, Stephen Miller. Yeah. Chronically online, Stephen Miller. Yeah, and you have the head of, I think, Cintcom was in there. Anyway, you got all these people in there, and...
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While they're setting this up, all the invites are going out, because the way you do it with Signal is you click a button that says, like, start a new group. You name the new group. In this case, they named the group Hoothie PC Small Group, right? And, shit, what does PC stand for in this? Politically correct, which, honestly, I thought that we were over. Yeah, you'd think so, huh?
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Yeah, yeah. No slurs in the small group chat. Planning committee, I'm guessing? Yeah, planning committee. Houthi planning committee small group. Sorry, I had that written down somewhere. So they make this group chat and they invite a bunch of people. And here's one of the ways Sigma works.
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Is that like if you're just importing your contacts into Signal, it'll find the guys who have Signal and it'll just like show you based on whatever your name you have for them in their phone. Right. That they're on Signal and you can just invite them. Otherwise, you can set what your Signal name is going to be. And so when people type in your phone number or whatever, they'll see that.
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Or if you send them an invite, that's the name they'll see. And this brings us – I got to take an aside to talk about a guy who is not a member of the Trump administration and who is not a member of government, a man named Jeffrey Goldberg, born in 1965. He is currently the co-editor of The Atlantic. Prior to this, he had a – What some people would call an illustrious career.
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He grew up in Malvern on Long Island. Shorty Malvern. Malvern, yeah. I'm looking at his wiki here, which just has the line that his neighborhood was mainly Catholic, and he described it as a wasteland of Irish pogromists. Oh, Jesus. He had a fun childhood.
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Interesting. Interesting, Jeffrey. Fascinating stuff there. Interesting. So after college or kind of while he's in college, he leaves and he goes to Israel because he wants to serve in the IDF during the Intifada, the first one, as a prison guard. Jesus Christ. Which is where Palestinian participants in the Intifad were being held.
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And yeah, he he had like an interesting conversation with this PLO leader who is also like a math teacher who I guess they they were able to like discuss their Zionism or whatever in some way that he found useful. Anyway, weird guy, not a I bring this up to be like not a left wing radical, like not Not one of, quote unquote, our guys. Not one of our guys.
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Not a guy who's probably broadly opposed to most of, and in fact, to most of what the Trump administration is doing overseas. Especially with the airstrikes, frankly.
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Now, he has pissed off. It's fair to say he has really pissed off Trump a number of times, right? Because he wrote some articles. He wrote that 2020 article in The Atlantic about when Trump said, Got caught saying that Americans who died in wars are losers and suckers. Yes. Which is, you know, based on sourcing that he had. So he's also attracted their ire.
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But he's, again, generally, I would say, like, more on the bootlickery side of things. Like, he's just kind of like a nat-sec cheerleader, right? That would be a fair way to describe Jeffrey. Totally. I don't know that he would entirely disagree with that description of himself, you know? Yeah, like a neolive guy.
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That said, he's not he's not so much of one that he's unwilling to report critical stuff, which is what happens here. So he gets an invite on his phone that it just takes him into this PC Houthi small group. And people have done the work. There's another guy in the Trump administration whose initials are J.C. John Greenbrier, I believe. Yeah, I think it was John Greenbrier.
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And the person who, because there was some debate initially about who invited him, because after this came out, there were allegations that he snuck his way in or whatever. We now know, based on the evidence, that he was inadvertently invited by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, right? As evidenced by the Signal screenshots. Yes. Yes, yes. There's lots of screenshots.
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Jeffrey did his, you know, the job of documenting. Eventually. Right. Yes. Well, he documented it right away. Yes. So now here's the thing. From the beginning here, Jeffrey is having the natural reaction. I will say this for all my critiques of him. He has the reaction I think any minimally competent journalist would have. Someone's fucking with me. Yeah, yeah. This is something to get me, yeah.
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You don't get invited into a chat with the sec def and the head of the CIA planning a military strike, right? That just doesn't happen.
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Yeah, it does not really go down. So he's trying to figure out what the fuck's going on.
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like what's happening and he's like he's making a note he's documenting stuff is there and they're talking about like weapons packages like these are the kind of weapons this is where they're striking and then as the strikes go and they're being like this guy headed into his girlfriend's house we're hitting it house blew up he's dead right that particular exchange was very funny because the way he phrased it was like it completely baffled jd vance yes let me pull this up because it was it was pretty funny no please please uh
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Yeah. So it's great. And once it becomes very clear what's happening, number one, rather than stay in the group, see if maybe he could get invited to other groups, just kind of like keep track of what was going on. Again, being a guy who's like primary concern, and I really do think Goldberg's primary concern here was the security of U S soldiers, like national security of the United States. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to like, is any of this legal? Are they like, like his is just like, these people are not being secure. Like with, I mean like this, this could, if the wrong person got invited to a group like this, it could potentially endanger the lives of airmen and stuff. That's not my primary concern with all this. Right. But that is his, you know? And so he hops out of the group.
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He leaves. Yeah. Uh, and he puts out this article and he redacts most other than the, what's happened, which is a story in and of itself. He like goes out of his way. Like there's people who are like in intelligence that are in this, that he has their names. And he's like, I am not naming them because, because they're serving intelligence officers and that's a no-no.
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He doesn't like specifically give up, other than that this is happening, anything that's like particularly dangerous, right? But this is the kind of thing, as soon as it comes out, obviously it's a furor. And it's unlike most of the time when everybody gets like pissed off It seems like it might have some legs because it's just such a what the fuck moment, right?
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Yeah. Yeah. It's super funny. Everything that's happening here is very funny. I basically want to move on to, like, what's going to happen next, which is they are going to try to nuke Jeffrey Goldberg. Like, they're going to try to send him to a prison, if not a literal, like, El Salvadorian work camp, right? Like, that is going to be their next goal here.
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I mean, in times of war in the past, if the version of this had happened in World War II, they would have just executed whatever soldier did this.
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Haven't we all added the wrong person to a group chat? And it's like, I mean, yeah, but I've never, like, bombed Yemen.
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Yeah. Like I have two friends named John and I added the wrong one to a group about like planning a mutual friend's birthday party. But like, again, minimal damage.
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If he was just in there, they'd say, yeah, he seems cool. Put him in the group.
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And again, France has a navy. They've got nuclear submarines. They could end the world.
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The primary point of like how the Houthis are conducting their strikes is not we're going to knock all of these ships out of the sea. It's it will it will create an unsustainable insurance situation for a lot of merchants. If there's just always kind of missiles, even if we never really or almost never hit anybody, that doesn't really matter. You got to deal with the insurance thing.
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Yeah, it's not the ability to like easily interdict these kinds of strikes, but certainly the ability to, and more importantly, kind of the ability to survive them to like mitigate the damage that they can do.
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It's kind of just a basic of like military stuff that you really don't want people to know exactly when you're sending dudes in to do what.
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Overly emotional, slightly unprofessional, confused by what everyone else is saying because I won't scroll up. Continually derails plans with late objections. That's so good. Oh, that's so good. That is really funny.
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That's it. What's interesting is no one ever says, the president has approved this. The president has said, do this. Like, Miller says something along the lines of, like, we're going forward with this, or I've been told we're going forward with this. Yeah. Which is... Again, not in terms of, like, it's a very Hitler way of doing things. Right, yeah.
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Like, there's this, I talk about this on the show, there's this decades-long debate about, like, did Hitler literally order the Holocaust? Or did he just kind of, like, keep making it clear to people that if they kept moving in a more Holocaust-y direction, that would, like, endear them to him? Yeah, yeah, intentionality.
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aspects of both are true but like yeah this is definitely kind of example that latter thing where trump is probably like yeah somebody should probably fuck up those hoothies and steven miller goes like yeah trump said you know we're good keep moving forward but he's also miller's not dumb he's not gonna say trump said to do this he's gonna say he's been delegating so much more than his first term to the point where his presidency is just projecting a certain vibe that then other people have to carry out all of the details for yeah this is very similar to the hitler regime
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Yeah, there is a term for this at the time in the Third Reich. It's called working towards the Fuhrer, right? Where you're not going to get direct guidelines. You're supposed to figure out what he wants and move closer to it.
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Mm-hmm. Yeah, what's rending my additions? James. Yeah, okay.
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We should pop in here. A story just dropped. Michael Waltz, the national security advisor who invited Jeffrey to that group chat. Journalists have found his public Venmo. No.
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Quote, unquote, it's full of journalists. Ha ha. I'm just going to read a quote from an article on prospect.org. Yeah, please. Unsurprisingly, Fox News holds the highest headcount for reporters in Mike Waltz's phone. Griff Jenkins, whose Fox.com bio lists him as a Washington-based national correspondent for Fox, is joined on the list by Brian Kilmeade, co-host of Fox and Friends.
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Porter Berry, president and editor of Fox Digital, also made the cut. But white right-wing reporters are not the only ones represented in Waltz's Venmo list, which appears to be less than clean on obsec, as Secretary of Defense Hank Seth wrote.
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Leland Vittert, a national correspondent for News Nation, is also listed on the digital account, as is Brianna Keeler, an American journalist who currently serves as co-anchor of the afternoon edition of CNN News Central. Lauren Pykoff, an executive producer at MSNBC, is also in Waltz's contacts. Earlier this year, Trump tweeted about the network, Wow, Rachel Maddow has horrible ratings.
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She'll be off the air soon. But amidst the broadcasters, producers, and talking heads, one name stands out from the crowd. Judith Miller, who was summarily fired from the New York Times after it was revealed that her reporting on the Iraq war was categorically false and obtained almost verbatim from Vice President Dick Cheney.
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Her dismissal was the price paid for cozying up too close to an administration set on war. It's just like, okay. We don't check any of this. We haven't locked anything down.
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Oh, my God. Now, I think it's time, folks, that we take a little bit of a detour and talk about tariffs.
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Oh, my God. I love playing that song. I love playing that song. We don't actually have anything to say about tariffs. Mia's not here. I will note there's a graph going around about the potential cost of Guinness under Trump's tax plan, which is usually around $7 per pint in the U.S. and will now be $22 to $27. after Trump's new tariffs for imported alcohol.
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Gators, yeah. They looked to me more than anything the way Proud Boys dressed a lot in like 2019, 2020. Yeah. It's, yeah. Like, it's extremely concerning.
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Yeah. Yeah, the guy filming is like doing about what he can, given the fact that you have to assume he had no real idea what was happening initially, other than like something visibly fucked up. Like, I'm glad he said the things that he said, but.
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And we don't know if she has been or not already.
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Well, no, because again, the resources to do stuff like... trace somebody down by their shoes from like surveillance camera footage exists. We saw it used on those lawyers who lit a police vehicle on fire back in 2020. But like, there's not really much in the way of crimes going on here.
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And there also have, there's so many of these people, like the idea that you would, you would pull all of the footage that you would need to track every one of these. It's just, it's just not feasible.
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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
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Oh, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about how it's happened here and it continues to happen here. Sorry about that, but we're not changing the name of the podcast, you know, because we're not. Anyway, I got James Stout with me. I got Garrison Davis with me. Woot woot.
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a baseline like kind of quasi answer um that i think we can use as a jumping off point you know if you're someone who is being targeted you know or in a community of people who are being targeted you know you're a naturalized citizen you're here on a green card you're trans uh you're any kind any of the many different groups of people that are being targeted right now
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And you have the opportunity to leave and you think that that's the right thing for you and you should do it. You shouldn't feel bad about it. You know, if you've got a job that is in demand in other countries and you know the process and can get start the process to like get residency somewhere else and work somewhere else and, you know, make make your life work that way.
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Then I don't think you should feel bad about doing that if that's what you decide is the right thing for you. That said, it's not. It's just simply not going to be a realistic possibility for most people. What is more realistic for a lot of people is, for example, moving from states where the risk is higher to states where maybe the risk is lower.
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Hard to say how long the risk will be lower, you know, but I, you know, I certainly that's more achievable for a lot of people than getting set up in a foreign country, as James will talk about. If your hope is just, I'm going to try to go somewhere else like Europe or whatever as an asylum seeker, as again, James will go into more detail on, life ain't easy for asylum seekers.
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And that's not really, again, it may not be nearly as much of an option as you think that it is right now. I had to go through kind of my own process after the election of like, well, am I going to like, you know, get my finances in order and move to another country and basically try to like pay my way into getting a visa somewhere like in Spain, which is an option for someone like me.
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And I came to the conclusion that like, nah, you know, if the worst case thing happens, I'd rather like die here or whatever. It's just not worth it, you know, to try to get out. So I'm committing to trying to like hold the line here with everybody basically that I love in the world because like, what else are you going to do, you know?
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No. I would go so far as to say, even if you plan to stay here, if you have the ability to get dual citizenship, you should be pursuing that right now. Absolutely.
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We're back, and we're talking about onions, which you need to wear around your neck to protect you from evil spirits. Garrison, that's what you were getting at, right?
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I did invite Pete Hegseth. So we'll see if he hops in, you know. He's rejected us multiple times. Yeah.
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It's so funny because it is like that is like the dream of every journalist that you just get added to the entire government's war planning chat. And he just uses it to dunk on the Trump admin. Like not to get more info on like anything. And then he like homers back into the head. Yeah. It's fucking hysterical.
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They would have accidentally invited a different journalist. It was going to happen eventually.
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Well, that's your opinion, I guess. Edinburgh is where if I was going to go to Scotland, I'd probably aim at.
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Oh, it existed before those books. Yeah. That is rude, Garrison. Don't take that away from Edinburgh. Don't give her that.
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You haven't been to Edinburgh. Don't tell me that shit.
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They were mostly hard liquor themed. Okay, that's fair.
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My favorite Glasgow fact is that there's a beverage called Buckfast that is 20% alcohol mineral wine made by monks that has as much coffee as a Red Bull. And in Glasgow, Scotland, for a significant period of time, roughly 1% of all violent crimes were committed with the bottle. Yeah, Bucky, it's a whole subculture. Buckfast gets you fucked fast. That's right, folks.
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Just look at how much food the U.S. produces, how much medicine. Seventy percent of all of the blood used in every single country's medical system around the world is exported from the United States.
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Don't flee to Belgium. Stay away from Belgium at all costs. I had a nice time in Belgium.
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As an Italian, I think we need to go to war with them again. You know, it's what made Caesar great. It could make us great again. That's my stance on Belgium. It's Italian territory. I stand with the Belgian people.
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Yeah, like a threat to one is a threat to all. So like the way I see it, any group chat that gets compromised...
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That's right. Next, they're going to come. Could be any of us. Could be any of us. Jeffrey Goldberg could be lurking in your small group. That's you and your girlfriend talking about what kind of pizza to order. He could be there reporting for the Atlantic. You wouldn't know unless you looked at who was in there and saw his name.
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Then you would know, which is true of all of the people in the Houthi PC small group.
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I'm going to start at the beginning because I do assume that actually like as impossible as it sounds to those of us who like wake up and imbibe fucking social media in the morning. like an addict takes their first hit of crack cocaine, but in a way that's less healthy for both our hearts and our brains.
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A decent number of people who listen to this podcast have just kind of like heard vaguely like some bits about this. Yeah, they're wondering what the fuck we're talking about. What are you doing? What are you guys doing this? So we're going to talk about this group chat. So first off, couple of basics. So Signal is an app that is end-to-end encrypted.
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That means that if you have Signal and your buddy has Signal and you're messaging each other, it's encrypted. And it is very hard at this point, unless one of your phones is directly compromised by a non-state actor or an ex who's really good with computers, no one else can see what you're messaging each other.
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So if you and a friend are like planning what to order on fucking Grubhub tonight when you go play Super Smash Brothers or whatever, you can keep that secret. Or if you and a friend are planning what substances to buy that the government might not want you buying, you can keep that secret.
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Or if you and your friend simply don't want various media companies taking every detail and phone carriers, taking every detail of your life's conversations and turning that into analytics data, you can stop them from doing. And if maybe one day you might be engaged in speech that the government might not like, you can continue to engage in that speech privately without danger.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. It is a human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating everything. The Hunt.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of April 17 to April 23. J.D. Vance has killed the Pope.
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A second Pete Hegseth unauthorized signal chat has hit the Department of Defense. The White House announces that the Education Department will start collecting on defaulted student loans. Beanie-clad Tim Pool joins the White House press pool. And hippie Facebook moms rejoice with artificial food dyes being banned across America. How are we doing, everybody?
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I did it. I still did it. Thank goodness he did not die on Hitler's birthday, because that would have been a whole other, whole other can of worms. Yeah, I'm still thinking. One day off.
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Do you know who else probably used to listen to Macklemore? Not anymore because he got too woke, but Pete Hegseth seems like a 2012 Macklemore guy. Yeah, might have been. Might have been. He was sharing plans for Yemeni airstrikes with his wife, his brother, and a personal lawyer in another Signal chat.
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They are not interested. Looping at the lawyer is the real, like, God-tier move there. That is so funny.
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But whatever. Now, hopefully, if they start using AI more to get through school, they won't have as many student loans to be collected on. Yeah, there you go. A practice that has been paused since March of 2020, set to be resumed on May 5th. And then... Man, the Tim Pool thing was really wild. Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt gave a glowing introduction to Tim Pool's addition to the press room.
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And Tim's first question to the administration was asking why news media just lies so much about Trump. Fantastic journalism here from comrade Tim.
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Let's pivot towards RFK and the concerning registry that has been discussed, which is a word you never like to hear. Whenever someone brings up the concept of a registry, it's usually bad.
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I mean, like the idea of like reparenting, I guess, is more. Is deeply problematic.
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You can certainly see them expanding this out to hormone replacement therapy, transgender healthcare. Yes.
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Yeah. Like behavioral improvement centers that are, you could even be part of, you know, like, like community service. Yes.
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They photoshopped a MS-13 tattoo onto his knuckles above a weed leaf tattoo, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. Yeah.
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Yeah, he was arrested, quote-unquote, without proper immigration documents, which you don't carry around when you're a U.S. citizen. Yeah, you're not obliged to... Papers, please. You don't need that. His family brought his Social Security card and birth certificate to court. Eventually, the case against him was dismissed after being held by ICE for 10 days.
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This reminds me of a similar case from this past week, where a U.S. citizen was detained on Wednesday the 16th. This is a 20-year-old born in Georgia, Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez. He was pulled over while driving to work near the Florida border. He doesn't speak much English or Spanish. He speaks an indigenous mind language.
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But he gave his real ID card and social security card over to a state trooper. He was detained and charged with illegally entering the state as a quote unquote unauthorized alien. Similarly, the trooper claims that Lopez Gomez said that he was in the country illegally.
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This is like some kind of communication error or these like law enforcement officers are just like lying or trying to construct like language traps to make someone agree to a statement that admits that they're in the country illegally, which allows them to be detained. He was put into a 24-hour ice hold.
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The next day, a federal judge verified his birth certificate, which was brought by his mother, but claimed to lack the authority to release him, though he was released later Thursday night. And he was arrested under a new Florida law signed by DeSantis last month, which a judge blocked earlier this month on April 4th.
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This basically allows state troopers to act as their state's own border patrol, and it penalizes immigrants who, quote-unquote, knowingly enter or attempt to enter the state after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers, unquote.
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It's like, it's not even... Very basic racial profiling.
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But it's like they're just fucking doing this to everyone. This has happened in other states as well. There's been incidents like this, like the past few months, which have which have increased in frequency since Trump has taken office. Yeah. Let's go on a break and return to talk tariff. Okay, we are back. How's the economy going?
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do not like. OK, Mia, what can you tell us about tariffs this week?
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Well, pre-order your Nintendo Switch 2 right now. Yes. In other news, the Minnesota Attorney General is suing the Trump admin over the executive order about trans women participating in school sports, saying he will, quote, not participate in a shameful bullying. And also says that this order violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
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So we'll see some more court cases over this in the weeks to come. I'd like to talk a little bit about the student crackdowns for Palestine protests, kind of in a different way. We've discussed ICE going after and detaining and deporting and taking away visas and green cards. So unrelated to that side of it,
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On the morning of Wednesday, April 23rd, the FBI served multiple search warrants in southeast Michigan, presumably related to Palestine protests and encampments from the past year. There's also some reporting of law enforcement activity in other states like Pennsylvania, but I'm still waiting to confirm that.
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The press secretary for the Michigan Attorney General confirms investigators executed search warrants for three homes. He said that people were briefly detained during the execution of these warrants, but they were all eventually released. And he noted, quote, there is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants, unquote.
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So these people aren't being investigated like by ICE to get deported necessarily. This is seemingly for other protest activity. A pro-Palestine student group says that these raids happened at around 8 a.m. Quote, early this morning, police and FBI agents raided four residences of University of Michigan pro-Palestine protesters, refusing to show warrants.
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They seized all electronics and a number of personal belongings, unquote. But let's close this episode by returning to my most Stephen Colbert, skibbity Biden segment, Stinky Musk, which is still the worst name I've come up with. Last Tuesday, Elon Musk said that, quote, working for the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done, unquote.
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Musk is moving closer to stepping back from Doge this May, around the time that his special government employee designation is set to expire. Reporting from Washington Post claims that Musk is growing tired of the vicious and unethical attacks from the left, and that is kind of dragging on him.
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With other reports suggesting that Musk is annoying other cabinet members and administration officials more than Trump himself. In fact, just this Wednesday, a few hours before recording, Musk and Bessette were having a pretty intense shouting match in the White House.
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Going forward, Musk says that he plans to work for the government about one to two days a week for the remainder of the Trump presidency so that he can, quote, make sure that the waste and fraud that we've stopped does not come roaring back, unquote.
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He keeps referring to his work at Doge as like being already completed, essentially, like we already found all of the fraud and now we just have to make sure more fraud doesn't happen. We've previously reported on the alleged fraud that he claims to have found and the false numbers up on the Doge site. But it seems like this work really is winding down.
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The Musk-Doge reply to this email with five things you've done this week or else be fired directive has essentially sputtered out. Senior officials did not comply with the core aspects of the directive. It was never really enforced. And the Trump Office of Personal Management later said that this was voluntary and that OPM officials may have never actually ever reported
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read those response emails at all, though a small number of agencies are still requiring compliance with this mandate. And in some fun news, Tesla stock just continues to decline, dropping to half its peak from last December, and anti-Tesla vandalism is potentially spiking the cost of Tesla insurance.
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Tesla had a just disastrous earnings call this Tuesday, April 22nd, showing that Tesla profits have fell 71% over the first three months of the year. The total revenue has decreased 9% compared to 2024, with car sales revenue dropping 20% compared to a year earlier.
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The Tesla CFO stated that, quote, the negative impact of vandalism and unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people had an impact in certain markets, unquote. In a company statement before this earnings call, Tesla claimed that, quote, unquote, a changing political sentiment could impact demand for their product.
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Musk announced that he would be shifting his attention back to Tesla and that his Doge time allocation will, quote unquote, drop significantly. Musk talked tariffs on this earnings call and tried to carefully, like, not bash Trump while stating concerns over the high tariffs, saying, quote, I've been on the record many times as saying I believe lower tariffs are generally a good idea.
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But this decision is fundamentally up to the elected representative of the people being the president of the United States. So, you know, I'll continue to advocate for lower tariffs, but that's all I can do. Unquote. Any thoughts on Musk and Tesla here before we close?
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Well, we reported the news. be reported the news.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. That you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. Got it. It is the human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating everything.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. Got it. It is the human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating sex.
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This is It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. And this episode is about the people who want to make it, being the United States, fall apart even faster, allowing them to install a white supremacist ethnostate, though it kind of feels like that's pretty much already happening.
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This episode is also about the people in government who categorize and classify wannabe terrorists who want the country to collapse faster, and what these changes in categorization methods can tell us about the future of the country.
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I'm Garrison Davis, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, philosopher and comedian Michael Burns of the YouTube channel Michael O. Burns and formerly Wisecrack RIP. How you doing?
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Yeah, that's kind of been my mood the past three months, maybe longer. There's a tad, a tad like liminality, but I don't know if that's just like living in denial and trying to cope. But hey, you know, what's wrong with a little bit of coping?
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Now, unfortunately, this episode that I have prepared today is not a super cheery one for you, Michael. No. Which is maybe kind of appropriate because the reason why I have you on this episode today is because the FBI and the Department of Justice have come up with a new terrorism classification acronym, which name drops the Internet's favorite and sometimes least favorite philosophy, nihilism.
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They're calling these guys nihilistic, violent extremists.
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We will get into this. Do you want to give like a philosophy 101 definition of nihilism? A super well-known and universally agreed upon term that always means the same thing to everybody.
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And I'm not sure how much the FBI agents who are doing these federal court filings have read Nietzsche or the French existentialists and instead are probably using a colloquial definition of nihilism, right? This like, oh, nothing matters, you know, this like apathetic postmodernist like idea to go a little Jordan Peterson-y, right? Yeah.
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Correct. And that's what they're really honing in on. I will read an expanded definition of nihilist violent extremism. This is from a federal court filing dated March 18th, 2025.
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Nihilist violent extremists are individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.
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Nihilist violent extremists work individually or as a part of a network with these goals of destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors. Now, this is where it's going to get into some kind of weirder stuff that we will kind of explain later.
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They have like a second definition here, quote, nihilist violent extremists, both individually and as a network, systematically and methodically target vulnerable populations across the United States and the globe.
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They frequently use social media communication platforms to connect with individuals and desensitize them to violence, among other things, breaking down societal norms regarding engaging in violence, normalizing the possession, production, and sharing of gore materials, and otherwise corrupting and grooming those individuals towards committing future acts of violence."
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And that kind of outlines some of the strategy of these groups. The groups that they're kind of going to mention here, I've been doing freelance research on for about four years now. I've been trying to publish a few articles on these guys over the years, but it's always tricky. And we will get to kind of the darker corners of that in a sec.
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But let's first kind of talk about what this new term, this NVEs, Nihilist Violent Extremists, what this is kind of replacing in the FBI lexicon. Now, it seems that this term is being used in place of two previous FBI terrorism categories. This is from a November 2020 FBI bulletin. Quote, Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism.
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This threat encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment, including opposition to perceived economic, social or racial hierarchies or perceived government overreach, negligence or illegitimacy. Whew.
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not the hatred of society and wanting to collapse it.
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Child sexual abuse materials. Yeah. Come up a little bit. Yeah.
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Totally, because there is like political nihilists in like the Russian tradition and more recently in like the American anarchist tradition or the Greek anarchist tradition where they believe in this like idea of like negation and trying to like negate government institutions.
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That's actually what they're going for. And I have a lot of mixed opinions on this term because I think this term is trying to describe a group that does kind of defy classification. But I think the use of the nihilist term is also not good. So I'm kind of in a rock and a hard place here as someone who does a lot of extremism research.
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Now, the other term that the FBI is probably seeking to replace, at least in part, with this new nihilism definition is racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism. This is like your white supremacists, your neo-Nazis.
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The FBI defines it as, quote, "...this threat encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from bias, often relating to race or ethnicity, held by the actor against others or a given population group."
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racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists purport to use both political and religious Justifications to support their racially or ethnically based ideological objectives and criminal activities This was the group that saw like a massive a massive explosion in growth the past 10 years really starting around 2016 to 2017 With you know the neo-nazi mass shooting epidemic especially around like 2017 to 2019 and
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This is the most lethal group, and it grew exponentially during that period. And we're kind of seeing some of these groups start to reform now. Now, there's been some reporting that this anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism, which I'm just going to say agave, which is the acronym, which does make me a little bit hungry for a glucose syrup, but it's fine.
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Now, there's been some reporting that state agave is specifically like a Biden-era term. But it actually predates the Biden presidency and was in use under Trump. In fact, a lot of the internal FBI reforms that are being reported on right now are actually undoing changes and counterterrorism strategies that started under the first Trump presidency. But we'll get more on that later.
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We're going to go on an ad break real quick and return to talk about a gruesome act of violence in Wisconsin last month. All right, we are back. I'm going to get more into how the government is using this term and like what they are applying it to, what they're applying the nihilist violent extremism label to.
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Earlier this year, a Wisconsin teen male named Nikita Kasap killed his parents in an attempt to gain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carry out a plot to assassinate President Trump and accelerate the collapse of the United States. I'm going to read a quote from a federal criminal complaint filed last month.
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Quote, on March 3rd, 2025, county sheriffs obtained a search warrant for Cassap's cell phone. During the review, they identified material on the phone related to, quote unquote, the order of nine angles. The sheriff's review of the phone identified possible usernames for Cassap, including Accelerationist 14 and Awoken, unquote.
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Now, Michael, are you unfortunate enough to be familiar with the Order of Nine Angles? I am not. So this is a group that was originally based in the UK and now is primarily active in Eastern Europe, though there are branches or spinoffs called Nexions in the United States. This is a group that is kind of hard to define. People often call it a Nazi Satanist group.
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I think it's more accurate to call them a white supremacist occultic group who essentially try to cultivate evil for the sake of evil. They're like a left-hand path occult group that has orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks, especially through radicalizing U.S. soldiers.
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At this point, they're pretty mythic with their writing and tactics leaving a strong, lingering presence across the left-hand path fascist occult milieu. We also have a reference to quote-unquote accelerationism here, which is similar to nihilism. It's like this philosophical term which has kind of been warped and changed via people's application of it in politics.
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And specifically kind of the way that we're going to be using this word here is this idea of trying to like accelerate the collapse of the country, mostly to install like a white supremacist ethno state after the country has collapsed. This is how most Nazis use the term, even though it has a slightly different like cultural background with the work of Nick Land and Mark Fisher.
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So this federal criminal complaint alleges that Kasip was communicating with people on the messaging app Telegram. And these people were possibly in Ukraine and or Russia. And these people helped him plan this attack. The FBI found TikTok messages on his phone where he discussed the struggle of telling his friends that he, quote unquote, follows 09A teachings. That's order of nine angles.
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And he discussed a previous FBI visit to his home in 2023. In other exchanges on TikTok, he shared information with a user named Nihilus about how to find Nazi telegram channels. I'm going to read through some of this chat transcript. Nihilus, hey dude, do you know any telegram groups where Niners, that's O-9-A, and Drex can interact and exchange info? Awoken, that's Cassip.
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Sorry, no, I'm mostly in NSWP telegram groups, LOL. If you do find any, it'd be nice if you tell me. Nihilus, what's WP? Awoke, wikipedia.org slash national underscore socialism underscore white power. Nihilus, oh, white power, cool. Awoken, do you know any 098 telegram groups? Nihilus. Oh, not a group, but a channel. You can find documents there. Awoken. All right. Send. Awoken.
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Can you send me the link to the account? Awoken. It says I can't access the message. Nihilus. How can I do that? Wait a second. Awoken. Here's my Telegram username. Acceleration is 14. Nihilus. I sent a message. So there you go. That's, uh...
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Man, just... There is some later Telegram messages that are archived in this complaint as well, where at Accelerationist says, what country do you think will get the blame for this? Meaning his planned attack. An unknown user replied, Russia will be blamed for it. This is the goal.
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Accelerationist said, quote, when the time comes for me to send my manifesto to you so you can spread it online, should it be a PDF? Also... Sorry.
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I just like that when the context of all that, they're discussing file types. And also, you won't anyhow change or modify the manifesto, the unknown user replies, write it on a piece of paper and take a picture. Wow. The FBI personnel performing the preliminary review saw images of a three-page document titled Accelerate the Collapse. The images are screen grabs displayed on a phone.
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And these images were created on February 28th, 2025. This document is the manifesto referred to by at accelerationist. The manifesto calls for the assassination of the president of the United States in order to foment a political revolution in the United States to, quote unquote, save the white race from, quote unquote, Jewish controlled politicians.
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The third page of the document contains images of Adolf Hitler with text that reads, quote, Hail Hitler, hail the white race, hail victory. Now, from what I can read of this manifesto, it's pretty basic. It's heavily plagiarized, like most of these kind of white supremacist accelerationist manifestos are.
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It talks about how Jews control white countries and are promoting white genocide and degeneracy. It talks about the need to, quote unquote, collapse Jewish occupied governments. The manifesto states that his motivation for wanting to kill Trump was to sow chaos and raise public awareness that, quote, assassinations and accelerating the collapse are possible things to do, unquote.
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Not that possible since he's arrested and did not accelerate the collapse, but... He also advocates that people unable to commit to taking direct action instead make connections with other white supremacists and grow a network to take over the country once America collapses. He recommends the writing of Nazi accelerationists, including James Mason, who wrote the influential Nazi book Siege.
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and the Terrorgram Collective, a group of white supremacists from around the world who organize on the messaging platform Telegram to share guides on how to do terrorism. He also recommends the writings of former Atomwaffen members, an American accelerationist group, writing, quote, there is much to learn from the successes and mistakes of Atomwaffen.
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I think it's worth noting that Adam Wathman was also either like infiltrated or partially co-opted and inspired by some 09A teachings. This is kind of how the more bizarre and occultic influence of 09A seeped more into the kind of general American accelerationist Nazi milieu. This was like in like 2018.
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Now, Kasip advises that if the reader of the manifesto is already, like, pilled, that you should just skip the theory and just read practical how-to guides for terrorism and bomb-making, since, quote-unquote, there is no political solution. Huge amounts of violence will be required. Long past the days where we can vote for a Hitler to save us. White revolution is the only solution, unquote.
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Which I guess I'm kind of desensitized to this sort of stuff. In fact, I just find this slightly funny considering kind of the victory lap that like Stephen Miller and like white nationalists are currently having in the government where many of them do think they can just vote for a Hitler to save us and that Hitler may already be in office forever.
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Even Trump is not extreme enough for a lot of these guys. They really go places. Now, Kasap was coordinating with multiple Telegram users, likely in Ukraine and Russia, on how to build a drone that can drop an explosive and paid some individuals for some of the required materials and also had a plan to flee to Ukraine after his attack that he was coordinating with Ukrainian Nazis on Telegram.
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Tough look for Telegram. It's always a tough look for Telegram. Not great. Not a great platform. Pretty much only used by these guys. Yeah, no, he was talking about how he probably needs to, quote unquote, brush up on my Russian. Oh, yeah, definitely. Before he flees to Ukraine after trying to kill the president. You know, you download Duolingo after you do that. That's right. That's right.
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He had plans to meet up with 10 people with similar beliefs in Ukraine. My mind is just so blown by all this.
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Now, on March 10th, sheriffs interviewed a classmate of Kassop, and the classmate told them that Kassop would send, quote-unquote, gore edit videos that includes flashing gore, body gore imagery, and war images put to Russian music sent via Snapchat. This is a common tactic done by these sort of, like, teenage extremists.
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This is a whole sub-genre of video that has changed and altered in aesthetic multiple times. Frankly, if you spend enough time on Twitter now, in the comments of blue-check neo-Nazis, you can find some of these edits where they have techno fast-paced, sometimes Russian music set to glorified images of Rome or Nazi Germany or a large variety of stuff. But the gore genre is specifically unique to the
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to the 09A, like, occultic Nazi branch because they think that, like, viewing these images, like, increases your power level of, like, evil, right? It's a very video game view of, like, of, like, spiritual development of, like, you have to, you have to, like, raise your evil stat by looking at gore. And this will make you more able to commit, like, big acts of violence.
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Correct. Correct. And that's like a big part of their praxis. This is why they send this type of stuff to a lot of like kids on the Internet, because they hope that if they desensitize these kids, it'll be easier to convince them to then do acts of violence themselves.
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The cast up told his classmate that he intended to kill his parents by shooting them, but could not because he didn't have access to a gun.
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He later told his classmate that he would befriend someone with a gun and then steal it, and told him that he was in contact with a male in Russia via telegram, and that they were both plotting to overthrow the government of the United States and assassinate President Trump. Kasap told the classmate that when he saw 10 consecutive attacks in the news, it would have to be him.
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And get those laughs in now because the next section is much more dark. Oh, no. Because it's funny to laugh at a guy like this who mostly failed. I mean, he did kill his parents. That is bad.
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Okay. Oh, no. He did kill his parents. He did flee to a different state. He wasn't smart enough, though. Police tracked him on him and his parents' cell phone and their car. who he still had with him. So again, not a very good attacker, I guess.
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But no, this kid murdered his parents, sat in the house with their decomposing bodies for 12 days before trying to carry out the rest of his attack on the United States. So yeah, though he did not succeed in his larger goals, these people still absolutely do get groomed into doing violence.
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And this is something that happens at a pretty frequent basis, honestly, to the point where these types of things don't make giant headlines anymore. They would have maybe in 2017. But now a lot of journalists are desensitized to this. And because it happens so frequently, it is less newsworthy, which is a very unfortunate place to be in for a country.
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Do you know what else is unfortunate, Michael? I don't know. What's that? Having to pivot to ads, actually. Necessary evil. It's way better than killing your parents. Yes. Yes. I will go on record. I will go on record. Eat me, Gita board. Sorry. I love ads, actually. As a heads up, the next section will reference online exploitation and child sexual abuse material. All right, we are back.
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Let's get more depressing, unfortunately. But I think we will find a way to turn this around. Well, not like in an optimistic way, but in a way that it's like useful. We'll learn something together. So at the end of this section of this complaint that attempts to describe Kasip's collapse-driven political ideology is the appearance of this new term, nihilistic violent extremists, right?
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Now, this was actually the second time this term has appeared in court documents. The earliest appearance of this term was in a March sentencing memo for a child sexual abuse material case first filed in November of 2024, which was linked to the 764 Child Extortion and Exploitation Network.
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Ken Kleppenstein, who first reported on the use of the nihilism term, missed this first appearance and attributed the origin to the Kassop case. Michael, are you similarly unfortunate enough to be aware of 764?
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Yeah, I mean, it has been for a lot of people. I've been doing extremism research, and I've been aware of these guys for about four years now. The FBI, I think, first did their public announcement, like warning parents about this in 2023. 764 is like a network of groups that operate either on Discord, Telegram, Instagram, social media apps.
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They're kind of inspired by some aspects of 09A, but they are much more focused on the production and distribution of child sexual abuse materials and trying to manipulate a groom and blackmail and extort minors into producing this material. A lot of it's done by other minors too. Like a lot of this is teens targeting other teens with adults kind of helping this process along.
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It's a pretty big problem. There's been some good reporting on it in Wired and The Guardian the past few years if you want to read more. Now, this March sentencing memo for the 764 case describes 764 and related groups as, quote, nihilist violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and engage with other extremists abroad.
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764 Network's accelerationist goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the United States government. Members of 764 work in concert with one another towards a common purpose of destroying a civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, including minors.
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Now, I think this definition may be a bit too generalizing, but it's not incorrect. This is correct in what the explicit goals of this group are, maybe not just every individual member of this group. But I think it would be a mistake to kind of dismiss this definition as outlandishly grandiose, right?
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It kind of, it calls into like mind, you know, like conspiracy theory, like framing, because it sounds very like extravagant and complicated. And it kind of is, but it's also like simple. It's people trying to automate the process of producing and distributing illegal materials.
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But I do believe it is a mistake to completely dismiss this, both in terms of like the government trying to ascribe political motive for the distribution of these materials and also the ideological justifications held by some members of these groups. Now, there have been two more 764 cases from April of 2025 that have used the nihilist violent extremism designation in court documents.
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Now, part of kind of the struggle with this is like Ken Klippenstein reported, quote, it sounds to me like some demented philosophical justification for just being a pedophile.
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And like, it is, but that doesn't mean the political motivations shouldn't be discounted because those motivations impact how they operate, how these groups spread, which targets they pick, and other political actions members might take, like mass shootings, targeting racial minorities, targeting LGBTQ individuals.
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So yeah, this is kind of why I push back a little bit on this kind of dismissive tone towards this larger, almost conspiratorial kind of matrix put onto groups like 764. Now, part of the tricky thing with use of this new nihilism term is that it's being used to rope in a variety of horrific incidents under a singular nebulous category, right? So let's take the case of Kassop here.
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Kassop, the guy who killed his parents in a plot to collapse the United States, is a relatively bog-standard neo-Nazi accelerationist with seemingly no direct ties to 764 activity besides an interest in 09A, which was just one of the inspirations that influenced 764 as it evolved into its own complex machine about five years ago.
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But Kassop openly admitted to being radicalized by Nazism and the white power movement online. And yet in his criminal complaint contains an expanded version of the nihilist violent extremism definition, which is literally copy and pasted from a child sexual abuse material sentencing memo from five days before. So they just use this same thing despite it not really applying.
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It's reading, quote, individuals are targeted online often through synchronized group chats. Nihilist violent extremists frequently conduct coordinated extortions of individuals by blackmailing them so they comply with demands of the network.
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These demands vary and include but are not limited to self-mutilation, online or in-person sexual acts, harms to animals, sexual exploitation of siblings and others, acts of violence, threats of violence, suicide, and murder. So very, very dark stuff.
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The definition goes on to state how vulnerable individuals are targeted and members of the group attempt to gain notoriety throughout the network and spread fear among those targeted individuals for the purpose of accelerating the downfall of society and otherwise achieving the goal of nihilist violent extremists.
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So while that does accurately describe groups like 764, it doesn't really relate to the case of CASA. It's tricky because a lot of these 764 guys are also Nazis, and a lot of Nazis are also pedophiles. Some of these guys start off as, like, evil, occultic pedophiles who associate with Nazism because it's a pretty universal symbol of evil.
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And sometimes it's the vice versa, where they start off as, like, an anti-Semitic right-winger, a Nazi, or a fascist, who then associate with this weird pedo-occult stuff for a variety of reasons, like spiritual, perverted pleasure, or tactical network building. Usually it's a mix. Yeah.
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Klippenstein writes, "...the warrant alleges Kasip was in touch with the Order of Nine Angles, a satanic neo-Nazi group that espouses accelerationism, a fancy word for the belief that destabilizing the social order allows for radical change. That is pretty heady stuff to ascribe to a 17-year-old and ends up having the feeling of an episode of Altered Carbon."
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And I kind of like reject this dismissive framing. Like, no, these 17 year olds are thinking about this. They are getting convinced of this material online. That is the motivation for it. This isn't like a science fiction thing. This is real. And it's pretty common among like extremists this age. There's a lot of young teenage male extremists. That's kind of their main demographic.
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And this type of stuff is popular. Like this is at least popular within this small group of extremists. So, yeah, it is a little bit heady, but this is what they are genuinely thinking about. It's not incorrect to, like, ascribe that to them. Cassette openly admitted to this connection.
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But they could be interpreted as reacting to a general, like, passive nihilist culture with this form of, like, pseudo-political nihilism. This attempt at, like, social negation, like total systems collapse. But, like, even still, they aren't total, like, political nihilists since they have a very clear system of hierarchy that they want the current world order replaced with.
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Though these individuals may be seen as, like, victims of nihilism in, like, the Nietzschean sense. Yeah. Now, like my main problem with the nihilist violent extremism term is that it's so depoliticized and like in a way that's rife for political abuse.
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This term can be used to cover what the government deems as violence stemming from like apathy, from frustration with society, as well as like anti-tech or anti-civilization politics. And this is all coming from, like, top down at the new Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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For years, Kash Patel has closely associated with QAnon, has helped the legal defense campaigns for January 6th insurrectionists, which included Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters. And now, as head of the FBI, he's investigating FBI agents who worked those January 6th cases.
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Joe Kent, the new director of the National Counterterrorism Center, has made media appearances with Nick Fuentes and neo-Nazi YouTuber David Carlson. He hired Proud Boys to consult in his failed congressional campaign and his friends with Patriot prayer leader Joey Gibson. Kent has repeatedly called for the FBI to investigate Antifa.
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The co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, Heidi Baric, has said that Patel's QAnon links and Deputy Director Dan Bongino's public conspiracism and bigotry make taking the threat of far-right extremism, quote-unquote, impossible for these two men.
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She says, quote, I think it makes it very unlikely that the far-right will continue to be seen as the threat it actually is in terms of hate crimes and domestic terrorism. All of this marks a huge departure from the first Trump administration, where the FBI, for the first time, declared white supremacy the country's greatest domestic terrorism threat.
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Facts about violence and its perpetuators probably won't matter this time around, unquote. And these changes are already taking place. An old counterterrorism strategy guide was removed from the White House website in January. A current FBI agent was quoted in Vanity Fair as saying, quote, the key is the domestic intelligence operations guide.
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If they change that, Patel will be able to shift domestic terrorism investigations away from the accelerationists and the right-wing street fighters and towards things like BLM and Antifa, unquote. Patel has cut the domestic terrorism office staffing and reassigned agents and intelligence analysts.
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with new senior FBI officials reportedly considering to disband the entire domestic terrorism operations section. In addition, the FBI has discontinued their previous domestic terrorism tracking tool, where they tag relevant investigations to identify and track trends for terrorism probes across the country.
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Sources for outlets like Reuters say that changes to the agency will reduce counterterrorism operations against far-right and racially motivated extremists and militias.
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Jacob Ware, a domestic terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters, quote, there is a broader desire, I think, within the administration to, at best, ignore data and put their head in the sand, and at worst, to realign resources away from this battle, unquote.
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A spokesperson for Ohio Representative Jim Jordan told Reuters that the termination of the domestic terrorism tracking tool is a, quote, great step in the right direction of returning the FBI to its primary crime fighting mission, unquote.
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Representative Jordan previously in 2023 ran a congressional panel that alleged the FBI terrorism case tagging tool was being improperly used to target conservatives after January 6th. Three former FBI agents testified at the Republican-led panel, and two of those former agents admitted to being paid by Patel, who at the time was not director of the FBI.
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He was just a right-wing influencer after being kicked out of the government after the first Trump administration. We've also seen the Joint Terrorism Task Force largely shift their efforts towards immigration enforcement, helping ICE with deportations, and the so-called wave of Tesla terrorism. And, like, the other thing is that this new nihilist violent extremism term isn't just replacing agave.
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It's not just replacing the anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism. Because the agave term itself has three subcategories. as referenced in an FBI document that outlines domestic terrorism activity from 2015 to 2019. This includes militia violent extremists, anarchist violent extremists, and sovereign citizen violent extremists.
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And even in addition to those three, there's actually a newer subclassification from 2023 called Agave Other, which really isn't a great term at all. This is the problem with trying to use these tracking and tagging tools is that they can get very convoluted, but now they've seemingly collapsed all of these and are just using the term nihilism.
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they can frame this as like a rejection of society. The same way, like there's been talk that they're going to try to use this label to explain cases like United Healthcare CEO shooting, the arson attack at Josh Shapiro's house. They're going to be using this term to apply to kind of any act that they see is like contrary to like society and civilization.
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and anything that's stemming from frustration with society. And that's the huge problem. And in doing so, they're shifting focus away from right-wing militias who do the majority of actual lethal violence.
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When these reports from the past five years talk about militia violent extremism, it talks about how there is an increased lethal threat from these militias to law enforcement and government personnel.
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due to factors related to grievances from the perceptions of fraud in the 2020 election, government measures related to COVID-19, and legislation to restrict firearms or expand immigration or manage public land. And these are the people that do the vast majority of planned attacks or executed attacks. This report for 2023 outlines two attempted bombings by militia violent extremists in early 2021.
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one by an individual targeted against a data center thought to provide services to the FBI and CIA, the other by two people against a state Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, California, as well as the quote-unquote dozens of militia violent extremists arrested for their involvement in January 6th.
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So even though we're going to take the gas off of groups like those, as well as racially motivated violent extremists, this definition can still include a lot of anarchist violent extremists, which the FBI admits in a 2023 report are most likely to engage in non-lethal criminal activity and just impact law enforcement operations.
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That's the big issue here. Like the Trump government still wants a term that focuses on what some people would like colloquially refer to as like accelerationist terrorism. And that does encompass some of the extremist violence from the weirder corners of the far right, like in the case of CASAP, but as well as like leftist or post-left, like anarchist extremism.
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But in the administration's mind, the previous terms for this were tainted by crackdowns on right-wing or patriot movements after January 6th. And like the nihilist violent extremism term is not replacing the term terrorism necessarily, like the way Klippenstein suggested in his article.
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The word terrorism appears frequently in these very documents that we've been discussing, nor does the term terrorism have, quote unquote, limitations in law, as Klippenstein said, that like prevent its use in political prosecution. If anything, it carries kind of special powers of punishment, which can be over applied to increase sentences, sway juries and strip rights.
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We've seen bills to label Antifa as terrorists introduced this year, the whole Tesla terrorism thing. And historically, like the use of terrorism has been used as a repression tool in Atlanta's Stop Cop City movement, which similarly has like a climate focus, like you mentioned.
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And what this new nihilism term lets them do is it allows the Trump administration to signal to their base that they aren't going to be going after right-wing militia-style groups anymore, not anti-government, anti-authority extremists. Instead, they're just going to target zany weirdos who want to destroy society.
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It's a looser, more flexible term that can be applied to a much wider swath of people. The kind of final thing I want to note here is that for groups like 764, we really don't have a good term for them. Some people have defended this nihilist term specifically for groups like 764 since that was where it originally appeared. And it is true that these groups kind of defy classic
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Some of them are certainly motivated by racial bias. In the case of CASAP, who's like tied with 09A, but not specifically 764. But a lot of these other 764 guys who are mostly in it for the pedophilia still do have anti-government ideologies that they are roped in with.
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Now, I have seen a few alternative terms lofted by certain independent researchers that don't really do a good job, but are gaining influence under Trump's government. There's this like freelance researcher named Becca or Bix Reitz, who mostly operates on Twitter. She's proposed the term satanic accelerationism or ESAC. Not good. And this kind of outlines my problems with this person's research.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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Now, because all of the legitimate extremism researchers have kind of moved away from Twitter and are just on blue sky now, people like this have like exploded in influence under Elon's shepherding of Twitter. And like this, this person just spreads like satanic panic style writing that appeals to conservative Christian audiences.
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She boasts about how many mutuals she has with these Nazi terrorists. She posts on Rumble. She went on InfoWars. So that kind of tells you everything you need to know about this person. And a big part of her work is trying to downplay the right-wing and white supremacist influence in extremism.
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She excitedly posted, quote, the FBI has coined a new term for this type of individual, nihilist violent extremists. This makes me so happy because it indicates that law enforcement are listening to researchers on the ground and are no longer considering these groups neo-Nazis or quote-unquote white supremacists
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So, yeah, this is a big part of this push is appealing to these types of people who don't want their weird pedofreaks to be labeled as right-wing, even though they all are pretty far right-wing terrorists in most cases. This researcher also falsely linked Kassup with a Ukrainian Nazi occult group called MKU.
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She later retracted this claim on Substack, but left the original viral tweet up online because, hey, engagement. Her Substack post reads, quote, unquote. This is not how you do extremism reporting. This is not how you do journalism. But this does demonstrate kind of the problem with this term is that, yeah, groups like this do need a different term, maybe like accelerationist violent extremists.
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That's a term. You could use that if you're going to remove all the other acronyms. But certainly the nihilism label just kind of complicates things and allows for the targeting of just a massive swath of the population that could become like political prosecutions that then get linked to these child sexual abuse material cases. Okay, that's my script, Michael.
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How do you feel about that info dump? I'm so sorry, truly.
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Well, I'm excited to usher in the new wave of Kierkegaardian violent extremists who are going to usher in... Don't get me on a list!
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I am actually sorry that this went on nearly double the length than which I thought it had planned. After such a depressing episode, I'm going to ask a kind of an odd question. What philosophy books do you think people should read in this political moment? Because a lot of people are approaching me with like, how do I stay sane? How do I stay... How do I like...
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keep going when things feel so bad. And for me, I've always turned to philosophy. I've been recommending different books to different friends. And I'm kind of interested in like what you have to say about kind of what philosophy can like offer us in these times of like existential torment.
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We don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time.
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And it's something that I feel like some leftists kind of get trapped in or it's kind of a two sides thing is some people just get fully lost in like
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the labyrinth of theory and the other people get lost in trying to constantly reinvent or like make for the first time stuff that already exists right and i think there's a really careful balance between like reading some stuff so that you can like know what's going on and not feel the need to try to like you cause every you know philosophical evolution to come about via your own thought
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You're not alone. Like other people have done this and you should still like think for yourself and still compare. But people have thought about this type of stuff before. People have been in bad political situations before. And it's useful to know what they've thought.
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And like this is like, you know, my work is mostly looking at like current events and like trying to track like extremism and like what the government is doing. And, you know, more information always helps me choose how to navigate in the world. That's why I do episodes like this. And I think philosophy is just one other side of that.
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Unless you have anything else to say, do you want to talk about where people can find you online and your new YouTube channel?
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thing i'm excited about on uh on like depression and capitalism and mental health so yeah and i'm on all most of the social medias i'm just michael burns or michael o burns relatively easy to find uh on most places well thank you so much michael for joining me in this dive through the darkest depths of the internet and uh the extremism milieu that is festering in america and abroad thanks for having me
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. It is a human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating everything.
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I'm carrying on our Vegas tradition. And I've moved into gambling. Oh, you're gambling now, huh? Not actually, but instead of doing something stupid for Inauguration Day, me and my friends got together and all played anarchist poker. So that was fun. I lost about $10 to my friends. So that's fair. How often did you say, I hardly know her? Like about four times.
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Yeah, that's the right amount of time. But we also got quite drunk. By the time we started our second game, I was also dressed like Data from The Next Generation, complete with silver face paint the entire time, and a poker visor. So that was how I spent yesterday.
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Well, and even last J20, there was a large, large radical contingent. And those people are similarly sitting out. And when you're looking towards the next few months, looking at what kind of ICE raids are going to happen, looking at what's going to happen for reproductive health care, transgender health care, people are making the calculation that...
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It does not make sense to needlessly throw yourself against the walls of the state when we can stick together and see what happens and prepare for all of those other things that are going to actually impact you and people that you know seriously. And it sucks to be stuck in that reactive position. And there's things you can do proactively.
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But going outside and yelling in front of a fence probably isn't going to do any of those things. It's probably not going to help the people who are going to need help in the next few weeks. And people are understanding that. And it's leading to people reacting quite differently than what they did eight years ago. I agree.
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Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's what's in part what lost the election is that is that general attitude and that conception of them throughout the country. And yeah, getting your little like snide remarks during Hegg's confirmation hearing might make you feel good and might generate a good clip for social media. But is that actually going to stop him from getting into the cabinet position?
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One of the interesting things when like looking back at the last version of Trump's J20 is you did have, you know, these large, large militant groups, you know, what would later probably be dubbed Antifa by the media. But there was there was a presence in the street. And this time around, really the only sizable militant presence in the street was like the first return of the Proud Boys. Yeah.
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Did you stumble across a gaggle of black and yellow clad militants in the street? Yellow and black.
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I have some friends right now who are in the D.C. airport, and it is chud central over there.
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It sounds quite bad. I saw a friend posted about all of the Trump merch, and they were sitting next to two individuals debating race science in the airport terminal. Oh, God. So that is the vibes of the D.C. airport as of as of Tuesday, the day after the inauguration.
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But yeah, like the return of the Proud Boys is like one one of the big things that I think we're going to we're going to see these next few weeks is the amount of far right militias or or these, you know, more like street gang type groups who have been so emboldened by by Trump essentially giving them permission to do whatever they want to now, now that they know that they're not going to face any kind of like real legal consequences.
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repercussions for carrying out whatever actions they want to against people of color, queer people, et cetera.
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Yeah. Do you want to talk about what the Proud Boys were actually like up to on Monday?
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I mean, the situation has continued to be proven correct consistently. The levels of recuperation for even, like, your, like, diametrically opposed, like, militant enemy side is just fucking crazy. Mm-hmm.
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The fact that he's in this position where he can do something like that on stage and it actually doesn't matter is so much more frightening to me than Elon Musk doing a very low-motor control version of the salute when he's wrapped up in some excitement and he's trying to meme to his fans on 4chan. The fact that he's even just allowed to do that and it doesn't actually matter.
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This will not affect him in any way. is more what's interesting to me. Because yes, we've all known that he's been a Nazi for quite a while. He's shared things that are essentially Nazi race science on Twitter before. He has engaged with extremely anti-Semitic conspiracy theories before. And the largest anti-Semitism org in the country has completely capitulated to these people. Oh my god.
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So like they've hollowed out everything that's like supposed to be like, you know, the institutional blockages, whether that's, you know, places like the Washington Post, whether that's literally all of the tech companies, the degree to which like everyone has cozied up to Trump, which is also like very different from 2016. Exactly.
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Everyone was like fairly like united institutionally was united against Trump. And, you know, the same way we like we don't see, you know, people out in the streets, you the actual institutional powers have decided to, instead of actually trying to fight this guy, they're going to try to see how friendly they can be. How much can they get out of this? There's this resignation.
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And I don't know how long that'll last. I'm not sure if once Trump becomes president, the establishment figure that he's been deriding for the past few years. Once he falls back into that zone, if we're going to see more resistance to him from institutional levels, but you can't count on it. And the degree to which it is different from 2016 is worth remembering.
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A phrase me and Robert talk about sometimes is the forever 2016. The fact that it feels like we've never really left 2016. Everyone kind of acts like we're still in 2016. This is such... load-bearing year on our entire cultural consciousness. But the fact is, we aren't in 2016 anymore. And you can't act like we are. You actually have to move on from that.
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And we're starting to see more of that in certain corners. You see some of that among some of the radicals, some of the anarchists, as well as the tech companies and the CEOs and the media companies. They're just changing the degree to which they're moving away from their 2016 mode.
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Yeah, there's going to be a degree to which people's masks come off more than usual. I mean, I think certainly this next Pride Month will be interesting to see how people change from Pride Month 2022 or even Pride Month 2017.
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I mean, it's certainly, you know, lots of people who I surround myself with are, you know, looking towards ways to take control of like their own bodies and stop relying like wholly on any kind of government, government, uh, like agency or, or model for that, as well as doing a lot of, a lot of reading on the old, like, uh, anti deportation, anti ice resistance, uh,
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from years and years ago, not just from the Trump era, but from the stuff way before.
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If we're not gonna be out in the streets doing slightly mindless protest where you're marching in circles, you can use that time to instead educate yourself and build connections with people and read about these things that may become more and more important to know, at least so you have an understanding of history as the next four years start happening quite quickly.
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Yeah, and like the same things won't work, but you also need to understand the things that didn't work last time. And it's good to know the things that did. It's important to have that understanding so you don't feel like you're having to reinvent the wheel every single time. And that type of generational knowledge sometimes is really tricky to pass down in these sorts of spaces. And it doesn't.
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And sometimes it requires a degree of initiative to actually seek out that information on your own. The internet's great and terrible. But it has a vast catalog of history. Yeah.
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it's also it's also not trying to dunk it's not trying to create like a viral moment it's like genuinely upsetting to them to get like reminded of like what it means to be human yeah and like maybe that's more important than trying to get your like katie porter top 10 funniest moments in congress like a compilation
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Well, no, but I live in Georgia. They live there now. And as someone who lives in Georgia, the only people that I think should be deported back to New Jersey are the Costco guy and his kid. Get them out. Send them back.
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Like, see how you deal with that, Danny boy? No, it was, I think, the most useful thing I've seen yet. Yeah. It's still, like, largely symbolic, but, like... At least someone took a big public risk, you know?
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Yeah, and I've seen everything from like, oh, he realizes he was wrong, to he realizes the Empire is the disease, or just he realizes the disease got out of control more than they had realized.
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I also think there's something, like, there's a lot of agency in the choice to, like, I'm done, but I'm not going to make that decision for this other person. For Cassian, yeah. Yeah. But, I don't know. Like, it scanned to me. I do like thinking that in this last scene, as we're, like, watching these last bits of all our characters, you know, not only, as people have pointed out, is...
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Cassian going to be dead in like two days, along with Ben Mendelsohn and shortly thereafter, Grand Moff Tarkin. But like all the other stuff that's canonically going down, like right right as fucking Clea sees that first sunrise, like you have to imagine Han Solo somewhere is doing a line off of like a space prostitute. in some sleazy bar. It's like 4 a.m. in the morning where he is.
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He hasn't slept in days. Luke Skywalker's looking at his aunt and uncle being like, well, they're never going to be lit on fire, obviously. Just beautiful.
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Although I also love, if you'll notice, he's with the wife of the guy they married their daughter off to. And Skolden, you have to assume, has gotten purged at this point because they realized that he had been funneling funds to the rebellion. But I do like we even get that this is the only little private rebellion that he can manage right now. He's fucking this guy's wife.
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Yep. All right. Well, I think that's our episode. Yep. Bye everybody.
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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
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Yeah, except for, yeah, I mean, sure. All the fucking time. All the time it changes. Yeah, except for all the changes.
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Yeah, I mean, the most important part doesn't change, which is most things in proper place at right time, right? That's what determines war winning. The things that matter are what change.
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Also, what doesn't change, not great fun for the most part, not an enjoyable way to spend your time. Not enjoyable except for the chunk of people who tend to make most of the calls.
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Yeah, we'll be talking about Yemen a little bit. Yeah, man.
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Yeah, we don't need it. We don't need to debate Rommel right now. What we do need to do is throw to ads that Erwin Rommel of the podcast industry.
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Yeah. Well, speaking of war being bad, let's talk about what's going on in Yemen. So if you remember from the last quarter or so of the Biden administration, after Israel launched their reprisal attacks to October 7th on Gaza,
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the Houthis, which is a, depending on your stance, either the legitimate government of Yemen or a rebel group in Yemen, you know, the international community stance is a rebel group. The Houthis stance is different. Yeah. Started launching a series of missile attacks, both aimed at Israel and aimed at shipping in the Gulf of Aden, right?
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In order to disrupt, because a significant amount of the world's trade goes through there. This took a number of forms. They have ballistic missiles. Some of them are indigenous, by which I mean made by the Houthis, oftentimes using stocks that were captured from the military and government of Yemen previously that they supplanted in a lot of areas.
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And other times using missiles that were given to them by Iran. Yeah. Right. So it's a mix of tactics. They have also used drones and they have also landed troops in order to capture bulk freighters, including one called the Galaxy Leader. And I think 2023 that was full of cars. And their claim was that it was a British aircraft. vessel.
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And obviously the Brits had been helping to arm and support Israel. The vessel was actually registered in Lebanon. However, whenever we get into discussions about like whose vessel is whose, none of that, none of what is registered matters. Vessels are registered all over the place for a variety of nothing. It's always nonsense. That means nothing. It means nothing.
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Nothing in the entire world matters less to the reality of a situation than where the vessel is registered. I'm not saying that justifies or doesn't what the Houthis did. I'm just saying it does not matter where the vessel is registered. The ship was owned by a Lebanon-based company, but also given the nature of capitals, it doesn't matter all that much.
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Now, what also doesn't matter is that in January of this year, the Houthis freed the captain of that ship and they made an announcement that they would limit further attacks to vessels flagged as Israeli or owned by Israeli individuals or entities. Right. Now, that also doesn't mean a lot, right?
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Because the nature of international trade means that there are a lot of, you know, you could basically argue if you're the Houthis, well, this is owned by a multinational corporation who owns companies in Israel or who has heavy investments in companies in Israel. They are four, right? Right. As a result, you know, the Houthis continue doing the Houthi stuff. And Trump...
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saw them as kind of a convenient target, a convenient place to flex his military muscles. And there were some people within the United States defense establishment that considered that extremely convenient too, right? And this is largely due to the fact that Biden prescribed a very limited campaign against the Houthis. Now, this does not mean inexpensive or insignificant.
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We kept at least one aircraft carrier Carrying out strikes in Yemen for like a year or so, which is kind of the first combat duty that an aircraft carrier has had in quite some time. That was really like active taking incoming fire, not incoming fire that ever really threatened the carrier itself. But that's sort of beside the point. And there were people within the U.S.
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military establishment who were consistently frustrated with the Biden administration that they were not letting them operate at a high enough tempo. Right. And kind of the the number one guy advocating for this side of events was General Michael E. Carrillo, who is the head of Central Command or CENTCOM. Right. And his attitude had been we need a much more aggressive, high tempo campaign.
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He pitched the Trump administration when they came in. I think it's like an eight to 10 month long campaign where initially they would degrade Houthi anti-air assets. So first we go in there and we use our air power to establish what's called air supremacy. Right. Air superiority means that you have government. better quality air support, but also your shit can get knocked down.
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Air supremacy means you have complete control of the skies, right? The US military is fairly used to having air supremacy. If you look at like, for example, our combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, when it came to like fighter aircraft, helicopters would get shot down from time to time, obviously, and have accidents. We weren't losing F-18s in Afghanistan. Right.
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Like they weren't getting knocked out of the fucking sky by the Taliban. We had air supremacy in Ukraine, depending on what part of the of the battle space you're talking about. Either things have been more or less at a standstill or Russia has had air superiority, but not supremacy. Right. Because Ukraine has very solid modern anti-aircraft defenses and has been able to exact a toll.
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We will talk to a greater extent about what's been happening with India and Pakistan. It is exceedingly unclear at the moment. who got the better of the engagement? Did any of those Chinese anti-aircraft missiles actually knock out aircraft? Did India lose any aircraft? Did Pakistan down any aircraft?
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We actually, like, everyone's making different claims right now, and I don't have objective evidence, right? Other than that, we know that there's at least evidence of, in at least one case, what looks like wreckage of a Rafale, and in at least one case, there's what looks like a knocked-down Chinese anti-aircraft missile. I'm spacing on the exact name right now.
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But again, that doesn't mean anything about how they actually fare in the battle space. Right. So anyway, yeah, this motherfucker had a sitcom. Michael E. Carrillo was like, I've got this plan. We need a much more force. We're going to knock out their anti-air defenses. And then we're going to basically carry out a modified version of what Israel carried out against Hamas and Hezbollah. Right.
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Where we start targeting and killing the leadership cadre once we've knocked out their defenses. Right. And he estimated that would take about a little under a year, right, but the better part of a year. And the Trump administration said you can have your higher tempo war, but you've got to show results in about a month, right? In about a month, the U.S. military carried out about 1,100 strikes.
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They killed, they say, hundreds of Houthi fighters, destroyed quite a bit of weapons and equipment. Very unclear how many fighters they killed, certainly hundreds of people. Were those all Houthi fighters? How many weapons and equipment were destroyed? I don't have access to that sort of data, and I'm not entirely confident that anyone in the U.S. military has a much better idea.
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Certainly a little bit more data, but also they get that shit wrong all the fucking time.
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Yeah, they are not a peer state in terms of the U.S. in that they do not have the manufacturing base and capacity, but they are equivalent to a small state actor, right?
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And the Houthis are so experienced with getting bombed. They've been bombed by a lot of people before. None of this is new to them, right?
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So in the first 30 days, while the U.S. has made a lot of claims about how many people they killed and the level of degradation of Houthi capacity— The Houthis have done some damage to U.S. capacity. They have shot down seven, at this point, at least seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are $30 million each. And in addition, now four F-18 jets have been lost. Not probably to Houthis.
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Probably just to fuck-ups that are a result of the tempo of activity, right? These all tend to be craft that are landing and don't get caught by the catapult system that they've got on these aircraft carriers or otherwise wind up in the Red Sea, right? There is some suspicion and debate as to like, is there any sort of like internal treason going on here?
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Is somebody on the aircraft carrier making these fuck-ups happen? This is being investigated, I believe. Although there's no confirmation about what exactly has gone down. It's weird to lose this many F-A-18 Super Hornets in a very short period of time.
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And it's also not weird that people fuck up when they are carrying out operations at a tempo they never have before. Right. And there's a very good chance that it's nothing more than that. The more you fly, the more accidents are going to happen. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Period.
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That poor motherfucker is getting fucked. Right.
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And now you've probably been fired. Yeah, you're out of a job. And they put a third guy. And that first guy's kind of lucky because when the next two fall off, at least maybe that's less pressure on you. Yeah.
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That's got to suck. So in about 30 days, the U.S. military had burned more than a billion dollars on this operation. Right. At which point Trump and people around him were like, oh, fuck, we can't keep this shit up. We can't maintain this tempo of operations.
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There were warnings given within the Defense Department that we have used so many of our most advanced munitions that if China makes a move on Taiwan, we're not sure we have the reserves necessary. Right. These munitions, when we talk a lot about the capacity of U.S.
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firepower, people talk about shit like in 2018, how we like we got a there was this Al Qaeda guy who had been responsible for the attack on the USS Cole 20 something years ago.
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Who used a cell phone he shouldn't have used briefly and then turned it off and we were able to get visual confirmation of where he was from the cell phone signal and knock his ass out with a drone, right? And we do have incredible capacity, potentially, to make unbelievably precise strikes. However...
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That capacity is reliant both upon a functional network of human intelligence, a functional network of operators of aircraft and drones who are not completely burnt out by the tempo of operations, and access to incredibly advanced munitions, which we do not have in an exhaustible capacity. and are reliant upon an international supply chain to continue to manufacture, right?
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And all of that has been endangered by the tempo of this campaign. And ultimately, there's a great New York Times report on this that's just absolutely damning to the military that came out. It's called Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia, that declared that after all of this,
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The best we can say is perhaps a modest degradation of Houthi capacities that they can easily recover from given enough time, which they're going to get because Trump both declared victory and stated that the Houthis had yet again agreed to stop striking shipping in the Red Sea. And he was like, this is a win. We made a deal with them. Big deal maker. Donald Trump made a deal.
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Now, if you look at what the Houthis said, all they said is we're going to stop striking Israeli shipping, which, if you'll recall, is what they had said in January and So, did we win? No. Did the Houthis win? Not yet, but they didn't lose. And again, if you understand your insurgent warfare, you win by just not losing for long enough, right? Yeah.
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Well, that's all I got. That's the Hoothies. Let's have another ad break real quick here. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Let's have an ad break.
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God almighty. I've been to too many of the graveyards in Northern Syria.
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I would like there to not be any more to go to. Yeah, that would be great. I'll find something else to do. Yeah, fuck it. I'll go run with the bulls again. I went white rata rafting yesterday. It was nice. I could just do more of that. Yeah, no, I'll rock climb. All right, everybody. We're done for the day. Go, hopefully not, live in a war zone. But if you do, hopefully that stops soon. Peace.
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Oh, man, I'll take a fucking Krieger at this point. Yeah.
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There's a great line that got one of the strongest reactions with the folks I was watching it with when Luthan's about to head out and he's talking with Clea and she's like, don't do this meeting. If it doesn't look perfect, we don't engage. Yeah. And Luthan responds, I think we've used up all the perfect.
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It's this really good, there's some very impressive face acting from Skarsgård here. He's so good. There's so much he wants to say to this person, who, as we'll discuss, is essentially his daughter. But ultimately, all that happens is she says, tuck your shirt in. It's insane.
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Yeah. And again, it's very consistent. He's clearly trying to buy time for Clea to escape. Right. Like that's that's part of part of his purpose here. Yeah. And I think he's also just done, you know, like totally he's he's done. He's tired and he doesn't have it in him to run anymore.
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forgery is the sad curse of antiquities yeah at the moment only two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery yeah insane stuff it's great it's great writing and it's it's perfect that like she keeps trying to like get some sort of acknowledgement that he she's won that's all she wants out of this is for him to basically she's actually kind of desperate for him to say you did good kid you caught me it's crazy and all he does is throw shade at her
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Yeah, again, this whole time he's been increasingly cooking her.
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Yeah, yeah. It's just some great stuff. And Dedra, we get some great face acting from, what is it? Denise is her name, right? Yeah. Gao, I think. Where you just see in a second she sees the smoke and then Luthan collapses because he has stabbed himself in the heart. Yeah. Which is also, like, it serves as another kind of riposte to every argument that she's been making.
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Like, it's his ultimate counter to her claims that, like, you're fundamentally selfish. You're just doing this for yourself and your own, you know, desire to create chaos. He's like, no, bitch, I'm gonna stab myself in the heart. Like, you don't know what commitment is. It's great.
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Yeah. I like that. They, they, they had her simultaneously. She's both right. And that if she had been listened to, she could have stopped the rebel victory, but also she fundamentally like destroys the death star as a result of her insistence on being right. Yeah.
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What's interesting to me is, yeah, you're basically just hearing what's happening outside. He's in an Imperial Army uniform, and you're hearing radio chatter. And it's radio chatter that could have come from any war of the last 20 years. It's very much modern radio call.
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It sounds like a lot of the shit you heard in the collateral murder video, like some of the stuff that got leaked by Chelsea Manning, where people are like, yeah...
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hit everything on that hill dies you know anything past this this point in this like line of buildings anyone you see on the heat scope kill them like it's that kind of stuff right yeah and it's it's it's very much like it's very non-star wars chatter totally you know he's he's like horrified at like what he's doing he's trying to find ways to cope with it he's drinking out of a flask and yeah just like repeatedly repeating to himself make it stop
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Yeah. And it's also interesting to think that he's putting himself in the perspective as much as anything of the Imperials doing the massacre. Yes. Yeah. As opposed to the civilian victims of the massacre. I read an interview with Tony where apparently, because they did not have Luthan's backstory set up in season one. They didn't fully know where he was going to go.
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They didn't have a single one nailed down yet. And it was apparently Skarsgård who was like, don't have him be another person who's pissed, who just hates the Empire because it took everything from him.
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Yeah. Yeah. And I really I think it's beautiful that like, yeah, his backstory is that, no, he was made complicit. Like, however, whatever got him into the army in the first place, maybe just conscription. You know, he may not have even had a choice to join, but the empire forces him to do like puts him in a position.
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And he's it's as much discussed with himself that he goes along with it as far as he does. Yeah. And you get in those lines that he's just repeating to himself over and over again. That's his whole motivation, right? The next 20 years of his life are him trying to make it stop.
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And then he says, I'm Luthen, you're Clea. I'm Luthen, you're Clea. That's all we need to know right now.
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Yeah. And I love both that he's he's attempting to give her as much like agency as he can within this situation where he's also like crafting her into a person. And so if she decides she wants to go see this massacre, he'll let her do it. He's not going to. He's not going to try to make her. But if that's what she wants, he's not going to stop her.
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And then when she's seen what she needs to see, he's going to give her the best advice that he can give her. There's another line coming. Where she asks if he's scared and he's like, only about what I'm doing to you, right? He feels deeply compromised by this position he's put himself in with this only other person that he really can trust.
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Yeah. And she's not willing to, she can't like make herself use it yet.
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Yeah, it's it's it's great. Like the whole the decision he made he makes here is like you like you see a lot about their relationship. And again, this like deeply how deeply compromised he feels by it of both like I have to get this person ready for what's necessary. And also I have to protect her from like.
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the worst things that we're going to have to do together like he he does want to remain primarily the one complicit so i i think in part because he does believe i mean fundamentally that's the core of his character he does believe she has a future outside of this and then that's the entire point of what he's doing yeah you know what else is necessary robert for us to throw to ads because otherwise we can't keep this movable feast on the road
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Yeah, and I love that, like, that's his whole motivation ultimately is, like, undoing the only part of what he was involved in that he can undo, which is saving this person. And, like, saving this person involves destroying the thing that took her life away from her.
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But Leslie, do you have anything else to say about episode 10? I mean, yeah, I like this. This is obviously like my favorite episode of this particular batch.
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Yeah. I love the Lutheran Clea moments. I love seeing like how at the same time, this like hint when you're seeing them kind of haggle over the price of this antiquity that they've got. That like, OK, so Clea always had this this degree of like cunning and this ability to kind of like recognize what's going on with probably how she survived in the first place. Right.
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She's she was always someone who saw more than other people, which she's the girl. She's the girl. Yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, you get this piece of Luthan, like there must have been like whatever he was before he joined the military. It was somebody who had this kind of deep knowledge of antiquities and probably this desire to make something of his life other than what became of it.
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And all that he's got left of it is like utilizing that real piece of himself to make a fake Luthan. Right. Like that's just such an interesting character beat for him that like this, this thing that is probably closest to the real Luthan, the one that existed before his military service, before the empire ruined him, is completely remade in the service of making himself into something he's not.
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Yeah, but here's the thing, what I'll say about that, and this is kind of my favorite part of that, is I can see how she would be like, this feeling I have towards him isn't like what someone would feel towards a father. But also, she doesn't really know how people feel about their parents because she didn't get to have them very long.
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Can't feel that way about their father. Feeling both this deep sense of love and disgust towards your parents is an incredibly normal experience. And she just doesn't, I think maybe there's a degree to which she doesn't even really realize how common that is because of what was taken from her.
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Oh my God. She comes into it. You can tell she thinks I'm going to get out of this. I'm going to talk my way out of this. Yeah. Surely I will sort this all out.
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And I love too that Lonnie makes a statement that he didn't tell Luthen he had this, because he's like, well, you would have made me use it. Well, yeah, super cool. And there's this, yeah, Lonnie has gotten very good at this. He was right to not tell his boss anything.
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there's that glorious moment when she realizes how fucked she is. When he puts his finger on her head, like she's just an odd, she's there for him to act off.
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phenomenal yeah say the word death star yeah amazing and then yeah he turns her off and is like yeah we'll get it we'll get by without you somehow yeah hopefully hopefully we'll be able to get by without you yeah and it's both funny because like he is just he is nuking her there's nothing left after this and also he's dead in like two days Tarkin's about to obliterate his ass with a button.
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Tarkin's about to be space dust, along with Yolaren and everyone else.
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Yeah, these guys like Yalarin and whatnot, who were, like... Partagas! He was, like, good at his job! Yes, yes.
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Yeah. On his Super Star Destroyer all the time. Well, and what we see throughout Andor is rebels fuck up all the time. They fail all the time. We see moments of failure from Luthen. We see them from Cassian. We see them from Draven and the guys at Endor. Bael, Mon Mothma. They all fuck up. And then they get the chance to learn from their mistakes and get better, which is ultimately why they win.
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Well, and they understand the most important thing about television sci-fi, which is a robot awkwardly playing poker with his human face. I know.
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Data, K2SO, holding hands meme. And I love that K2SO is also constantly being like, you guys are drinking a lot. Yeah, I love that when they're about to go on this last mission, Cassian is canonically drunk driving through space. He is one half shot away from blacking out. It's time to pilot a spacecraft. Most realistic insertion ever.
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Yeah, Ulysses Simpson Grant is the last person to be as drunk as Cassian Andor was in this scene.
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Let's have a shout out to our man Draven here. He's kind of based. I like Draven. I love that they managed to both make him be, he has to be the foil to Cassian. Because Cassian does not want this Chain of Command boy.
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he's so sympathetic but he's not wrong and he's not a dick he's like look man i've got like 400 other freighters i'm worried about right now there's like shipments of rifles that i that i have to keep i have to keep all of this in my head i can't write any of it down i haven't slept in days i eat nothing but tums like i can't even drink hot coffee because otherwise my fucking ulcers light on fire i don't even remember when i ate solid food my ibs has ibs can you please stop taking off
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conditioned Melchian Cass against the stun grenade which is again phenomenal it's so good and I think just generally like Clea has again Luthan has protected her from a lot of like the direct she doesn't have CTE right if Cassian had lived another 30 years like his fucking brain would have been melting because he's been around too many goddamn explosions and he's been electrocuted and the same thing's true of Melchie right they just barely feel it
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No, no, no. But she's raised by an old soldier who does the responsible thing that you do if you have the experience, which is you tell the younger people, no, no, no, use your ear pro. No, no. Get further back. I know you don't think you need to be, but get further back. Like, my ears ring all the time. Don't fucking take risks.
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I also kind of wonder if maybe there's a level of protection from the stun grenades you get, again, when you are still right on the edge of a blackout. Yeah, that's compelling.
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And Moth was kind of just like, oh. We've been bugging him.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. That you're going to fill me in.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. It is the human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating everything. The Hunt.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. Got it. It is the human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating everything. The Hunt.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. That you're going to fill me in.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. That you're going to fill me in. Yes.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. Got it. It is the human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating sex.
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I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it.
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He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting.
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She had inexplicable feelings. It is a human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating everything. The Hunt.
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Electile dysfunction? Executive disorder. Jesus Christ. Our weekly newscast.
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Covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. It's not about dick stuff.
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Not yet. Hopefully one day. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans, who never knows the title of the podcast that he's on.
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This episode, we are covering the week of February 12 to February 19. Let's start with a brief Eric Adams update, or as I call it in EU. That's the Turkish for Eric Adams update. So in response to the calls to drop the Turkish corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, eight top federal prosecutors have resigned in protest. Then we had four deputy mayors leave office.
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The New York governor is now considering removing Adams from office, which somehow is something that the governor of New York has power to do, by the way. And also the city council speaker has called on the mayor to resign. There is a judge doing a hearing on Wednesday as we are recording this right now on whether on whether to appoint a special prosecutor to continue prosecuting the charges.
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despite Trump's effort to have these charges dropped to help Adams make sure that ICE raids can continue in the city in a very, very clear quid pro quo. So this is a developing story. We will continue on the Eric Adams front as this changes.
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I'm sure people are familiar with the turkey situation in general. All right, next. On a related note, on Tuesday, President Trump instructed the DOJ to fire all Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys. Now, usually these types of appointments do resign at the end of their president's term, but Trump just immediately going out to fire all of them is new, unique, and noteworthy.
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And Trump has done some other noteworthy things to expand executive power. And for more on that, I will turn to Mia Wong. Oh, boy.
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Yeah. Ever since basically he got inaugurated again, they've been trying to push for this complete unitary executive power thing. as like running the entire, not just running the entire executive branch, but all of these agencies that they want to rope under the authority of the executive branch.
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Well, and earlier today, the official White House account tweeted about abolishing the New York City congestion pricing with basically like a magazine cover style image of Trump wearing a crown with text that reads, long live the king. And again, that was the official Twitter account of the White House. Which has also been doing some like unhinged posting, including like ASMR deportation videos.
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It's like really dark stuff, like viscerally upsetting.
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Yeah. Well, and this is stuff that, like, Robert's been talking about for a long time. There's been a lot of people talking about the Heritage Foundation's push for the unitary executive theory, stuff that Curtis Garvin's been talking about. Like, my article last week on Shatterzone kind of underlines where they are going with this. Yeah.
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And yeah, like the consequences are so vast and unknowable because we've never had an executive that is kind of this successfully or like this focused in his attempts to seize like total executive control over the entirety of the federal government. Yeah.
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Yep. So... This is great. I mean, and Musk and Trump have been saying stuff akin to that in interviews, like being asked, like, how is Doge allowed to do this sort of stuff? Musk and Trump have been saying, well, the people voted for this. Like, we are enabling the will of the people. Even if that, like, you know, goes past, like, our technical authority, it's what the people wanted.
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So we're going to remove all these bureaucrats that ordinarily would try to stop us because we have, like, the consent of the government. The mandate of heaven. Even if that just completely bypasses Congress, even if that denies the courts, which we'll talk about more later, they are willing to go as far as they can.
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I mean, some of the courts are trying, but trying isn't good enough.
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More on that later. Let's touch on immigration with James and then we will have a quick break.
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Jesus Christ. So is this a result of Rubio's negotiations with Panama? How is this logistically operating in terms of the US dropping people into a totally different country that they also just don't have citizenship to?
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I mean, it's the entire motto of the new Trump term in general, and things are being broken.
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All right, let's go on a quick ad break and come back to talk about RFK Jr., Okay, we are back. I need to take off my plate carrier. It's crushing me. As James takes off his plate carrier that he's wearing for some reason.
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Yes. So last week, so last week. RFK Jr. was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services. This is one I thought there might be a slightly more pushback on, but oh, oh how naive I was.
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On February 13th, Trump signed an executive order establishing a commission to make America healthy again. In the third paragraph, the order states, quote unquote, concern over the, quote unquote, staggering increase of autism. And the next paragraph takes aim at ADHD medication. Not great, not ideal, and the order continues to be pretty bad. I will do a direct quote here.
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Quote, this poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life. To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must redirect our national focus in the public and private sectors towards understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease. This includes fresh thinking.
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on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, and effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety." Fresh thinking.
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No. No. Everything in this order has the most, like, dog whistly language.
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that not only directly targets life-saving medication, but it can also be used to target vaccines.
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There's been an increasing number of measles outbreaks the past five years in this country. Yeah.
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Speaking of, Section 2 of the order calls to quote-unquote aggressively combat critical health challenges such as quote, the rising rates of mental health disorders and diabetes. So RFK has made a number of statements that are worrying, which is just a blanket statement that I can make.
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But specifically talking about how to treat diabetes with lifestyle changes and changing your diet habits and a whole bunch of extremely worrying stuff. Section 5 of the order states that with 100 days, this new commission made up of the heads of 13 various agencies and chaired by RFK Jr.,
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is supposed to submit their findings that, quote, assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures posed to children, and assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs, unquote.
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The idea that we're going to be trying to take away people's antipsychotics while also making handguns more available across the country.
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But this is targeting depression medication, mood stabilizers, meds for ADHD, antipsychotics. And then also lines about certain chemicals absolutely being an anti-vaccine dog whistle.
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On Tuesday, RFK Jr. made his first official statement since being confirmed, promising that, quote, nothing is going to be off limits, unquote, in his quest to make America healthy again, telling Health and Human Services staffers, quote, some of the possible factors we will investigate were formally taboo or insufficiently scrutinized, unquote. And then, according to Politico, RFK Jr.
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suggests that he would direct HHS to investigate antidepressant drugs, ultra-processed food, electromagnetic radiation, and the herbicide glyphosate. So that seems to be some of their first targets.
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Our economy is going to crash. If they remove Adderall, this whole country is going to cave.
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I'm going to start storing them like peppercorns.
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Yeah. Lastly, before we go on break, Borders are Tom Homan has been on a crusade against AOC and others for holding know your rights trainings, specifically informing constituents, including legal citizens who are being harassed by ICE, that you do not need to open the door. If ICE knocks on your door, you can ask them to leave. You can stay silent. You don't need to share personal information.
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You have the right to speak with an attorney and you do not need to sign anything or hand over any documents. So there's been, you know, like webinars and trainings informing people of their rights. And this is really upset Borders are Tom Homan, who last week went on Fox News to accuse AOC of impediment, which is not a real word.
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And he announced that he has directed or has asked the DOJ and the Deputy Attorney General to investigate AOC for interfering with ICE actions by simply educating people about their rights. I have a clip here I'm going to play in the podcast with Homan on Sean Hannity. When does it cross a line into aiding and abetting lawbreaking?
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Let's turn this over to discussion. James, I'm sure you have some thoughts on this.
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And this is very basic Fourth Amendment stuff, and this applies to you
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whether or not you are a citizen this this applies to if you are in this country yeah you have these rights and it is within isis and and tom homan's interests to make people uh not realize that they actually do have rights regardless of their immigration status yeah absolutely like they're not gonna tell you necessarily right what rights you have no they're not going to tell you they don't have the right to enter your house
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Police want to enter your home. And if you open the door, they will. But you do not need to open the door. And this is very basic stuff of informing people. Really getting on Tom Homan's nerve. He's been on news five times the past week to specifically complain about AOC. He really wants her to get arrested for this thing that's not a crime.
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Do you know what else is front and center? Advertisements.
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All right, we are back. Mia, it's time for Tariff Talk?
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Dan, I've not been an editor on this podcast for years, but sure. Yes. Yes.
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Like they might really do that. Oddly enough, this push from Trump might actually help catalyze the anti-conservative movement in Canada, which has kind of been trending conservative the past 10 years.
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And Trump's actions have really upset the country, even the conservative factions. You are seeing support for the liberals swell, which has been like in like rapid decline for the past five years. So it's actually causing a pretty big shakeup in Canadian politics right now, which I'm sure I'll do an episode on it in the future.
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God, I would love to see that. I wish. To get back on the war on woke front, I'd like to talk about attempts to purge DEI gone wrong, specifically in OSHA, who has now trashed workplace safety guidelines by banning and removing 18 workplace training and safety publications. per popular info. Now, some of these documents have been removed for just containing the word like gender. Oh, wow.
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Like in one case about how patients might need different treatments based on their gender or age. This list of banned documents also includes a document from 2009 that instructs employers on how to, quote unquote, protect their EMS responders from becoming additional victims while on the front line of medical response. unquote.
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The alleged reason for removal is because the document contains a sentence about how EMT workers work under, quote-unquote, diverse conditions.
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And that EMT agencies have a, quote, diversity of state-specific certification, training, and regulatory requirements, unquote.
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Well, I mean, I'm sure it would also be removing programs with the word disability, frankly. Oh, yeah, yeah.
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And this is affecting a huge number of agencies, right? Like we could do, we probably will do full episodes on this. I've been collecting a whole bunch of resources in a document called The War on Woke, which eventually I will turn into an episode. This has manifested in other ways as well.
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There's now disclaimers on the Target HIV and the CDC website, which now reads, the CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's executive orders. And specifically on pages related to sexual health, There is a big, like a top banner reading, quote, per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 1159 p.m. February 14, 2025.
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Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.
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The Trump administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation and to women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration and this department rejects it. Unquote.
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So even though they've been ordered to have these webpages, it's still online, they are basically defacing the webpages with these notes from the Trump team.
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But speaking of violating court orders... The Trump administration told a judge in a Tuesday court filing that it will not comply with the TRO directing USAID and the State Department to resume foreign aid funding, stating that, quote, USAID intends to terminate instruments that the administrator determines are inconsistent with the national interests or USAID's mission.
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And it tries to argue that this is in line with USAID's lawful ability to operate. So they are just blatantly defying a judge's order, as we've talked about how they seem to be wanting to and continuing to do for the past four weeks.
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More on that in the weeks to come as this situation escalates through different appeals courts and will eventually probably reach some kind of final showdown with the Supreme Court. Now, longtime Social Security official Michelle King has quit the agency amid fights to prevent Doge from accessing sensitive information.
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The Washington Post quoted Martin O'Malley, the Social Security Commissioner under the Biden administration and a former Maryland governor, as saying, quote, at this rate, they will break it and they will break it fast and there will be an interruption of benefits, unquote. Social Security is just one of the agencies that Doge is either gutting or has already gutted.
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And it's leading to kind of a mass resignation, not only of like, you know, probationary employees and like deferred resignation, like letter employees, right? Everyone who's receiving that fork in the road email, but also just like top ranking, like officials who've been doing this their whole lives who are quitting because now it's impossible for them to like do their job.
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with Musk's Doge basically running all of these departments and determining who can be hired, who should be fired. In late January, David Lybrick, the highest ranking civil servant at the Treasury Department, was put on leave and then quit his job after trying to stop Doge from accessing data at the Bureau of Fiscal Service.
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The head of the FDA's food division, Jim Jones, resigned last Monday, citing Doge as inhibiting his ability to run the department. And at least four deadly plane crashes have happened this past month. Actually, five now, considering one this morning. And then there's also that whole upside-down Delta flight from Minneapolis to Toronto.
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And this is all happening amidst the Trump admin's mass firing of several hundred probationary employees at the FAA, an already understaffed agency. And this past Monday, a team from SpaceX arrived at the air traffic control headquarters in Virginia to begin the process of overhauling the control system.
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That is to produce an airplane at your normal quality and standards. Similar to that, on February 13th, an Air Force plane carrying Secretary of State Mark Rubio was forced to turn around en route from Washington to Munich. After the aircraft, a converted Boeing 757 experienced a mechanical issue 90 minutes into the flight. So they were forced to turn around. So again, critical support to Boeing.
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I only wish them the best in securing more and more government contracts.
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Which is increasingly scary. I flew so much last year and I am less willing to now.
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And it has been one of the more deadly months in aviation history.
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But it's also preventing them from hiring more air traffic controllers, which they need to because it's so understaffed, which actually does lead to an increase of these like small plane collisions. And this is this is like a similar pattern across all departments, though.
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The USDA announced on Tuesday that over the weekend they accidentally fired several agency employees who are working on the bird flu response. as a result of the Trump-Doge mass firings. And now, and now USDA is trying to rehire them?
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Well, yeah, it's employees that have been hired for less than a year and have different protections than other career employees. Yeah. And part of Doge's campaign to do like massive, massive layoffs across all government sectors is by targeting, first of all, probationary employees because they're easiest to fire and then move on to career employees. Yeah.
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And this is just the first batch of mass layoffs because they're the easiest to do. They don't have union negotiations. They can't appeal the firing. So this is the first step in a larger series of events that will lead to a severely reduced government workforce.
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And like the situation with the USDA is a very similar situation with the nuclear strategy employees who the government is struggling to rehire because they lost contact information with them after firing them. They fired the nuke police.
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Well, what another uplifting episode of It Could Happen Here.
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Also, unrelated, we have a tip email, James, we're going to talk about. Yeah.
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Yes. Well, one and only that I know of, unless there's another one going around, which would be freaky. There might be.
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Welcome to What Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis, and this episode is going to be a special audio companion piece to an article published last night on Substack at Shatterzone. That's Robert's usual Substack, though last night I published an article detailing the online history and transvestigation discourse regarding a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin.
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The article has pictures and hyperlinks which might help explain some of the stuff I'm talking about, but I'll do my best to relay it here to you on the podcast feed. Another Monday in America and another school shooting.
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On the morning of December 16th, a female student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, shot and killed a teacher and fellow student and injured six others before killing herself. Initially, police falsely reported the shooter was 17 years old, but late Monday night, they correctly identified the deceased shooter as 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha or Sam.
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In the aftermath of this horrific event, right-wing influencers and content creators wasted no time in blaming the shooting on trans people, labeling the suspect as another in a series of alleged transgender terrorists. But what really happened here had nothing to do with trans people and is sadly ordinary for the United States.
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In August of 2024, the father of the future school shooter took his daughter to a gun range to do trap shooting. Samantha wore a shirt bearing the logo of a band, KMFDM. In another photo of the shooter, we can see the front of the shirt. The same design was famously worn by Columbine shooter Eric Harris, who was a fan of the band.
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The bulk of this new shooter's online footprint suggests a general obsession with school shooters and the TCC, or True Crime Community, a nickname used for the de facto international Columbine fandom. This sort of content dominates Samantha's Tumblr, which last posted in May of 2024. An alleged online friend of the shooter said that she, quote, Samantha is hardly alone in this.
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There have been over 100 copycats inspired by the Columbine shooting since 1999. A Twitter account believed to have belonged to the shooter posted a series of videos that teased and glorified school shootings in the days leading up to her own shooting. The account was created in December of 2024, and the profile picture featured a young man in camo pants and a tactical backpack.
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The male profile picture was used as evidence by some conservative influencers that the shooter must have transitioned, though these same influencers cannot agree on whether she was female-to-male or male-to-female. One user constructed an overlay trying to compare the photo of the shooter with her Twitter profile picture.
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This is a ridiculous diagram with about seven images overlaid at different opacities trying to layer the faces and body shapes of these two people on top of each other. This post is only proof that most of what gets passed off as quote-unquote OSINT online today is just completely incompetent rambling and propaganda.
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The main issue with this diagram is that the male profile picture is actually another Columbine copycat, a school shooter from Russia, who, similar to Samantha, was only 15 years old when he carried out his shooting.
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Hours after the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, while right-wing accounts were still arguing about what sort of transgender the shooter had been, a neo-Nazi Twitter account named Nitro claimed to be friends with the shooter on Discord and repeatedly denied accusations that the shooter was transgender, calling her a quote-unquote biological woman.
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An early complicating factor in establishing the motive and identity of the shooter is that her alleged Twitter account posted a link to a Google Doc of her manifesto. but seemingly forgot to make the visibility setting public. So you couldn't access the Google Doc. You had to put in an email for approval, and the person who was supposed to approve your email was now dead.
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So there was no way to actually look at this person's manifesto. The shooter's alleged Discord friend, Nitro, claims to find what he believes to be a snippet of a manifesto draft shared by the shooter in a Discord group chat.
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Nitro is based out of the UK, and so if this is legitimate, and that is a big if, this message would have been sent about an hour and a half before the shooting per the Discord timestamp. I'm going to read a bit of this alleged writing from the shooter. Quote, Women are the only hope for this wretched world, but even women have been brainwashed by moids for too long.
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They've internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for male approval and validation. It's disgusting. I realize the truth. Men are irredeemable. Radfem Hitler was, is fucking vindicated now. They can't be reformed or redeemed. They are a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only solution is to total exterminate them and every foid who worships these fucking parasites.
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Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly. Only then can women be free to create a new world. I'll be the pioneer. I'll be the first one to take the first step. I don't care if they're fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially N-words or politicians. I've been craving to kill them all. This is my mission.
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Only when their parasitic sludge has been expunged from the earth is when then the world will be clean and women can start over. It's the only way. In approximately 10 minutes, I should be dead. It's strange, but it feels good. unquote.
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Hopefully to most people, this should read like unintelligible gibberish, a reactionary, quote-unquote, feminist screed about initiating a wave of male-targeted violence to cleanse the earth with pepperings of moids and foids, which is internet incel slang for male and female, respectively. Also included are racial slurs and something called, quote-unquote, RadFemHitler,
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That last part is a reference to a Twitter influencer by the same name and the handle Hollow Earth Turf, whose content is a mix of trad-influenced right-wing feminism with anti-trans flourishes, advocating for a mass purge of moids. This includes trans women.
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This account is derided by those both on the right and left, but has a small dedicated following of conservative RadFem and anti-trans women with trad or often occult interests. The Discord Nazi, Nitro, claimed that the shooter was quote-unquote a fan of RadFemHitler and talked about the account frequently on Discord, though Nitro previously believed her interest in the account was merely ironic.
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Now, obviously, an anonymous Twitter Nazi is certainly not the most reliable source, but Nitro was the first person to correctly identify and post photos of the shooter, though they could be utilizing this newfound clout to troll a widely disliked Twitter user.
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But the fact that he's been right about all other details inclines me to not discount his claims altogether, but instead just hold them with a billion pounds of salt. Allegations that the shooter was a neo-Nazi Radfem certainly sent Radfem Hitler into a panic, who quickly deleted her account.
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Meanwhile, some of her online associates worked damage control, claiming to have contacted the alleged boyfriend that the shooter had been quote-unquote e-dating. with the apparent intention of disproving any ties the shooter had to the Twitter radfem orbit. Through this alleged online boyfriend, the right-wing TERF ecosystem claimed to have acquired a copy of the quote-unquote full manifesto,
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This purported manifesto lacks the anti-male, anti-moid ramblings of the Discord screenshot, but unsurprisingly shares its use of racial slurs and glorification of violence, at times evocative of Pekka Erikovinen's manifesto, a Finnish school shooter from 2007 who killed eight people. Ovidin considered himself a quote-unquote natural selector who had evolved beyond the classmates he gunned down.
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In Samantha's purported manifesto, he is mentioned by name as a quote-unquote true inspiration. Over the course of eight hours, a RadFem Twitter account released six pages of what they claimed to be Samantha's writing. It contains general misanthropic rambling about humanity and parents being quote-unquote scum.
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The writing describes a difficult family life, suicidal thoughts, and admiration for school shooters and white supremacists. Though it briefly references the accelerationist terror-gram saints, the whole of this piece of writing is much more reminiscent of old-school Columbiners than the modern white nationalist terror milieu.
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The alleged manifesto directly names the two Columbine shooters and includes a paragraph on Vladiskov Rozlyakov, another Columbine copycat but from Crimea, who also cosplayed as one of the Columbine shooters during his own mass shooting.
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Though the Discord Nazi and the reactionary radfems question the authenticity of the other's alleged manifesto, what both sides of the incel war do agree on is that Samantha was not transgender. We're going to go on a quick ad break and come back to discuss transvestigation and the trans terror panic. Okay, we are back.
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It seems these days the fastest way to get transvestigated is to do a school shooting. Transvestigating is the practice of trying to determine if an individual is transgender. It's often leveled against celebrities, athletes, and politicians. But in recent years, there's been a new common subject of transvestigation. Mass shooters. In particular, school shooters.
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Myself, Robert Evans, and James Stout previously reported on this trend back in 2023, right as it grew in prominence after the Nashville Covenant School shooting, which police say was committed by a trans man.
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We theorized that the online right was testing out a new strategy to attack trans people by associating them with mass shootings via the use of selective bias reporting and plain disinformation. That fear has come to pass.
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The modicum of believability provided by the Nashville shooting, as it's the only legitimate trans-related incident that meets criteria for mainstream mass shooting databases, was enough to fuel this ongoing strategy for the next two years. Since then, conservative influencers have attempted to link nearly every viral mass-slash-school shooting to trans people to create a false trend.
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The strategy operates as follows. During the first few chaotic hours after a shooting, a small group of right-wing content creators weaponized the lack of verified information to make posts framing an alleged shooter as being transgender. This can be done through the use of out-of-context social media posts, doctored photographs, photos of other people, or simply pictures of long or dyed hair.
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All they need is a collection of loose evidence to affirm on social media that a mass shooter is really transgender. For more context on this, you can listen to an episode of It Could Happen Here I wrote earlier this year covering the rise of fake trans terrorists. The goal is to get as many of their followers to see and spread these claims as fast as possible.
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Even if it's widely debunked the next day, many who heard the false claim won't be aware of the verified correction. All these anti-trans influencers need is a brief window of time to plant the idea into people's minds. And then that becomes remembered history.
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If this strategy is repeated every few months, whenever there's a new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create the false perception of a growing trend. Now, in reality, trans people per capita are actually way less likely to commit a shooting compared to cis people and are much more likely to be the victim of gun violence.
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But this past Monday, conservative and anti-trans influencers tried once again to weaponize a tragedy for their own hateful agenda. Monday afternoon, Ian Miles Chung posted, Trans terrorism must end. Hours later, Laura Loomer wrote, The trans movement is really turning out to be a terrorist movement."
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Just minutes after police responded to the shooting, the conservative influencer Matt Wallace posted that an unknown, quote-unquote, witness said that the shooter, quote, looked to be transgender, unquote. Wallace, who has over 2.2 million followers on Twitter, provided no source or citation and has since deleted this post.
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But others in the online mega-orbit parroted this language before any identifying information was released, with the user JustJeffFromCalley writing, "...a trans person targeted and opened fire on students at Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin. 12 hit."
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The right-wing content creator Ryan Mata baselessly claimed that the shooter was on hormone replacement therapy, calling the shooter, quote, another mentally unstable psychopath who was prescribed puberty blocker and hormones, unquote. Mata hosts a show on the right-wing YouTube alternative Rumble and has over 123,000 followers on Twitter.
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His tweet claiming the shooter was on HRT racked up 1.6 million, quote-unquote, views and 17,000 likes in just 12 hours. Larger accounts like Chaya Raichak's libs of TikTok fueled undue speculation about the gender identity of the shooter, seeding confusion into the growing discourse and weaponizing a tragedy for political gain.
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Quoting the police chief saying, quote, I don't know if the shooter is male or female, unquote. A small group of conservative influencers have just so successfully created an alternate reality in which nearly every new mass shooter is transgender that they don't even have to outright say it anymore.
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Accounts like Libs of TikTok and Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Chung can merely gesture to this reality tunnel they've intentionally created. And now thousands of people will affirm this fake reality as the obvious truth. backed up by historical precedent of fabricated memory. Matt Wallace posted a photo of the shooter and the male profile picture saying, what do you notice about the shooter again?
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Ian Miles Chung posted, quote, police are unable to identify if the school shooter in Madison, Wisconsin is male or female, but they do know who did it and identified them as a student. Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Unquote.
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This speculation fueled conspiracy theories, which spread, claiming that police were intentionally withholding information about the shooter's gender identity in service of some hidden agenda. And actually, they were just waiting to, like, let the family know that their daughter was dead and making sure they had the correct identification. Very basic stuff. Police always do this.
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But no, it's all part of some secret agenda and some hidden narrative. As early as 1 p.m. EST on Monday, which is just like an hour after the shooting would have taken place, the neo-Nazi Twitter account Nitro correctly identified the shooter as his online friend Sam slash Samantha.
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As this name spread online, the multi-gendered nature of the name added to the speculation that the shooter was trans. Scarlett Johnson, an activist with the ultra-conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty, shared self-admitted, unconfirmed reports that the shooter was quote-unquote a transgender teen who went by Sam or Samantha.
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As alleged pictures of the shooter started to spread online, courtesy of Nitro, the transvestigation of the shooter only intensified. An unfortunate coincidence is that the shooter's given name matches the ancient Sam Hyde meme. in which extremely online people try to trick journalists into believing the culprit of a new mass shooting was the American comedian Sam Hyde.
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In recent years, the meme has turned into the Samantha Hyde meme, used to falsely label mass shooters as trans women. One hide post from an unassuming boomer named Ed Massey raked up over 600,000 views, 4.5 thousand likes, and one and a half thousand retweets. Massey posted, quote, unquote.
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Now, it should go without saying, but the use of puberty suppressing medication has no link to increased violence. We're going to go on one last break and return to conclude our discussion of transvestigating school shooters. Okay, we are back. Time to talk about the potential double flipper.
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So as this transvestigation continued, the quote-unquote we-can-always-tell crowd ended up transvestigating in both directions, seemingly unsure of what assigned gender at birth the shooter must have had. Some believed the shooter was trans femme, while others concluded they were trans masc. with one reply to an end-wokeness tweet reading, quote, those do not look like female hands.
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And another transvestigation post saying, the shooter is a trans kid, a female, pretending to be a male. Exactly why we keep our Second Amendment rights to protect our children from this mental health crisis. Zoom in close on her shirt and hand gesture, unquote.
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A now-deleted post from a TERF account also attempted to pass off the shooter as a trans girl, saying, quote, "...the Wisconsin school shooter was a 17-year-old trans-identified male. It just keeps happening." Now, quote-unquote trans-identified male was usually a transphobic dog whistle to refer to a trans woman, as in a male who identifies as a trans woman.
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But sometimes transphobes get confused by words and use the phrase to refer to trans people who quote-unquote identify as men. Like this other trans investigation post saying, quote, Shooter was a 17-year-old trans but identified male. Now, one of the most widespread posts claiming the shooter was a trans guy came from an anti-Semitic doctor in Denmark with 1.4 million followers.
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She falsely claimed, with no evidence, that the shooter was taking testosterone, writing, quote, unquote. As of Tuesday morning, this post has over 3 million views, 22,000 likes, and 8.3 thousand retweets. In a following post, this doctor blamed quote-unquote the Jews for inventing transgenderism.
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As a note, extremism researchers have argued that transphobia is structurally similar to antisemitism. Now, a common piece of anti-trans memetic propaganda deployed in the wake of mass shootings is the Trans Shooter Collage. This format spread after the Nashville school shooting in 2023, and this week, Matt Wallace provided us with a brand new version.
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This post is an ugly mishmash of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 people's faces with a variety of backgrounds, a purposeless red circle in the middle of the image, and text that reads, quote, "...almost every child killed in a mass shooting in the last few years was killed by a transgender shooter."
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Now, out of all those pictures in this collage, only one person in this collage is actually reported to be transgender, the Nashville shooter in the upper left. The rest of the people pictured are not trans and have never claimed to be trans.
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The person with long hair in the lower half of the image is Colt Gray, who is falsely labeled as trans by far-right influencers like End Wokeness and Mike Cernovich. Colt Gray's Discord posts reveal he actually held transphobic beliefs.
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A more classic version of the trans shooter collage format is just five pictures with text next to each of them reading the ex-shooter identified as trans, the ex-shooter identified as trans, right? Just a big list of five of these names saying that they all identified as trans. The version I'm using here is courtesy of Libs of TikTok admin Chaya Raichek, who posted this earlier this year.
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But just as before, the majority of the subjects in this meme aren't actually trans, and it's just full of disinformation. The Colorado Springs shooter who targeted a queer club is not actually non-binary and simply tried to weaponize a false identity to get out of hate crime charges. The person labeled as the Denver shooter is not trans, has never claimed to be trans. He just has dyed hair.
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This individual pictured did plan the shooting with a transgender male who is not pictured. Now lastly, though the person pictured as the Uvalde shooter is trans, this is not the actual Uvalde shooter. It's a random trans girl who was one of two trans women whose photos were used to falsely label the shooter as transgender.
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The other two people in this image is the Nashville shooter, who does appear to be trans, and the perpetrator of the Aberdeen workplace shooting. But back to Madison, Wisconsin. So after all of that transvestigating, what do we have? Just another Columbiner with neo-Nazi ties. The right has gotten so good at deploying the trans shooter as a smoke bomb.
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It obscures the reality of the over-availability of firearms, the dynamics of online radicalization, and the social issues that fuel alienation and anger in youth. Instead of focusing on all that, on the victims of this epidemic of white supremacist violence, we instead have to spend a whole day debunking the late shooter's pronouns. And that's the point. That's what they want us talking about.
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Those who delete their quote-unquote trans terrorist posts after being conclusively proven wrong will try the exact same shtick in a few months after the next mass shooting goes viral. Others won't even care that much. They'll just leave up their post, secure in the stability of the reality tunnel they helped to create. I'm going to close with a quote from Sartre.
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Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves. For it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. This post has been deleted.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Dr. James Stout and Reverend Dr. The Honorable Robert Evans.
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Well, I'm sure you feel otherwise fine due to this great week in American history we've all been through together. Yeah. Which started with a meeting between President Donald Trump and El Salvador President Bukele on Monday morning in the Oval Office, where they discussed the possibility of the United States helping to build more Seacott-style facilities to disappear U.S.
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citizens and immigrants that the Trump administration deems criminals or terrorists.
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We're in it. During that meeting, both President Bukele and the Trump cabinet argued that there is simply no way for people sent to Seacott to ever return to the United States, coming up with a whole bunch of absurd ideas. Observed reasons for why that is impossible due to foreign policy and safety of both El Salvador and the United States.
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Me and James did a whole episode on this earlier this week that you can check out on the It Could Happen Here feed. I'm going to move on to an update on the student crackdowns. So ICE has targeted a third green card holder for deportation based on pro-Palestinian activism. Mohsen Marwi is a Palestinian from the West Bank who has lived in the U.S. with a green card for a decade.
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While studying philosophy at Columbia, he co-founded the Columbia Palestinian Student Union in 2023 with Mahmoud Khalil. Marui was arrested by ICE last Monday, April 14th, at his citizenship interview in Vermont.
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Now, after Khalil was arrested last month, Marui went into hiding, and he suspected that this citizenship interview could be a honeypot, but decided to go anyway after waiting a long time for this appointment. His lawyers quickly filed a habeas corpus petition arguing his detentions unlawful and violates the First Amendment. A U.S.
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district judge issued an order hours later that he was, quote, not to be removed from the United States or moved out of the territory of the district of Vermont pending further order of this court. Zionist doxing accounts targeted Madawi in recent weeks. I'm going to play actually this two-minute clip of Marwi talking. This is from December of 2023 on the program 60 Minutes.
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He took a step back from protests in March of 2024 during the second wave of student protests at Columbia.
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Yes. Part of why he took a step back was to focus on his role in the Buddhist club as a, as for, I think in the past, like two years, he has been, he's been participating in that on campus.
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He told CBS news the day before he was detained a quote, if my story will become another story for the struggle to have justice and democracy in this country, let it be unquote. Yeah. Like other students who've been targeted and arrested, he's not been charged or accused of any crime, but the State Department has deemed him a threat to foreign policy.
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Yeah, hard to see how, but I think as we're seeing it, that doesn't really matter. Yeah.
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Now, last Friday, a Louisiana judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration to allow the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, upholding the government's argument that the rarely used Cold War era statute of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows for the secretary of state to deport aliens that pose, quote, adverse foreign policy consequences.
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The only, quote-unquote, evidence presented in court was a two-page memo written by Mark Rubio that alleges that Khalil's presence in the country threatens, quote, U.S.
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policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States based on information provided by the DHS, ICE, and Homeland Security Investigations regarding the participation and roles of Khalil in anti-Semitic protests and disruptive actions which foster a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States, unquote. So there's no real evidence in this document.
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It is just Mark Rubio's opinion for two pages. And this is the only evidence that ever has been held in court that resulted in the judge ruling in the government's favor.
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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the same stuff that we saw at the RNC, where they referred to students as terrorists, like just completely, completely flat. Like every single person at a college campus who is upset about a genocide or criticizes the state of Israel, that person is a terrorist. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.
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These documents showed that the government used unverified tabloid reporting against Khalil and contained contradicting information. So essentially using New York Post style publications as a pretext for ICE to execute arrests against people who are green card holders, legal permanent residents of the United States. We're going to go on break and come back to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Finally, finally, something fun. All right, we're back. I'm going to throw to Robert Evans for an update on everyone's favorite roadkill consumer.
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Also like co-opting like COVID conscious language.
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Also... Frankly, I know way too many autistic people who write poems. Oh, tons of them.
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Extremely common activity for my fellow... My fellow autism people out there.
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Yeah. I talk slightly differently in the cool zone work chat, which is kind of the extent of it for me. Yeah, that's the extent of it. Not really, but that is an aspect. Speaking of the Department of Health and Human Services, they released a report page on their website for you, the vigilant citizen. Oh, yes. To report trans minors receiving health care. Finally.
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So another one of these snitching hotlines, this time on a federal government website, that I'm sure will only get real complaints sent to it and not the B-movie script.
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Yeah. Uh... Speaking of trans people, I do have a few updates on some of the transgender stuff. During that meeting between President Bukele and Trump, they went on a small tangent about trans people where Trump said that he actually doesn't like talking about, quote unquote, men in women's sports because he wants to wait and save that issue to use for the next election. Amazing. Yeah.
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That's super interesting. Very clear insight into how Trump sees the trans sports issue and treats it as this election-winning superpower. And certainly he is directing the DOJ with his executive orders. He still is targeting trans people, especially trans people in school. So it's not that he's treating this as a hands-off issue.
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to ensure that it can remain a hot-button thing for the next election. But I think in his mind, he doesn't want to stop Democrats from... caring about this issue in a way like like the more that that they that they fight for it in his mind is like what gives him ammunition for the next election, whether he's going to run for a third term or just like Republicans like mega stuff in general.
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But I think that it is an interesting look into like his personal insight on on this issue. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice just announced on Wednesday, April 16th,
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that they are suing Maine's Department of Education for not complying with Trump's anti-trans executive order by continuing to allow trans people to compete in sports, claiming that they are, quote, failing to protect women in women's sports, unquote, which they say violates Title IX. Mm-hmm.
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The suit aims to get an injunction to force Maine to strip away rights from trans people in schools, to take away two winning titles from trans school athletes, and are considering to quote-unquote retroactively pull all funding that Maine has received. Maine's Attorney General Aaron Frey said on Wednesday, quote, unquote.
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So Maine and specifically the Maine governor are adamant that this is going to be an issue that's only going to be settled in the courts. And in fact, challenged Trump at a recent meeting to see you in court over this issue. We are going to go on break and then return to close out this episode of Executive Disorder. Okay, we are back.
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I'm now going to throw to myself and Mia to discuss tariff talk in a future recording.
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I'm so confused, though, because I thought it's 10% tariffs for non-Chinese companies.
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Well, thank you for that uplifting story, Mia, about Doge breaking into and stealing data from the NLRB and posting overhead drone photos of people's houses who threatened the Doge supremacy.
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All right. I think that's all for us today on It Could Happen Here.
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Yeah, lots of people here have this like very Orientalist perspective of like Buddhism, TM, as this like, you know, like peaceful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, no, like Buddhism, like every religion has a variety of sects. Yes. And the Buddhist national sects can be particularly nasty.
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That is low-key surprising, considering Mark Rubio. Right, yeah. Well, I think Rubio is more of a, like, a slightly... Rubio's a neocon. Yeah, I guess, like, it makes sense, Mark Rubio, like, five years ago. Yeah. It doesn't make sense, like, post, like, USAID being gutted. They're like, oh, you're still doing that kind of stuff, huh? Yeah, there's, like, a weird, like, mix of things.
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style Rubio this this tracks but all of the movements that the Trump administration's been doing more recently this seems like seems like a some kind of DEI shenanigans if you ask me yeah actually they added another seven million later nine million which is yeah it's not a lot of money compared to what we would normally expect and at the same time they did it for
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So they're just finding people displaced from the earthquake and forcing them.
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I don't think so. It sounds vaguely familiar, but all of these humanitarian organizations all have the same four words that they shuffle around in different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Okay, yes, yes, I do know what this is and who this is, yes.
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Are they going to force people to convert to evangelical Christianity before they give services like they do in some cases?
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Yeah, no, absolutely not. You cannot... Like, they want them to die.
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This is It Could Happen Here. I am not going to El Salvador. It's not going to happen. No way. No thank you, Mr. President. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout. Hi, Garrison. We're here to talk about possibly the most upsetting thing I've seen in American politics in like the past six months to maybe even... I don't know, this really had hit me for like the past few years.
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Like what happened on Monday in the Oval Office was, is kind of the most blackpilled I've ever been, which is not a great way to start an episode.
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There's like a level of like intentional depravity that you're reminded of more blatantly.
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So we're going to be talking about an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and El Salvador President Bukele. I guess I could learn his first name.
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So, as you probably know, recently, the United States government has sent upwards of 300 people, immigrants, to the El Salvador Terrorism Confinement Center, this prison black site that people never return from.
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I guess I could point to, for a pop culture reference, which feels a little bit in bad taste, but you could point to the prison in the TV show Andor as being a very comparable facility, frankly. Except they turn off the lights in Andor. They do not turn off the lights in Seacott. Lights are on all the time. They put 10 to 20 people per cell. It's pretty bad.
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Jameson has done episodes on Seacott in the past. We'll probably keep doing more.
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Yeah, they can't go outside. They stay in their cell for almost 24 hours a day. They might occasionally get 30 minutes outside. But that's not even confirmed because no one's even allowed inside to see what's going on in there. And we've sent upwards of 300 immigrants there, the vast majority of which have no criminal record.
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Even if you do have a criminal record, being renditioned to a foreign prison camp is still bad. But this is something that Trump hopes to expand on greatly, and they are currently defending their ability to do so in the courts.
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Since it has been learned that a few people sent there may have been partially sent by accident, but the Trump administration is refusing to return these people and is instead still trying to convince the public that these are dangerous terrorists that deserve to be disappeared. So let's kind of start with that main case.
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The case that's receiving the most public attention right now is of a Maryland man named Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who's the subject of a district court case that has been sent up to the Supreme Court and then sent back to the district court on whether this man can be returned home to his U.S. citizen wife and child.
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And then on Monday, April 14th, in the Oval Office meeting, President Bukele said that he will not return this Maryland immigrant with protected legal status back to the United States, who ICE admits was sent to Seacott based on a quote-unquote administrative error. Bukele said, quote, how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it.
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The question is preposterous, unquote. The El Salvador president also balked at the idea of releasing Garcia from SECOT, since he can't have a quote-unquote terrorist free in his country, lying about Garcia being a criminal. I am going to play a few clips in this episode, because I think it is necessary to listen to these people actually say...
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the words that they are saying in the tone that they're saying them. And the exact phrasing on these, I think, is actually pretty important right now. So unfortunately, you are going to have to hear the voices of a few people who you might not rather hear from, including the president of El Salvador. So I'll play this first clip.
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insane like the whole pretense of any any like serious engagement with reality there it's just gone yeah and they're both like miming that neither of them have the ability to make any kind of deal between each other to yeah to send people back even though they have the ability to make a deal to send people there
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The whole time Bekele's talking, Trump has this growing smirk on his face as Bekele's talking about this preposterous notion of smuggling a U.S. immigrant back into the United States despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of this immigrant back into the country.
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The whole smuggling framing is obviously absurd with him saying, like, I don't have the power to return him to the United States. All he needs to do is release him from SECOT and the US can fly him back, right? Just as we flew him to El Salvador. Like the two heads of state are sitting right next to each other. They could agree to do this at any time.
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But now everyone's pretending that suddenly they don't have the power to undo what they seemingly had the power to do in the first place.
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In effect, they are arguing that every single human being that is sent to Seacott by the United States is unable to ever leave the prison alive. That's basically what they're saying. They're saying both parties, both Trump and Bukele, are unable to have someone who's been sent there returned. So they're just saying no one's able to do anything. They're just stuck there until they die.
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And this is part of the design of Seacott. The person who runs the Seacott security has said that they do not intend in any person ever being released from Seacott. You are not designed to get out. You are stuck there forever. No one's ever left there. Yeah. It's just where you get disappeared. And that's all that it is.
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And I think part of why they're so unwilling to send Garcia back is because then you have someone, like, the first person who's ever, like, gotten out and can talk about what it's actually like in there when you don't have, like, Kristi Noem and, like, propaganda cameras pointed at the prison bars.
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even this per year deal makes, now kind of makes zero sense because both of them are arguing that there's no way to send anyone back. So like, it's not that it's even like, oh, they're only going to be there for one year. It's like, They're just there.
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And who knows if they're going to still be alive by the time that some of these people would be able to get out, whether that's through the miraculous Donald Trump impeachment of 2026, which will never happen, or however. These people are just stuck there because he's not going to release them into his country. We are seemingly unable to take anyone back from there. I mean, unwilling, right?
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It's argued that we're unable as people get into more after this ad break. Okay, we are back. One thing that we've seen across the Trump administration the past 80 days or so, something that we saw very evident in this meeting, is that whenever a single person is asked a question about the outrageous, possibly illegal, possibly not, but just immoral or evil things that are being done,
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The first instinct is always to pass the buck onto someone else. We saw this a lot with Signalgate, how it was always someone else's fault. No single person could get hammered down of being like, okay, you are the person that's going to be accountable for this.
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And throughout this Oval Office meeting, eventually they started taking questions from journalists and reporters and propagandists who were in the room. You saw this trend of if someone asks Trump about what's going on, he passes the buck to Stephen Miller, who passes the buck to Bukele, who then passes the buck to Mark Rubio.
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It's like this big circle of everyone's just talking around each other because no one really has the authority to speak on what's going on or how to fix this problem because they don't see it as a problem. Instead, they just talk in a circle. I think Miller was one of the most effective at this.
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And unfortunately, we're going to play the longest clip in this episode, just under two minutes, from Stephen Miller, where he lays out the Trump admin's thought process and strategy behind what they are doing. And I apologize for this, but it is useful to hear from Himmler, too. So here we go.
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So there's a lot there. I think I'm going to start with, I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would move right away. And I think that is really the heart of what this Trump administration is doing. It's appealing to this most basic suburban crime, panic, fear, racism. Well, if he was your neighbor, you wouldn't want him living next to you.
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Well, just completely lying about the context of this case, with Miller saying it's arrogant to suggest that we, the most powerful country in the world, or used to be before the tariffs, can tell El Salvador how to handle its citizens, falsely claiming that immigration courts deemed him a member of MS-13, which just is not true. Yeah.
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talking about kidnapping him from Seacott to return him to the United States, as if ICE didn't just kidnap hundreds of people with no criminal records and send them to a foreign gulag, and then also lied about the Supreme Court ruling, saying they found the district court order to return Garcia unlawful, and grossly mischaracterizing the scope of what the Supreme Court ruling was and how it was sent back to the district court to work out the details on what facilitate the return actually means.
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And again, I think one of the most telling parts is how he ends by saying, quote, no version of this ever ends up with him living here. And yeah, they're going to look for any way to make this test case work.
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And if they can do this to someone with protected legal status who is not a terrorist, who is not an actual MS-13 gang member, this is kind of ideal for them because that means they can paint anybody as a foreign policy threat enough to be sent to a foreign gulag. Then at the very end of the clip, he passes the buck off to Bukele to have him answer this question.
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He's lived in the States since 2011, and he left El Salvador to flee harassment and abuse from gang members.
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No, we've had like 14 people are accused of some kind of violent crime, like murder or rape. And the other 275 do not have a criminal record whatsoever.
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No, hundreds of people have been forgotten in this. Mm-hmm. After Miller's rant there, Mark Rubio jumped in to state that, quote, no court in the United States has the right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States, unquote. And Stephen Miller hopped back in to talk about this Supreme Court case that they're falsely saying they won 9-0, which is not how that case went.
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And they start talking more broadly about what can be allowed if it has to do with the foreign policy of the United States and how the courts don't have the ability to intervene in that process.
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Part of what I find so disturbing about this idea of no habeas corpus, no due process, if you aren't on foreign soil, is that this idea of the courts having no jurisdiction over foreign policy decisions means that as long as you, whether you're a citizen, whether you're a permanent resident, a documented or undocumented immigrant,
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As long as you are forcibly removed from the United States soil, your rights and your due process has been forfeit. And the U.S. has neither the obligation nor sometimes the ability to return you to U.S. soil if that is their foreign policy interest. And this is such a troubling, broad concept that the portions of the courts are kind of allowing them to claim right now.
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And the complete removal of due process is like slowly getting encroached upon at first with undocumented immigrants and green card holders. But as we will see in the next section, they are also absolutely going to be targeting U.S. citizens.
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Yeah. And as it relates to your rights for due process, if you are in the United States.
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We're going to go on break and then come back to discuss the expansion of the CCOT detention program and the possible targeting of U.S. citizens. Okay, we're back. So, on April 7th, a few weeks ago, while on Air Force One, President Trump told reporters that he would be, quote-unquote, honored for the president of El Salvador to take U.S.
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citizens, quote-unquote, American grown and born criminals, and put them in SECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center Prison Black Site, saying, quote, why should it stop just at people that cross the border illegally, unquote. A few days later, the White House press secretary reiterated that this is something that Trump is discussing both publicly and privately.
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And later, during the April 14th Oval Office meeting, Trump said that if Salvador was to build more of these torture mega prisons, the United States would, quote unquote, help them out if the Trump administration could disappear more American immigrants and U.S. citizens to these prison black sites.
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So this is just the start of a long process that is going to be deeply troublesome and worrying. And again, this is something that they keep talking about. I think they're still looking for some kind of legal justification or they're looking for something that maybe, if not allows for this, explicitly prohibits this in a way that they can't get around.
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I think this is why they're definitely trying to stretch this foreign policy claim as far as they can. That if it's outside U.S. soil, there's a limited way U.S. courts can actually interfere or undo things that have already been done.
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And again, the idea that we're going to fund the construction of even more of these El Salvador mega-prisons just to house American grown and born criminals as well as immigrants. We're just funding gulag camps on foreign soil to send the undesirables to.
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And no matter how much Trump talks about how we're only going to send quote-unquote American criminals there, as we've seen with SECOT so far, no. Like... The majority of people they are sending do not have criminal histories. I don't think anyone can trust the Trump administration's definition of what is and isn't criminal to this extent anymore.
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Later in the same meeting, Trump reiterated the same idea about sending U.S. citizens who his administration deems criminals to this foreign black site. Here's another clip.
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He's really obsessed with this baseball bats thing. I don't quite know what that's about.
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Maybe it's something he remembers like 30 years ago that really got stuck in his head. Right. But also later he says that they're negotiating with other countries to send US citizens to, not just El Salvador.
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yeah and again like as we've seen the past few years and increasingly so now the the effort to to label like activists or people who are vocally opposed to the united states foreign policy the united states and state of israel deeming them terrorists and then by extension if you charge them with a crime then criminals the idea that they can be housed in a place like seacott now uh
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with very, very limited to no due process. The whole due process question is still very up in the air for how they're going to handle that aspect. But you can't just take this as like, oh, you know, that's just Trump talking. Like, no, this is something they really want to do. And it's one of the freakiest things that I've seen in domestic U.S. politics in a long time.
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Earlier, Trump was recorded half-whispering to Bukele, telling him that El Salvador needs to build five more Seacott-style torture prisons to house U.S. citizens, as Trump says, homegrown criminals. Bukele replies that they will have enough room, and then the entire Oval Office laughs. It's the bleakest clip I've ever seen before. Yeah. Talking about homegrowns are next.
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Got to build five more places. Oh, we have enough space. Everyone laughs. And then Trump shows off the new gold frames for the portraits in the Oval Office.
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Creating these, like, stateless zones where, like, the regular laws of your, like, fatherland state do not apply. Right.
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Yeah. No, this is like elementary school stuff. It says like the first thing you learn about is concentration camps and gulags and how that's like the symbol of evil. And now it's something you laugh about in the Oval Office to send homegrowns to five disappearing torture camps.
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Like if you're a Venezuelan man who may or may not have a tattoo.
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And like the president of El Salvador is so on board for this.
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Both him and Trump have openly aligned themselves with quote-unquote nationalism and nationalists. They're openly saying this. Trump said dictator on day one. That wasn't just a rhetorical device. That was literal. This is what he's doing. The El Salvador president told Trump, you have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some.
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And he followed that up by saying that he is eager to help with that.
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This whole liberation through imprisonment thing is elementary school stuff here.
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It's so much more disturbing that now, according to polls, around half the population, maybe a little bit less, just agree with the current way that deportations are happening and Trump's immigration policy, like on a completely like flat basis.
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And if you spend any time on X, the everything app, watching videos of these press conferences, it's full of people just like cheering this on completely, like completely blankly.
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Of course, of course. But the number of people... Yeah, it's real humans saying it. These are real people who just completely, completely blankly think this is a net good. Those people are unreachable. You cannot come back from that. There is no coming back from that. If you believe that the way deportations are currently happening is fair, just, and right, I cannot...
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understand you as a human anymore that is so like divorced and like alien yeah you've gone past the point of no return right like liberals who like shield who like shield their eyes from like the horrors at the border like i don't agree with that but in some ways i can like understand it the open like cheering on of this right is like a whole it's a whole other level yeah it's not like i can't bear to see i'm gonna ignore it because it'll cause me to confront the no the contradictions it's i'm seeing it i'm watching it and i think it's fucking great
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The last thing I'm going to play here, a CNN reporter asked Trump if he would obey a Supreme Court order to return someone to the United States. Instead of answering this question, Trump attacked the reporter and complained about how she wasn't praising him for deporting criminals.
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Yeah, mad. Very textbook authoritarian blanket stuff. There's nothing to commentate about that. It just is what it is. I guess we do have some breaking news because we're recording this on Tuesday. James, do you want to, in possibly five minutes or less...
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Fill us in about the update from the district court on Garcia's case, since it was sent back to the district court from the Supreme Court last week regarding his possible facilitated return to the United States.
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Yeah, they're going to weasel their way around it the same way you heard Stephen Miller weasel his way around every question and with truth being used as a flexible medium to shape a sculpture of their choosing.
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And this is not the only person who we believe was quote-unquote mistakenly sent. There's reporting today coming out of Documented New York. Yeah.
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A father of a 19-year-old legal immigrant from Brooklyn. This 19-year-old with no tattoos... was kidnapped off the streets of New York. The quote from his father reads, quote, the officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said, no, he's not the one, like they were looking for someone else.
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Correct. But the other officer said, take him anyway, unquote. And now this father, exactly a month later, is still looking for his missing son who is disappeared into an El Salvador torture prison. Yeah, Jesus.
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Things are looking a lot more grim in my mind than they were when we recorded that should you leave the United States episode. I still think the things I said there, I stand by and I stand by the only recommendation I have is to create options for yourself. And I think...
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those options should be created as soon as possible, especially if your citizenship is a topic of debate, according to the United States government. But even that will not keep you safe, as we've talked about today.
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We will continue to report on the Garcia case, other court cases regarding these 300 people renditioned to El Salvador and Seacott in the next few weeks.
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
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Oh, it's It Could Happen Here, a podcast from CES, the Consumer Electronics Show 2025. I am here with my friend and work partner, Garrison Davis. We have been... Trotting the boards, the boards being the Las Vegas Convention Center all day. Garrison, today you started earlier than I did because I was catastrophically hungover after getting very drunk with a priest last night. Yeah.
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We had a nice dinner and then we set out to experience a fresh new hell. And in this case, that fresh new hell was what the AI bros have ready for your children.
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Yeah, it really is remarkable that like, yeah, I guess in part just because like that is such a focus. I think it has something to do with what you saw some of yesterday where, and I had caught a little the day before where they're like, yeah, they don't really like this stuff. We're going to have to get around it.
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Like, obviously this is inevitable, but like people really also seem to not enjoy it very much. No one can explain why. But I think that this may be like, okay, well, if we get them when they're young enough, if we train these kids, we can force this on them and they'll have no choice but to like it.
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Do you get the feeling that she was, like, a bad person trying to help, like, other bad people sell poison to children or somebody who was trying to, like... in a way that these guys would listen to, tell them that what they're doing isn't working.
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Amazing that human beings don't want a robot to replace them in such drudgery as the search for love and human connection. Incredible that teens aren't interested in letting a robot go on dates for them.
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The amount of people I meet who feel that way about, like, their digital twins or, like, who take pride in having, like, an AI trained off of their social media posts at events like these, it's shocking to me because, like... Do you feel good about saying that a chatbot, you feel like it is you, that you have trained a chatbot to be a reasonable simulacrum of yourself?
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Do you feel good about thinking that? Does that make you happy about yourself?
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Some pushback. Some pushback. To the idea that like, you should live a life. Your one precious life should be lived.
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It's harder, so you guys have to be better about that.
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That was very interesting, because the surprise about that, because it is this kind of... I'm sure most of these people were born to wealth and privilege, and the first thing that people do with money, the primary reason to have money, is to reduce friction. The fact that that's surprising to anyone, like, no, like... Friction's necessary, otherwise you're not a person.
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I mean, it's like the ghoul we saw the other night, right? Like, you know, they're just not really people, you know?
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Yeah. Dating people, making friends, being social, doing whatever it is you do for a living as yourself is what life is. Yeah.
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No. Like, all they're offering people is, like, this machine will do everything that you actually want to do with your time, and also you won't have a job. Like, that's what big tech is promising, Gen Z. Yeah, so that's how I started my day. Speaking of Gen Z, Z stands for zillions of dollars that we'll get if you listen to these ads.
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That it's actually just kind of using some of the tech that makes up AI to allow you to make something humans wrote more reactive.
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That guy sitting there talking, almost rolling his eyes at his own product while it yaps in his lap is a perfect... He clearly didn't think about how that would look, because it does not make an appealing ad for the product.
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Raise it. I mean, it looks like you could probably handle all of the physical contact they need too. So you don't even need to ever touch your child. And in fact, you can just have chat GPT, root that through the bear and never even see your own flesh and blood. Like I think ideally you would have them cut out of there, you know, really surgically remove that baby, you know, a month or two early.
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And that way you can kind of absolutely minimize the amount of time that you ever spend in contact with your spawn.
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Right. Well, The good news is that I don't think these are going to be wildly successful products. I mean, I guess we'll see. But these are super expensive. And like, did you get a price point for that bear? I did not hear a price point for the bear. I'm curious as to what they're going to be charging for it. I mean, we'll see if any of this stuff really does take off.
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I wouldn't consider it optimism to hope this stuff takes off, but like they don't seem like great products to me. So I guess we'll see. I read something very interesting that is related exactly. It probably was. He might have been talking about like that weird bear or something. I read something very interesting on the subject of like AI children's toys from a guy who was like an AI developer.
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This was from a post on Twitter by Alex Volkov. So a very interesting experiment happened after Magical Toys reached out and fixed the issue referenced below. She started playing with this dino, chatted with it, and then learned to turn it off and doesn't want it to talk anymore. She still loves playing with it, dressed it up. It now has paper shoes and a top hat that we made together.
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But every time I ask her if she'd like to chat with it, she says no. A few times it turned it back on and she did speak with it for a bit and then she just turned it off again, not wanting to engage." I gently asked why, and I wasn't really able to understand where there's the resistance. It's not weird to her. In fact, at one point, she was pretending the dino was a baby and was turned on.
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So I told her, let's ask it to pretend to be a baby, and it obliged and said okay. So we asked it to cry. Granted, they don't have an amazing advanced voice mode like OpenAI, so it did its best, but it sounded weird, which made her laugh really hard. It was basically making crying sounds like talking. And also, there are still technical issues.
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The voice is sometimes choppy, so it could be that it's still uncanny for her. I'm honestly fascinated about why the AI aspect of this didn't connect with my six-year-old. Because it's creepy. Because it's, people, they don't like it. Nobody wants this. Yeah. Ick. Yeah, ick.
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I know this is a sample size of one kid here, and I'm sure many, many things will change as she'll grow and learn to interact with more AIs in different forms. But the first toy contact was interestingly almost a complete failure. That is interesting. Yeah, I find that fucking fascinating.
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I would prefer, I'll pretend it's a robot, but I don't want it to be a robot that talks to me.
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Oh, that's not bad, actually. No. That's good. Okay, good. All right, well, maybe.
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Okay, we're back. So we went and saw something else today. While you were at a different chunk of the event talking to yet another flying car company that promises to revolutionize the East, with which we can all do 911s. Super excited for that future, by the way. I stumbled upon the booth for a company called TCL. A pretty big company.
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A fairly large, yeah, large company, make a lot of TVs, stuff like that. They had a couple of things. They had an AI laundry machine. So many AI laundry bots. Yeah. This one was the worst because it's like this little, almost a soft, rounded pyramid shape. It hangs your laundry. They say they can't do folding yet. So it just sort of like picks up dry laundry and holds it.
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It just suspends it in the air. It suspends it in the air inside of itself. And also it can only do a kilogram of laundry. The only thing they had in there was like and scarves. So it's like probably a couple of thousand dollars, but you can, AI can clean your, your handkerchiefs and scarves.
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Yeah. And they had a washing machine that it can identify and count exactly what clothes are in it and how many of them there are. And it'll tell you the soil level and yada, yada, yada, yada. Like I'm sure some people will want this shit, but it's like,
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Yeah, only people who have a lot of money and want to spend it on a laundry machine because I don't see that it actually reduces the amount of work you need to do at this point. But the thing they had at the booth that caught my eye was a robot toy for kids. AI space me is the name of the robot. Baby Yoda was a partial inspiration because like a Furby. Yep. There's some Furby.
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There's some Porg in there. It's a two part toy. The interior part is like a swaddled up, almost looking little Porg thing with a cute face. And the eyes are reasonably good. Like they did a decent job of the eyes not looking creepy. but like that blink and change color and contract and expand. And then it's got like two little flapper arms that can like wiggle.
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And it's seated inside, almost like the aliens in Independence Day. It's seated inside like this large rolling body frame that allows it to move around on the ground. And so it's supposed to like be your child's friend. And the first thing that was upsetting to me, because they had this video ad that would play every so often. And it was, Very creepy.
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And, you know, I thought back to when we were doing the interview with the guy who had like the robot for old people. He was like, it's very important that it not tell them it loves them, that it like always reiterate that it's a false thing. This robot just keeps telling the kid, I love you, like I care for you.
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When the lady did a demo, she was like, it's a toy that actually knows and cares about your child. And like, no, it's not. No, it's not. Don't say that. That shouldn't be legal for you to say that. For you to sell this to children and tell them it's an intelligent being that loves them is like deeply abusive, in my opinion. Like that is actually child abuse because it's not alive.
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Anyway, so I had to bring Garrison over because you needed to see it. Oh, and saw it, I did. Yeah, and I'm going to play a little clip from the ad. So I want you to hear the way this thing sounds.
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I found that profoundly upsetting. Disturbing. Yeah. Your kid can like pick it up and like walk with it. It'll like talk to them. It'll make up stories. It'll like look at pictures your kid draws and then generate them into like live AI videos. You can put a pin on and it will record stuff that your kid does and play it back to you at night as a video.
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So again, absolutely minimizing the amount of time you have to spend with your child.
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Yeah. It takes over your car so that like it's talking to you from the screens in your car.
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The mix of things that we're trying to have this do, like the other ones were billed as toys. This was billed as like a friend for your child.
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Yeah, it's supposed to also act as like it'll change that you can hook it into your smart home so it can change the temperature. Like they did a little in-person demo where like a woman pretending to be a mom talked with it about like planning a birthday party for her kid with it. Yeah.
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And it like put food in her Amazon cart and like changed the temperature inside because more people were coming over. One of the things they advertise is a security mode where it like travels around your house at night and acts as a sentry watching your home. Like wild stuff.
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Yeah, and I think probably very bad for children. Everything they showed us was incredibly curated. When we watched this live thing where she was having a very fluid conversation with it, that was clearly scripted.
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So I wonder how well this thing actually works in practice. We never got an actual live demo. No. Because they always show it perfectly recognizing the kid, perfectly recognizing what's in their little kid drawings and stuff, what it's supposed to be to make beautiful, creepily shiny AI moving versions and stuff.
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So I wonder how much less good it's going to be in reality than the thing that they've showed us. But it's definitely some amount shittier than what they've displayed already. And part of why I think that is like, we went to check out the booth that this other, the South Korean company just called, I think SK had like a, they called it a quantum security camera that was AI enabled.
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And then thinking about how like in the ads, it always like recognize the kid and its parents in a drawing accurately. Well, this one, when I flipped off the camera with both middle fingers, recognized it and wrote up a description of a man giving the camera a thumbs up. Like, I'm really curious for when these things hit the market and people start buying them.
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Like, what sort of fucked up stuff it'll do and how kind of big the seams are. I don't expect a long life for this thing, which is going to be even funnier because, like, there was already a big $800, like, children's companion AI toy that failed last year and the company shut off access to them.
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And, like, so parents had to explain to their kids who had bonded with this thing that it was dying forever. Yeah. And that's especially exciting to me because they've built a robot that talks to your kid and tells it it loves them. And eventually that robot is going to be taken away from the child by the company when it no longer becomes profitable. And that's, I'm excited for that.
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Like new ground and how to fuck up kids. Anyway, that's what I got, Garrison. What an uplifting CES adventure once again.
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Yeah. That's all. Great. All right, everybody. Well, this has been Behind the Bastards. No, it's not. Or, no, it's not. What is this? This has been It Could Happen Here, a podcast by somebody who is slowly going insane.
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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it, the consumer electronics show, happening here to everyone. And, of course, it is, in fact, happening to everyone because over the course of the day, all of our subjects here, all of our experts here have watched different kinds of dudes explain the different kinds of jobs they want to replace with a chatbot that was trained on Reddit.
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So I'm going to go around a circle and introduce our guests today. First off, we've got the great Ed Ongueso Jr. Ed, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me on. We've got Garrison Davis, who's also great, but I'm not going to say it at the same time because I don't want Ed's compliment to feel like less. But you're contractually obligated to not mind.
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Great to be here, as always. Very natural, very natural. Zai? Hi, hi, hello. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you. This is your first CES as well. That's right. Your first time being a journalist. Also true. How do you feel doing the job that Alex Garland has just reminded us in the movie Civil War is a fundamentally noble, perfect endeavor only practiced by heroes?
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Without the safety. Remember. And last, but certainly not least, in fact, maybe better than some people in the room. Again, I'm not going to say who. You can wonder that for yourself.
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I'm not even really like talking about it. Yeah, exactly. Because we haven't gotten those numbers back from OpenAI.
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So what I want to do here, I think this is kind of our roll up. We've spent our last day on the floor. I want to go around and I'll start first. You guys have a second to get your thoughts together. What comes to mind immediately is like, this is the thing that I had the most positive reaction to. And this is the thing that I had the most negative reaction to.
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I think is a solid way for us to start out. And I think my most negative reaction obviously was the Amy artificial child best friend toy, which was deeply upsetting and uncomfortable. And I hated both that, like, I could tell from an industrial design standpoint. pretty good design. Like it looked like something like, oh, a kid will think that's cute.
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And from a, this is our intent for this product standpoint, it felt like a replacement for the love of adults in the life of a small child, which I thought was like evil in a profound way. And I guess the best thing that I saw
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I'm not perfectly competent at this point to like analyze how well it worked, but from the demo I saw, I was very impressed with, in a QI, Naki's basically reads facial micro motions in order to let people control a computer. Not exclusively, but especially if they're quadriplegic or whatever. Like I thought that was really interesting and it's the kind of thing that
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Because honestly, I might loop that in with there was a AI-assisted cane for people who were blind. There was another device that allowed you to control a computer through facial movements in your mouth that was like a retainer.
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All of the stuff that's like, oh, these are like really people care a lot about helping somebody regain the ability to utilize technology to let them reconnect to the world. That's like the opposite of replacing a child's parents with a toy. Ed, you're in the hot seat next. Yeah.
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Yeah, when I first read the line, that is not dead, which can't eternal lie, and with strange eons, even death may die.
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We don't need to be encouraging the blue and on stuff here.
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Let them have it. You're right. He wasn't shot at all. That was all an AI trick.
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An AR-15 would blow your whole head off that way.
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Not in any legally binding sense. We had a beautiful moment where it was this like, it was like a set of smart goggles, which there were a lot of that had like night vision, but also it had like threat assessment. So the specific thing they bragged is like, it can help a police officer identify if somebody has a gun.
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That does make me think of a better world where we have exactly as much money and focus on AI, but it's all integrating it into cat-focused products. Like $50 billion being poured into cat AI. Translate whatever your cat is saying into French perfectly. Your cat can make deals with Chinese. And by the way, we've hooked him up to Venture Capital. He has an open line to SoftBank.
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I want to see a guy dressed as Steve Jobs be like, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally done it. We have gotten across the concept of death to a cat. They now understand their mortality. Just meowing.
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What a dog would think about Proust. Just a dog sitting at a table smoking a cigarette. Yeah. The future. Garrison, you're up.
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They were dressed as wizards. They were dressed as wizards, and we walked up to them, and they said— Let's start. VLC, folks, if you don't know this, this was especially relevant to those of us who pirated a lot. It's a media app that allows you to basically play any kind of— Any video file. Video file, yes.
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Or audio file, and now it will automatically give you subtitles too, using local AI that's not like reaching to the cloud or anything to do it.
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I'm not going to fake it. The degree of like, I don't give a fuck about anything else in this stupid goddamn show that they gave off. They exuded it.
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I walked up and I was like. VLC is a very popular app. They just crossed 6 billion downloads. I've been using them for almost as long as you've been alive. And I walked up and I was like, I've been using your product for 15 years in order to pirate media. And they said very nonchalantly, keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
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This is why I keep an air tag on them. Great way to get abducted.
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Well, speaking of possibly scary, the sponsors of this podcast don't know who they are. Could be the Washington State Highway Patrol again, in which case, thank you, boys, for your noble service on our nation's roads. I'm not saying that because I got pulled over the other week and I'm really trying to fight a court case right now. I would never do that. Anyway, thanks, guys. And we're back.
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This is completely supposedly closed source. From what y'all were telling me earlier today when you explained this to me, it sounded kind of like the people making this have an understanding of the dangers inherent particularly to the trans community and why they might want to use this and a focus on privacy for that reason. I didn't press them on that because, I don't know, I felt a little weird.
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Leaving broken pieces of plastic on both the charger itself and your car.
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In the Tesla charging station in Brentwood, California, where the average income is in the eight figures. Yep. I got to say, though, you're being very unfair to them. It was so nice of them to put down the phone where they were doom scrolling TikTok to look at all of the different reasons their kids are going to be abducted and talk to you about this product.
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I feel like I could have upsold them and like, what if we put some explosives in this? You know, really like keep them off of the car, like blow it away.
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Someone scared a lady driving a Vibe. That's one of the electric cars, right?
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We're calling it the iguana, and it does spin with enough force to break a grown man's thigh.
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Now, David, this kind of technology wasn't possible just a few decades ago. Right, exactly.
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Yeah, and that was mostly for pirates in at least one movie I saw recently.
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Yeah. What are you getting? What are you optimizing from yourself by not having, like, pieces of, like, the thing that a human being does, which is, like, pick your clothes? Right. Yeah. I wonder how you feel about this, because you and I have been going to CES for, I'm going to guess, a broadly similar number of years.
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You have like the dead-eyed veteran look to your face.
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The first time someone showed me a tablet computer, I was like, Oh man, science has given me everything I want.
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Yeah. Uh, 2011 or 12, I got to see inductive charging of a car for the first time. And it was so big. The Las Vegas Convention Center is the size of a city. And seeing the lights in that whole convention center dim as they were doing this, it was very inefficient.
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Yeah. But that was like, oh, wow, this is kind of amazing that this is even possible. But yeah, not really since then. Not really since. That's why I'm really glad that there's lights in the Hyperloop tunnel. Yeah, otherwise it'd be... Unless something goes wrong. Would have started to seem kind of grim otherwise.
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Well, the smart home stuff is interesting because that has been, as long as I've been going to these, they've been trying to sell people on smart homes. And... I don't think I've ever gotten a good idea of what a smart home is that I think a person would want. I can think of two things a person would want, right? One of them is it would be nice if like I didn't have to think about playing music.
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I could just like tell my house to play the music I wanted and it would play the music and I could hear it everywhere and I didn't have to futz with a bunch of shit. And the second is what if I'm coming home from vacation and my house is cold? It would be nice to turn on the heater like an hour before I get home. And one of those things you'd use every day.
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And one of those things is not really viable to base a business off of, but like they keep trying to find new ways to stick computers in my house. And I don't know, does anyone else have anything they want out of a fucking smart home?
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Yeah. Speaking of great consumer concepts, the ads for this podcast. All right, we're back. And I want to close this out by asking everybody a question, which is, how do you feel about where tech is going?
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Yeah, the nature of, like, you can really tell that a lot of, like, the health products are very optimized for, like, rich tech executives. Like, there was a lot of sleep products that all relied on you being willing to, like, bathe yourself in speakers playing binaural beats while you slept. And, like, different devices measure your, like, doing ECG. And it's like, I don't know.
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surveillance stuff even though there are applications that are not that yeah you know it's kind of focused on like the sin the health sins that you're committing yeah we spent a decent amount of this week hanging out with a catholic priest and i do feel like several tech companies were the ones trying to sell us indulgences right yeah
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If you're deaf in an ear, you can listen to your music the way you used to be able to.
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They're durable. I'm on year two of the same pair that I run with every single day, like sweat, rain, great product. This
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It's the fascinating difference between that elder care robot, LEQ, which was clearly a man with a tremendous amount of empathy trying to design a device to help people, and what I usually see with AI, which is trying to design a device to remove the need for human empathy. There was a vet app called Laika that's like chat GPT for veterinarians. And they were like, yeah, you know what?
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Most of it we focused initially on technical questions. So if I have these symptoms, what can that mean? But what vets kept asking us is we would really like advice on how to talk to people that their pets are going to die. And I was like, do you... Are vets not getting out of vet school now? Because that's like, that's a big part of being a vet.
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Well, you say that, but I really do think Viridox is going to revolutionize the way in which mysterious fogs kill large numbers of people. I'm just slandering these people. Maybe, maybe. But don't name it something so sinister.
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And so maybe that shelf-stable mist will also translate to waking up the dead. Possibly, but you don't know that it's going to do, you don't know that it's not going to do that either.
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Yeah, time for, yeah, it's a... In fairness, I drink his son's blood pretty regularly.
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Yeah, I think that's about the best line we could go out on. Like, that's, yeah, you nailed it.
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Hell yeah. Do you want to tell people how to find you, Zai? At NeoWoman on Twitter with zeros. Zeros for Neo. Zeros. All right, everybody. Well, that's going to do it for us here at It Could Happen Here and our week at CES. You know, just try to hug your loved ones until the Viridox sweeps through all of their homes, neighborhoods. Oh, no, it's in the room! It's in the room!
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I'm going to go on a little rant about the name of this episode. Who are you? Because that moment between Cassian and Cyril is one that Tony Gilroy has said in interviews he had to fight for. Everyone was like... Just crazy. And Diego Luna said it was one of the hardest lines for me to deliver because Luna... likes the show and is a fan of the character Cyril and his acting.
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And he knows, and it has the degree of sympathy that you almost have to have for Cyril at this point. And so it was such a difficult challenge for him to be like, to really sell who, wait, who the fuck are you? Shatter Cyril's self-perception. And it's not, it's not even, I'll even push against a little bit that, because I don't think it's entirely that. I think what I like about Cyril's journey
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And what I like about this episode is that who are you is not just about that line. It is about every character that we see in this. We are learning who they all are and they are learning who they all are. Rylance in the beginning, right?
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This guy who had been so gung-ho about the Gorman resistance, who had been the, when he realizes what's happening, that they're all going to be massacred, his family and his culture are going to be wiped out. as a result of this act of resistance that he's helped to organize. He tries to stop it. He says, we have to pull back. And he learns he's not a rebel, right? He's not a rebel.
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And there's always been hints of that. He's not a rebel. The emperor can't know about this, right? We've seen hints of this from Mark Rylance. He learns that about himself. And then a little later in the episode, when it's become, because we watch his kids get massacred. Yeah. He doesn't see them, but he knows they're dead. He hears the gunfire. He understands no one's making it out of there.
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He's not a dumb man. And when he comes in and shoots Cyril in the head, he learns again who he is. And now he wasn't before, but now he is because they've taken everything from him.
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And I love for him that he gets a chance to learn who he is and be wrong and then learn again and be right. Right. Which is not a chance Cyril is going to get. Cyril does. And Cyril, we see a lot of characters in this who could only have been themselves in a fascist state. Dedra's one of them, right? Dedra could not have been the person she is outside of the empire. Totally.
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I think Partagas probably is too. Could never have been himself fully outside. Certainly.
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I think he must have been in the Republic CIA. Yeah.
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Yeah, and I think Krennic obviously is one of our best examples. Krennic is only his whole self. Krennic is an empire guy. Under fascism. Cyril is not an ideological fascist. Cyril never really embraces fascism as a belief system. He never understands the empire that way. He just understands the empire is law and order. Law and order.
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If you look at it from Cyril's standpoint, he gets brought into this not because he wants to clamp down on the evil rebels and he loves Palpatine and wants to kill freedom. It's because two guys are murdered. that he considers colleagues and he thinks it's wrong, right? He has a sense of like justice. And he believes he's following that. And he believes that his girlfriend is invested in that.
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And he truly believes he doesn't want to hurt the people of Gorman. He wants to find the outside agitators who are driving them to disaster, right? And the moment when he learns that that's all a lie, he beats the shit out of his girlfriend. Very violent. I had an argument with someone online about like, is this domestic violence? And I'm like,
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In a literal sense, these people are in a domestic partnership and he is doing violence to her. In a moral sense, if you find out that your significant other has been hiding a genocide from you...
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And we've seen from Cyril previously that he has physical courage, right? He's not afraid of violence. He's not afraid of putting himself in physical danger, right? Like, he's not Cassian Andor level comfortable with it, right? Because he just doesn't have that kind of experience. But he's not... He's not physically a coward, but he's a moral coward the whole series. And that changes.
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And again, going back to who are you, he learns one thing about himself, which is that he is not a genocide committer, right? He is not someone who will consciously participate in the annihilation of a race, right? When he learns that those are the stakes, he chokes Dedra and he fucking runs. He doesn't know anything else about himself at that point.
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And my interpretation of his reaction to that line from Cassian isn't just, because I think what I love about the scene when he chooses to attack him, it's not him making a decision to go back to the Empire. He's not trying to fight Cassian because he wants to get back in good. It's just the only thing that makes sense.
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It's crazy. And it's animal. The way that he goes after him is like a rabid dog charging, you know?
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Yeah, we'll get into that more in a second. I do want to throw to ads here really quickly, and then we'll continue to talk about Connor for a moment. We're back. So you say he wants to be the Irish answer to Tommy Robinson, which is such a Like, aim higher, man. Like, it's odd to me.
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So my interpretation of kind of his ending moments is that, number one, I don't really feel it is necessarily that he undoes all the progress. I think that there's this animal moment when he sees Cassian that just overrides that because nothing else about his life makes sense anymore. He's completely lost any sense of sanity. And Cassian makes sense. Fighting him makes sense. And so he does it.
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And we do see he has a chance to shoot him and he hesitates and he lowers the gun just a bit and then he's immediately shot. And in that moment, number one, one of the themes of this is that like everyone has their own rebellion. There's an argument you can make that him not doing that was his last little act of that.
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There's an argument that maybe he would have tried to engage him in conversation or monologued or whatever, but he didn't get the chance. We just don't know. We'll never know. And he's kind of contrasted with Rylance in that Rylance does get the chance. To see who he is and have it be not enough and then become enough. Cyril gets the chance to see who he is. And he does.
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He does do what he gets one win. And it is a win to realize there's a genocide going on. And I refuse to be a part of it. Right. That's not nothing that he makes that choice. we don't know where he would have gone from here.
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There's a version of Cyril that could have been a part of the rebel that could have, if he had just left Cassian, helped some Gormans escape on a ship, used his Imperial credentials, gotten them out of there, becomes something else. We'll never know because he doesn't get the chance. And I see in that last moment, not just him being like, you don't know who I am. Oh, that shatters me.
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But him being asked, who are you? And realizing I have no answer to that question.
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And he just doesn't get the chance ever to do that.
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I will argue it's going to get paid off a lot in the next three episodes. But there's this idea that does run through the series that even if you are someone working within this machinery of death, within this evil empire, you're not unredeemable or unsavable, but you don't have unlimited time. Right? Yeah. You can be something else.
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You have that chance, but you don't have infinite days to make that choice.
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Many such cases. Many such cases. Whomst among us.
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That gave me a little breakdown too. It's my least favorite chair. I was like, oh no, it's happening again.
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Oh, God. I hate that chant. I hate that fucking chant. Retire it.
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But it's very real. It's very real, right? Like, these are these guys, right? Yes.
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Like, I had kind of been worried because we've had so many cases of guys in the United States who start out as these absolute jokes on the far right, and then you just see them pick up more and more attention over time. And that was kind of my worry with Conor.
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I got a little flashback of being buzzed by a police helicopter. It's standing rocks so close that it knocked my car off the road. Yeah.
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What's great, too, is just in the face acting with Cassian and with Willman, you can see they know, too. They've been in this. They know Willman is like, okay, okay, okay. I know what's happening.
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Some people have said that the Gorman massacre is very clearly inspired by what's happened in Palestine. These episodes, I'm sure, were informed by other massacres in Palestine, but these were written prior to the most current outbreak of really intense genocidal violence.
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Again, there were other similar massacres that occurred in Palestine, but also like this is very clearly patterned off of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. This is very clearly patterned off of, I would argue, my suspicion, the Amritsar massacre in India by the British government as well. Like, I think that there are pieces of all of that in here.
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But you're saying you're kind of concerned more that he's going to continue to be like an organizing presence on the far right rather than someone who... has much of a chance of picking up actual like political office.
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It happened in Maidan too, right? Where you have, you know, both you have Berkut snipers shooting and killing protesters and you have protesters firing back from behind the barricades.
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Yeah, we are learning. He already knows, clearly. He knows who he is. He never has any question about that, but we don't know who he is. Cassian doesn't fully until he's like, yeah, I wiped you from the system, bro. Get out of here. Right?
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And his dad died. protecting him. Yeah, like watch his dad die.
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And there's a beautiful, Andor's last line to this kid is, I hope things work out for you. And the last thing we see that kid do is detonate a bomb to kill himself and a bunch of other people.
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Yeah. Yeah. And he tells him rebellions are built on hope, which is where we get that line from Rogue One.
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And he, again, he learns who he is in this episode, right? Like, he's not just a fuck-up. He rams a truck into that K2 unit and saves Andor. And saves Cassian. Saves the whole day. Yes. He learns who he is. He learns who he is.
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I want to read a little bit from Mon Mothma's speech here. Sure. What I think is kind of the nut of it here is, I believe we are in a crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.
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When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. Uh, boy.
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It's not just Orange Man. It's making a broader, more historical point. Totally, yes. All of this works by destroying any kind of shared concept of reality. You can get people to, if you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities, right?
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Yes. And I love that speech. I think it's really one of my favorite bits of this is that it continues to show the degree to which, as in Nimick's manifesto, tiny spontaneous individual acts of rebellion are constantly occurring and are a key part of the movement, even when they're not organized.
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Mothma only gets through her speech and maybe only lives because a team of door repair guys who do not appear to be anyone's secret agents just fuck up purposefully at their job like we Can't get in. I don't know, man. We can't get into the fucking thing. Like, you're going to have to wait. We're still working on this. And it's kind of inferred that like it's it's weaponized incompetence. Right.
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And I really appreciate that bit. We have a showdown with her and her driver because she becomes aware before her speech that her driver, who she's been taking in as a confidant in the last couple episodes.
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This is a different driver, I think, than first season. No, this is the same driver. She's been talking to Cloris a couple of times. She makes a comment about how this one hurts.
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There's a little bit of an insinuation with him looking at his gun and listening to her that maybe he's rethinking things. But again, we never get the chance to see that because Cassian just shoots.
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I think he's making up his mind about what he's going to do. And I don't think we actually see that. But I mean, I think it's open to interpretation.
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Very good. I also I like the one of the kind of it's not stated directly, but like Lonnie, the Imperial deep cover agent within the ISB is is the guy who put these people there, particularly the incompetent ISB agent who Cassian first shoots the lady.
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Yeah, and it's just kind of more confirmation of the value of Lonnie, of having him there and how much he was worth the sacrifice of Ando, Krieger, and his rebels in season one.
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Vel does not seem to be working with him anymore. She's more or less completely gone in on the actual, like, military part of the Alliance. Velson Yavin.
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Yeah, and by God he has. And there's a couple of really good moments in this that I don't want to skip over. There's the next year in Yavin moment between Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, which I saw someone on Twitter decree to be Zionist propaganda. Oh, some of the worst people in this.
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But that is definitely based on next year in Jerusalem, a term that has been in use for like way more than half of a millennia. That is that has nothing to do with Zionism. You're just being racist. I'm sorry. And it's a nice like it's a I think a nice nod to the travails of like what we are seeing is like a diaspora. Right. As people have to flee their homes to participate in the rebellion.
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Right. I think it's an appropriate term. kind of callback to real world history there. And the line where I think that moment between her and Bale works really effectively. And the thing that he's doing works really effectively.
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Yeah, we will be dealing with that soon. I would like to call out Mon Mothma's face acting in both the scenes where Cassian just immediately domes a motherfucker. Her soy jack face? Oh my God. Incredible stuff.
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She's known intellectually, and it's even hit her, because she had a friend of hers kill, right? A former lover. Yeah.
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There's one thing I'd like to bring up at the end of these episodes. That's kind of a callback to the very first episode of the show is the first time we see our boy Cyril. He's just convinced that something is and people I've seen people point out. So he was actually really good at his job. He points this out that like I solved a murder in two days. Right.
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He figured out who had who had killed these officers very quickly. And one of my favorite little undercutting of serial points is that his boss solves it even faster. Like in that first conversation, because his boss is an older guy. He's a corporate cop. He clearly has been doing whatever he's been doing since probably before the Clone Wars, right?
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He's been near the end of his career than the beginning. And he doesn't like the Empire, right? He's not even that much of a law and order guy. He's more of a get through the day and do my fucking job guy. When Cyril brings up Cassian killing these cops, he's like, yeah, man, they're at a brothel. I know their salaries. They can't afford that. They were shaking people down.
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They shake the wrong guy down and they got killed. Best to ignore it. You don't want the empire over here. And, Every aspect of Cyril's life would have been better if he'd listened to this guy who I'm sure spends the rest of the empire sitting on like barely notices the end of things. You know, he's probably retired by then.
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Just a shout out to the smartest, the smartest guy in security services we meet over the course of these entire series. That old dude at the desk who's like, not worth it. Not getting into it. Yeah, I wouldn't ask anybody anything.
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Everyone's great. Goddamn. Oh, we should also talk a little bit about Dedra's breakdown after the Gorman Massacre.
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Yeah, yeah, which also does fit into the whole who are you thing where we see that she's not like a complete sociopath, right? She's not absolutely devoid of horror over what she's doing. She's just willing to accept the horror in order to get what she wants out of life, which I think is just like a much more realistic portrayal of human evil than we tend to get.
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Yeah, I mean, I have a lot to say about this, but I think we'll wait until last episode to fully discuss Bix. I think that's probably best.
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Star Wars. The stars have never been more wars, Garrison. The stars have never been more wars. We can all agree on that.
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That I'm not doing. I'm staying the fuck away from the border, although it's also impossible to stay the fuck away from the border because like 90% of the country lives technically within the border patrol's remit.
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If they decide to talk to you about something other than, you know, here's my passport, etc. Do I have anything to declare? Which you do have to answer. If they attempt to engage you in other conversation about, say, your political beliefs, all you have to say is, am I being detained? And if they say yes, you say, I plead the fifth and I demand to speak to a lawyer and then nothing else.
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There's nothing else you say. That's how you should handle this situation.
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No, not necessary. And yeah, like it's one of those things. I have no desire to like get into an online beef with the fellow who got stopped. He is a big boy and able to make his own choices. But I do not recommend you make those same choices because there's no actual benefit to you in doing that. Right. Yeah.
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Yeah, it's simple and unnecessary. And it's just, like, largely the problem is that, and this is even something that he talked about, where, like, well, the guy seemed really nice and apologetic and, like, he didn't want to have to do this. And if you're having a conversation like that with them, then... they're getting what they want out of it, which is for you to feel like that, right?
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For you to feel like, oh, okay, this guy's nice. I can chat with him for a little while.
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This is not advice for people who are coming here and not citizens.
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There's no point in time in which that's useful to you or anyone else. You ain't changing their minds.
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We should give a brief overview of who the PKK is. The PKK is the Kurdish Workers Party, and it is originally a Maoist and now not that terrorist group. That's legally how it's defined by the United States and by most Western countries. It was started in southern Turkey in the late 70s, close to 50 years ago, and it started out as a rather different kind of organization than it is.
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It's one of its founders, and generally the guy referred to as its founder is a dude named Abdullah Ocalan. or Apo, who got captured in Kenya a few decades back and has been in a Turkish prison ever since, but does continue to write stuff that informs, because there's kind of this strong Maoist core at the heart of the foundation of the party, continues to have a lot of influence over it.
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And this is the root of kind of the different organizations that sprung out and became what we call Rojava, is this group that kind of came in during ISIS's invasion and, you know, had changed significantly from its Maoist roots at that point. And kind of from the PKK, we get the YPG and the YPJ and, you know, these different social and militant movements in northeast Syria. Anyway.
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So it almost sounds like this is like a retirement plan for him, right? Like he's clearly past his prime in terms of the getting hit in the face thing for money. And now he's sort of moving on to like grifting off of these far right events and probably traveling just ahead of a series of riots. You know, like that seems like what's in his future.
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Yeah. We're going to cover this subject in more detail on Tuesday, next Tuesday. But suffice it to say, this does not mean that all of the different movements that came out of and were inspired by the PKK are folding up and setting up shop. This is more of...
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a pragmatic decision made as the result of the changes of situations on the ground and the progress that a number of these other movements have made. And yeah, this is worthy of deeper discussion. We'll give a deeper discussion.
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But this is something that's going to hopefully at least mean that Turkey spends less time bombing northern Iraq, although that that it may be foolish to hope too much for that.
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When the IRA was like, maybe we've done enough. And significantly when there were releases of people who were incarcerated. Right, right. And the British government did make some significant concessions too.
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Yeah, there's a lot of rumors, again, just to go briefly, that the Turkish government essentially needs, that Erdogan essentially needs some of the support of the Kurdish parties in order to maintain, keep doing Erdogan shit. So, again, we'll see on all that.
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Well, yeah. Slightly blowing, lightly blowing each other up. Can we say that without minimizing it?
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J.D. Vance, like, massaging India's shoulders. I know, man. I know. But it's cool.
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Yeah, just remind everyone in charge, do you know how rich you are? Come on, you don't want this. You've got hot tubs in your mansion. It ain't worth it.
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Yeah. When everyone Naruto ran at Area 51. Yeah.
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This is ridiculous. This is getting dumb. We did our retaliatory attacks. We fucked up a bunch of expensive jets. Yeah. That is key, is that everybody can sort of... This didn't go on so far... that like everyone has a lot to avenge and it went on enough that everybody can claim some wins. Pakistan could be like, we really did some damage to India's best chunk of their air force.
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And India can be like, we blew up some stuff, you know, everybody's got, if you don't have enough information to know that like nobody really won, you can pretend you did. Right. And that's what both of them are doing. Yeah.
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Oh, yeah. Welcome back to something ED. If you have ED, please consider HIMS. HIMS. HIMS. Yeah. Cutter, I hardly... Okay, so... No, wait. No, no. Garrison, I'm so proud of you, buddy. Okay. That was the right thing to say. That was the right thing to say.
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It is absurd. And I gotta say, honestly, my primary thoughts, I know they should be like offense and anger, but they're mostly, ah, Cutter, you know the assignment. You know exactly how to, this man can't turn down a luxury palace plane?
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Why did we allow this to be constructed? It's one of those things. This is not this. It's like, again, should it not be legal for Trump to do this? Is it not legal for Trump to do this? Of course. Is it physically possible for the man Donald Trump to say no to this plane now? No.
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It's great. It's just Trump Tower in the sky. No, it's actually, what I will say about that, Gary, is that Trump Tower in the sky is like a shit built to look fancy to tasteless Americans.
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This is actually extremely nice. Yes. The, the, the, the Emirate of Qatar knows what they're fucking doing when it comes to interior design for fucking evil, rich people. This, you could have had this, if you replace the, the walls that are clearly a plane, this could have been like a set on Andor from like a high level Coruscant, like person's house.
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Like that's, that's what we're talking, especially that like room with the elevator in the middle. Like that's a set where Mon Mothma yells at her husband. Like it's beautiful. Yeah.
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Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the way far right violence has looked in Ireland, like when these when these protests have really kicked off, because it seems like there's been this kind of fairly significant acceleration in the last three or four years in terms of particularly arson attacks.
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Someone made a comment that, like, we received the Statue of Liberty as a gift.
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Yeah, no one's going to be, like, influenced by a mere $114,000 a month. You couldn't, for example, pay me that much money and get me to say everyone should buy a Chevy truck. The new Ram. That's the vehicle of the proletariat.
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And one thing that I was kind of struck by in your notes was the degree to which like no one's been arrested for any of these yet. Yeah.
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Harrison, for $114,000 a month, you think I wouldn't sell Chevys? Yeah.
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Not only are they going to listen into it, the guy whose job that is like they've already been paying almost as much as the plane cost for him to get preemptive therapy to sit and listen to that many Trump inner circle conversation. The fucking Amir himself is putting a hand. I know, man, I know it's going to be hard. Like we're all back. We're all behind you.
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That was in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, that was in Saudi Arabia.
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Sure. That's honestly... Both Dubai and Trump deserve that kind of, like, shade. Yeah. Sure, they belong together.
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It's tragic because the mobile McDonald's and Burger Kings used to be a sign of American, like, logistical dominance. That, like... I was wondering if it had invaded Iraq. Like, fuck our ability to, like, airstrike anyone anywhere. We can put a fully operational McDonald's anywhere on the planet in about 16 hours. Like, no one else can do that.
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Yeah, we invaded Iraq with Burger King trailers in 2003. Yes, and to see it turned against our values so much is just deeply... No, I mean, I'm joking here, but it is funny.
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We're all thinking about the best way we ever spent our company money. Every penny of that $114,000 a month Chevy gives us for telling people to buy the new Rams. It went to a good place.
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That's right. We're courting Shell right now. So don't worry, James. We're going to get that cover, buddy. I'm glad to hear it.
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
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Yeah, we're calling this the do whatever the opposite of Jim Cramer says power hour. We've literally just reversed his audio.
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If you're going to say this guy killed somebody, there better be a corpse.
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If only we could cut in the song I've never met a nice South African right here. Yep. I think we can.
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It says that's just one state and it's not a good one. Also, that's the sauce, right? It's also the place I was born, Garrison.
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Yes, and that the actual ability of a lawyer to intervene when you are treated illegally by the state is not null.
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Well, everybody, until next time, remember something. We said report it to news!
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be reported the news hey we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe
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Yeah let's talk about that a little bit like the the actual organizing of the anti-fascist movement in Ireland how is it kind of responded to the the I mean explosion and in some cases a literal explosion in far-right violence on the street like are you seeing it kind of reach like new heights or does it kind of seem like it's unprepared for the moment that we're hitting because like
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I mean, in the United States, it's kind of hard to tell because things have changed so much since 2020. Right. Like a lot of the the the fascist violence that we're seeing is now explicitly from the state. And so there's there's just not a lot of on the ground. There's not the same kind of on the ground response to it that you were seeing when it was groups like the Proud Boys.
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And I'm wondering kind of how things have changed since 2018 in that regard in Ireland.
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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here, which is normally focused on the United States because that's where we all live. However, we do like to cover the rest of the world and the ongoing struggle against the global far-right movement. And today we're going to talk about a place that we don't cover often on this show, Ireland.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to continue this discussion and then close things out. But first, we've got one more ad break to do. And we're back. So yeah, I kind of wanted to end this by looking into a little like, what are you kind of looking for in the future? Like in the kind of the next year or two in Ireland? Like what are you expecting? What are you worried to see?
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And it's not because Ireland doesn't have a problem with the far-right. because as our guest today is going to talk to us about, it most certainly does. And so I would like to welcome to the program a great guy, Padraig O'Rourke, author of Burn Them Out, A History of Fascism and the Far Right in Ireland. Thank you so much for being on the show.
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Like, yeah, what do you kind of see moving forward here?
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Yeah, you know, there's this attitude. And I think, as you noted in some notes you sent along, there's a degree to which it's true that Ireland has some resistance to the far right that has led to maybe it growing slower or taking a little longer to get off the ground to the same extent that it has in the UK or the US.
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Well, yeah, and as we've seen in the US, what starts as this tiny, tiny number of freaks and weirdos can wind up being a mass movement if it's not...
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. Do you have anything you want to plug here at the end of the episode? I mean, your book, obviously.
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Well, thank you so much. And yeah, that's our episode, everybody. Come back tomorrow when we'll have another one.
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As a result of kind of the history of Irish republicanism, that that's not comprehensively true across the island and that that's, you know, certainly has not stopped it from having some pretty significant problems, which we're going to talk about today.
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And to what do you credit that? I mean, it seems like there's a mix of things. First off, you suddenly do have people immigrating into Ireland from elsewhere in the world in significant numbers for the first time in quite a while.
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And then on the other hand, it sounds like there's also the kind of, as we see everywhere in the world, the conscious exporting of far-right figures and ideas into the country.
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Yeah, and that's such, I think, an important point, the degree to which – because this is a global issue – the degree to which everyone else attempting to abide by public safety measures during COVID-19 strengthened the far right because they were out in the streets, this kind of organizing equivalent of getting to steal a march on the enemy – It makes sense to me that it was because in the U.S.
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that was interrupted, at least by the George Floyd uprisings. But in Ireland, you know, it seems like there was a much more significant period of time where these folks were essentially acting and organizing unopposed. And the police were when they chose to act at all, acting against folks on the opposite side of things who were organizing during covid.
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Yeah. And, you know, so I'm kind of thinking here, this is part of why you've started to see, you know, guys like, we started this conversation before we began recording, talking about Tucker Carlson coming over to talk to Conor McGregor, who's becoming an increasingly large part of this.
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And I wonder if it's maybe these different kind of international, folks in the international movement sort of sniffing that you know, they're hoping the cancer has metastasized, so to speak. I mean, is that kind of how you see it?
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Oh my God, it could happen here? It is, and it's talking about it happening here. You know, about what's happening in a galaxy far, far away. These are the Andor episodes. We're talking about episodes, Jesus, what is it? Seven through nine? Seven through nine. Seven through nine of Andor season two. When this is done, we'll be three quarters of the way over with
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I mean, one of the best seasons of television ever made. So, you know, savor it, folks. Enjoy it and enjoy these podcasts. Yeah.
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Yeah, I want to note at the start of this kind of what we see, because we're watching one-year jumps between these. This is the first time where it's been made really clear the rebellion has moved on from scattered insurgent groups to a functional army. Oh, yeah. When we're introduced to Yavin, there's a transport landing.
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A group of soldiers are getting off, and they're being told, like, okay, your ration cards are here, and you need to report in here and here. This is where you're billeted. It's very standard professional military stuff. So we are now at the point where... The rebellion that Andor has been portraying previously is not around anymore. The rebellion has moved on, largely.
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And those old networks still exist to some extent, but that is not the heart of it anymore.
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Their hate for imperial norms. are getting help from quote-unquote outside agitators. Which is not untrue, actually. For once. But also not like the core of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that that's part of the point, right? That's part of what Luthan's going for, is he wants to keep them sort of obsessed with this side of things. In part because Luthan knows that it's moved on, right?
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Like Luthan knows that the rebellion is in Yavin now. You know, he is he's not entirely a sideshow, but he's no longer the heart of it. And every resource they waste looking at his network is a time they're not spent looking at Yavin.
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No, no, I haven't yet. I caught some clips of it on social media, but I haven't gotten to sit through the whole thing.
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Because he can't go and come as he pleases anymore, right? Like it gets him in trouble with General Draven. Yeah.
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Yeah, well, he's doing what he has to do. I mean, I'm Luthan's last defender. If he's only got one fan, it's me. And Luthan is handling this exactly how he has to. There's no room to be nice. And there's no room for anybody's feelings in this.
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But what we do see is people choosing now, I want to be involved in this kind of bigger and more structured thing where the way I am treated is less dependent upon the whims of this guy at the spoke, where I don't get to know anything, where there is a command structure, where there is a degree to which it's more predictable how things will be day to day. A lot of people do prefer that.
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And also at this stage of the rebellion, if you're going to take on a military like this, you need a formalized force. You need more of a command structure. You need a chain of command and people need to know who is calling shots in what situations because you simply can't function effectively in a large scale in combat without it.
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Well, I don't think he thinks he fits there, right? Exactly. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Like his whole thing is such an idiosyncratic organization that's just based around him and Clea, you know, this young woman that he works with. Like there's no place for him in a military command structure. That's not his thing.
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There's a good part in that scene where they're debating it, where the guy who gets who kind of stumbles upon them doing the robbery. Yeah. In the last like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Has a speech where he's basically like, look, man, everyone's like whatever they're doing, whatever their attitude about the right way to resist. They're all Gorman's to me. And so they're all on my side. Yeah. Right.
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And I like the way that he that he expressed that. Because it very much, as we're going to talk about next episode, it comports with who that guy is as a resistor, right?
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No, as in we're all in this, we're all going to hang together is what I think he's saying.
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Yeah. This was a super interesting scene to me. And this is the first time we have seen any mention of the Force, really.
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In part, what I love about Andor is how big it makes the universe seem because Cassian isn't like, he doesn't have like the... You know, there's that line in A New Hope where basically Han's like, I don't know, Han's clearly heard of the Jedi, but he's like, I don't give a shit about this.
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It's like somebody talking about, yeah, like Wicca, right? Like if you're just like a dude who's a fucking drug dealer, you're like, I don't need to hear about that, man. I got fucking heroin to move.
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Yeah. Like fake force healers. And beyond that, the thing that's unsaid is what we know about Cassian is he was raised on a planet completely cut off from the rest of the galaxy. His childhood was as a hunter-gatherer in the deep jungle.
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And he was presumably, as all peoples in that situation always have, raised with a set of beliefs about the universe and spirituality that were completely shattered when his entire planet was annihilated by the Empire, right? Was it by the Republic? Yeah. Well, it was in that transitional period. The fuzzy period between the Republic and the Empire, yeah. Yes.
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But of course he doesn't believe in anything, right? Like, he had some sort of set of beliefs, and the entire cosmology of his planet was annihilated. Like, why would he believe in anything?
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Well, and I really like that they must have, there must have been a discussion, should we have her say she used to be like a Padawan, right? Who somehow escaped Order 66? Thank God she's not. And thank God they just didn't... We don't know what she is. We don't care. They don't need to tell us. It doesn't matter. Because no one in the situation would give a shit.
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Cassian's not going to be like, so yeah, tell me about your fucking... He doesn't give a fuck. There's so much else going on in his head at that moment.
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Yeah, I just, I will talk a lot about the name of this episode. Oh yeah, baby. Because I love it. Because it's just some of the best writing that this show or any show has ever had.
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Yeah, please go ahead and give us the over there.
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Oh, and this scene is the guy who plays Rylance. There's so many great monologues in this. The dude who plays Rylance, who is the old rich guy who's kind of the the organizing center of the Gorman Front. The original one, yeah. Has a beautiful speech here where he's just, how can you say these things? What kind of being are you? What kind of being are you? It's excellent. It's perfect.
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We'll get everything we want. The Empire will reward us for our loyalty. This is it. This is the last fucked up thing we have to do, and then we can live happily ever after.
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And they make a beautiful point. The kettling is done by stormtroopers who are the elite, right? These are their very best infantry. Right. The riot cops, from the moment they're introduced, because we see these guys land with their kit bags, their sergeant clearly has a lot more experience and is like, these guys don't know what the fuck they're doing. We cannot put them in any kind of danger.
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And that's the point, baby. And that's the point. That's why they're there. These men were handpicked to be the worst of the empire because they're expendable, right? And because you can count on them to panic. And that's what's needed. They're cannon fodder. Yeah.
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It's phenomenal. I'll give you that. I don't know which I'd pick as the best, but... It's tough. It's tough.
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noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest, saying, quote, the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law. So we have this official, like, openly saying, like, he's not charged with a crime. We're just wanting to see if we can do this. Can we deport a legal permanent resident for saying something that we don't like?
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And, I mean, all of this is in relation to Trump's executive order... you know, about quote-unquote anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, today in the Oval Office, he said something incredibly anti-Semitic and also anti-Arab somehow in the same statement, saying, quote, Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore.
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He's a Palestinian, unquote. Which is just an unbelievably anti-Semitic and anti-Arab statement all at once, like removing someone's Jewishness because of how they act or things they've said or things they believe in.
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No, it's really bad. And of course, you're not going to have the ADL coming out against Trump here.
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And they're not going to call Trump anti-Semitic for making a statement like this. No. Because their interests are fairly aligned at this point, what's happening in Gaza. So I think now we're going to play a special report from James, who can't be on the recording here today, but he does have a report on deportations in Panama. So, James, take it away.
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All right, we're going to go on a break and come back to talk about the Department of Education and Tariff Talk with Mia Wong.
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Do you want to explain what that is? Because I still don't really have a clue what exactly that opening theme song is for Tariff Talk.
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It was also the only American product that Trudeau could name during his big speech. Very funny.
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That's funny because when I Google stagflation, I get very different results. That could just be my own.
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Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think I missed that. Anyway, Mia, continue.
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I mean, at this point, I think Trump's tariffs have wiped out. I'm reading four trillion from the US stock market just in this past month.
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Like the Israelites, they have stopped time in order to win the battle.
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All right, we are back. Speaking of running circles around the courts, we do have a small update. Last week in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court denied an appeal from the Trump administration in a case regarding Trump's attempted federal funds freeze and the shuttering of USAID. This was a case filed by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council.
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The White House is now required to pay foreign aid contractors for work that has already been completed. And further details will be worked out back in the district court. And it's still unclear, you know, if the Trump administration is going to abide by the court's ruling and resume all required payments.
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But this is the first move from the Supreme Court regarding, you know, Trump's actions the past few months. This has also not stopped Trump from trying to slowly close other entire government agencies. This very week, the Education Department laid off nearly half of its workforce, over 1,300 employees.
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Late Tuesday night, Education Secretary Linda McMahon went on to Fox News to say that this reduction forces only the first step towards abolishing the entire Education Department. saying, quote, this was the president's mandate. His directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know will have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished.
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But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat, unquote.
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Well, and... So far, the way that they're trying to close up the Department of Education is kind of in a more selective manner because they're still keeping certain parts of the department active.
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On March 10th, the Education Department announced that they were launching investigations into 60 universities for, quote, title six violations relating to anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination, unquote. And this is in relation to anti-genocide protests on campus.
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And this comes after Trump announced the immediate cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University.
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The Education Department is threatening that these other 59 universities may lose their funding if they do not, quote, "...enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits any institution that receives federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin." National origin includes shared Jewish ancestry, unquote. I don't know what to say here.
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Well, and specifically with this investigation, they are trying to get all these universities to cooperate in efforts to selectively remove students who have protested against the genocide in Gaza, right? This is the same attack on free speech and free expression that they're doing against...
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Khalil, this is the same exact purpose, and now they're trying to get more and more universities to be complicit in the selective removal of people in this country who choose to express their First Amendment rights, regardless of whether they're a citizen, a green card holder, or on a student visa. So this is all deeply, deeply worrying.
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Robert, you have a small segment you want to discuss before we start to close out.
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Well, and although these people might have, you know, slightly more discipline when it comes to actual firearms, there is also incidents like in 2020 where the Kentucky Army National Guard killed someone via the misuse of crowd control munitions. I think that is also worth stating, even if, you know, Kent State situation maybe is not as likely in the modern day.
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There's certainly other ways to cause grievous harm in these sorts of protest environments.
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No, if you use like less lethals the way you would use, you know, a regular firearm, that actually leads to like much more like possible lethal consequences or like life-changing consequences. Yeah. Which, you know, police are more familiar with the regular use of crowd control munitions than necessarily, you know, like BORTAC or like state national guards.
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Something that's also, you know, worth keeping in mind. Let's close by my least favorite segment, Stinky Musk, which still has a really bad name.
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On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Musk's doge should be subject to comply with FOIA requests and public disclosures of information required of government agencies, with the judge ordering the release of email correspondence between Musk's team and the Office of Management and Budget, and was ordered to, quote, begin producing documents on a rolling basis as soon as practicable, unquote.
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Now, despite Musk's claims of quote-unquote maximum transparency, last month the Trump administration tried to shield Doge from public records requests by labeling the agency's documents as quote-unquote presidential records, which carries special protections. This specific case is super interesting.
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The judge, a federal judge by the name of Cooper, also critiqued the way that the Trump admin tried to litigate this case. Quoting from Politico, quote, the lawyers offered virtually nothing in the way of evidence about Doge's operations or management.
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Indeed, the court wonders whether this decision was strategic, Cooper said, noting that the Trump administration lawyers had taken competing positions, including that Doge qualifies as an agency under some sections of law, but not others when it suits it. Thus, Doge becomes, on the defendant's view, a Goldilocks entity, Cooper wrote.
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Not an agency when it's burdensome, but an agency when it's convenient, unquote. And I do like Cooper's analysis here of how Doge is very selectively an agency only when it causes benefit to Trump or Musk. And finally, we have one other Musk story to close out this episode.
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Amidst Tesla's plummeting stock price, protests outside Tesla dealerships, and reports of vandalism of dealerships across the country, Trump has essentially started doing ads for Tesla on the White House driveway. Upon climbing in a red car that he's not allowed to operate, Trump remarked, wow, everything is computer.
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So this was a very odd and kind of embarrassing show of favoritism where Musk brought out a number of different Tesla models and Trump got to, quote unquote, pick the one that he wanted to buy as he just sat in on this televised advertisement for Tesla as his company is losing a shocking amount of money in the stock market.
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Yeah, and there's literally a picture of him with the notes that he has in really, really giant... Like a Tesla sales note bullet point of how much certain models are, what their different features are, which ones have self-driving features included, which ones you have to pay extra for.
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Yeah, no, he's literally carrying a Tesla sales pitch as he does this televised appearance boosting his new best friends and co-presidents' company. Trump said on Truth Social, the radical left lunatics are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the world's greatest automakers and Elon's baby, in order to attack and do harm to Elon and everything he stands for, unquote.
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So now not only has Trump called the Tesla boycott illegal, which is, you know, its own form of unhinged, But on Tuesday, Trump announced that vandalism of Teslas will be labeled as domestic terrorism, promising that perpetrators will, quote unquote, go through hell.
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White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said, quote, ongoing and heinous acts of violence against Teslas by radical leftist activists are nothing short of domestic terror, unquote.
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No, this is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. If Biden or any Democratic president did anything similar to this, you would have thralls of people screaming for his impeachment.
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Similar to the Eric Adams thing, it's one of the most blatant open displays of corruption I've ever seen, where a president is using his office to boost the personal financial interests of one of his top advisors, who's also running government agencies, essentially, and doing massive, massive cuts to prohibit their ability to investigate his own businesses, while also taking massive amounts of government money to keep businesses like Tesla and SpaceX operable.
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So this has been a pretty silly thing to watch unfold the past few days. And now Tesla shares have risen 4% after Trump's support for Musk and Tesla. Great. Well...
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis, and I'm joined today by a special guest host, Bridget Todd. Welcome back to the show.
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And I'm very excited for you to be here because you have a special report on one of the people who I've been cyber-stalking for years. Ha ha ha! And I'm very excited to hear the details of what she's been up to these past few weeks. I kind of know the rough overview, because again, because of my cyber-stalking. But I've not done a deep dive the way you have.
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So I'm very excited to hear an update on this character.
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I mean, I've covered her mostly through her involvement with Daily Wire. I've talked a little bit about kind of how that all fell apart, you know, like a year and a half ago or so. I've talked a little bit about her involvement in Turning Point USA with Charlie Kirk. And she's just kind of been one of these randomly, you know, like...
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like, orbiters of, like, the online, like, right-wing content sphere for, like, I don't know, the past six years at least. And I typically focus more on, like, you know, like, the Ben Shapiros, the Matt Walshes, you know, back in the day, the Steven Crowders and stuff. But Candace was always just, like, around.
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And, like, she definitely, like, went after a different demographic than what, like, my usual focus is, right? Like, I'm focused on, like, what's going on with straight white men? Like, why are they like this? Yeah. And who who is targeting them? And, you know, and that's, you know, that's like the Matt Walsh, Stephen Crowder kind of angle.
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Like Candace Owens has like a kind of a broader net that she targets with her content. So like she's always kind of come up as like a side character. I don't think I've ever done like a distinct focus on her before. Besides just, you know, whatever kind of crazy post or like, you know, anti-trans or like very like weird, like racist rant that she goes on like every once in a while.
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She's reinvented herself multiple times. And some people who mainly come at this from the anti-fascist research perspective might not be aware of her latest rebrand, which is what I'm excited to hear about today. Yes. I just remembered how she had that whole event with Kanye when she did her BLM documentary. That was a whole other Candice era. Yeah, so much.
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And then come out as like an explicit neo-Nazi like two weeks later.
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Yeah, no, this is something that I guess some people might not know if they've only become aware of her through Daily Wire. Yeah, in the pre-2016 BuzzFeed internet kind of sphere, she was just one of these people who would have progressive-ish takes, criticize embarrassing politicians and overtly racist stuff happening.
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And then the degree to which this heel turn happens is one of the most stark examples I've seen in a I don't know. I'm trying to think of if there's any exact parallel. I don't know. There's certainly some detransition grifters. There used to be ex-gay influencers. It's like proto-influencers, kind of before influencers were a thing. Ex-gay speakers.
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But yeah, the switch around on Candice from these blog posts is so concentrated. Yeah.
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Yeah, I mean, there's a version of this that happens, or at least it kind of used to happen more in regards to anti-fascist research where you identify specific extremely racist accounts or explicit neo-Nazis and contact their employer in an attempt to get them fired so they can focus on
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getting a new job and supporting themselves rather than doing racism online and in person, especially if he's like, you know, a member of like a group, whether that be, you know, the Proud Boys back in the day or many, many other groups, Patriot Prayer, now Patriot Front, that sort of thing.
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It's funny how hated this tactic is soon to be by people like Candace and the Daily Wire people, but here she's advocating it herself.
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And it's like post-Anita Sarkeesian kind of content like world.
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Yeah, I'm interested to see how much the checkbook was a consideration here.
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How much her Kickstarter got versus how much she realized she could get if she jumped on the other side of the content churn.
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Yeah, this is around when I became aware of her.
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The governor of Tennessee was super excited when The Daily Wire relocated their headquarters to Tennessee and brought in all these people. There was so many private dinners, meetings. There was a number of resolutions welcoming The Daily Wire to Tennessee in this 2021 period as they were just starting to launch their own streaming service website.
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Which is why they recruited Candice, because they were looking for content creators to fill out their slate.
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And like actual anti-Semitic stuff, like that people use that as a way to like shut down like very... very admirable pro-Palestinian activism. No, Candace Owens just is anti-Semitic. And it's the same thing with Jackson Hinkle.
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And she made an escalating series of anti-Semitic claims after October 7th, which slowly kind of broke with the company and been more and more and more of an over-series of a few months.
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It's funny because it also kind of mirrors this online fight she had with Steven Crowder a year or so prior when Daily Wire was trying to recruit him. And then she got informed about how abusive he was to his wife. And then she went on a media blitz against him as he was in negotiations with the Daily Wire. She's very willing to...
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stir shit up like even if it like goes against her own interests or the interests of like whatever company she works for like she is she is absolutely willing to like make like some kind of like chaotic spectacle regardless of her own like you know financial security I guess
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Yeah. No, it was there was some really nasty posts.
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It's crazy that instead of having, like, A company meeting. They were just doing this on Twitter.com. Oh, my God. And my messy ass was eating it up. I was like, keep fighting. Let them fight. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. I'm totally willing to watch this. Watch this go down. I do not want to get involved.
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I can't believe I'm taking Ben Shapiro's side here, not just because he's Ben Shapiro, but also because he's an employer. But it's a really tough situation here.
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I mean, yeah. If she had an inclination that she could afford to lose this job because she might make more money on her own, then yeah, absolutely. That would allow her to push this further than what she might otherwise might.
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There's been a lot of discussion in the right-wing content sphere about The Daily Wire's fairly restrictive contracts, despite still getting paid tens of millions of dollars. There is restrictions on what happens when you lose monetization because The Daily Wire is a company trying to make a profit. So totally, there could absolutely be other financial stuff going on here.
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I think it's more like an interlocking series of issues rather than just one thing or another.
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It sounds too much like the Johnny Depp thing. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. This is all the types of things I try to avoid learning about at almost all costs. So thanks.
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No, they're not watching like the Daily Wire for fun slash for work.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Ah, of course. It's the woman who's lying about being sexually harassed, of course.
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I know she's doing this like on her podcast, I assume YouTube as well. She also just like trying to like flood TikTok, trying to flood like Instagram reels. Is this kind of part of how she's trying to like expand her reach?
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Yeah, that's probably not going to end well, huh?
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Sure. I mean, she's been doing the content churn for almost a decade now. Like, yeah, you do get good at it on like a technical proficiency level.
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And she does gain this element of authority because she's a woman talking about this. It makes men feel better about being misogynistic because a woman's telling them it's okay to. I mean, this is the same thing that she was able to weaponize for all of her anti-Black Lives Matter stuff, for all of her racism isn't real things.
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She tries to use that to her advantage, mostly to make white members of her audience feel good about their own racism because a Black woman told them it's actually okay. And, like, that's been, like, a big part of her career the past few years.
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Yeah. No, I mean, like you say the same thing with like, you know, like the gays against groomers thing, right wing trans influencers, detrans influencers. It's the same like Gambit. And certainly I think like, yeah, like your identification of her as like a professional contrarian is like very, very key to her success.
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You know what? I'll take her word for that one. You know what? I'll believe her on that single point.
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Yeah, things that have no bearing on this whatsoever. I mean, this focus on, like, this, like, conspiratorial Ben is, like, the same. She's using the same tactics she did for her Black Lives Matter documentary. For most of her political work, she's using the same tactics over and over again.
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And eventually she reaches this stress point or this threshold where she cannot see a path forward or she can't see a way to surpass it. And then she does a pivot. This happened with her progressive blog. This happened even at the Daily Wire. She doesn't work with Turning Point USA anymore.
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And this new pivot is learning, hey, it's super lucrative to be a tabloid entertainment, quote unquote, journalist. Very easy, super lucrative, and all of the tactics you learned on the right-wing mediasphere work great here. Like, all of this, like, conspiratorial thinking, really a disregard for, like, facts and evidence, works perfect for this sort of, like, rumor-based reporting strategy.
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And it spreads like crazy. And yeah, it spreads across political lines. You don't you aren't just targeting the mega people or like the far right.
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This this can be so much more broad to like the giant audience of like, you know, quote unquote, like a political people go to these platforms for a form of like of like escapism and entertainment rather than just hearing about politics yet again, because that's, you know, very, very tiring.
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The big bummer for me is that The Daily Wire's first film, Lady Ballers, left us on a cliffhanger with Candace Owens and Matt Walsh sitting in a car talking about how Matt Walsh planned this entire plot of the film as some kind of scheme or social experiment. And... You know, it was implied there would be more, you know, it was like a, you know, like Avengers Nick Fury type post credit scene.
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And now we're never going to learn what Candace Owens and Matt Walsh get up to now because she's left the company. She's now doing her own thing. So now we just have this dangling plot thread that's just going to bug me forever. Like what does the Candace Owens character at the end of Lady Ballers do next? I'm going to be thinking about this for like years.
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I think we do deserve closure. I just think my closures may be a little bit different. I'm very fine having all of these plot threads wrapped up quite quickly, but I do not see that in the cards immediately.
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I've been anti-Me Too since long before it was cool. Sure. I mean, that can be true. It's also true that she's getting better at propaganda and widening her footprint, which, yeah, then once her audience gets bigger, she'll be able to slip in more things that I would find unsavory to a larger audience over time. But...
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She also might be content to keep growing that and be slightly less off-putting in the meantime. But no, there's also just a huge audience for the anti-woke backlash, anti-MeToo stuff right now. That's kind of the new mainstream, frankly. So I am certain that she's going to try to continue to flex that and grow that in the next few months, years. Yeah.
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That makes sense. Yeah, totally. Like the health guru fitness entertainment bubble. Yeah, that's huge.
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I mean, that relates even to the originator of this Gamergate stuff and the whole anti-woke media fandom content sphere, right? Where so much of the anti-woke backlash has been built on people complaining that Star Wars is too woke now. There's too many women in movies. There's too many black people in commercials. Where did all the white people go? There's too many gay people in TV.
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There's too many trans people in TV. And that is definitely focused on by the rest of the Daily Wire group goons. And you can very easily pivot back to that sort of cultural commentary after you're done talking about Blake Lively. This is a very small jump where you're still talking about the entertainment industry, but with this anti-woke framing of like, you know...
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Why is all these minorities here? Why are they pushing transgenderism on kids? Whether that be talking about trans actors in the business, whether you be talking about female-led or diversity casting, all that kind of stuff. That especially Candice can use her contrarian position to speak on authority about. Talking about why are you recasting these legacy characters to be people of color?
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Or why is a woman the lead of this thing when it should be actually a man? Very basic stuff that's been a part of the YouTube slop for a decade now. But it still takes in a lot of clicks. And it is a lot of what the Daily Wire and right-wing content still does. It's all this weird culture war stuff. It's very, very tied in with Hollywood. Like you were saying about how Ben Shapiro claims to...
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hate Hollywood he's trying to build his own alternative to it but he can't stop talking about it like he can't stop complaining about Disney's Snow White and I can see Candace doing like the exact same thing but now with like an honestly like a bigger a bigger more like a political audience that's much more malleable and can be shaped around these like larger cultural trends when you think about this like perception of this backlash against wokeness
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It's wild. I mean, like Ben Shapiro is starting his own campaign to free Derek Chauvin. I think there's gonna be a lot of pressure on the courts right now. I mean, you're seeing that from like Elon and Trump as well.
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I think undermining the authority of the court, I think is actually kind of part of this larger concerted issue amongst the entirety of the right right now, because this is like their biggest remaining roadblock to achieving their right wing utopia is the court system. And this may not be intentional on every person's part.
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Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens aren't intentionally collaborating on this, but they may be copying each other's trends. And if they're seeing this wider push across a large amount of the right-wing content people to put pressure on various aspects of the courts, including by using high-profile cases like Harvey Weinstein or Derek Chauvin,
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That's not a great sign, and I can definitely see them trying to do that in conjunction, I guess.
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I mean, yeah, I think for our audience, it's more likely that you'll have family members who are going to be finding this stuff. And you should find a list of sources, maybe this episode included, but probably you can find some articles as well. Think of some background on Candace's history and previous beliefs. You can pick and choose some of her most outrageous claims.
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So when your aunt sends you a video about how Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are kidnapping children or something... You can maybe inform Aunt Judy that maybe you shouldn't listen to everything this Candace Owens character is saying.
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Usually by getting sad, but I don't know. This has been an interesting dive into the life of a woman with many, many careers, many...
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Many personalities. A chameleon. A chameleon of contrarianism.
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Jesus Christ. Oh, what a nightmare that would be. Man. Scary. Bridget, where can people find you online?
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Well, thank you so much. Good luck in DC. Thanks for holding the line out there as Elon puts a killdozer through your entire city. We're doing our best. I would love to talk again about a DC update. Maybe next time you come on the show.
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There we go. Well, we will talk then. Goodbye, everybody.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis, still banned from one of the top 15 highest endowment universities in the country, but I am not banned from this podcast. Today, I'm joined by Robert Evans and James Stout to discuss the very troubling news of students having their visas and or green cards revoked by U.S. Customs in relation to anti-genocide protests.
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James, this is something that you've been putting together a piece on for a while.
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Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Yeah, so we've been trying to kind of figure out the exact details of what is going on, what justification they have for doing this, and how we can extrapolate this out to larger trends. Because deporting legal residents for college protests is pretty insane. Mm-hmm.
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And also the rhetoric coming out of the White House and like the White House, like social media accounts around this incident is like extremely worrying. Yeah. Like the way they're basically putting up like wanted posters for protesters.
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And in general, the way that the White House account has been doing this, like own the libs, like memetic nationalism that the past few weeks has been has been really upsetting. And this is this has continued around this issue.
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And I think it is worth focusing on this as a specific escalation, because you have people like Mamadou Tal, who I think Cornell tried to revoke their student visa, and then he in some way negotiated back into that situation. to stay on the interim provost. John Siciliano eventually ruled in Tall's favor, so he did not end up getting deported last year.
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And now this new development in relation to the Columbia protests is a significant escalation.
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Because not only is this not just like the university revoking NF1, which they do have the authority to, this is like coming directly from the Trump administration where they are going after specific students without the involvement of the university and students who may be legal permanent residents.
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Yeah, well, and you see that with other things, like with Rubio's State Department directives on trans people right now, where they keep the language intentionally vague, they leave the enforcement up to, like, individual actors, and then they can eventually, like, figure out the logistics, like, in court once people be like, um, no, this is illegal. Yeah.
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So yeah, it is vague because they want to test the actual full authority of their power. But I think the specific fact sheet, which is like a sister article towards this executive order, says, like James was saying, to all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice. Come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you.
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I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses which have been infested with radicalism like never before. Unquote. So there you have him saying both resident aliens, which we can infer probably refers to green card holders, as well as student visas. So these are... These are two separate things that he has specifically named as going after.
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And now you see more direction from Rubio after this arrest that happened on Monday. You see more direction from Rubio and the State Department in specifically naming legal permanent residence as targets for removal and targets for ICE actions, which is not something that is extremely common.
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Let's go on a quick break and we will come back to discuss some more of the details on what Mark Rubio is actually saying and where this could all end up. Okay, we are back. I would like to talk about specifically some of the rhetoric that Rubio has been using since this arrest and a little bit of what he was saying before.
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Like we were saying before the break, some of this kind of vague language can kind of be used to their advantage. And this is certainly like riffing off of very vague language that Trump would use on the campaign trail, right? Where he would talk about wanting to jail or deport protesters, like in general, regardless if they're student visa holders, green card holders, or just US citizens, right?
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Like, Trump has made statements about wanting to do all of that. And campaigns like off the cuff statements and actual like government policy are two different things. And right now, like they're trying to figure out where the line between that is, like how much of this rhetoric can be turned into government policy.
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And we mentioned, like, the fact sheet from the executive order that I believe was signed in January, which is, you know, to quote-unquote combat anti-Semitism. And then, like, last week, so before this arrest happened, we had a post from the Secretary Mark Rubio Twitter account official. Quote, those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas…
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So that one specifically focuses, I would say, pretty firmly on people who have student visas, right? He names, like, visitors. And then after the arrest happened, he posted a different statement on his own personal account. Quote, we will be revoking the visas and or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so that they can be deported. Unquote. Sharing an AP article.
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And then the Homeland Security DHS Gov account posted this. On March 9, 2025, in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism and in coordination with the Department of State, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student. Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.
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ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump's executive orders and protecting U.S. national security, unquote. Yeah. And there has now been a flurry of posts from both the White House account and DHS accounts basically posting like a picture of this person saying that he's aligned with Hamas in celebration, almost like styled after a wanted poster.
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But instead it just reads like arrested. And that is like the – that's the rhetoric that like they're using right now on their official accounts.
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Something that James, I think, noted, it's important to think about if ICE was just freestyling this action or if there was a directive beforehand to go after green cards specifically, right? And it seems like, at least for the people doing the raid, they did not care, nor did they know. They weren't informed. They just were told to go after this person from someone higher up. Right.
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And that very well could be Rubio. I mean, a lot of DHS is being ran by Stephen Miller right now. A lot of this feels very Miller-esque.
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Totally. Like this happening in Texas, like in all of those districts where Elon Musk is trying to set up his corporations because there's friendly judges, this would be handled quite differently, right?
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Yeah, regardless of any things that this person may have said.
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Yeah, it's high visibility, and I think it's also very likely that they are just looking to have a test case for this to see if they can create legal precedent for removing people's green cards for anti-genocide protests, right? And the specific details of that will become more and more or less important based on the results of the case, as long as they can create that precedent, right?
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And specifically, the precedent for revoking a green card, something that's pretty substantial. They want something that's in their mind the most favorable towards their outcome. So that's part of what they're trying to do with this specific case. And it is very much in line with Trump's campaign rhetoric and versions of what Trump has said before.
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And now you're seeing someone like Rubio, someone who's a little bit more policy-minded, taking steps towards this outcome.
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And I think before we go on break again, I do want to kind of close this section by talking about how they don't necessarily need an executive order specifically allowing Trump to do this. Or Trump doesn't need to make an executive order explicitly for this based on immigration deportation law. There will be an argument made in court that they have justification for this action already. Mm-hmm.
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This is something that I've already been through when I immigrated to the country and did my citizenship interview. If you have discussed in the past something that can be construed as support for a terrorist organization, that does disqualify you from U.S. citizenship.
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So there's going to be a lot of arguments around specifically these terrorism statutes that will make someone like this a subject for removal. And that's going to be the angle in which they go about this. And I think that's worth keeping in mind.
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Yeah. Yeah, the state should not have this ability. We should not let them get away with this, and we should put as much support and legal support into preventing this from happening. I really can't say which way this will go. Immigration law is one of the most headache-inducing things I've ever had to go through in my entire life. He will be spending a lot of money on immigration lawyers now.
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It was something that we like to, like, laugh at for getting measles in Texas. Disappearing people bad.
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So what is Trump trying to do about these cases which could be pending or have already been resolved?
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Sure. I mean, there's these two sections, right? There's this one that revolves around who can be, like, admitted, who can be accepted. Yeah. And there's that one section, which is, I believe, section... 1-227 subsection A4A-C, which is the section specifically on deportation as relating to, like, supporting, quote-unquote, terrorist activities.
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So I think they will try to use these both, like, in conjunction. And I think it's also important to note out here the use of the word, like, aliens as opposed to the word that, like, Rubio was using previously, which is, like, visitors, right? Like, visitors, I would say, probably applies more to, like, student visa holders.
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versus aliens aliens can be anyone right like aliens can be visa holders can be green card holders right and so at least in like the official wording here the use of the word I think aliens is important as opposed to like Rubio's like you know posts on x.com yeah which now become official policy because we're in the hell world yeah Yep.
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That refers to like, just like, you know, visitors to this country.
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Yeah. It's like, it's very basic, like dehumanization language. Yeah.
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Yeah. And it's something that Trump is also saying they will be taking a continued interest in. He is promising that this is the first arrest of, quote unquote, many to come. So as they continue to focus on this, we will as well. James, did you have anything else you wanted to say, like re-lawyers?
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Robert, shouldn't you rename the podcast It Is Happening Here? Yeah, uh-huh.
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Why don't you rename the podcast, I just feel bad all the time.
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It's definitely a safer investment to pull out your 401k now when the market's crashing. Use that money. Buy drones. Those drones will be worth a lot more in five years. Or...
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It's like how boomers used to invest in silver or gold as a stable currency. No, we're investing in DGI.
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Wait, this is a thing? This is Boba and Kiki with a weird, like, digital fuzz. Over it fucker boba and kiki yeah, okay garrison Yeah, it's a it's like a social experiment to like ask people What like the emotional correspondence of each of these shapes are like which like a Rorschach? Oh?
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It's like a Rorschach thing sure or like like which one looks which one looks nicer which one looks meaner You know that sort of thing. I'm a kiki type like like I I am a kiki I
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Unfortunately, I think Rorschach and Night Silver might actually get along.
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So I'm assuming Nate's going to try to argue that that Musk's intelligence is akin to the Kiki drawing here as opposed to like the empathetic Boba.
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Yes. Well, and last week, I know there was a SpaceX launch. I'm sure it went well. I'm sure it didn't fling debris all over.
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But he's going to argue that, you know, we're going to see how well this co-presidency goes, but he's probably a pretty smart guy to get all of this stuff done, right?
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Let's learn more about Nate's spiky intelligence after these very soft and soothing ads. Yeah.
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Well, yeah, and you can measure this through his posting as well. The types of posts he would make in 2017 are completely opposite to the way that he would talk about certain social issues now. He's not memeing about anarcho-syndicalism.
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I have been turning into a monster during our friend poker nights recently. It's tough.
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I don't put on the data makeup every time I play poker. Just that one time. Actually, no, I've done that twice now, never mind. I have done that two times. It's becoming a habit. I also have the little hats. I ordered a 12-pack of the little poker visors to complete the outfit. Of course you did. Wonderful.
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I mean, he proved that by fooling Nate Silver, a man who probably values his own intelligence like a great deal.
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Elon's what, like 50, like 55 or something? Like, what are we doing?
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Although SAT might not be a stable metric for evaluating intelligence, surely Nate has an alternative method.
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What the evidence he gives us here is. And I think this is something that we should reveal to the audience after these ads. Good point, Gare.
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So this is a graph of Elon Musk's tweets from 2014 to 2024 showing the time of day and when a post is posted represented by small red dots. And yes, at around 2022, the thickness of the red increases dramatically. Exactly.
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And the period of where he must be sleeping in this graph is very concerning.
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And specifically, Silver is using this. And Elon, sobriety is possible. Sorry. And specifically, Silver is using this as evidence of Musk's intelligence. Yeah, it's not. He's scaling his Twitter activity as a sign that he must be like a special type of person.
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Musk is mostly like sitting in an occasional meeting, doing drugs and injecting random women with his sperm.
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And sending tweets. He doesn't do the injecting, I think.
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I said most. This is an HRT joke. Anyway, continue.
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I would like to get into more of Silver's justification for why he associates this high tweet load with intelligence.
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It's pretty upsetting because, you know, a few weeks ago I was having a little bit of a resist live moment and I actually ashed my clove cigarette on a parked Tesla. Felt pretty cool about it. But now I guess I can't even do that. It's too dangerous.
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No, you can't. I could face substantial charges.
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The quickest path to intelligence is having a horrible sleep deprivation and drug problem, apparently. Or at least that is how you show for it. It's funny because I saw Brian Johnson, the billionaire who's eating his son's blood, or now plasma. Oh, yeah, the dead guy. Posted his own self-study on the damaging effects of sleep deprivation.
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And I'm pretty sure Musk retweeted it with an emoji or something.
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Yeah, I mean... Well, before we close, I do want to say, before any psychologists or sociologists or linguists get mad at me, yes, I know Boba and Kiki is... Is that is this is a shape language like correlation test?
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I myself, as well as Nate here, have kind of expanded its usage to like projecting even more like human or like like emotional qualities onto these shapes or onto these specific words. So please, sociologists, leave me alone. Do not do not do not message me.
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I'm afraid it's already too late. I think I already hear like 12 different Redditors typing. But yes, I think Nate's just using that image there as like a metaphor to like show how, you know, aggressive or manipulative Musk's own intelligence is as symbolized by a Kiki as opposed to, you know, maybe like a Bill Gates, which might be more of like a Boba intelligence type. Okay.
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A little softer, a little bit more philanthropy, you know. Okay.
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Why can't Nate Silver just like run like Trump's casino or something? Right. This is just like just like put him away.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of the world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of March 5 to March 12. Trump films a Tesla commercial, RFK Jr.
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eats beef tallow french fries at Steak and Shake, and Sam Seder commits a mass casualty event on YouTube. How is everyone doing today?
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Yes, we will get to it. First, I would like to give a little bit of an update on a story that we talked about a few days ago, the detention and the revocation of a green card for a Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil. As of Wednesday, his lawyers have still been unable to even contact their client. There was a large rally outside the first court conference in New York this Wednesday.
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So we talked about this a few days ago for some background, an episode with James, Robert, and myself. Robert, do you want to like briefly summarize the situation and then I'll play a clip from one of his lawyers?
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Correct. And we will get to some of that later. I'm going to play a clip from a press conference outside court that happened on Wednesday, March 12th. This is one of his lawyers.
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So that was on Wednesday. For now, Khalil will be remaining in ICE detention in Louisiana. And ICE Director Tom Homan said Wednesday that, quote, free speech has its limitations, unquote.
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A White House official did tell Friend of the Pod, the free press, not necessarily our favorite publication, but they do have an exclusive quote here, that the basis for targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint for investigations against other students. Saying Khalil is, quote, a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States, unquote, said the official.
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Well, let's go on a quick out of break and return to talk about, I don't know, the Treasury or something.
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All right. Cool. Alright, we are back. Before we talk about the Treasury, I first want to do some breaking news. Well, kind of breaking. So, when I was flying to New Orleans, I was able to fly past the brand new Gulf of America. It was a life-changing experience. It really warms my heart.
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And then luckily, a few days ago, Georgia Representative Buddy Carter announced legislation to empower Trump to enter into negotiations to, quote unquote, purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland and importantly, to rename it red, white and blue land. God, let's get some quick reactions from the panel.
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Yes. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised because I would assume, and maybe this is still in the works, if Elon Musk can find a way to call this thing X-land is really my concern. Yeah, yeah.
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And this is like appropriated funds for FEMA being safely secured in banks that have literally been stolen.
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This is the most like quid pro quo thing I've ever seen.
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Speaking of corruption, let's pivot to ads. All right, we are back, and I'm going to close by talking about the war on woke, my new favorite news beat that I'm forced to pay attention to every week.
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There was a transports ban that trumped an executive order about using a whole bunch of children as a prop, very clearly trying to steal the charisma from whatever that governor who lost the election did with his preschool lunch thing. Yeah. Anyway, instead now it's you just, you know, hurt other children in the school by not making them be allowed to play sports. So that happened.
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And then a few other things have happened the past few weeks that I'm kind of just like catching up on because I've been really focused on like reporting on like Musk specifically. And there's been a lot of other stuff the past few weeks. So I'm going to kind of get to that now.
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The State Department's travel website changed the acronym LGBT to LGB on a webpage warning about how dangerous it might be to travel to other countries with worse legal protections.
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say lgb travelers can face special challenges abroad laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel many countries do not recognize same-sex marriage many countries don't recognize the x gender marker in passports and do not have it systems at ports of entry that can accept sex markers other than female and male so they've only changed the title part they haven't even bothered to edit the text
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No, because because they also have another info page where they have just like control F LGBT to LGB as well. So this is this is like one of like many changes we're seeing across a whole bunch of federal websites in relation to Trump's order to like remove wokeness and gender ideology. Previously, the CDC removed HIV and trans-related health info pages from their website.
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And as of yesterday, February 11th, the webpages for the FDA, Health and Human Services, and the CDC were allegedly brought back online, restoring their January 30th status. They did this right before a court-mandated deadline to restore these pages. I can now go back on to the CDC's HIV page.
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Verge first reported on this, and they said that they've been unable to verify that all of the pages have been restored exactly to how they were before. This is something that we're still working on because this literally happened yesterday. This is like a small part of their current war on wokeness.
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Another aspect of this is there's been a whole bunch of orders from federal agencies to ban specific woke keywords across their databases, their websites, training information. including from agencies like NOAA.
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So just like the weather and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they released a memo banning specific words across the agency, including words like ability, acceptance, access, affirmation.
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Aggression, allyship, androgyne, asexual, belonging, bias, binary, bisexual, black, culture, DEI, discrimination, diversity, empathy, empowerment, equity, ethnicity, fairness, gay, gender, gender dysphoria, handicap, homosexual, LGBTQ, intersex, pansexual, queer, transgender, transvestite, as well as words like impartial, inclusion, indigenous, intersectionality, justice,
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The word white has been banned. Safe space, social justice, underserved communities, race, privilege, power dynamics, Native American, multiculturalism. So just all of these, like, again, this is like the party of free speech has banned all of these words. And it's not just NOAA, also the National Science Foundation.
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has released memos saying that they cannot have these words included in their documents because it could cause them to lose grant funding.
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There's a lot of similar words flagged in the National Science Foundation list of banned words, like activism, activists, advocacy, barrier, bias, black, Latinx, community, diversity, equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive... diverse, you know, diverse community, diverse groups, diversified, diversifying, all this kind of stuff.
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Ethnicity, equality, inclusion, inequality, LGBT, institutional, marginalized, trauma, underappreciated, stereotypes, systemic, underrepresentation, undervalued, victim.
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Exactly. There's so many words that are just, like, used in, like, how, like, studies function that they cannot use because the word is too woke and then they're going to lose their funding. Like, you can't, like, you can't, like, look at, like, things being equal. You can't look at any kind of, like, scientific bias.
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Like, you can't, like, this very basic stuff, it may just result in, like, the TikTokification of this. Like,
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No, and we have to do scientific studies on how various disabilities affect people's lives. Very basic stuff like this. All of these types of things It's really bad, and these things are going into effect. This stuff is still happening.
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Columnist Dr. Lucky Tran reported, quote, The CDC has instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal. The move aims to ensure that, quote-unquote, no forbidden terms appear in the work. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Great. It's all really bad. Yep.
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And we're seeing this this sort of like lists being formed increasingly, including this DEI watch list put together by a conservative oppositional research group called the American Accountability Foundation. Christ.
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Who released a DEI watch list, which publishes the names, photos, occupation and personal information of mostly black employees who work under the Department of Health and Human Services. When the website was first discovered, the employee profiles were labeled under targets. This has since been changed to dossiers. Like very, very frightening, like very bad stuff, like very obvious intimidation.
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For each target, the website lists a collection of alleged DEI offenses, which includes donations to Democrats, social media posts, having pronouns in their bio, or previous work on, since deleted, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Columnist Jamal Bowie says, quote, they are mostly targeting black employees.
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So this is quite literally just a repeat of Richard Wilson's segregationist purge of the federal government. And and yes, like all of this, all of this, like push against quote unquote DEI is like very clearly just like white supremacist segregation in action.
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Like this is the whole point is that if any employee is a person of color, that means that they that they must be unqualified because they were hired only due to DEI. And to avoid doing that, you can only hire white people. And Trump's transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent out a memo directing staff on where to direct like grant funds.
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And he said, quote, give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average, unquote, which is a very clear dog whistle to just like only hire like white Christians, hire Christians with big families, you know, parenthesis, like white people. This is like very, very obviously what they're doing.
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And so much of what Hegs is doing here, specifically with the West Point club banning, is like, these things are not DEI. These things are very old. These are pretty standard things that have been roped into what it means to be in America. And we're now just seeing this crusade against DEI being used to just reverse affirmative action and specifically select for white Christian applicants.
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And that's the entirety of this point here. They're using DEI as this magical wand to frame things that are pretty standard and accepted parts of how you do hiring practices, how you don't do discrimination, to just specifically only uplift white Christians. And that's part of this very basic Christian nationalist project that people like Heritage have been trying to do for a long time.
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And they've roped these things together so closely now, like the anti-trans school executive order. Only the first half of that executive order was actually about the gender ideology stuff. The second half was aimed at curbing what they called discriminatory equity ideology, DEI. Basically, it was proposing a program for...
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quote-unquote patriotic education across the country basically trying to rewrite history to make like the united states like this like noble historical project it's like it's stuff that they've tried to do before with that like uh with that like 1776 project that the new york times reported on part of trump's order called for quote inaccurate honest unifying inspiring and ennobling characterization of america's founding and foundational principles
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A clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout history. The concept that commitment to America's aspirations is beneficial and justified. The concept that celebration of America's greatness and history is proper.
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And then the order goes on to try to ban the concept of white guilt, saying that teachers can get in trouble if any of their students feel guilty about things that people of that same race have done in the past. And making sure that teachers do not teach things in a way that could possibly make a student feel quote-unquote guilt.
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Well, I'm going to close here with two pieces of breaking news. One, earlier today, we learned that the NIH has finally acknowledged that the grant funding freeze is illegal. And this is probably due to pressure from news coverage about all of the temporary restraining order violations through the continued freezing of funds.
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And now the NIH is saying, because of these orders, we will resume funding. The first TRO was like two weeks ago on February 1st. So it's not like they just learned about this. It's that they have in some ways like perhaps caved to pressure. Again, like these executive orders do not enforce themselves. These are enforced by people at agencies. these things do not become automatically enforced.
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So this is like one step now. You can go to popular.info, who has been breaking the news on this specifically. And then some breaking news that I have here on Dropsite. Quote-unquote, armored Tesla forecast estimated to win $400 million of State Department contract funds. What? So this could go one of two ways. This could either go a really funny way. Yeah, I was gonna say.
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Upwards of 10 miles a year. Yes. Yep. All right. Well, that does it for us today on It Could Happen Here. James, do you want to talk about the tip line again?
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The government of two weeks ago no longer exists. We are now in a fundamentally different country. Under the authority of President Trump, Elon Musk is leading a de facto cyber coup of the United States.
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Using the intentionally vague and unaccountable Department of Government Efficiency, Musk is seizing control of the United States' critical digital infrastructure, literally rewriting the code that runs our country and culling the federal workforce.
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Using the justification of removing government bureaucracy, Musk and the Trump administration have installed their own batch of bureaucratic tech oligarchs made up of former Tesla and SpaceX interns and engineers, Thiel fellowship researchers, Palantir employees, eugenics enthusiasts, and literal Nick Fuentes pilled groipers.
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Career employees have been locked out of their respective agencies, both digitally and physically, as the Doge team ransacks various departments and accesses wide swaths of sensitive government data. Agency officials who have tried to resist Musk's seizure of classified materials have been fired, and more federal employees have been put on leave, including the entirety of USAID.
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This effectively amounts to Musk abolishing the whole department, all without congressional authorization or oversight, not even an executive order from Trump that extends presidential authority. On a whim, the unelected Elon Musk decided to carry out the closure of an entire government agency. And he is far from finished.
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Doge has hijacked the treasury to withhold authorized payments to multiple agencies, resulting in an ongoing battle of lawsuits and court orders. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis, and this episode is an audio companion to an article I published on the ShatterZone substack, linked below in the description.
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You can follow along online at shatterzone.substack.com and click the hyperlinks for more information and sources. Elon Musk has personally directed the General Services Administration to terminate leases on quote-unquote mostly empty federal buildings.
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The GSA, essentially the landlord of the federal government, was one of the first agencies to receive Musk's quote-unquote fork-in-the-road deferred resignation letter offering to buy out the entire workforce. The legality of the letter is still uncertain as it promises to pay out currently unappropriated funds.
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IRS workers who accepted the resignation offer have already been asked to return to work until May. The newly appointed GSA commissioner, Michael Peters, a private equity executive that specializes in downsizing corporate real estate, has decided that, quote, non-DOD federal building space should be reduced 50%, unquote, according to a GSA employee who requested to remain anonymous.
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On top of planning to cut the entire federal portfolio by half, Doge is seeking to cut GSA's own budget by as much as 50%, with talk of consolidating GSA offices into a few major cities using a quote-unquote hub model. Wired reports that Doge staff may be trying to use White House IT credentials to access GSA computers remotely.
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An anonymous GSA employee claims that few people at the agency have elected to take up the voluntary paid resignation offer, with those who have mostly being of retirement age.
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High-level Trump appointees used quote-unquote scare tactics in agency emails, pressuring career employees to accept the deferred resignation offer, warning that cost-cutting measures will eventually lead to a further reduction in force.
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Employees are concerned that a reduced federal workforce would result in federal buildings losing their operations and maintenance contracts, with disastrous consequences for the functionality of government buildings. The brain drain is going to cripple our ability to maintain the buildings even more than it already was. We aren't overstaffed, per a GSA employee.
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They continued, I think this process is already too far along to stop. I'm hoping we just need to get to the midterms. What is happening across the federal government right now is unprecedented. But this is not Germany in the 1930s. It's not the fall of the Soviet Union. We grasp at analogies to help contextualize current events that escape understanding.
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There are similarities, but what's happening is new. It's very American, very 21st century. Think of the growth of the internet, social media, tech startups. In 50 years, what's happening right now could be talked about in the vein of what happened to the United States in the mid-2020s.
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Now, rhetoric of cutting red tape and breaking federal bureaucracy has been common political claptrap for decades. And previous efforts have been largely all bark and no bite. But now there's been a huge chomp. So why now? What happened? Trump has blamed entrenched federal bureaucracy or the quote unquote deep state for preventing him from enacting sweeping change during his first term.
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The obstacles Trump encountered didn't just come from Congress and the courts, but rank and file government workers who run day-to-day operations. Last month, the far-right America First Policy Institute published a report titled Tales from the Swamp, How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.
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The author, James Schreck, a former Heritage Fellow, credits, quote-unquote, hostile career employees for, quote-unquote, refusing to implement policies. Shrek says, quote, many career employees refused or defied directives, withheld information, slow walked projects that they opposed, performed unacceptably, and used strategic leaking to undermine the president's agenda, unquote.
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Trump himself realized this late into his first term and sought to remedy the situation by revoking civil protections for tens of thousands of federal career employees, reclassifying them as at-will employees under an executive order called Schedule F. This allowed Trump to treat large swaths of government employees as political appointments.
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In his article for the America First Policy Institute, Shrek refers to career removal protections as a, quote, modern invention that protects entrenched bureaucracy, unquote. Though Biden repealed Schedule F, Trump effectively reinstated the order on the first day of his second term.
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Trump promised to restore his authority to, quote, remove rogue bureaucrats back in early 2023 under his Agenda 47 plan, vowing to, quote, wield that power very aggressively, unquote. When Trump first ran on Drain the Swamp in 2015, he was referring to corporate lobbyists, special interests, and Washington corruption. But now, the term is used to deride the so-called administrative state.
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Federal agencies, regulatory boards, and bureaucratic career employees that maintain the basic functionality of our government. Both Schedule F and Doge are part of a two-pronged assault on the administrative state, all in service of consolidating then amplifying executive power.
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Trump has fully embraced the unitary executive theory proposed by the likes of Russell Vought, Project 2025 co-author, and the newly confirmed director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Although it's understood that Congress has quote-unquote power of the purse, Under unitary executive theory, Trump now believes that funding appropriated by Congress does not need to be spent.
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Rather, the executive branch controls the flow of federal spending, and Congress merely sets a ceiling on spending that the executive must not exceed. Under this interpretation of the Constitution, the president has sole and complete control of the executive branch, including all of its agencies and departments. But people in Trump's circle, like J.D.
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Vance and Elon Musk, could be pushing Trump to go even further, to where the president considers both the judicial and legislative branches as purely ceremonial and advisory. In the words of new right philosopher Curtis Yarvin, And arguably, we are already well on our way to that point.
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This centralized executive power allows the executive branch to achieve goals I would have previously considered to be quite lofty. And I'll outline two of those examples, pulling from the aspirations of the modern conservative movement after this ad break. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, and get ready to say bye-bye to the FBI.
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Though the right has typically been thought to be firmly in the back-the-blue camp, this isn't always the case, especially on the more extreme end. The far-right militia movement has long clashed with federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI and ATF. In the aftermath of January 6th, many MAGA supporters found themselves at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Republican politicians began to feed into right-wing uproar surrounding the FBI as Trump himself became a target for investigations. After the Mar-a-Lago raid in August of 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, defund the FBI. Arizona Representative Paul Gosar joined in attacks on the bureau, posting, we must destroy the FBI. We must save America.
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That same month, right-wing columnist and podcaster Liz Wheeler published an op-ed titled Abolish the FBI, which called to, quote, farm out the vital functions of the FBI and raise the rest, unquote. The new right publication, Compact Magazine, featured a slightly better written article by the same title, Abolish the FBI.
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At CPAC in March of 2023, Matt Gaetz, noted pedophile, advocated to get rid of the FBI, among other federal agencies.
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In April of 2023, Trump joined in in calls to defund the FBI after being charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Next month, two former FBI employees testified in a congressional hearing accusing the Bureau of weaponization against conservatives in regards to the January 6th investigations.
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The same two former FBI employees, who had their security clearance revoked after espousing J6 conspiracy theories, later called to, quote, abolish the FBI at a Heritage Foundation symposium on the, quote, weaponization of the U.S. government in April of 2024.
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During a live episode of Donald Trump Jr. 's podcast on July 8th, 2024, he called to abolish several federal agencies, starting with the FBI, as well as the CIA and the IRS.
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The Trump administration has already begun the process to dismantle large swaths of the FBI before Kash Patel has even been confirmed by the Senate. Eight top FBI officials have been fired or forced to resign by order of Acting Deputy Attorney General Emile Bove, despite resistance from acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll.
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A questionnaire was distributed to FBI supervisors requesting agents provide information pertaining to their own involvement in the January 6th investigations. This was believed to be used for the targeted removal of agency personnel. Last week, the FBI handed over a list containing the information of 5,000 employees and agents who worked on the January 6th investigations.
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FBI leadership initially chose to withhold employee names. In response, Bove accused the FBI leadership of insubordination. This was ultimately a fruitless effort, as data seized by Elon Musk's Doge team could easily match employee IDs to names.
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Trump has since agreed to not publicly release the names of agents until at least late March, as lawsuits continue, and is required to give two days' notice if the administration chooses to publicly disclose names. But individual agents are still worried.
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An anonymous letter from an FBI agent warns, quote, currently there is an effort to cull a significant number of career special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, unquote. Around one third of FBI agents were told they would be placed on leave, according to a government source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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FBI employees have lost access to systems only to later regain access, while others were told to wait to find out about their employee status. Agents are now trying to negotiate back into their jobs, with sources saying FBI employees may be able to stay on if they can prove their loyalty to Trump and disown the January 6th prosecutions.
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I write all of this not in defense of the FBI, but to demonstrate how far Trump is willing to go to expand his executive power and transfer law enforcement duties to agencies seen as more loyal to the president.
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Though I doubt the FBI will be completely abolished in the next few years, the agency could become unrecognizable, a shell of its former self, with hardline Trump loyalists replacing the existing and already largely conservative workforce. Alternative agencies perceived as being more loyal to Trump, like Homeland Security Investigations, could start picking up the FBI slack.
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According to a senior government source, on day two of Trump's second term, HSI was instructed to reopen investigations into the 2020 George Floyd protests to, quote, identify protesters, BLM rioters, like they did to us after January 6th, unquote.
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For another once-considered far-fetched goal of the conservative movement that now seems oddly within grasp, let's talk about the Department of Education. Conservatives have advocated for dismantling the Department of Education ever since Jimmy Carter signed its modern incarnation into law in 1979. Most notably, Ronald Reagan tried and failed to abolish the department in 1981.
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But Reagan's commission ironically strengthened support for the department. Once Reagan ran into roadblocks, he instead sought to limit the department's power and influence. Since then, calls to abolish the Department of Education have been a recurring Republican talking point among certain think tanks and politicians, but they have struggled to land sizable blows against the department.
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Trump previously fiddled around with merging the Departments of Education and Labor during his first term, but that plan went nowhere. In Trump's own Agenda 47 plan released in 2023, he expressed his goal of, quote, closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., unquote.
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Later, at the National Religious Broadcasters 2024 Christian Media Convention in February of 2024, Donald Trump repeated this promise, quote, I will close the Federal Department of Education and we will move everything back to the states where it belongs, where they can individualize education, unquote.
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Project 2025 outlined how to achieve the effective dismantling of the department by transferring funding and duties to other departments, such as Health and Human Services and the DOJ. Opposition to the Department of Education was a frequent topic at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Robert, Sophie, and I attended multiple panels and events taking aim at the department, hosted by groups like Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation.
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On the first day of the convention, the party ratified their official 2024 RNC platform, which called to, quote, close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and send it back to the states where it belongs, and let the states run our educational system as it should be run, unquote. And now the department seems to be next on the Trump-Doge chopping block.
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The administration is drafting a sweeping executive order, while Trump says he wants his education nominee, Linda McMahon, to quote-unquote, put herself out of a job. The planned executive order would not just direct the Secretary of Education to begin dismantling the department, but also ask Congress for assistance in formally abolishing the agency.
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It's unlikely that Trump would get the 60 Senate votes needed to pass the necessary legislation. But even if they can't manage to technically abolish the department, he could still try to rip its guts out, slash spending, and forcibly resign or fire employees. Basically make the department simply non-functioning, much like what Doge did to USAID.
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Upwards of 16 Doge staffers are currently listed in the Education Department directory. Federal education employees have already received the fork-in-the-road resignation buyout offer, while others have been fired for alleged links to DEI.
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Without someone like Elon Musk in Trump's administration, there was no clear path towards implementing some of the more lofty plans proposed by conservative thought leaders, whether they be Trump's own Agenda 47, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, or Curtis Yarvin's dream of a national CEO king. Only Elon Musk could do this.
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You need someone with his influence, connections, money, experience, and knowledge of fringe neo-reactionary Silicon Valley political theory to propose and carry out something like Doge. So how did Musk get here? Though it's common knowledge that Musk has drifted pretty severely rightward the past five years, leading into the 2024 presidential campaign, he was not an out-and-proud Trump supporter.
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As recently as 2022, Musk deemed Trump too old to serve as president again, tweeting that it was time for Trump to quote, hang up his hat and sail into the sunset, unquote. Initially, Musk threw his support behind the doomed presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But as it became clear Trump would be the Republican nominee, Musk fell in behind his new party line.
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But his implicit support of Trump was kept on the down low. The two met in Florida in March of 2024, among other wealthy Republican donors, as Trump was lobbying for campaign funding. The New York Times reported that Musk did not want to publicly endorse Trump as of early 2024, telling friends the most he would do was an anti-Biden endorsement.
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Instead of public support, Musk would create his own super PAC to secretly help get Trump elected, timing payments so his fiscal backing of Trump's campaign could only go public after the election. But all that changed on July 13th. After Trump's brush with death in Butler, Pennsylvania, Musk seemingly took Trump's call of fight, fight, fight to heart.
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Tweeting less than an hour later, quote, I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery, unquote. This opened more frequent communication between Musk and Trump. Later that weekend, both Musk and Peter Thiel called Trump to recommend J.D. Vance as vice president.
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Next week was the Republican National Convention, during which Elon Musk was frequently name-dropped, both by official speakers and regular attendees, talked about as almost some kind of mythic right-wing superhero. On the final day of the convention, rumors circulated that Musk himself would make a surprise appearance on stage.
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Though said rumors did not come to fruition, Musk's specter haunted the entirety of the RNC. Come August, Musk just finished overhauling leadership at his America super PAC and was rigorously pushing pro-Trump messaging on X, the everything app. On August 12th, Musk hosted Trump in a two-hour live streamed phone call dubbed in X space.
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This conversation marked the first time Trump casually spoke at length about the assassination attempt. The pair also discussed, quote-unquote, migrant crime and the need to eliminate federal bureaucracy. Trump gave a rare compliment to Musk, calling him the greatest cutter, followed up by saying, quote, I need an Elon Musk. I need someone that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts.
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I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states, unquote. News outlets were more interested in reporting on the stream's technical glitches rather than Musk's idea for a government efficiency commission, to which Trump responded very positively.
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Next month, on September 4th, Trump announced that, at the suggestion of Elon Musk, if elected, he would, quote, create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms, unquote.
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Musk himself agreed to be appointed head of the commission aiming to cut trillions of dollars. This announcement was not taken very seriously. The New York Times called commissions such as this, quote, a favorite Washington solution for delaying dealing with hard problems, unquote.
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And the Times later reported that the commission, quote, can issue recommendations around federal funding and regulations, but will be powerless to enact them without executive actions by Mr. Trump or funding approval by Congress, unquote.
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Even I can admit that both myself and some of my coworkers underestimated Doge's ability to physically carry out Musk's suggestions with no congressional oversight or authority. As the election ramped up, Musk's super PAC mobilized thousands of canvassers across key swing states and collected data to target both enthusiastic and unlikely voters.
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Throughout 2024, Musk spent over $290 million in contributions in support of the mega campaign, mostly via his own super PAC. On October 5th, Musk made his first appearance at an official campaign event, joining Trump for his return to Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk continued to appear at Trump rallies in the month leading up to the election.
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By election day, Musk was firmly in Trump's inner circle, spending election night and most of the next week with President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago. After this ad break, we will return to discuss how Elon Musk is now trying to become the CEO of the United States of America. Okay, we are back.
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And now, a few months after the election, Elon Musk is doing to the United States exactly what he did to Twitter. By the end, it still might technically function on some level, just worse in every way, prone to glitches and full of Nazis. The previous version was already bad and harmful, but the new one somehow sucks even more and no longer has the aspects that made it semi-worthwhile.
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The fork-in-the-road deferred resignation letter sent to government employees used the exact same title as a similar email sent to Twitter employees after Musk bought the company. the Doge team has installed sofa beds on the fifth floor of the headquarters of the Office of Personnel Management to enable working around the clock, mirroring Musk's previous actions during his takeover of Twitter.
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Musk has brought on some of the same exact people who helped him take over Twitter, all of whom are now special government employees with odd job titles but immense power.
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It was reported in Wired that a Musk stooge told General Services Administration workers that the agency will now pursue, quote, an AI-first strategy, unquote, and that the GSA should operate like a, quote, unquote, startup software company.
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Musk has ordered the General Services Administration to terminate leases for all roughly 7,500 federal offices amidst a national call to return to in-person work. This, again, is a classic Musk move taken from his takeover of Twitter, in which to cut costs, he refused to pay rent for Twitter offices in London, New York City, and San Francisco while the buildings were still in use.
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A current GSA employee was quoted in Wired as saying, quote, they are acting like this is a takeover of a tech company, unquote. Musk's own personal success hasn't been from his skill as an inventor or a software engineer. What he's proficient at is taking over corporations and molding them in his image. This is what happened to Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter.
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In 2020, Musk called the federal government, quote, the ultimate corporation, unquote. And now he seeks to become CEO. In doing this, Musk is following the tech industry motto of move fast and break things. So far, all his actions bypass Congress, the slow controller of stable government.
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Having everything be done via executive order and doge helps to speed run a full reboot of the administrative state. The motto of the old government may as well have been move slow and build things. Progress is slow, but detonation is fast. The breakage of government isn't a mere side effect or a bug of this expedited form of rule. It's a feature.
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To reshape the government into their ideal technocracy, first breaking things is a requirement. They might not get away with all of it, and they don't need to. They're doing so much so fast, knowing that they will only get away with some of it. But with new Supreme Court-approved presidential immunity and unlimited pardon power, they can try as much as they want with zero consequence.
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These are not the moves you would make if you wanted a stable government. It's the moves you would make as a new tech company, which is why Musk's operation is masked with the Silicon Valley language of efficiency. The inefficiencies of government are part of the point That's what creates stability, makes the country a trusted ally, and gives the dollar value.
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Quote, regulations can be bothersome sometimes and downright problematic, but that's kind of the point. They act as a control on imprecise and rushed decision-making. If the cost of doing business is slowing down the process, that's the cost that has to be made. To quote a government employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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But those inefficiencies and pesky regulations really irritate the Silicon Valley tech bros who think they are the smartest people on the planet. It's their view that since they're so smart, shouldn't they run the country? Musk has a personal interest in slashing the regulatory state as it interferes with his own businesses and dreams of space colonization.
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Last year, Musk claimed that Doge, quote, was the only path to extending life beyond Earth, unquote. The White House press secretary has said that Musk himself will determine when there is a conflict of interest involving his businesses and Doge. SpaceX alone has received $15.4 billion in government contracts, according to the New York Times.
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the large reduction in the federal workforce through the combined efforts of Doge and Schedule F, there's a irrefutable similarity to a plan outlined by new right blogger, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel's favorite philosopher. Last year, Robert Evans did a behind the bastards on Curtis Yarvin, and you should absolutely check that out for more information.
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In 2022, Yarvin outlined how a second Trump term could quote unquote, reboot the United States government. This plan amounts to a corporate takeover of government, which subsequently reshapes the structure of government akin to a corporation. Though in Yarvin's mind, it is not President Trump who assumes the role of CEO.
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Instead, the president acts as chairman of the board and before inauguration should select a CEO who is an experienced executive. This appointed CEO could then, quote, run the executive branch without any interference from Congress or the courts, to quote Yarvin, while President Trump reviews the CEO's performance in the background.
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Yervin writes, quote, most existing important institutions, public and private, will be shut down and replaced with new and efficient systems. Trump will be monitoring this CEO's performance on TV and can fire him if need be, unquote.
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Musk may believe that he has successfully maneuvered Trump into appointing him CEO, but Trump could be well aware of Musk's ambitions, but is keeping him around as an emergency patsy, ready to fire when needed. The Trump admin is currently testing the limits of presidential authority.
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And once those limits get surpassed by the standards of Senate Republicans, Musk is the easiest guy to blame and push out of the administration's inner circle. The first step in Yarvin's plan has the Trump campaign running on centralizing executive power to eliminate government inefficiency. This was both in line with Project 2025 and Musk's suggestion of an efficiency commission.
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Once Trump gets into office, the plan is as follows. Purge bureaucracy. What Yarvin calls rage. Retire all government employees. This is essentially being carried out by Doge, Schedule F, and by just pressuring career employees to accept deferred resignation offers by threatening future mass layoffs.
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Senior-level officials have been replaced by a batch of loyal tech oligarchs, with links to Musk and Peter Thiel. The stupidity of Doge was almost a secret weapon. The cryptocurrency memeness made everyone in respectable society not take the idea seriously. What's the worst an advisory commission could do with no power to enforce its suggestions? Oops.
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Another step in Yarvin's plan is to nullify elite institutions of power, like the media and academia. Musk's takeover of Twitter has gone a long way in altering the country's information ecosystem. The Trump admin seems to be utilizing Steve Bannon's flood-the-zone strategy to distract and exhaust the media, as well as more directed attacks.
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On January 31st, the Department of Defense kicked out NBC News, The New York Times, NPR, and Politico from their in-house press offices and replaced them with One American News, The New York Post, Breitbart, and HuffPost. Under direction from Doge, the White House has ordered government agencies to cancel subscriptions to policy news services from multiple news outlets.
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A White House advisor told Axios, quote, the eye of Sauron is on more than just Politico. It's all the media, unquote. In terms of attacks on academia, the federal grant freeze has had devastating effects on university research. Another step in Yarvin's plan is to co-opt Congress and ignore the courts. This is where we are at right now.
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The goal is to reduce both the judicial and legislative branches to being purely ceremonial and advisory, as advocated by Yarvin. So far, the Trump administration has effectively sidestepped the legislative bodies via Elon Musk and Doge. It's highly unlikely Trump would ever be impeached or removed by this Congress.
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Furthermore, this Congress seems to have willfully given up on their power over the federal budget. To quote a senior government official, quote, the real challenge is that Congress is on board for now in losing their own budgetary authority. So far, a lone security guard standing outside USAID and the Department of Education has been enough to deter resistance from the Democratic Party.
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Last week, I interviewed Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina. The full interview will air tomorrow, but here's his short take on the current situation.
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Right now, the real roadblock is the courts. The Trump administration has already displayed a willingness to ignore the courts based on the continued halting of federal spending and grants, despite an order from a U.S. district judge.
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The Justice Department has argued that the order to resume funding, quote, contains several ambiguous terms and provisions that could be read to constitute significant intrusions on the executive branches, lawful authorities, and the separation of powers, unquote. This past weekend, Musk raged against a federal judge who ordered to temporarily restrict Doge's access to Treasury Department data.
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Both Musk and the White House have labeled the judge an activist, with White House spokesperson Harrison Fields calling the order, quote, absurd and judicial overreach, unquote. On X, the everything app, Musk boosted claims calling this a judicial coup and shared an announcement from California Representative Daryl Issa to introduce legislation to quote-unquote stop these rogue judges.
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But even without added legislation, Musk and the Trump administration are gearing up to directly defy judicial authority.
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On Saturday, Musk shared a tweet reading, I don't like the precedent it sets when you defy a judicial ruling, but I'm just wondering what other options are these judges leaving us if they're going to blatantly disregard the Constitution for their own partisan political goals, unquote. And on Sunday, Vice President J.D. Vance posted a statement undermining judicial power.
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Quote, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control executives' legitimate power. Unquote. So now it all comes down to force.
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If the executive branch not just ignores judicial authority, but blatantly defies it, who would be left to enforce the power of the court? That leads us to another step in Yarvin's plan, centralize the police. nationalize local law enforcement to place them under federal control. Trump has flirted with this tactic in the past when he deputized Washington police as U.S.
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Marshals to kill Michael Reinhold in 2020. Doge staff threatened to call U.S. Marshals when USAID security officials, who have since been fired, denied them access to classified systems. Yorvin believes this step is paramount. Quote, support of the democratic public is a cipher. I think that actually all you need is command of the police. Unquote.
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If you have all of the guys with guns, who can physically stop you? Support from the public doesn't hurt, though. And if things get tricky, Trump could employ the next step in Yarvin's plan, mobilize populist support. But crucially, don't wait until you're at your weakest at the end of your term after losing an election.
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Under popular mandate, deploy your empowered supporters at the height of your powers to oppose any obstruction from government agencies or the courts. Trump may weaponize Supreme Court-ordained presidential immunity and his unrestricted pardon power to make any willing actor carry out his bidding with zero risk of legal consequence.
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Now, even if Trump himself isn't aware of Yarvin's plan, his vice president certainly is. On a far-right podcast in 2021, J.D. Vance laid out a very similar vision for a second Trump term, using what the Peter Thiel protege described as a de-wokification program to purge bureaucracy.
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Yarvin writes that the initial goal of this new administration should not be simply to govern, but to, quote, figure out what the Trump administration can actually do when it assumes the full constitutional powers given to the chief executive of the executive branch, unquote. What the administration can do once they fully seize this power is so incredibly vast.
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Without checks and balances, all those crazy things Trump tried to do during his first term would be a lot easier to enact, let alone whatever Musk and the tech oligarchs want out of the United States Incorporated. But that's a whole separate topic. The current fight determines the degree to which this power is seized. And Yarvin notes the importance of going all the way. Quote,
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When Trump in 2017 took office, he took about 0.01% of power. If Trump in 2021 wants to have more than 0.001% of power, the only way he can do it is to take 100%. Take it all at once, completely legally. The real Donald J. Trump would never have the guts to even think of doing this. And he's just too old, unquote. Funny pessimism from Yarvin there.
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All of this doesn't even need to benefit average Trump supporters because Trump's main campaign promise wasn't mass deportations, fixing the economy, or abolishing the Department of Education. It was retribution.
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As extremism analyst Jared Holt notes, quote, the right got its base so hooked on the idea of revenge, it doesn't even need to pretend that any of this benefits their base in any tangible way. They just have to say it hurts the wrong people and that satisfies them, unquote. If Trump and Musk continue to get their way, it could take years to fix.
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But the past 10 years have shown us you can't really return to normal. There probably is no going back. The options are to hunker down and play it slow and try to survive whatever happens in the next two to four years while offering passive resistance. Or we accelerate to whatever comes next.
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put cards on the table, trigger a kinetic confrontation, and fully manifest the results of this constitutional crisis. We are dealing with managing crumbles versus a full systems collapse. Sad face emoji.
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This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. Last week, I was working on an essay about how the Trump administration is trying to shut down the Department of Education. Now, very quickly, that project expanded to being about how Elon Musk is actually trying to internally coup the federal government and become the CEO of the United States.
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That article is now published on chatterzone.substack.com and is also the previous episode of this podcast. But during my research, I talked with law professor Derek Black about the Department of Education, the state of disunion in the country, and if we still have a democracy.
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already some of the things we talked about have begun to happen, like Republicans introducing legislation to expand executive power, while Trump and Musk flirt with denying the authority of the courts.
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But I decided to publish the full interview because I believe his perspective is still helpful, and the conversational format alters the way we process information compared to me just reading a kind of depressing essay for 40 minutes. So without further ado, here is the interview.
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Let's start by discussing what's going on at the Department of Education right now. And maybe let's actually start a little bit further back. Attacks on the Department of Education are not new. Reagan famously kind of pioneered the rights focus on this. But it's been something they've struggled to... deal sizable blows against, especially in terms of wanting to abolish the organization.
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Could you talk about the history of conservative attacks against the department?
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Yeah, that's the general overall feeling I'm having is that there's a lot of things going on that I would have previously thought are kind of like pipe dreams. Calls to abolish the Department of Education, even this rallying call from the new right the past few years to abolish the FBI. General claims of draining the swamp.
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These types of old, almost stereotypical claims that now, through Musk, they've been able to weasel their way into actually dismantling large companies large systems that make the everyday functionality of the government possible. What should people know right now about the current attacks on the Department of Education? Trump is still allegedly drafting an executive order.
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He'll probably have to work through Congress, but we'll see the degree to which he even needs to do that. What are you worried about right now, and what do you think people should know about the current attacks on the DOE?
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And that's a good thing. It's a good thing. How do you think that relates to the administration's attempts to centralize executive power, though? If you look at what happened with USAID, this agency that has been enshrined in law, that may not be legally abolished now, but they've been effectively abolished. All the employees are on leave. It's been hollowed out. It essentially no longer exists.
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I feel like they're trying to, at the very least, test the bare limits of executive power and bypass Congress when they can. Part of my fear is Congress is not willing to fight them on that, seemingly. They're not willing to call them on that.
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They're almost willing to acquiesce their appropriations ability, as well as the ability to actually have to remove departments from existence or create new ones.
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And that's the big thing that I'm concerned about is we talk about these things that presidents are not, quote unquote, allowed to do. And I feel like both Trump and Musk right now are speed running the limits of executive power. And they are willing to test the boundaries a little bit more than previous presidents. And they're willing to break the government temporarily to their goals be enacted.
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And at a certain point, it's really tricky when the thing that you always hear is, you know, like, hopefully the courts will step in. Hopefully they'll do something. If things get really bad, who will, like, literally stop them?
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In terms of, like, the courts told them to halt the funding freeze, and there's still grants that they are refusing to issue that were already approved, legally need to be followed through on, that they are still withholding. And it's really frightening when it comes down to, like, basic level of, like, is there people... military police who will enforce this if things get really bad.
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That's something I don't have complete confidence in anymore.
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J.D. Vance was interviewed on a far-right podcast about two or three years ago. And he expressed desire for what he called a quote-unquote de-wokification program. Which again, sounds silly, but this is basically happening now. He extrapolated and said, quote, I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice, Unquote. Unquote.
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And I feel like we're getting closer and closer to this scenario. I'm sorry, where did J.D. Vance make this statement? In what context? On Jack Murphy's podcast. Jack Murphy is a far-right commentator. Vance is invoking the political philosophy of Curtis Yarvin, who is becoming increasingly popular in the new right.
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Lots of what Musk and Trump, by extension, have been doing the past few weeks is taken pretty directly out of Curtis Yarvin's playbook for seizing executive power. And I feel like we're getting closer and closer to this. And so much of what's happening in various agencies is about proving loyalty to Trump so that if there is some kind of constitutional confrontation, people side with him.
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Doge is basically installing loyalty tests. And running through communications to see what the loyalty to Trump is for different levels of administrative employees. The FBI are negotiations to stay on, but only if they can prove their loyalty to the president. And it's all of these scenarios that, again, originally would be kind of far-fetched when you're hearing someone like J.D.
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Vance talk about this. A few years ago on some right-wing podcast, that's one thing. To watch this happen in real time, for people like me who study this type of more esoteric far-right political theory, it's kind of surreal to watch the type of thing that you've been writing about and thinking about on background for years now happen.
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I just kind of rambled there, but do you have any thoughts on this idea that Vance is talking about in terms of creating this constitutional crisis?
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Let's, I guess, close by talking about disunion and how that relates to the general feeling I think a lot of people are experiencing around the country, as well as linking back again to the attacks on the Department of Education.
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what's the solution here? I mean, like beyond, beyond people diversifying where they get their media from. And like for vast parts of the country, I think that that line has been crossed a long time ago. If you look at the way like Twitter functions, the way that people just exist in their bubbles and are happy to, like people don't want to hear anything else.
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And with the most hostility coming from like both extreme ends.
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I don't know how to get around this problem. This is something that we've thought about a lot the past eight years, but certainly longer.
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What would cross the Rubicon for you? People throw around the term constitutional crisis. What would actually happen that would make that something that you would be like, this is like it, like it is happening. What is that like make or break moment? Are you wanting me to imagine a realistic one or just sort of give you some sort of example that makes sense? No, what would that be for you?
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Because I think everyone has their own personal rubric for what is too far in my mind. What is something that's like, this is completely unacceptable. And for some people, this may have already happened. But in terms of legitimate constitutional crisis, what is that for you?
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Executive power has been steadily expanding, certainly.
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I mean, I guess the main difference there for me relates back to what you said about acting in good faith. Something that people on the left, I think, get mad about sometimes is Democrats seeming a complete commitment to acting in good faith sometimes. And it certainly appears that Trump is willing to push a little bit farther, especially in terms of tests for loyalty.
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And at a certain point, if he does something really bad, at least for these next two years, I don't see a way that he'll get impeached or removed from office. Certainly not with this Senate, not with this Congress. That check and balance just no longer is viable due to the last election. And acting with that popular mandate has, I think, given them a bit more courage on their side to go
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a little bit further, play a little bit more fast and loose with some of these checks and balances than what we've previously seen. But this is certainly still developing.
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Unless you have anything else to add, do you want to talk about where people can find you and your writing?
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That's right. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world, and what this means for you. That is Robert talking previously. James Stout is also here. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by Mia Wong. This episode, we're covering the week of February 6th to February 12th.
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Currently, me and Mia are inside New Orleans, Louisiana, and I am proud to report that fascism has been defeated. The Philadelphia Eagles have beat the KK Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Drake has been executed live on stage. It's a great week.
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obliterated generational beatdown and yeah when i arrived here in new orleans um on monday this is the monday after the super bowl so a complete nightmare but there was just an ocean of an ocean of out and proud eagles fans and the funniest thing i saw is when i was waiting for mia to fly in there was this like half a full clothing rack of leftover chiefs merch that's great no one bought it
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Literally Taylor Swift themed Kansas City Chiefs merch.
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yeah yeah i mean like canada previously promised quote-unquote promised yeah to arrest net yahoo if they were ever like able to and like yeah i'm very curious to see how this is going to shake down with the u.s taking like an extremely firmer stance at least than we previously had we we already like you know quote-unquote like condemned canada but like i'm interested to see trump like be more interested in actually pushing this further than it has been
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This guy who lied about prosecuting the Benghazi attackers and almost got SEAL Team 6 killed?
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Well, I mean, hopefully, allegedly, these products and services would never wish harm upon SEAL Team 6.
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Alright, we are back. I'd like to talk a little bit now about Patel's actual plans for the FBI. Now, this job does require a Senate confirmation. So we will see, you know, if he gets past that process or if he's going to get pushed in through recess appointments, which we still don't really know if Trump will be able to pull off.
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But in terms of the FBI, we do have some idea about what Cash has in mind because he spent the past two years just talking about it nonstop in books and interviews. Yeah, because he, like all these guys, cannot shut up. Can't stop talking.
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In an appearance on The Sean Ryan Show this past September, Patel said, quote, I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state, unquote. Okay.
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Yeah, I don't think they can make a whole museum turn around in one day.
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No, like Patel does talk about like trying to like clear out like the bureaucracy and red tape of the FBI. And and though he has criticized the wide footprint of the FBI and its surveillance operations, though really only the ones targeted against Trump and his campaign.
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Cash's ideal FBI would not, in fact, have like a more limited presence out in the world, saying that after closing the Hoover building, quote, then I'd take the 7000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You're cops. Go be cops. Unquote. So this is what you give like a seven year old the keys to the FBI.
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And this is this is this is the kind of stuff he's talking about. Yeah, it's like I'm going to send all these administrative employees out into the world to chase down criminals.
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You know, if we said it a little bit further, we could have like Will Wheaton as like the villain. Yeah, Will Wheaton as the evil kid heading the CIA.
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No. Sorry, President Williams. Goddamn. Oh, dear. Nightmare. Nightmare fuel. Now, it's really unclear if, like, Cash's plans here are, like, rhetoric, right? Like, you know, more vibes than, like, actual plan. You know, like, expressing some kind of sentiment rather than, like, an actual practical, like, plan. But last year, Patel published a book called
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titled Government Gangsters, The Deep State, The Truth, and The Battle for Our Democracy, where he also proposed relocating the FBI headquarters out of Washington, D.C. to, quote, prevent institutional capture and curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship, unquote.
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Though the bulk of this book also details like why we must root out politicians, journalists, big tech and quote unquote members of the unelected bureaucracy that operate the deep state. So, you know, like the FBI engaging in a little bit of political gamesmanship is OK.
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In the appendix of this book, it contains the names of 60 alleged members of the deep state, most of them either like former Trump cabinet people who like turned on Trump or just like current Biden admin people. It's all pretty silly, but it's not like he actually plans to take out political prosecutions away from like the FBI's operational structure.
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Like, come on, buddy, this is like your entire plan. In an interview with Steve Bannon last year, Patel reiterated the goal of targeted prosecutions against political enemies, saying, quote, Yes, we're going to come after people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, unquote. So that's cool.
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Again, this is, this is the basic stuff that Trump's been promising since like, you know, the past four years going after journalists, going after politicians.
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This quote specifically also just like reminded me that like, there's like a real possibility that like the head of the FBI legitimately thinks the 2020 election was stolen. And like, Then I got to thinking like how many of like the people operating the highest levels of government now genuinely believe the election was stolen in 2020, which is like kind of kind of threw me for a loop.
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I like didn't really like process that like concept of like how just broken the reality structure will be with something like so like clear. Yep. That's his FBI plans.
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Patel is really bad. And we're going to get into some more of his kind of crank beliefs. But there is a level of base incompetence. The fact that Tulsi has been able to get into this position despite... very clearly having like deep sympathetic ties to Assad and Russia is like super frightening.
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Yeah, yes. Now, since 2020, Kash Patel has served on the board of directors for the parent company of Truth Social called Trump Media Technology Group. So he's been part of the team operating, you know, Trump's version of Twitter.
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And back in 2022, Patel was openly talking about how like the Truth Social staff were trying to, quote unquote, incorporate QAnon into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences. So this is the section where we're going to really get into Patel's super, super heavy Q ties, which is kind of like a throwback, right? We don't really talk about QAnon as much anymore.
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And I don't think Patel's interest in this is genuine. I think it is just to like grow both his own brand and help boost the stock of Truth Social. It's still like the closest that anyone in Trump's team has gotten to like openly endorsing QAnon and like repeatedly, right?
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True social staff operate an account at Q, formed to piggyback off of QAnon's popularity and draw in popular QAnon influencers. In February 2022, Patel posted a photo of a beer pint and the arm of someone wearing a flannel shirt with text saying he was, quote, having a beer with Q right now, unquote.
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Patel continued to frequently interact with the Q account, make QAnon-related posts, and do reoccurring appearances on QAnon-linked podcasts. Most notably, the X-22 Report, the Matrix XXX Grove Show, and Red Pill 78. It's been a while since I've listened to these types of shows, and it was like a huge throwback. Oh, man. And they're like all chugging along.
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And now they're like chugging along better than ever, which is, you know, not ideal for me. On these shows, Cash has praised the QAnon fandom researchers, saying both he and the president have been impressed. It's all like very pandering, but it really works for these people.
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Later in that interview, Patel openly said that he publishes government documents on his website, fightwithcash.com, specifically so that QAnon researchers will dig through them to make QAnon content. He openly said that's why he posts these documents.
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You know, Patel also has books just like you, although he's been signing copies of his with the QAnon phrase, where we go one, we go all. I mean, I do that too. And he has defended his use of the slogan on these QAnon podcasts, like in this clip from the Matrix XX Groove Show.
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I'm going to quote now from an article in Media Matters by Alex Kaplan, who's been reporting on Patel and his ties to QAnon since 2022.
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Quote, on yet another show in June of 2022, Patel went even further, saying of QAnon, quote, we try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breadth of the mega and America first movement.
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And so what I try to do is, what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can't ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following, unquote. In that interview, Patel also said of QAnon, there's a lot of good to a lot of it. And he agreed with the co-host who said, Q has been so right on so many things, saying, quote, I agree with you.
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He should get credit for all the things he has accomplished because it's hard to establish a movement. Let's call it that because that's what it is, unquote. Oh, boy. Do you know what's also hard to establish, Robert? An alibi? An alibi. And, you know, some people's alibis could be reading ads like the one that we're about to do right now. That's right. That's always my alibi.
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All right. We are we are back. Now, in these podcast guest appearances, he would often plug his book and advocate that listeners just join Truth Social. And engagement with these more niche online streaming shows and podcasts fortifies the right-wing online media ecosystem and draws people away from mainstream news. This is why he was going on those shows so much back in 2022.
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Patel basically says as much on this episode of the X-22 report.
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And I think part of why he's doing this and whether he was told to do it or whether he just did it on his own volition is that like having someone who's seen as being close to Trump, especially with national security experience, it helps keep Trump supporters politically engaged by making them feel like they are getting special access to like exclusive information.
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It's all a part of keeping the mega movement alive when their side is not in power, while also building up a ground base of support in preparation for them to take power back. And that's what he did like a lot in 2022. Most of those podcasts were leading up to the midterms as well. So it is part of this general political strategy to engage with these like
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much more niche, kind of smaller QAnon shows, which not only does grow their audience over time as well, it does help their audience grow. It also just establishes a completely siloed media ecosystem away from mainstream news. That is part of what they're doing. That's why Trump made Truth Social, is to create more of these reality tunnels, more of these information silos.
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Now, Patel kept busy in between 2020 and 2024 with a variety of kind of grifty ventures. I'm going to quote from the New York Times here, quote, Mr. Patel's company, Trishel, collects consulting fees, including $130,000 last year from Mr. Trump's Truth Social site. He also made $325,000 over two years for strategy consulting for the pro-Trump Save America PAC.
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and $145,000 in 2021 for fundraising consulting from friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the now former House Republican from Florida, unquote. Now, last year, Patel's nonprofit charity, The Cash Foundation, received $1.3 million in revenue, mostly from donations, though its reported expenses totaled $674,000. Wow.
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Which is the majority of the money, and nearly half of that was spent on promotion and advertising. According to the New York Times, the charity spent more on ads than they actually gave away. Which is fantastic charity work. Oh, fuck. Good work. Through this foundation, he also sells cash merchandise, which is spelled K money sign H. Yeah, that guy's going to really FBI well.
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Including six packs of wine for $240 and $50 golf polo shirts. Part of these polo shirts have this like, you know, like pro-America branding. I want to read the description of one of them. Tired of seeing your money go overseas? Support your fellow Americans by purchasing our t-shirt. Where do you think this t-shirt's made, Robert? China? Well, it's made in Haiti. Oh, Haiti. Oh, okay.
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The America of the ocean. And South America. So, you know, you're still supporting Americans. Just South Americans.
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Oh, my God. Now, this foundation has also funded defamation lawsuits for a Stop the Steal activist and his friend and former boss at National Intelligence. But Patel's grifting does go beyond his foundation. Just earlier this year, Patel was hawking anti-vaccine supplement pills from the company Warrior Essentials. Wow.
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Specifically, the pills that claim to reverse the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. I love that. What if these pills just give you COVID? They're just COVID pills?
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That's impossible. So this product that Patel was selling is called No-COVID-Em. And it's allegedly formulated to, quote, destroy the toxic spike, unquote, caused by the mRNA vaccine.
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Novid's good. Yeah. According to journalist James Little, these no-COVID pills just contain basic supplement ingredients like turmeric extract, green tea extract, and vitamin D. Great. Yeah. A subscription for a 30-day supply is for $49.98. Jesus Christ. And a single order of pills is $59.98.
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They're really pushing the subscription because you got to keep doing more pills every 30 days in order to really keep the vax suppressed. In a post this past February on True Social, Patel truthed, spike the vax, order this home run kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax, unquote. My God. I just can't believe that a guy like this could be FBI director. It's just, it makes me.
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I would love to believe that a guy like this will lead to just general incompetence, but I just can't let myself believe that. Like, I think it's just going to become more and more targeted against like people who are good.
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And specifically, like, you know, Patel has also been a recurring gray zone guest and is pretty close with that whole crew. That's, you know, not great for certain people. But he really is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of like odd anecdotes. including his trilogy of books, which will be kind of the last thing I talk about here.
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So over the course of the past three years, Patel has written and published a children's book trilogy titled The Plot Against the King, where Patel himself appears as a wizard to defend King Donald from enemy plots. Oh, God. Uh...
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No, but now we have the FBI director who fancies himself the wizard to protect the king. I am going to read the description from the first book here. Quote, a fantastical retelling of the terrible true story. Hillary Quinton and her shifty knight had spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become king. They claimed he was working with the Rushionians, but how could that be? Rushionians?
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Cash, the distinguished discoverer, join him as he uncovers the plot against the king and who was really behind all the lies, unquote. Now, Patel referred to this as, quote, the first ever children's Russiagate book, unquote, which I got to give him to him. That's probably true. That's almost.
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It's going to be amazing. Unfortunately, there's two other books in this series. Part two, quote, tells the fantastical story of how two inquisitive minds, Dinesh and Debbie, search for the truth to uncover evidence of a terrible scheme.
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part two is titled 2000 mules it is no longer available on amazon due to like all the lawsuits around this just being fake because they broke a bunch of laws because it was criminal and lies yes search for the truth to uncover evidence of a terrible scheme to elect sleepy joe instead of king donald on a choosing day unquote choosing day just called it election man no because it's a king it's when they choose their king
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There are kings that are elected anyway. The back of the book reads, come join Dinesh and Debbie as they try to answer some troubling questions. Why did the counting stop in the middle of the night? Why were there more votes than people in the kingdom? What is up with all the glowing poo? Unquote. That is what it actually says. Now, why? I'm not. What is the glowing poo supposed to be?
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I don't know because I can't scam Amazon to buy the book and return it because it's no longer available on Amazon. I don't know what the glowing poo is. Sorry. Listeners, if one of you has a copy of this book. Oh my God. Then part three is titled Return of the King. Okay.
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Quote, it continues the silly yet important journey of the Maga King as he returns to take down Kamalala and reclaim his throne. Unquote. Okay. So yeah, that's Kash Patel, possible new FBI director. Oh, who also produced a song titled Justice for All, which is a version of the national anthem, but sung by all J6 defendants in prison with proceeds going to the Kash Foundation.
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So he also released a song, which was not on my wrapped this year, unfortunately.
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I mean, it's just, it's so odd to have the FBI director making a song with imprisoned J6 defendants. You know, it really does just throw my head into a little bit of a spin.
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Any closing thoughts here on Mr. Patel now that we've done a very brief overview of his life story ending with this children's book? He seems like he's qualified to do something. That's what everyone's saying. That's what everyone's saying.
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Every single person who's announced, you get a wave of headlines from people who work in government being like, this is the most unqualified person ever nominated for this position. It just keeps happening. I don't even feel obligated to quote or say any of these things because we all know what's happening. We all know why this is going on. That doesn't matter.
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And he hires guys like Patel to clean up his messes and do all his dirty work. And if they do it, they can slowly rise to the ranks and become director of the FBI. Yeah. And that's the political strategy that they are all working with and have run to success yet again in 2024. Well, I guess stay tuned for more happenings here as they continue for the rest of this week and for the next four years.
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I'm pretty used to it by now, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. We've been doing this whole thing for quite a while. You sure have. Have you noticed that some of these cabinet picks are a little funny? They're a little bit odd. Have you noticed that yet? I don't know. I get kind of a funny feeling about some of these guys. Have you heard about this? Are you hearing about this? Yeah.
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I don't love it either, Gare. They don't seem cool and good. I mean, not all of them are sticking around, I guess. Matt Gaetz is now out of the job. Tragic. Kind of like Icarus. He flew too close to an elementary school. Yeah.
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It was a really fast turnaround for Gates, too. Yeah. And now we're all watching Pete to see if he secures the top job at the Pentagon. But today we're talking about this other guy named Kash Patel. How do you feel about Kash Patel, Robert?
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Yeah, or at least like, I don't know, Cash is different in a few ways. Like he does a lot more kind of dirty work because he's not like important as a person. He just wants to like be seen by Daddy Trump.
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And this episode, we're going to get into a little bit of Cash's backstory, what his plans are for the FBI, as he is now nominated for the position of being director of the FBI, as well as kind of what Cash has been up to in the four years since Trump's been out of office. So let's just start all the way back to the beginning for background on Mr. Patel here. Okay.
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So Kash Patel was born in New York, but after graduating law school in 2005, he worked as a public defender in Florida for nine years before becoming a federal prosecutor in the National Security Division of the DOJ.
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He didn't really want to be a public defender. It's that he really couldn't get any other jobs because he wasn't, like, that skilled. So he ended up just working as a public defender, even though it wasn't really what he wanted to do out of law. But once he got to the DOJ, he worked as a terrorism prosecutor.
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According to a DOD profile, Patel, quote, "...led investigations spanning multiple theaters of conflict and oversaw the successful prosecution of criminals aligned with al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terror groups," unquote. Patel also worked with, quote, counterterrorism units to conduct collaborative global targeting operations against high-value terrorism targets, unquote.
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No, no. I say that just for kind of his like more like surveillance background. But we will certainly get to his ability to complete these jobs on a reliable basis.
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And like, although that info is directly from the DOD's website, Patel himself has exaggerated his career record, claiming in a YouTube podcast to have been the quote unquote lead prosecutor in the case against the 2012 Benghazi attackers.
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Patel actually was not even part of the trial team, was only a junior staff member at the DOJ at the time, and he was removed from this case for clashing with the U.S. Attorney's Office. But this incident kind of marks the start of a few unfortunate events in his career that really started to kind of turn Patel against the justice system.
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According to the New York Times, in 2016, Patel was thrown out of a courtroom for wearing, quote, rumpled khakis, boat shoes, and a too small borrowed jacket, unquote. Sigh.
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No, he was just kicked out of the courtroom with the judge saying, quote, if you want to be a lawyer, dress like a lawyer, unquote. Now, this judge was also like a racist asshole. Yeah. Not defending the judge here.
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But this incident is like an important part of his career trajectory. A profile in The Atlantic details Patel as growing increasingly frustrated and disillusioned by his failure to navigate and rise up in the justice system.
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Just collecting more and more personal grievances that fuel an animosity towards the bureaucracy of the legal system based on people's apparent unwillingness to like help him excel in his own career.
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But in 2018, Patel got his really first big break with Republican Representative Devin Nunes hiring Patel to be the House Intelligence Committee's lead investigator to disrupt the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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Trump was impressed enough with Patel's work under Nunes that he gave Patel a job on the National Security Council and later served as chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. Trump mused about having Patel as deputy director of the FBI or director of the CIA in late 2020 after the election.
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But this led to harsh resistance from within his own administration with AG Bill Barr saying that Patel would only become FBI director, quote, over my dead body, unquote. So I don't know if we'll have any updates on that. Yeah, we'll see. But instead, back in 2020, Trump just put Patel on the Pentagon transition team.
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Trump basically tasked Patel with doing dirty work and awarded him with promotions for following orders. Patel advised on the Ukraine impeachment, spread conspiracy theories that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election, created a list of intelligence agency officials to fire in February of 2020, and helped manage the now dismissed classified documents case against Trump.
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The former deputy national advisor to Trump, Charles Kupperman, said in an interview, quote, Trump wanted to make cash a political executioner to root out and fire individuals on the White House staff who weren't being as loyal as he thought they should be, unquote. So that's kind of a good look at him as a person and like what Cash's role is, like specifically for Trump.
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And with the possibility of the justice system becoming just more and more of like a tool to target Trump's political rivals, Cash is the exact guy that you would pick, especially for a job that has like an investigative focus like the FBI. But Cash isn't always good at his job necessarily. Well, who amongst us? We're going to talk about one specific incident here.
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That's one of the wildest stories in national security that I've ever read. In October of 2020, four days before the election, the Pentagon was planning an operation for SEAL Team 6 to rescue an American citizen, Philip Walton, who was kidnapped in Niger and being held in Nigeria.
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As the State Department was working to communicate with officials in Nigeria to clear airspace for the operation, Patel, who was not part of this operation, just called the Pentagon, saying that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had gotten approval from Nigeria and the airspace was de-conflicted.
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So, as the SEALs were about to land in Nigeria, defense officials couldn't verify that the flight actually had clearance, leaving the aircraft to circle over the target for hours as they scrambled to get approval from Nigeria.
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According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Patel was never in communication with Mike Pompeo about this mission, and defense officials concluded that Patel, quote, made the approval story up, unquote.
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cool guy this is wild you almost got seal team six like shot out of the air because you made up a story about having a flight clearance it's like it's crazy yeah I mean this is exactly the guy you want running the FBI for sure A Pentagon official yelled at Cash, quote, you could have gotten those guys killed. What the fuck were you thinking?
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To which Cash replied, if nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares? Amazing stuff.
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So like people like interviewed in The Atlantic and I think the author of The Profile on Cash kind of muses that like maybe Cash just wanted this operation done before the election to give Trump like an extra win leading up to the polls. I don't know. It's certainly odd. But like Cash has a very like inflated sense of like personal worth.
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In an interview with Glenn Beck, he talked about how people should trust his expertise because, quote, I've read the entire JFK file. Well, I mean, geez, you and Oliver Stone. He makes comments like that. It's like, no, no, no. Like, trust me, I know everything. I've read all the classified stuff that you're not allowed to. I'm like the smartest guy in the room. I've read everything. Right.
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Like he's he uses this as like a as a way to like inflate his own personal worth. And like flex to weird right wing online podcast grifters.
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Yeah, because you have guys like Kash Patel reading these files. There is nothing in there.
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He's not smart enough to put any pieces together. Or maybe they're just even still redacted and the versions that he's reading don't really have any pertinent info.
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Yeah. The second thing that got applause was what they talked about next was about, you know, everyone's turning to X, Twitter, the Everything app. The Everything app, yeah. For information now. And Twitter, X, the Everything app, played a crucial part in bringing to light the Muslim rape gang story in the UK and how that was so important for saving children. And we have to post more, not less.
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And, like, this was the other thing that got massive applause was talking about, the rape gangs.
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That was Tasha Yar's planet with the rape gangs, Garrison? One of the more blackpilling things, certainly.
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It's also not a good Trek episode. I was referring to the panel, not the Trek episode. But that was the other thing that got massive applause, is this, like, save the children type rhetoric. And, you know, saying, you know, like, as a mother, it's so important that the more people post about this problem. That was the two big applause moments.
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But I think in general, this whole panel was trying to demonstrate how symbiotic a new Trump presidency and Elon Musk's Twitter are going to be.
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This is how you talk to the new government. This is how you talk to all of these new people, all these new cabinet members. They're all on Twitter. They're all talking on Twitter. This is how you stay connected to the new government.
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I mean, yeah, I'm not sure if they care anymore. I mean, something else Linda talked about is how Twitter's the only place for independent news to spread. And as both of us have worked in the independent journalism minds, nothing, nothing spreads on Twitter.
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I mean, I think some of what she's referencing is there's a lot of throttling intentionally of people on maybe our proclivities, and there is a degree of boosting for more centrist or right-wing journalists, and maybe that's
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that's some of some of what they could be kind of more more referring to there but you know it was it was a short keynote only 30 minutes just the two things that got applause are doge linda doesn't know that many words so they really need to keep it under 30 minutes and literally muslim rape gangs is you know this this type of like like very very gross racial fear-mongering and those are the things that like lit up the room
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Actually, I think it might be time for an ad break.
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Oh, my God. As you walk around the CES floor, there's a lot of, frankly, garbage. There's a lot of just like... Mostly garbage.
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So much floor space. There's... We walked, what, 20,000 steps today?
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It's across like three hotels and a massive convention center. 90,000 people come into town for this thing. It can be hard to see everything you want to. Now, what's cool about Showstoppers, this side event at the Bellagio, is that basically it's a room full of kind of all the coolest stuff. A whole bunch of stuff that has won CES Innovation Awards, all packed into one room with food and alcohol.
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So, oh boy, did I order- Free food and free alcohol. So many drinks that I then just left on tables. And always pretty good food. Pretty good food.
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So we walked around Showstoppers and there was a number of pretty cool stuff that we saw. Yeah. But I think it's maybe time to talk about the saddest man.
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I know there's people who work for Lucasfilm who listen to this.
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Is it the co-founder or is it just like another one of their reps?
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With like new agey hippie necklaces. He had five necklaces. Five necklaces? Five necklaces. He had pants with embroidered flowers on them. And a nose bridge. It looked like one of those things you put on your nose when it's stuffed up. That was one of the other things at Showstoppers. There was a company that was doing that.
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No, I think you've set it up. We walk up to Jack. I start recording. And we start talking about the robot. And then things spin in some pretty interesting directions. Yeah. All right.
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Oh, wow. That's super interesting. I hope you all liked Jack J as much as I didn't. Getting to 27 years old and not knowing what ska is. I thought he was much younger. You thought he was like 22?
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But the fact that he didn't know what ska was as a genre. He was unaware of it. I don't think he listens to music. Well, he listens to AI-generated music.
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He has the most I listen to AI generated music vibes out of anyone I've ever seen before.
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It's so opposite from the first guy you talked to who was so like about, no, I want to help with actual tasks that people don't enjoy. Yeah. I love cinematography. I love filmmaking. I don't, first of all, I don't think a robot can, can replace this. No, I watched five different AI generated movies yesterday and they all looked like shit.
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Even like a robot handling a physical camera to make like, to make like choices on like shot framing and composition and like movement.
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Which first attracted us to this table. Yeah, that's why we showed up there in the first place. The robot was like moving around and like trying to simulate its washing dishes capability. And it knocked over the same water bottle about five times. It couldn't pick it up consistently. So I will not trust it with my fine China. I'll say that.
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He's a man completely fueled by Lex Friedman podcasts. And he doesn't want to actually do any real work. He just wants to talk about how AI is going to take over everything. And we have to welcome it in. And here, listen to this is Scott.
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Well, do you know what? There's also nothing super intelligent behind.
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It kept saying the word ska in the music and saying the word Robert.
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Repeatedly. While just doing random noises. After we had our fill of that, we did walk around the rest of Showstoppers.
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Well, what I did is walk around the rest of Showstoppers. I stopped at this one booth that had an iPhone case with a little keyboard on the bottom that plugs in. And I started messing around with it. And the guy at the booth walked up to me and made fun of me because he's like, you've never... He never held a phone with a keyboard. He never had a BlackBerry, did you?
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He literally said, like, you've never had a BlackBerry before, have you? I'm like, no. Like, yeah, you're typing all wrong on that thing.
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Huge deal. I remember that, which sounds like a lifetime ago.
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on Tuesday night at CES. We've got to get to bed. But no, he made fun of me for not knowing how to use a smartphone keyboard. He did the right thing. I don't need to use that because I have a keyboard on my phone built in already. It's much faster.
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So anyway, we stopped at this company that makes, well, now just makes the software to use in, in conjunction with the augmented reality glasses and any like high powered laptop, specifically the laptops that have like built in, like, you know, like co-pilots because they require like higher processing power.
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Like a, like an AMP. Neuro processing unit is what they're calling like the AI dedicated processor. GPU thing effectively. It allows you to hook up these glasses and run, you know, possibly infinite amount of monitors using AR. And we talked about this company last year because we saw them at Showstoppers.
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It's nice. It's good quality, easy to use. You can move the monitors around. It's an excellent, excellent gadget. We talked to them last year, and the main thing that was holding us back on it is that you needed to use their own proprietary laptop.
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It was just like a Linux laptop. It didn't have everything I want out of my own personal laptop.
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It was still good. And now you can just use any high-powered laptop with it, essentially. So it's lovely to see that improved. We saw this lovely, very small, foldable projector...
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Yes, the AR glasses and software system is called Spacetop. Very good by a company called Sightful. It works great. But yeah, this little folding projector currently has a Kickstarter. The company is called AuraZen.com.
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Specifically, it was the ZIP tri-fold projector. Right now, it's a 720p, very small foldable projector. It has like an auto-focusing, auto-keystone. They're working to get it up to 1080p, but they're running a Kickstarter right now to ship in about three months. Super good quality stuff. If you're a gadget person, you know, like it felt like a quality piece of electronics in my hands.
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It doesn't need Wi-Fi to work. It just can cast from your phone.
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It auto-focuses, and it scales correctly for where it's projecting. It automatically adjusts... the tilt of it so that it, you know, looks proper.
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I hooked up my phone to it. As I went to my phone screen, I realized I have a slightly, I would say artful, lewd image of an angel, which I quickly swiped away from.
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On my home screen of my phone. You know, things could always be worse.
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and like that's like that's like the dark magic of ces and like i don't like i'm not like anti-tech like i i think they're i think technology can really improve people's lives if used well and sometimes i get kind of blackpilled walking around ces but then we'll stumble across this like you know someone who like literally lost a leg yeah and made themselves their own better leg eight years figuring out how to do this yeah is winning awards for it
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Just steps away from A.I. Ska and the Donald Trump mask over the laundry folding robot.
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The BioLeg's the product. Yeah, the BioLeg is the product by Bionic M. I'm going to try to check it out more tomorrow at Eureka Park, which at this point, that'll be in maybe future episodes come next week. But I guess this closes our actual week of coverage.
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Same. I was like destroyed emotionally after the DNC. Yeah.
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Wow. I guess I'll go now. I'll just clean out the aftertaste of that. That was even worse. Thank you.
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I think I started out pretty strong with police drones. Even more topical as we record this now as New Jersey is about to get completely abducted, I think, by alien aircraft.
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Besides the mass hysteria of the New Jersey drone panic, police drones are a real problem, and those are going to be increasingly so. I was happy with my reporting on that at CES. And then I guess, I mean, to echo Sophie, I had a great time at the RNC.
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A sentence I never thought I would say. Yeah. And particularly the RNC Grindr episode, I still think is pretty good.
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It was really dangerous, too, because I was having to do my RNC research next to Robert and Sophie the whole time. And oh, boy, like a minefield scrolling through that app.
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The time to start figuring out those logistics is now. It's not waiting until 2027.
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I guess just two recent things I've enjoyed. Finally finished The Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.
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I enjoyed that deeply. It kind of picked my Twin Peaks The Return brain, so that was pleasant. And for a more recent release, Luca Guadagino's new movie, Queer, adapting the short story by William S. Burroughs, I found this movie to be utterly fascinating and transfixing, to use the term from me, Robert.
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I don't have much else to say about it because I would rather people just watch it and take away what they want to themselves, but it got me thinking a lot about the lack of meaning inherent to identity. and why I hate the term queer bodies. So yeah, good movie.
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Wow. Let's go over some of our terrible 2024 predictions just briefly. Now, unfortunately, there was a lot of election ones, which we're very sad to listen to.
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Now, we were correct about many things. We did talk about how Harris would probably be a really bad candidate to run against Trump. Totally forgot about that. We did.
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Well, I think that's just because we were still just reeling from that debate so bad. Yeah. That like anything was like, oh, my God, there's like a lifeline. Look at how she can walk 30, 40 feet at a time.
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None of us picked Vance specifically at that point in time, but we did pinpoint Trump's orbit and his campaign crew pretty well. Mia predicted that RFK Jr. could be a Trump VP pick, and though he didn't become VP, he essentially kind of took over the VP campaigning role from Vance in August. Yeah, because Vance was so bad at it.
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We all decided that like Vivek was simply like way too loud and like obnoxious. So Trump would like find some other spot for him. Stand by that. And that's what happened. He's still in the orbit, but he's not super close. So if he talked about possibly Kristi Noem as getting linked in with Trump, maybe for VP. Now that didn't happen for VP, but Kristi Noem is in the cabinet.
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Yeah, and Robert said that he would not be shocked if Trump got close with Tulsi Gabbard. Oh, Robert. And... Alas. Other less good predictions. I predicted that a Daily Wire host would get pied. Unfortunately, did not come to pass.
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Not when this airs. Not when this airs. Yes, Kim Kardashian getting into politics didn't really happen. She kind of stayed at her regular coast level. Sorry, Sophie.
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Yeah, I mean, and she was doing that with the Biden campaign as well.
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The Harris campaign. She was meeting with Harris multiple times. She kind of stayed at this like distant but like talkative place.
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Speaking of speaking of your other prediction was that people would start forgetting about the Nazi stuff and Kanye would put out a well-received album, which kind of happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit.
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Lastly, my failed prediction is that if Trump won the election, there would be two solid weeks of rioting, which simply did not happen. Yes, nothing happened. I just think it's actually kind of interesting. And we will maybe unpack that in the coming months as Trump's second term kind of settles in. I'm sure we will kind of revisit why we think this did not happen.
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Certainly, I'm curious about what Inauguration Day will look like. But yeah. That was a lot. Also, sorry, Morrissey is still alive. David, David, um, scavenge is still alive. Putin is still alive. And, uh, though James did say that Assad would eat it. And though Assad didn't die, he kinda, he kinda did eat it.
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He's next. I guess let's start with some kind of dictator predictions. What do we think will happen to a dictator in 2025?
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Dictator predictions. Maybe we get a new one. Maybe we get a new fancy one. I don't know.
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Yep. Okay, my Assad prediction is he becomes a Russia Today host. That's my Assad prediction.
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We are merging with Tenet Media to bring out our friend Asar Al-Assad.
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Yeah, I mean, we are verging into not doing predictions, just doing hopes and dreams.
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We need some hopes and dreams out in the world, I think. Fair enough. Yeah. Do you know what else we need, team? Money. From these advertisers, that's right.
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So, usually in the middle of these prediction episodes, I like doing our third annual death segment. Who do we think will die? And I guess we kind of touched on this briefly, but I don't think we actually secure death for any of those people in our predictions, just that they would have circumstances change. Though, for this year's death segment, we have a bit of a twist. So...
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It turns out, about two years ago, on Spotify Rap Day, we all woke up to the news that both Angela Badalmenti was embarrassingly my number one Spotify artist that year, but also that Henry Kissinger died. And this Spotify Rap Day, we woke up to the news that the UnitedHealthcare CEO was gunned down in New York City. So, Spotify Wrapped 2025. Who's dying? Who's dying?
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On Spotify Wrapped Day. So this is like what? Late November, early December. We don't really know. Spotify Wrapped Death Day predictions. Hmm.
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I'm thinking, like, who's got to get through most of the year but not finish it out, you know? It's tough.
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Kiss Kissinger was a long shot, too, because he was like arguably immortal. He kept living for so fucking long.
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I was going to say that. I think he might die. You think we're finally going to get that drug overdose, huh? He just seems to be spiraling so hard right now. The spiral's mad real, yeah.
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We have some more Musk predictions for later on the episode. Okay. But I can see of some, you know, like famously the Secret Service, you know, not great at hiding their own drug problems. I can see possibly with Musk entering a new level of comfort, maybe the spiraling a little too far out of his control.
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Or, you know, maybe a SpaceX launch goes really wrong. Who's to say? Who's to say? Damn. I gotta think of who my Spotify rap day death is. I have a long shot.
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She's looking through the Spotify raps. And she knows that trans women make the best music. And she sees it, gets so mad, she just keels over.
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Okay. I have a real long shot here, but I can see how it could happen. So we're in like what, like month 10, 11 of Trump term two, right? The right-wing Nazi content creators are settling into their kind of groove. Some of them aren't really happy at Trump not like carrying on all of his big lofty promises. And one disgruntled fan of Nick Fuentes does something crazy on Spotify Rap Day.
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And that's my prediction. Is that somehow some really weird stalker or fan does something to Mr. Fuentes. Just pure prediction on what would be the oddest thing to happen. but something that could totally make sense. Maybe it's like an old Kanye fan, you know? From Kanye and Nick.
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Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I feel like his fandom's getting close enough to pull some weird, crazy shit like that on a deeply parasocially destructive level. Like Stephen King's Misery. A misery happens to Nick Fuentes, but he doesn't make it out. That's my Spotify wrapped prediction.
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yeah yeah that feels right do we have a non-categorized predictions is it that time yet sure now that we have we have finished our spotify wrapped predictions and i do not know who my top artists will be uh this last year it was trent resner so salute that flag okay garrison Challenger soundtrack. That thing fucking bops.
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The Whiter House, one could call it. Yeah. So true, so true. I mean, Garrison, no.
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I guess to piggyback off of Robert and Mia's predictions there in the economy, my prediction is that once I finally launch Cool Zone Coin this year, I'm going to make it big. The economy is going to go down. I am going to be going up. Everyone's going to start buying Cool Zone Coin because the US dollar becomes worthless. Bitcoin's going to crash too. It's fake.
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We're lucky I was in Portland this Christmas because we really stocked up a few more of those 90s classics to bump up the price of Cool Zone Coin going into 2025. That's right, everybody. Wow.
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You know, I actually haven't. I've been waiting to catch it in the theater.
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Oh, I don't know, Sophie. I think I can. As soon as we launch Cool Zone coin, I think we can really. Oh, my God.
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No refrigeration. It's better at room temp. Better at room temp.
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One of my, I guess, more hopes, and still partial predictions, is that National Guard gets into a scuffle with Border Patrol in some kind of blue state.
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We have some brave and strong governor is gonna salute the troops and send out our proud National Guard boys. To fight off ICE. And that's just a battle I would love to see. I've been wanting to see that ever since Portland 2020. I've been wanting to see National Guard troops fight against federal forces.
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I think we're going to continue the trends that we've been seeing, which points towards a bit of an apathy towards big popular mobilizations and more towards kind of bizarre lone wolf attacks. Something that could be even slightly problematic or possibly darker predictions. I think we'll have a really bad Luigi copycat within the next four months. Sure.
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I think that was the year before we talked about that.
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Hi, are you Skeet? Garrison. Instead of saying send tweet, now I just say send Skeet in conversation. Everyone loves it. Do you re-Skeet? Is that a thing? Yeah, I guess you do. I guess you do. And we're moving on.
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And yeah, this certainly does kind of fit that mold. We'll see how much that gets focused on in the trial and continued reporting.
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Oh, God. Fuck me. Finally, I like to close our predictions a little bit on Trump's cabinet. I think it's pretty safe to say, considering his last presidency, we'll have at least one third cabinet turnover by the end of the year. Yeah. This is something that we've been talking about a lot. When do we think Musk is going to get the boot?
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And based on the way Trump's kind of positioned him, I'm not sure if it's going to be as soon as what we all kind of initially thought, because Trump has kept him out of his inner orbit, but pretty solidly in his middle orbit. Like he's not in any like real position, right? Yeah. He has doge, but like, come on.
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No, no, totally. And especially in the three weeks after the election, they were like honeymoon, right? They were neck and neck. And some of that's going to start dissipating. Musk can't get fully booted out because the federal government needs...
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SpaceX and and unlike musk's other like technologies so like they will remain friendly But like they're not gonna be in this close position that they are now I initially I put that date for being March 20th 2025 you know a two months after Inauguration day it's it's enough time to get you know first for someone like Trump to get tired of musk's like personality
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But I think I might stretch that out a little bit more now than my initial prediction. I think they might do a little bit more of a long-term game here. But that also means that Musk maybe will not have as much constant influence as what it was first looking like in those three months after the election.
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Oh, yeah. No, I'm sure that he's going to reverse 100 years of corn subsidies and get corn syrup out of our Coca-Cola. I believe in RFK. Yeah.
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Happy New Year, everyone. I do want everyone to pick one thing that they're going to do this year that will improve their life, however small. For me, I'm going to get a new mirror. We're going to all pick one thing. We call that Project 2025. It's one thing we can do to improve our lives and, you know, and then by extension, the lives of everyone else around us.
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So make sure everyone has their own personal Project 2025 going into this next year. I think we will need it. Yeah.
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Matt Gaetz is like totally out of a job now. That's so funny. It's very funny.
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I am fascinated for what they think will happen in 2030.
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I guess my advice would be get really autistic about something. Problematic. Just like one thing. Just one thing. I get like really into it to the point where it kind of takes over your life. Your personal life starts fading away. It kind of blends into your whole state of existence. And only then will you actually get good at that thing. Yep. That's my advice.
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This was the first thing I reported on at CES was there was the Digital Twin, like, back in, like, 2022 or 2021. There was, like, one single company in all of CES that was promising, like, a Digital Twin. And now it's, like, every other company.
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I've seen pictures. I think I may have watched it one time. Okay. Well, let's take a little watch.
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That's such a bad omen for four more years of a Trump presidency. It's a bleak, bleak thing. That we have even uglier Thomas Kinkade-esque artworks.
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Shittily animated. Yeah. It's like they just generated a Thomas Kinkade frame and then badly animated it.
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And then you just take one thing at a time, and every few years you kind of change the scope of the thing that you're getting really autistic about. But that's kind of how I've rolled, and it's been okay.
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I don't think they're lying about that. I think if you walked up to someone randomly on the street and showed them this, I think they'd be like, oh yeah, it looks fine.
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So this is like the competitor to Sora, I guess. It's the other big video generation.
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They spawned in a buddy. The running is very funny. Yeah, they spawned in a GTA.
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Different levels of facial hair, different jackets he's wearing, different colors, jackets.
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As he runs at anywhere from one to 100 miles an hour. I assume they just trained... This was specifically pulling on Scorsese movies a lot.
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Palpatine is dispatched to the cops. I assume it's shot by shot, right? Each shot is going to require a lot of iterations.
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It's just... Yeah, I mean, again, unpacking what he actually is saying is unclear.
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Hopefully all those people are just getting paid to tell them words and be like, yeah, sure, I'll take your money, but who's to say?
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He's just sort of trotting across the stage awkwardly. The way this model generates running is really uncanny. There he is drinking again.
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I would love to track his tattoos from frame to frame.
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No, absolutely. They're generating, like, individual shots that they're, like, stitching together. And, like, who knows how long it takes to, like, get, like, the prompt right for that shot to work.
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Blade Runner 2049 and Denis Villeneuve in general, all of his films have been a massive source for these motion and still... so much so that I think Blade Runner 2049 is one of the easiest films to replicate film stills almost exactly for based on how load-bearing that film has been for a whole bunch of these models. That could be due to a number of factors.
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Bad. Yeah, yeah. I'm not foreseeing good things. There'll be a lot of executive orders that are, you know, probably bad. You know, things that aren't great.
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Like, generative AI is, like, good at, like, one thing creatively. It's good at, like, streamlining VFX, like— Workflow, to a degree. The workflow of how to do, like, VFX shots. It is. It is.
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Famously, the only useful thing it's been used for is making people's eyes blue in Dune Part 2. It's not $100 billion good.
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And, like, it is applicable for, like, changing objects into other objects on screen. It can produce really, like, kind of odd, like, uncanny effects that could be utilized by a team of human artists really well. What it can't do is generate a short film that is in any way compelling.
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Well, well. That is anyway compelling as a piece of art. Oh, okay. And the fact that they're laughing at how much... These are people who haven't lost enough jobs.
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And this has to be like one of maybe five people who are doing panels at CES who is like willing to say that.
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Everyone loved and thought it was a great creative choice.
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And it also steals us from being able to cast a young River Phoenix. Exactly. To play a lovely young... Which is the only thing in the way. Why is River Phoenix getting cast in more stuff, Gary?
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I think this is going to work out really well for Germany. It would be really cool that instead of just doing young Harrison Ford, they just do a River Phoenix deep fake for young Indiana Jones. Look, it's canonical. Great idea.
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Thankfully, AI will never do any harm to animals or the environment.
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What do you mean there's just this stuff that you were going to get? I think we do need a balance of some people being fired, like these people, and other people keeping their jobs like everyone else. Like Moya.
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If you're getting anything from overseas, you should get it in the few weeks that you still can. Yeah, if it has a battery, it ain't made here.
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I saw so many AI panels, half of which I left halfway through because I knew they weren't going to be useful for me. Just dog shit, yeah. The other half I took notes on and just got sad. But no, today was full panel. Starting bright and early in the morning where I walked into a panel where I heard augmentation, not replacement. About 20 times in the span of like 20 minutes.
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Yes. And the biggest thing I noticed across multiple panels today is an almost like anxiety among these tech executives about consumers rejecting the AI slopification of everything. And they're trying to find ways to like actually force people to start like using these products or having them like like it. Yeah. And I haven't really sensed that anxiety before. It's all been very, very positive.
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No, a phrase one of the panelists used this morning was the AI ick. Like, how do we beat the AI ick? And if you're ever saying to yourself, how do I stop having people feel an ick around me? Maybe you should really look inwards.
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But I heard a lot about in trying to get people to use these products is making sure artists don't feel like they're being replaced. Instead, having their art production process be augmented with AI and how that can make art easier to make while still keeping the human at the center of AI tools.
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And this is just what they talked about for like a while while reiterating that lots of the developments they need to see on AI, they have it on the tech side. What they need to rely on is consumer acceptance to really drive that innovation to see like what they can get away with. Like how much will the consumer accept the sophification of art and entertainment and customer service?
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And all these things are trying to cram AI into.
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And you mentioned something about trying to tailor movie endings for specific people, and I definitely heard some stuff about that. There's this one guy who was the panel's resident content creator. He was supposed to represent the artist block, even though he's like a... Yeah.
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Now, you know, some kind of, like, AI-friendly content creator, though, on this panel, and he talked about how, like, back in the day, you needed to have friends that would, like, recommend you music. And, like, the Spotify algorithm is too based on, like, an echo chamber, which you already like.
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But now, with agentic AI, this allows trust between the consumer and the machine to recommend new music. I'm like, again, like so much of these AR products is just trying to like replace friendship for these people. Have you tried having friends? Have you tried knowing people? How can you engage with like art and culture without friends?
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Like how can you like learn more about like what your friends are into, what they like? How can you discover new music just like without that instead of replacing that beautifully human process?
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Someone from Meta, Facebook, specifically their Metaverse division, which they're still trying to push for, by the way.
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No, no one is. But she talked about how they can, like, blend the metaverse and AI to make customized personal experiences. Say that you're watching an immersive live concert in a mixed reality, something that both me and Robert do all the time.
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Honestly, a 100x mixed reality concert could go crazy.
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But basically, as you're in this metaverse concert, they can have an AI that will sense your own excitement and personalize the ending of the experience based on your favorite songs or artists. So as you're getting excited, some AI Taylor Swift can finish the song. like for you based on like your own like musical tastes based on what the AI knows about you.
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And it's about creating these customized experiences.
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No, another panel I went to later in the day was about how do you market to Gen Z? Very funny panel. And they're talking about how authenticity is so important. You need to partner with influencers that have an authentic brand.
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And it's funny having that juxtaposed with these AI slot panels where you need an AI Taylor Swift to come boost the excitement for all these kids who are in their metaverse concerts. Oh, boy.
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But no, like personalized content, like targeting like AI generated content specifically for certain people, for certain users, whether that's on social media, whether that's on, you know, the metaverse, like some of these people talk about. Someone on the panel from Adobe, who's, you know, Adobe's integrating a whole bunch of generative AI into their like suite of products, right? Like a
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Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, right? Big, big company in the creative space. He said that like personalized content is always the most impactful, like content that a person feels like a genuine connection to. And that connection can be formed by just being like, you know, a compelling artist where you can recognize shared experiences of shared experiences of humanity, right?
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but now you don't need that artist part anymore. He said they only need three parts to create a pipeline. You need data, you need compelling journeys to take the user on, and you need the content itself. And the goal is to create content at scale that's highly personalized. He said, quote, we're good at the first two parts,
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Now we just need to improve the actual content side, which I don't even think that's true. I don't think AI is good at creating compelling human journeys. I had it.
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No, they do not have a journey, but even they themselves admit that they still don't have the content. The content itself still isn't even there. And that's something like they even acknowledge. And this is like a hurdle to, this is a hurdle to get over. What they do have is the data.
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And like, this is like something that Adobe has done because if you use Adobe products now, some of the most used creative products, Adobe trains all of their AI systems on the stuff that you make using their products. Which, you know, he really just blazed past that point. Because that's a whole other discussion. But even they know that they don't have, like, the actual products.
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And this is still reliant on, like, consumer acceptance. As they said before, someone from Meta, the same person on the panel, that talked about how, like, a few days ago on Instagram, they tried to announce, like, you'll have, like, AI profiles, right? Like, completely AI-generated pictures, profiles, you know, like, fake people. Yeah. who have their own accounts.
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And this created such a big backlash that they rolled this back. And they specifically announced this before CES.
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Yeah, okay. Yes. And the excuse that this person from Meta said is that the market just isn't ready yet. It's not that the actual product itself is bad or no one really wants, just the market's not ready yet.
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Oh, the last thing I want to add about this panel, just in terms of how much this stuff is just actually taking over more and more of the market, even if people don't want it, is that the guy from Adobe announced that in the fourth quarter of last year, they were able to boost all of Adobe's emails.
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If you send an email to Adobe, you have a problem, you need help, but everything that they do on emails... is now 100% generated by AI. And this was boosted from 50% at the start of last year. Now it's 100% of all of their email content is now done by AI with some moderation by humans.
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Or is it all AI for that too? He described it as like email content.
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customer service stuff, like marketing, maybe like outreach, like certain like outreach things. But yeah, like 100% now generated by AI with some human like moderation. But yeah, that is where things are moving. And that's how I started my morning.
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No. Yeah. I think as I was going from panel to panel, scribbling notes on AI as some very exciting news stories dropped that we'll talk about later. What were you up to Robert? Well, I was, I was trawling the show floor.
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Do you need drivers? Are you going to put a license plate on this?
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Sure. That said, I can't imagine China's less strict about personal aircraft. I would love to take this fucker on the I-5. Just start. Yeah.
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just start zooming yeah zooming up in the air because you could probably do like a pretty a pretty good road trip on this right you can you can you can well about that so it's very small and it's completely electric so i asked him how much time do you get in the air with this bad boy on battery maybe 25 minutes what happens after 20 minutes
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The battery issue is going to be troubling. This seems completely useless. But as we've heard nonstop the past two days, this is the worst it's going to be. This is the worst it's going to be. Only going to get better.
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Yeah, I mean, I walked through the LG booth. It was kind of the same as last year. The Samsung booth was too intimidating. But I should check it out because last year we didn't do the Samsung booth because we were going to. And then either one of us threw up or spilled something. Hey, okay, okay.
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So we couldn't do the Samsung booth last year. Maybe I'll try it this year. But tell me about these smart houses.
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That does make you feel safe about sharing your personal data.
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Well, and the thing is, I really don't like that at all because this is something that people were asking Facebook slash Meta when they were doing their Metaverse stuff because their headsets are recording very, very extensively your home layout.
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And the whole point, well, part of the point was that some of that data could then be used to send you targeted advertisements based on them seeing everything in your home. And I suspect that Samsung might also have some interest in targeted advertisements being a tech company. Oh, yeah. But, you know, I could never say.
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There's not that much stuff. Very little actual shit going on. People slap the word AI onto everything now.
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You don't care. No. If you're getting a smart home, I don't think you really care about that.
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house feels new this year this is the thing is like even walking through the lg booth which usually has some really cool new thing this year nothing new no nothing new they slapped the word ai on one corner of their television set right i guess lg does have like a large language model in like one corner of their booth but like so does everyone else like that's not like yeah compelling there was sk which is a south korea company their booth again the massive like ai your life is their big thing but
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Yeah, no, it doesn't seem very new. It doesn't seem very innovative.
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If we have high-powered smart glasses that look like a regular pair of glasses, I will get a pair eventually.
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Do you know what else always seeks improvement, Robert? No. The capacity for you to get personalized, possibly AI-powered ads to help you make informed consumer choices.
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Oh, I feel good. Because today, as we are recording this, it's late Tuesday night. There was a series of fascinating breaking news articles that happened as we were sitting, or at least as I was sitting in on these AI panels, which made it hard to not just completely interrupt everything and be like, hey, hey, any comment on this?
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So a few weeks ago, if you were unaware... A Green Beret rented a Tesla Cybertruck to feel like Batman and Halo and drove to first the wrong Las Vegas and then eventually Las Vegas, Nevada, parked outside of the Trump Hotel and Casino and then loomed himself up. And this has been a big news story.
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It happened during the same day as a pretty horrible terrorist attack in New Orleans, which resulted in about 15 people dead, done by a guy who was employed by Deloitte, a frequent, frequent CES sponsor. So this felt like a very CES style of attacks, you know.
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One Deloitte guy driving into people, murdering homeless guys, and then this Cybertruck explosion in Vegas, like a week before CES, you know, very odd. And then, Robert, some news drops today that I would love to hear you announce.
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He certainly used chat GPT in the planning process of this attack. Yeah. Fair to say that. And it's odd because both me and you spent a number of hours today actually attending demos from these speech-to-text, text-to-speech AI systems. We went to two specific ones that they demonstrated the capabilities of their AI assistive tech. The first one we went to spent 20 minutes talking about how...
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Their biggest inspiration, their quote-unquote North Star, was the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix.
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The actual chatbot they had was, like, fine. It was actually pretty good at translation, you know, translating from Spanish to English.
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It was fine. Similarly, we went to this one. To get a nice jawline.
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We went to this other one about this, actually a much more dubious concept in my mind, which is this AI assistant to help elderly people, people in their 80s and 90s who don't want to be in assisted living facilities, who have been living on their own, but they're getting to the point in their life where they need some degree of in-home care.
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So it's like this, it's, it's both like a conversation tool. It helps like memory recall. It's kind of in some ways has the, the features that like, you know, someone in their sixties would just use their smartphone for it to help keep in touch with their family. It's kind of simplified and more automated, uh,
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So, you know, ways to help keep in touch with like your family, improve like your memory, like talk about your own life.
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This idea I find pretty distasteful in general. Replacing actual friends or human contact or in-home care with a fucking Alexa machine, essentially.
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It specifically is designed to not look like a human so that someone who's using it wouldn't start to believe it's human-like. Yeah, we don't want to trick people. We don't want them to mistake it for a person. It refers to itself as a robot. It refers to its own motors and functionality pretty consistently.
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to to like you know make sure that the person who's talking to it gets like reminded of that and something i talk about is you know there's been a lot of news stories this year about people developing very unhealthy attachments and relationships to these kind of ai yeah ai programs like a character ai there's a story like a year and a half ago about like a journalist who quote unquote like you know like like got like fell in love with some kind of chat thing that resulted in him killing himself uh you know but these kind of these systems like encouraging was that a teenager
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That was a character AI thing. Was that a journalist? Last year, there was a journalist who fell in love with an AI chat thing. A few weeks ago, there was the kid who was talking to this character AI. Also, I just need to reiterate, her, not a great movie.
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But, you know, there's been a lot of these stories of these things, like, going wrong or, you know, encouraging or, like, not stopping, you know, like, these, like, intense conversations of, like, suicidal ideation. Yeah. Or, you know, like, self-harm. All these things.
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This is, like, this is, you know, built into it. I think this is still... you know, a big problem with this entire industry. I'm sure everyone would say this is, you know, obviously that we have guardrails for this and then becomes a news story when those guardrails fail.
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Similarly, to go back to the Tesla bomb, you know, there's supposed to be guardrails on chat GPT to make sure it doesn't tell you how to build a bomb. And those guardrails can fail. He showed us one which was like he told the robot, I love you.
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Or it won't change the subject either and continue conversation.
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That's our whole goal is to connect them to people. I asked him is like, you know, part of this product is designed to like, you know, help solve like loneliness in older adults. And like how much of this is really just like kind of trying to like replace actual human contact with this like, you know, AI contact. Like, will that really help, you know, loneliness?
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And he talked about how like, like, I think like he said, like 90% of the people who like use this, like it results in actually more, more communication with their families.
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Yeah, they have, like, 2,000 units. It's, like, a subscription model. I think right now it's, like, $99 a month. It's going to be boosted up to, like, $150 with some, like, extra features in the next year.
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Because I still am like fundamentally opposed to this premise. Yes. And it's sad still, but aging is sad. Aging is sad, right?
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And it's interesting to see someone approach this from a very compassionate standpoint, even if I find the actual kind of nature of this thing existing to be deeply uncomfortable.
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Oh, well, I mean, paying rent's a great motivator. Sure. Yes.
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Even the way this guy talked, you could tell he had like a very like empathetic voice, like genuine.
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Yeah, or it'll even say if someone didn't take their meds today.
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Well, I think that does it for us here at CES. That's right. What a packed 13. Don't worry. No empathy tomorrow, folks.
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I am the best that I'm going to be because I'm starting this week. I can still feel the CES magic. By Friday, I am going to be a different person. I am going to rip some poor PR person to shreds, I swear. But yeah, tune in tomorrow to hear our takes from the CES kind of sideshow called Showstoppers to hear also some exclusive brand new AI-generated ska music.
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So we'll give you that hint for tomorrow's episode. See you there. Well, see you all there.
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It's a quite compelling motivator. Sometimes it does require the assistance of caffeine or other things. I have a variety of playlists to help me when I'm in different moods. I definitely will about, you know, maybe twice a month. I just do a complete like a complete body check to my sleep schedule to get a special project finished.
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Speaking of sad evil, Twitter, X. The everything app. That's what people are calling it. They gave a keynote, which was very sad. The CEO, Linda. Yeah, Linda really yakarinoed about Twitter for a while. So bad. So they started by talking about how Facebook meta has copied Twitter's fact-checking policy of actually not having real fact-checkers. Yes, great project.
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And that's just kind of part of the deal, at least in terms of how I work. And not everyone does it this way, though. Maybe maybe people are more healthy than me.
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maybe has actually kind of failed as an industry. But our problems, perhaps, with fact-checking, very different from these people's problems. And the fact now that Facebook is walking away from actual, genuine fact-checks against disinformation, misinformation.
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and parting ways with like using like legacy media outlets to verify information because those media outlets are too political, quote unquote, and instead is copying the current X model of free speech and specifically saying like there's been way too much censorship on gender issues. Now you can comment that women are a piece of property.
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Well, I mean, I think specifically this is like trans, like queer stuff too.
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Linda was very excited about that. And they, uh, Yakari note about that for like a good, a good 10 minutes about how, you know, this is, this is where we're really entering a new era of free speech and social media. And then she got asked a question about how much X Twitter, the everything app, uh, will take a part in Elon Musk's plans for the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE.
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And this got the first applause of the panel. Applause only happens two times. During the DOGE section was the first room starts clapping moment. Everyone goes crazy. How many minutes in was that?
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oh maybe it was like maybe like maybe like 12 13 so people really yeah had to had to be intentional here this is not like they were just overdue for clapping no no no they talked about vivek talked about you know elon turning to twitter x the everything app uh for like suggestions on which government agencies to get rid of i hope we get rid of the atf So, so that was machine guns mandatory.
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Even though he sucks as a dude. I would hate to work with him, but I still gotta be Team Luthen in the end.
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Yeah. Information collecting boyfriend, always collecting information. Yeah. All right, let's talk about the space lesbians who are running the French resistance. So I liked a lot of what they did with them this episode. I liked how they were, like, reuniting. I liked the way they talked about... the on-again, off-again style of their relationship based on having to live in this rebellion life.
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They can't always see each other. They're always being moved around by Luthen. But they both specifically took this assignment hoping and I think knowing that it would mean that they could see each other. So I liked the development that we had with them as people who are in the same spaces but do not have the luxury of actually having a life together at this point in time.
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They advise the little resistance group. They're much more friendly than Cassian is.
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I guess they have more of a willingness to put up with the amateurs than Cassian does.
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I think is kind of what's going on there. And they're hoping that after this mission's over, maybe they'll be able to spend more time together. And then Cinta does get killed. And I've seen a lot of criticism of this. I've seen people invoking like a barrier gaze type trope. And I don't think that's my personal outlook on what's going on here. I think a lot of people die throughout this show.
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We had Brasso die. And this sort of thing just happens.
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Welcome to war. I think that is part of the point. The upset reaction that you have, I think, is showing the strength of this. It sucks to see a lesbian get killed, but I think we're seeing so many relationships fall apart. We're seeing a lot of people get killed.
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And then it's like, yeah, and she fucking dies. It sucks. It hurts. I think, like, We were able to watch these characters develop over the course of a few arcs, right? We saw these in the Aldani heist where they were basically the only two people to survive besides Cassie. Everyone else on that heist died, right? Yeah. So the lesbians made it out of that.
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They struggled to maintain their relationship in the interim as things happened. They had this emotional reunion here. I think, you know, you could make an argument. Maybe you'd be better to kill Val. But we've had more development with Val because of being related to Mon. So, like, yeah, it is tough with, like, the disposability. But that is a part of fighting in an environment like this.
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And then like Val's little like speech to Sam afterwards being like, like you are, you now have to live your entire life knowing that you took this person away. And like every action you take for the rest of your life is going to be like, it's going to be all in all an attempt to like make up for this. Like every, every, every Imperial you kill will just be one for Cinta. Yeah.
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Because like Cinto was like a professional. This is like the life that she led. Like you will never be able to understand how important she was. You'll never be able to understand like how good she was at this. And you're like a fucking like French kid. Like you don't know what you're doing. And now you have to spend your entire life making up for it. And it was a very hard speech.
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But I think Val did a really good job with that. And like understanding like the political necessity of like you can't let this be like in vain either. Like you have to like push this guy into making himself. making his life, like, worthwhile now. And, I mean, yeah, it was rough.
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I mean, I would love more, like, gay characters living happy lives in Star Wars, but we rarely see anyone living a happy life in Star Wars.
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Yeah. But no, I do understand the racial disposability and the barrier gaze aspect that can be read into this. It's a tough thing to thread here. And I think if you view this in context of all of the people that we have seen get killed... Like, the entire Aldani crew, like, Brasso, basically, you know, the droid from season one gets, like, abandoned on that planet.
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I think, like, it does make sense, I think, in that larger context. I think there's a way that not everyone, like, has to die to lead to Rogue One, like, besides Cassian. No, not everyone. But someone like Cinta, and, like, frankly, like, someone like Cinta, the type of militant she is, they do have a short lifespan. Like, that is part of the specific thing Cinta is doing.
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It's like, you burn fast and you burn bright and sometimes you will die in a way that's, like, really purposeless and that fucking sucks. And that happens in war. That happens in, like, activist spaces. Like, that happens in the United States with people here. And often they are, like...
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non-white gay people yep like that's what happened in atlanta so like these these things happen the number of people who committed suicide too after 2020 you know like yeah do we have anything else you want to want to say mia do you have anything you want to close out on as the resident non-white lesbian on the podcast they killed my lesbian so sad it's there aren't what
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You know, we had a non-white lesbian in Acolyte who also died. She did die, yeah. I do not see people talking about the bury your gay stuff with the Acolyte as much. Well, nobody, because nobody watched it, unfortunately.
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And I think it's also worth remembering, this is a show starring a non-white leading role. Cassian is not white. So I think the racial politics are a little bit more complex than I think what some people are discussing.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.
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This episode, we're covering the week of April 30th to May 7th.
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All right, we are back. I'm going to talk now about some other horrifying geopolitical news. Hey, this is Garrison from Friday, May 9th. I have a correction to make. On the original copy of this episode, I made an error in saying Greta Thunberg was aboard a humanitarian aid ship off the coast of Italy that was airstriked by Israel. The ship was indeed attacked, but she was not on that ship.
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I watched a video of her discussing the attack and it sounded first person and then we recorded shortly thereafter. But now it's clear she was not on the ship, but instead planned to board later that day on the way to Gaza as a part of the humanitarian aid organization, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. More than a dozen other aid workers were aboard the vessel when it was hit.
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And this relates to the larger humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza. Now back to the episode. The past two months, Israel has forcibly cut off all food, water, machines, supplies, and other humanitarian aid to Gaza. Starving the Palestinian people as Netanyahu continues to reject ceasefire deals. Reports from the UN say that Gaza will run out of food in days.
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Israel says that the Palestinians still have food for a few months, but the UN and other aid organizations say that is not true. Now, last Sunday night, Israel's security cabinet approved a plan to reoccupy and hold the Gaza Strip if a new ceasefire deal isn't reached by May 15th. while Netanyahu and Israeli officials continue to undermine negotiations for a permanent ceasefire.
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This plan is called Gideon's Chariots. Jesus fucking Christ. The plan is for the IDF to invade with four to five armored infantry divisions, mobilizing uproots of 70,000 reservists. which would gradually occupy and secure basically the entire Gaza Strip. According to Israel's finance minister, this IDF occupation would be permanent, not even pulling back with the release of any remaining hostages.
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Though other Israeli officials disagree on this and say this would be a temporary occupation. Pretty hard to take their word on that. all remaining buildings would be destroyed, flattening the entirety of the strip, just like Rafah and the northern side.
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Amir Avivi, the founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum think tank and a former deputy commander of the Israeli forces, say, quote, this is the only way to eradicate Hamas, militarily and governmentally, is to take over Gaza and to conquer the area and destroy them, unquote. There's some added complications with legally occupying Gaza under the Geneva Convention.
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A formal occupation would require Israel to have the capacity to operate as an official government authority in this region. Now, there's no indication that Israel will follow the Geneva Convention, as they haven't. Yeah, it's Israel. They never have given a shit. Yeah, I don't see why we'd expect that. But...
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If they do occupy, they would be more liable for the well-being of the Palestinians that would be inside the territory. And the IDF doesn't have a plan for this. They are planning to forcibly relocate around 2 million Palestinians to a single, quote-unquote, humanitarian area.
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which is positioned in the rubble of Rafah, where secure, quote unquote, compounds are being constructed to distribute food and supplies to Palestinians who are screened and approved as not being members of Hamas. This area will be managed by private U.S. companies and a quote-unquote new international foundation, which works with Israel and the United States.
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Established aid organizations in the U.N. announced that they would not be participating in running these quote-unquote compounds, calling this a tactic to give the Israeli military even more power over how aid is distributed, saying in a statement, quote,
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It contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic, as a part of a military strategy. It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarized zones to collect rations, threatening lives, including those of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement." Yep. Yeah.
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An Israeli official said the only alternative to being moved to this quote-unquote humanitarian area would be to leave Gaza quote-unquote voluntarily to other countries, citing Trump's plan to resettle displaced Palestinians. Robert, James, Mia, do you want to comment on this?
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And specifically the use of these like, quote unquote, compounds. You're like rounding up and keeping people inside one secure area. Concentrating them in camps. Like, come on, guys. You're just setting up camps for Palestinians on the south side of the strip. And like, that's all that this is. As they reoccupy and hold the entirety to, quote unquote, eliminate Hamas.
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So this Monday, Trump's going to start a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. This is while the U.S. government has taken a back foot on Gaza negotiations, while still backing up Netanyahu and any actions taken by the Israeli military.
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So we will know more about what Israel is actually going to do immediately in the region in like a week's time, though it looks like they are going to be going forward with this May 15th reoccupation plan.
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Well, and requiring, not like... Requiring, yeah. Not asking. It is going to be like an enforced requirement in a way that before it really hasn't been. The term that the law firm used in this piece is like, in the past, this has been mostly quote-unquote negligible. Yeah. And now this is something that the Department of State is really being adamant about.
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Even U.S. citizens, like that incident from just a few weeks ago where that 19-year-old who was born in the state of Georgia but primarily spoke an indigenous language was put into ICE detention overnight.
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People in Japan have compared this to policy similar to that of China's cultural revolution.
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Yeah. More and more families are figuring out that their family members have been sent to Secot. People who have not been named in official documentation, they've been able to search through these propaganda videos and identify more people. So they're launching court cases to have them returned. People who very clearly have had no gang affiliation.
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Not that that should even matter when you're sending people to the forever prison.
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Well, yeah, literally being arrested and charged with like, like entry as an unauthorized alien. Yeah.
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All right, let's go on break and then come back for a few more updates before we close out.
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He's training him up. We'll get him on soon. All right.
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Maybe that'll finally change Trump's outlook, is when his Diet Coke stops.
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Like, oh shit, he ran out. Federal occupation of the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah.
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Five pencils and three dolls this Christmas. Imagine if Joe Biden announced, like, all right, we're going to have to cut down on Christmas gifts this year. We can't do it. The Fox News would be, like, freaking the fuck out. We're like, Joe Biden's taking away your kids' Christmas and the pencils. And, yeah, who cares? Yeah.
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They want you to suffer. That's the whole point of their political project.
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Yeah, owning the libs. Anyway, is that all for Tariff Talk, Bia?
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I am excited for Trump to meet Ethan Hunt on his last mission. There's still hope. All right. I have a few more updates before we close out here. One on the federal judge back and forth. Last week, U.S. District Judge blocked the Trump admin's efforts via executive order to require what they deem as proof of citizenship to register to vote.
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The judge stated that this case was about separation of powers and undue presidential interference in how states and Congress run and regulate elections. Writing, quote, Yeah. So we'll see how that develops for now. I'll also be doing an update on the SAVE Act as it makes its way through Congress as well for those interested. Another kind of voting suppression bill that's getting pushed through.
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This Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld the trans-military ban. At least for now, it'll still process through appeals. But the Trump administration is now allowed to enforce the ban, which they previously couldn't because a lower court put the enforcement on hold.
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I mean, this is the Trump admins argument, correct? This is what they were writing.
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That's the Trump admin's argument, which is going to be used to undermine transgender rights in the future, possibly threatening Title IX. Yeah, it's very concerning. Yeah. So the fact that they were able to, at this point, win this case in the Supreme Court, extremely worrying.
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We are reading all of those. We may not respond to all of them, but we are taking note of them and we'll report on stuff in the future. The last thing I do want to add is a raid that happened last week in California.
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Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, and Secret Service raided a house in Southern California looking for a man who months ago posted flyers around Los Angeles last January warning about ICE agents in the area with names, photos, and phone numbers, reading in Spanish, quote, careful with these faces, unquote.
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The feds served a criminal search warrant on the home of this guy's parents, even though he moved to New York last March. At least 15 armored vehicles pulled up to this upscale neighborhood with full militarized federal SWAT. They seized routers and hard drives. Yeah, that's not great. Acting ICE Director Todd Loins was on the scene for this operation.
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He told Fox News that he took it personally that someone would put a target on his agents in an effort to interfere with them and put them at risk, saying the person will be held accountable. What they're using here is probably likely U.S. Code 119, protection of individuals performing certain duties.
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Whoever knowingly makes restricted personal information about a covered person or a member of the immediate family of that covered person publicly available with the intent to threaten, intimidate or incite the commission of a crime of violence against that covered person or a member of the immediate family.
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So this is likely what they're using, arguing that posting a photo on a flyer with the person's name and phone number is enough to threaten, intimidate, or facilitate the commission of a crime.
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That's a good question, James. That's a screenshot, right? So you can't click that. That is a screenshot and probably a question for a lawyer. But they are arguing that the ICE agents fall under this purview.
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So that's what they're going to argue here. The people's addresses weren't posted here. It was just their names and photos. But ICE and HSI are being very protective of the faces of agents doing immigration raids and student crackdowns right now. They're really nervous about agents possibly being targeted. So any attempt to identify these is being treated as a threat.
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A Homeland Security spokesperson told Fox News, quote, Right. Yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah, there really is no good ad pivot for stuff like this.
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I did watch them, and oh boy, but... We still have a lot to talk about for episodes four to six. It does kind of set up what we see later on. But I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there with like building an underground resistance, a lot of spies and espionage mixed in with like the personal cost of rebellion and how it affects like your personal life, your relationships.
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So there is a lot to discuss here. But oh boy, I am excited for next week.
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Yeah, episode four, Ever Been to Gorman. I guess, once again, if you do not want to be giving Disney Plus your money, you can be like Hondo Inaka and acquire the show that way.
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Yes. Yes. All nine or eight variations. Let's do a quick recap of this episode, then we'll talk about some of these aspects. So one year later from the previous episodes, Cassian and Bix are on the planet Coruscant, staying at a safe house in between running missions for Luthan.
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Bix is severely struggling with PTSD, while Cassian is stressed about having to avoid surveillance while hiding in the capital city.
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Later on, we can see that she's using space drugs to help her cope with the massive amounts of trauma that she's been forced to deal with the past few years. Now, our favorite weasel, Cyril Karn, has been transferred to the planet Gormant, where he's running the local Bureau of Standards in the capital city of Palmo.
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He refutes imperial propaganda about Gormant while on a FaceTime call with his Fox News addicted mother.
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You got to stop watching Imperial News. But this may be a ploy from Cyril because Cyril knows he's being monitored and surveilled by members of the Gorman Front, a small underground resistance group.
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While working as a double agent for his ISB girlfriend, Dedra, Cyril gets invited to a town hall meeting where he's introduced to the leader of the Gorman Front, a local businessman and city councilor, and then Cyril is recruited into the resistance.
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not a poor man right like no he's like he's like wealthy he's like well off yes yes i mean that's a big part about like gorman is this is like a you know middle upper class like status planet yeah this is like a big part of like luthens interest in the planet is if if he can bring a planet with that status into the rebellion that could have a whole bunch of advantages and that's kind of why he's at least like looking into them as like an option and eventually kind of setting them up for like an accelerationist push
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Yeah. Sure. There's an ISB board meeting where they discuss a batch of new raids and arrests on rebel activity and how to deal with this influx of arrests that's making it hard to process and obtain useful information. Luthan's ISB spy informs him of the Empire's increased interest in Gorman and that the ISB is running covert operations on the planet.
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Meanwhile, Senator Mon Mothma unsuccessfully lobbies against the Emperor's resentencing directive, and at Saw Gurera's hideout, Willem teaches Saw's partisans how to safely deploy a fuel pipeline diverter.
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Luthen's slowly losing a lot of the trust that he's built up throughout the galaxy.
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So this episode, we're introduced to the planet Gorman like in person. It's basically like Northern Italy mixed with French culture. Yeah. The massive set they built is just gorgeous.
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Huge town square for the capital city of Palmo. The amount of money they spent on this show. The protesters, I think, is really interesting because it's like... These protesters at, like, the monument of the Tarkin Massacre.
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Yeah. Man, Space Fox News, very good. We see the Ministry of Enlightenment's efforts to weaponize public opinion and how much it's working on someone like Cyril's mother, who then becomes convinced that the propaganda that she's being fed is stuff that she already believed, absolutely, right? It's stuff that she's retconned into her own memory of being like, no, I've always never trusted the gore.
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Meanwhile, she's sitting in front of her TV 24-7 watching TV. This like the garbage get beamed into her brain.
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That's kind of what's being set up. Will this experience for Cyril change him as a person? And I think, yeah, the audience is meant to not fully know. And I think it's definitely possible, but Cyril might be more of a hard-ass than what some people give him credit for. Yeah. Because he is very excited to get invited to this meeting.
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He purchases a spider from one of, like, the Gorman Front, like, recruiters that has information on how to go to this, like, public town hall where he talks about, hey, you know, maybe we can start working together. Maybe I can start feeding information. One point, hilariously, he gets accused of being an imperial spy in, like, a joking manner. Yeah. And denies it.
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And then he gets on the phone with his ISP girlfriend and is like, I'm in. Yeah.
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Yeah. I mean, and this is something that Cassian talks about in the next episode, which we will get to shortly. I mean, so much of these episodes is built around paranoia and surveillance. Cassian's talking about not wanting to go on a walk in the park because the Empire just put up cameras. He's nervous about where they go grocery shopping.
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He's trying to do everything right, but it's hurting his relationship with Bix. And it's just making their life very challenging on Coruscant as they're stationed there in between missions. Meanwhile, Luthen's just trying to gain as much information on Gorman as possible. He has a line that I like. A smear campaign is an opening move, not an endgame. I need the endgame.
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Talking about the limits of the Empire's Fox News-style propaganda is only... a starting position. Like this is obviously leading somewhere and I need to know where that is. And he's going to obtain that information slowly over the course of the next few episodes.
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And then I think the other thing I want to talk about before we go on break is Mon Mothma's lobbying against like the prison sentencing guidelines. She says, quote, sector boundaries, civil liberties, personal freedom, respect for local traditions. You've been voting with me on these issues for years. And the Gorman senator replies, this is security, Mon.
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You're confusing criminality and politics here. Mon says, really? Are we finding criminals or are we making them? Yeah. This is where you see senators parroting like fake crime stats about how there's been like, you know, this increased wave of crime.
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Just because they're arresting more people so that makes there be more crime. And we see this in season one where Cassian's arrested at the beach planet for no reason and then sentenced to the forever prison. Yeah. Like, yeah, they are arresting more people. So if you just look at those stats...
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by itself without any context on like how other policing isn't working, then yeah, it can look a certain way. And this is what Mon's trying to like push back on. And the other senators are just too, too like bought into the empire or too scared. Like the Gorman senator believes that voting against the emperor at this point would further endanger his planet. Yeah.
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Even though this type of thing is actually going to end up biting him in the ass in the next few years.
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No, our own version of this, our not outer space version of like propaganda news media can just say something and you don't even need the stats to back it up.
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Let's go on break and we'll come back to talk about episode five. I have friends everywhere.
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All right. Luthan wants a first person assessment of the Gorman front, but he's like too high profile to go himself. So he sends Cassian undercover as fashion designer Varian Sky. The ISB stages a performative raid of Cyril Karn's office to gain more cred with local rebels as Cyril begins to feed them select information. And he does such a good job of seeming pissed at it. Oh, yeah.
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He loves pretending to be pissed at the ISB. He has so much fun kicking his little trash can across the room. This is outrageous. Yeah. Very good stuff. And I do like like, yeah, like the weaponization of like state repression as a tactic to actually increase state repression like long term.
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You're doing this like performative show so that Cyril like builds trust and like solidarity with the other rebels. Very good. Luthen visits Bix at the safe house and grows concerned for her well-being as she uses space drugs to cope with trauma. Cyril arrives back on Coruscant to report to ISB Command, has a one-hour meeting with his girlfriend where they turn off the lights.
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Yeah, he's a little bit pissed that she's having him followed, and then she orders him to turn off the lights, and then they do something for an hour in their apartment. God only knows. I don't want to know.
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But at ISB command, they plan how to carefully push the Gorman front into taking action against the Empire. Cassian makes contact on Gorman and is unimpressed with their operational security and warns against trusting an Imperial source as the ISB could be feeding false intel.
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You don't get it. And like, honestly, I understand what, what, what's being expressed there too. And like, we'll get to that in a sec. Like the Gorman front is adamant that their source is vetted and reliable, even though they haven't really been vetted.
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The plan is, is that like the resistance seeks to expose the construction of an Imperial military base on Palmo, something that the empire denies, though. It seems most of the citizens actually already take this to be true. So, and or questions the necessity of this plan and relations Sauer with the group.
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Back on Coruscant, Clea learns through radio chatter that one of Luthen's listening devices may be discovered during an artifact reappraisal. Saw kills an Imperial spy in his crew, forcibly recruits Willem, and while on mission installing a fuel diverter, Saw convinces Willem to huff the fuel fumes. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second. I want to talk a little bit about Cassian on Gorman. Yes.
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And there's a lot of interesting stuff there. And specifically when the Gorman front leader calls Cassian out for not being a real revolutionary, which I think is kind of true. Cassian at this point is a thief and a soldier. Mm-hmm. He thinks about things purely from that, like, operationally, like, tactical point of view.
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He doesn't have, like, a larger, like, politics he's, like, focused on, right? Like, Luthien is more of, like, a revolutionary, a very, like, manipulative one. But, like, he is focused on, like, this, like, larger political game. And this is something that, like, at this point, Cassian's not fully, like, interested in. He's more interested in, like, on the ground, like, tactical preparedness.
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Yeah. That's what makes all their interactions so interesting because there is that unspoken tension which slowly gets like aired because like they're really assessing different things. Like what Cassian's assessing is different from what Luthan wants assessed and that's different from what the Gorman front actually like want to do.
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Like they're okay with the degree of casualties like being had because they just want to like have control over their planet again and put up any resistance even if it ends up like leading to hardship.
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Yeah. And they're like, okay with that visibility at this point.
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That's why he's lost his mind and soul. Yes. And that's why people are starting to really dislike working with him.
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Even though he might not be completely wrong here. Yeah. I like so much this episode is built around finding bugs. Yeah. The ISB looks for bugs in Cyril's office. The ISB's planting bugs in Cyril's office. Bugs are hidden in the artifacts that Luthen's selling to high society. Everyone's listening. Everyone's trying to collect more intel.
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Yeah. Something I love is when Cyril's talking with the Gorman Front about the ISB raid of his office, the Gorman Front remarks, quote, we think the ISB is running a shadow government without the emperor's knowledge.
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And it's so sad because this is their local resistance group who still has that level of delusion because they come from high society, right? They come from this diplomatic background where they can solve things through free trade. And they're like, surely the emperor doesn't actually know what's going on here. It must be the CIA. It must be the FBI. The ISB is running a shadow government.
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They're the ones that are actually ruining things. Yes. And you're like, no, your enemy is the entire empire. Yes, your enemy is the ISB. But it's also Cyril Karn and it's also Emperor Palpatine. Yes.
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Before we talk about the Saw Gerrera stuff at the end, I do want to point out how wonderful it was to see Cyril Karn in the ISB control room where he remarks that this is the greatest day of his life. Oh, God.
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It's so good. Cyril gains cred amongst the Gorbun front when they find out that his background is that he lost his job because the ISB found out how badly he fucked up Ferex. And like, they're like, ah, I see. Cyril must have good reason to hate the Empire because of this. And you're like, no. Oh, you stupid fuckers. He's desperately trying to like become some like ISB secret agent. Yeah.
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Like he just wants approval from like The daddy state. And from his girlfriend, right?
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The last thing I want to talk about in this episode is this episode displays, like, two different types of drug use. Yes. We have Bix, who's trying to get over the immense amount of fucked up stuff that's happened to her by taking Space Xanax, if you will.
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It is disrupting her personal life. It's also disrupting her like operational capacity.
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That's it. The weight of resistance is really getting to Bix.
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And, like, Luthen comes over to, like, check on her and also, like, see if she's able to, like, work, see if she can, like, appraise some, like, weapons or something. And he realizes, like, she is not, like, well enough to work at this point.
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And becomes, like, getting worried for her and, like, tries to, like, plead with her, like, you have to make sure that you, like, stay healthy. Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's, it's definitely, it's definitely hard to watch. I think this is definitely like this moment. It's like, I don't know. Bix has always had a lot of agency taken away from her.
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Like we see this like in season one and we see this kind of now. And I definitely would like to, would like to see her get put back in like the driver's seat of her own life at a certain point. But like, like, like living through like PTSD and living through like these types of like, you know, political movements does, does like destroy people. And like this does happen.
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Yeah. And he's been doing this ever since he was like a kid.
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Saw thinks that they were going to set up like an ambush at their next mission. Yeah. And instead they evacuate their base.
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I want to read it here. I have this back of the monologue quote. You feel how badly she wants to explode. Remember this moment. You think I'm crazy? Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the sane. Look at us, unloved, hunted, cannon fodder. We'll all be dead before the Republic is back. And yet, here we are. Where are you, boy? You're here. You're not with Luthan. You're here. You're right here.
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And you're ready to fight. We're the ride-o kid. We're the fuel. We're the thing that explodes when there's too much friction in the air. Let it in, boy. That's freedom calling. Let it in. Let it run. Let it run wild. And he is just, for one thing... The kid is choking on the fumes.
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He's huffing this now. This is what he's huffing that has been like retconned. Oh, is it confirmed it wasn't oxygen?
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Either way. We'll see. We'll see. I could be wrong. I was wrong last week about one thing. I miscredited the quote about the empire's grip tightening and systems falling through because the theory twinks. British actor has an accent very similar to the one Carrie Fisher poorly tries to imitate in A New Hope where she says that line. So sorry, George. Sorry, George. That was your line. Good line.
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The theory twink just has some very similar ones. So I got confused. Accountability.
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Everyone knows her accent's bad in that movie. We all know it.
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And hopefully that fire will grow. Yeah. And, yeah, if that means we get burned up in the process, that is, that's how it be. Yeah. If the fire will burn very brightly. Yes. All right. Let's go and break and then come back to discuss the final episode in this arc. Okay, we are back. Andor season two, episode six. What a festive evening. Ah, beautiful.
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Luthen sends Mon Mothma's cousin Val to reestablish relations with the Gorman front after Cassian's icy reception. Cassian and Bix reunite on Coruscant, but then Cassian shows up at Luthen's shop to confront him about checking in on Bix at the safe house while Andor was on mission in a possibly like opsec irresponsible move.
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Yeah, not good. This is like Cassian's emotions getting the better of him here. Senator Mon Mothma and her husband Perrin attend a party of the Empire's elite where she debates Krennic on imperial cruelty and the mindset of a rebel underdog. Meanwhile, Clea uses their undercover ISB agent to help remove a listening device hidden in the prized collection of artifacts.
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Vel reunites with Cinta as they help to lead the Gorman Front's first attack, stealing Imperial weapons on a cargo transport. At first, things go according to plan. Cyril watches from a distance and reports to ISB headquarters.
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Yeah. So near the end of this operation, a civilian confronts the rebels about what they're doing. And in the struggle, Cinta is accidentally shot and killed by one of the members of the Gorman Front, a guy named Sam with two Ms. I love Star Wars.
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This episode ends with Bix and Cassian going on a mission to kill the Imperial interrogation expert, Dr. Gorst, which they succeed and then walk away heroically from the explosion, similar to... Kill him by torturing him the way he tortured her.
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Then they blow up the building and they play the music cue from the very first arc, the very first season, where Cassian is walking away with that fast drumbeat. So this episode has so much about relationships complicating political activity, right? We have Andor and Bix, we have the lesbians, Val and Senta.
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They did kill your lesbian. They killed my lesbian! We'll talk about that in a sec. We're gonna cut this later. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a sec. They also have Cyril and Dedra. We have a lot of how relationships and politics function, where there's friction, when things can go well, when things can go bad. Let's talk, I guess, a little bit about this party where...
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Where Luthen talks with Krennic very, very briefly. And at the end, I mean, this is a very effective scene where they build tension with Clea trying to remove this bug while Krennic's in the room seeing these other artifacts and debating Mon. But when Luthen and Clea leave, they jokingly remark...
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man we should have killed critic when we were up there and they laugh and you're like yeah no you guys should have that's not a joke you really should have killed critic you really should have killed critic you really should have killed critic it would have fucked things up but then the death star may not have been completed yeah and this whole thing would have gone differently although you know you know in in a way the death star operation does lead to the fall of the empire in like a
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Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I think that is where things are going to be moving. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when Cassian's coming back from Gorman, like, Luthien picks him up, and they start, like, arguing over, like, is the Gorman front, like, a real thing to, like, spend effort and, like, time on? Like, they're kind of all, like, green. They don't really have good OPSEC. They're just not, like, ready yet.
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And Luthien pushes back and says to Cassian, like, you're thinking small. You're thinking like a thief. And Cassian rebuts, like, no, I'm thinking like a soldier. And Luthien's like, no, you have to think like a soldier.
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you have to think like a leader you have to actually and like from Luthan's point of view a leader is like a very like manipulative role and like you have to start using these guys as pawns for this like larger game because the empire is bigger than just Gorman the empire is bigger than us we have to think bigger you can't just you can't just think
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a small illegalist who's going to steal your food and not pay for parking and just get by while still doing crime, but try to outsmart the empire. He's like, no, we are beyond that. We ain't robbing banks anymore. Yeah, exactly, right? We are beyond the illegalist point of view. We have to start thinking much more strategically and with the bigger picture in mind.
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Because we are slowly getting closer to the Battle of Yavin here. And I find their little argument there really interesting. And then their secondary meetup where Cassian's mad about Luthan checking in on Bixx. And I think, like, I can understand both their point of view here. I think this is still a big fuck-up from Cassian. But it's, like, it makes sense.
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But, like, yeah, the relationship's getting, like, the better of him on, like, a strategic standpoint, like, at this plot point. And Luthen still trusts them, though. Like, Luthen still gives them the assignment to kill Dr. Gorse. So, like, Luthen still is able to work with these people. And he still actually, like, oddly enough, like, prioritizes empathy.
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And, like, says, like, empathy, like, you cannot have a... You cannot have a revolution without empathy. That's what this is built on. And even though he's a bit of a hard ass sometimes, he still does like trust them. Yeah.
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We are back. Robert, you want to talk about Syria?
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And this is particularly worrying for HIV preventative measures across the world as well. Most of the language that's used there has been heavily targeted. We're just going to get a whole bunch of people sick and die because of these actions.
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James, I pivot to you on our semi-regular border update.
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Love to see it. These strikers are doing pretty good is what I'm hearing.
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Well, and speaking of they, thems in the military, I will do a quick follow-up before we go on break. We mentioned last week about efforts from the Navy to house trans naval members.
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I guess they kind of are sailors, aren't they? But basically house them with people matching their assigned gender at birth. Same thing with access to intimate spaces like bathrooms. This has escalated further to now a general quasi-ban of trans people from the military altogether with a few implementation paths towards this. a form of like, don't ask, don't tell.
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We will report on this more in the future as a part of a larger piece on the Lavender Scare currently happening across the government. But that did happen literally like a few hours after we recorded it. We got word that they are seeking to disband trans people from the military altogether. Anyway, we will go on break and return to talk tariff.
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That's absurd. Well, there's no tariffs or butts about it, but the economy is in a bad spot.
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I mean, like, Trudeau had a call with Trump on Wednesday, basically going, hey, what the fuck, man? I thought we had a deal. And Trump was like, well, I'm not seeing much progress on the whole fentanyl thing. And Trudeau was like, what the fuck are you talking about? And Trump then basically pointed towards him not being satisfied until there's a new Canadian government.
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Like, he's not going to want to lift these until Trudeau is out of office and ask Trudeau when the next Canadian election is. hinting towards the fact that he just is going to refuse to seriously negotiate with Trudeau and will wait until whoever the next guy is. Meanwhile, you have a post from the Chinese embassy in the U.S. saying, if war is what the U.S.
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wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end.
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And I think Trump is using for like, like leverage here beyond even tariffs, like, uh, cutting out Canada from the five eyes intelligence group, halting Intel sharing with Ukraine. Yep. Very, very like drastic steps, uh, in terms of like national security and Intel sharing.
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Yep. Well, that does it for us today. I know on Tuesday night, Trump did a speech to a joint session of Congress. We have a whole episode on that that released yesterday because there was just so much to talk about. So if you want to hear our thoughts on that, you can check out yesterday's episode. on his congressional speech full of... Summary.
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A summary, yes, because the speech was very long, focused a lot on trans people, focused a lot on the border, talked about national security, really skipped over the economy because... No, guys are great. Because that's not really going too good. Keep shooting holes in it. Really skipped over that. Focused more on trans people as the single greatest threat facing this country.
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But yes, if you want to hear about that, check out yesterday's episode on the It Could Happen Here feed.
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Speech bad, yeah. Speech bad. The era of woke is over would be the other summary I give. Yeah.
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Increasingly relevant, considering that social security layoffs have started and they're now seeking to cut possibly upwards of 50% of the social security workforce.
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I'm sure everything will be fine and America will be back on top in no time. It is back. America is back. I learned that last night. We reported the news.
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I think it's a sign of great mental health to acknowledge the dark wolf inside you.
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That is the mercy of time. That time, it is a healer.
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I think it's a sign of great mental health to acknowledge the dark wolf inside you.
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Welcome to an It Could Happen Here special report. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout and Sophie Rae Lichterman. So excited. We are here to discuss Trump's first joint session speech of his second term. This is basically the equivalent of a State of the Union, except it's too early to really give a good State of the Union, even though this month has felt kind of like a year.
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So we are doing a special report here in addition to our regular executive disorder episode, because there is just so much to talk about that we cannot fit it all in our regular ED. Just let it go. Pause. Pause for effect. Okay. All right. You can't get me, Garrison. Speaking of, this was the longest. Joint session speech in American history. And man, it felt like it lasted forever.
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I was supposed to watch some yaoi with a friend last night and they came over and I was like, ha ha, gotcha. Actually, I have to watch this speech first. Don't worry. Usually it's only like an hour or so. I did the exact same scam.
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Two hours later, it finally ends and they're like, okay, we can finally watch Yaoi, right? I'm like, no, no, no. I have to watch the Democratic response speech. Don't worry, it should be shorter. And thankfully it was. But yeah, let's just start by talking about like the beginning of this speech or rather what the general overview of this speech was.
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This was not a leaning across the aisle speech, right? This wasn't trying to unite the country.
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This catered to core mega supporters and new issues at the center of the modern right-wing media machine. The version of the speech I watched on ABC frequently cut to Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro sitting together overlooking Congress as they were special guests of the president and the first lady.
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Give him a clap, why don't you? Sorry, James, I realized that got a little insensitive. Wow.
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Not anymore. Are we talking about our workplace harassment videos? DEI is over, James. No more of those videos here in the free state of Georgia. That's illegal.
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But like a single time early in the speech, Trump asked Democrats, why not join us in celebrating America? After he complained, I could cure any disease. And these people sitting right here, the Democrats, they would not cheer. I could cure any disease and these people wouldn't cheer.
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But no, some Dems did not show up in protest. Others were black, kind of like in mourning. Yeah, who cares? Some of the women's caucus were pink. Very cool. Very feminist. Mm hmm. And others were the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Sure. That'll help.
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But, you know, Trump just pointed towards the Democrat side of the chamber throughout the night and just referred to them as the radical left lunatics. Like, this was not a across-the-aisle speech.
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This was, if anything, emphasizing the divisions within the country.
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I mean, this is the same phrase that Biden opened his first speech with as well. I think Biden was referring to, like, we are back to pre-Trump America. And now Trump is using this phrase to refer to, like, this, like, mythical America, right? Sure. But no, Trump took the stage to USA chants throughout.
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So cheesy. The speech was outlining like a new golden age of America and the renewal of the American dream. Trump talked about how he has accomplished in 43 days more than most administrations do in four to eight years and that we're just getting started. Cool. He referred to this wide popular mandate, a quote, a mandate like this has not been seen in many decades.
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Referring to like winning all swing states, winning the Electoral College and the popular vote. And reference to this mandate kind of sparked the big boo, big disruption of the night.
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Like, no, I don't think that that's not specifically what Mr. Green was talking about.
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Without any, like, strength. Like, without any actual, like, momentum.
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Yeah. So, Representative Al Green from Texas, old man with cane. It's a good cane.
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That would have been cooler. But instead, he just waves the cane around, talking about how this mandate doesn't mean that there's a mandate to, like, you know, cut Medicaid, cut Medicare. That was specifically what he was talking about. Television mics did not really pick that up.
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Yeah, and Trump started yelling over these protests. There was a brief, maybe a minute or so yelling match in the chamber. Mike Johnson was like, what do I do here? Eventually, Mike Johnson threatens Mr. Green, gives a warning, and eventually directs the Sergeant of Arms to restore order and remove him from the chambers. Mm-hmm.
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Not a regular scene in American politics, but a scene that you might be more familiar with in overseas politics, specifically in democracies that are in trouble. You'll have more and more scenes like this. Yeah.
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You know, it's still 2025, James. We still have three more years. Three more years?
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Whether or not this is, like, you know, performative or cringe, it's, like, it's something that demonstrates, hey, like, this actually isn't normal, more than holding up a cheesy sign next to Trump reading, this is not normal, which some others did in protest. This actually is treating it like a serious situation, and more Democrats should have done this.
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They should have staggered their protests throughout the entirety of the speech. Mm-hmm. continually disrupting it, making the speech basically unable to end, pushing this past midnight, having an endless procession of people having to be escorted out. You should force Congress to censure half of the sitting Congress people.
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If this really is an actual existential threat to our democracy, if Trump represents right now a genuine constitutional crisis, which he does, he is ignoring the courts, the people in Congress should fucking act like it. 100%.
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Stagger it every like three minutes so that he just is unable to finish the speech.
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Yeah, he was thrown. And they should have continued to do this. The fact that no one else did is pretty disappointing.
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He did have that nervous smile for most of... Well, he normally does when he's confronted with a human being, but... Later on in the speech, after Trump talked about, you know, trans women in sports and the price of eggs, you had you had a group of Democrats wearing resist T-shirts walk out of the speech in protest.
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And like that's so much more pathetic than actually like standing up and talking about how this guy is ignoring the courts and is actually breaking the Constitution. Like that's what they should have all been doing instead of wearing resist lib merch performatively.
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But this is going to be the first ad break in a series of two mid-episode ad breaks that we are playing on this show. So here's the ads. All right, we are back. I hope you pick up your new ad break themed t-shirts to walk around in protest of capitalism. Yep, not made by unions. All right, let's talk about transgenderism.
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One of the first topics Trump had discussed at length was the anti-trans culture war, declaring that the government will be woke no longer.
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it's just so asinine like drunk old man at pub he bragged about about signing an executive order establishing that there's only two genders as well as an order preventing quote-unquote men from playing in women's sports he first pointed out to someone in the audience who was a former volleyball player who got hurt by a volleyball and then decided to quit the sport and
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They now blame this on the fact that a trans woman was allegedly responsible for probably spiking the volleyball, which, yes, is painful.
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In a team volleyball context. So yes, this was the first kind of of these political props that Trump brought along to kind of point out and demonstrate some of the things that he was talking about. Frankly, it just seems like this person was not a very good volleyball player.
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But the next example Trump pointed to, I think James can speak better on, but Trump said that essentially there was a quote-unquote man who beat a woman in a race by five hours to the shock of the audience.
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So after this initial dive into the trans topic, Trump followed up by talking about how egg prices are out of control. Take a shot. Which happened about 15 minutes into the speech. But near the end of the speech, Trump returned to the trans topic, pointing to the anti-trans activist mom named January Littlejod, no comment, whose kid secretly used they-them pronouns at school.
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With Trump discussing how wrong it is for schools to secretly transition students. And this actually just isn't true. Surprise, surprise. The parents in this case knew that their kid wanted to use a different name and pronouns at school and actually were the ones to inform the school of this, according to school emails obtained by CNN. Not that this matters.
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And I will say, during this clip, when the camera cuts towards his mom, like, all of the people that were used as political props that were cut to, they all had the most bizarre look on their face. Like, completely blank. Like, soulless. Not even, like, really excited. This woman, who was, you know, kind of one of also the faces of, like, Florida's Don't Say Gay Bill,
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Just, yeah, completely, like, blank expression. Because this thing that the president's talking about is just a flat-out lie, and, like, you know it. You lost a federal lawsuit over this lie, but here you are on national TV now, the prop of the president.
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And then Trump directly asked Congress to pass a bill banning trans healthcare for children, saying, Wokeness is gone. Our country will be woke no longer. Whatever. Such a loser. The next topic was Elon Musk's doge.
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Trump essentially just read out a list that mischaracterized aid programs or scientific research grants talking about how Health and Human Services paid for housing for displaced immigrants in the United States, money for Middle East Sesame Street for making mice transgender and an LGBTQ education in Africa, as well as DEI in Burma.
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which I will now pivot to James again to fill in some context here.
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Yeah. And this is very emblematic of the way Trump and Elon talk about a bunch of these aid programs, how like, you know, HIV prevention programs will be LGBTQ USAID money, right? Like they find a way to mischaracterize it in the most like culture war way.
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right yeah exactly right they'll try to find every single like health or education program and turn it into some like lgbtq or dei culture war issue trump claimed on stage that they've found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud now the doge website previously listed 105 billion dollars in like found savings but this very week the website scrubbed the five of the highest dollar value receipts
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after journalists found massive errors in Elon's estimated count. Shocking. And now its wall of receipts totals around 8 billion, though that might also be an overestimate, according to some journalists.
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Trump also talked about alleged social security fraud, claiming that millions and millions of dead people are getting social security. This just isn't true.
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Yeah. Trump's own social security administrator has like said as much the super old people in the database simply don't have death details logged, but they are not receiving payments. There is improper payments in the social security system, usually around 1%. Mostly that's overpayments or entertainments to people who are actually alive.
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And there is a system for resolving those already in place because social security is a pretty old system that we've had for quite a while. And like, I don't know, like Trump skirted by a lot of economy issues. And the way he did so was just by repeatedly claiming that Doge and like cutting this fraud will magically fix the economy. Right. Like this is how he wants to frame this.
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Eggs are too much money. All of these things. And he has no actual solution to it. So instead, we're going to fix the economy through Doge. Through finding all this fraud, somehow we will locate this pot of gold hidden somewhere that will magically make our economy better. And this is his solution because he doesn't have any real solution.
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Advertising. Advertisements. I believe Trump's first executive order, he established the podcasting advertising industry, which supports us to this day.
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Okay, we are back. On top of trans issues, the other, I would say, most cited element in this speech was the border. Trump referenced the Lake and Riley Act, which requires DHS to detain illegal immigrants who've admitted to, were charged with, or convicted of theft-related crimes or any crime related to serious bodily injury.
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These people have been figures of his campaign for years.
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Same thing with Fox News, same thing with One America News. Their entire life revolves around being political props. It's an industry.
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There was nothing new here. Trump signed an executive order on stage to rename a wildlife preserve in this like anti-immigrant propaganda move.
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He called for mandatory death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer and asked Congress to sign that into law, which is mostly like an anti-immigrant dog whistle, essentially trying to find a way to kill immigrants who are like charged with the death of a police officer.
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Now that he wants to label all these people terrorists or, you know, has labeled these groups terrorists, it gives the government a lot more leeway to do stuff like that.
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Sure. I mean, so is proving membership to Antifa.
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But Trump said that previously America has, quote unquote, buckled under migrant occupation, but now we are achieving the great liberation of America. That's the sort of language he was using for this section.
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The economy had a very minimal focus compared to border or trans issues. He really skirted over the tariffs thing as fast as possible. Yeah. Briefly talked about the federal funding freeze, bragged about terminating the Green New Scam, something that has never existed.
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Talking about withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords again, as well as the corrupt World Health Organization and the anti-American UN War Crime Council. Very cool. bragged about ending climate restrictions, you know, drill baby drill, going after rare earth minerals, talked about no tax on tips over time and benefits for seniors.
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And then briefly discussed that on April 2nd, he will be enacting reciprocal tariffs just completely across the board for all nations. And he did warn farmers there is going to be an adjustment period. Quote, there will be a little disturbance, unquote. Certainly.
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Crashing the economy will have a bit of an adjustment in the period. It will be a bit of a little disturbance.
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One of the last focuses of the speech was national security, promising a golden dome missile defense system, which Trump has previously talked about at previous 2024 campaign events. Obsessed with gold. Obsessed with gold. Obsessed with dome. Jesus Christ. Garrison didn't even crack for those listening. Once again, he... Got him now.
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Once again, he announced that his administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal. Yeah. Saying, we have Mark Rubio in charge. Good luck, Marco. If something goes wrong, we know who to blame.
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cool yeah amazing of his his comments on greenland were specifically odd saying greenland we strongly support your right to determine your own future and if you choose we welcome you into the united states of america but the the full quote about greenland was very odd he said quote we need greenland for national security and even international security so so weird.
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That is the mercy of time. That time, it is a healer.
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And we're working with everybody involved to try to get it. But we need it, really, for international, for world security. And I think we're gonna get it. One way or another, we're gonna get it. It's a very small population, but a very, very large piece of land. And very, very important for military security. Unquote. Okay. Very odd. Very odd comments. A whole collection of English language words.
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He is continuing to say that one way or another, he will take Greenland. I think his focus on it for national security is particularly interesting. I think this has something to do with trying to make the US and Russia these two massive world powers that both have Arctic land at their disposal, considering climate change or a variety of issues. But I think that this does move towards...
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this like quasi like Dugan ism of like this, like multipolar world that, that Putin certainly wants. And Trump is kind of signaling that, you know, through the influence of Bannon, uh, he's also moving towards with like Putin and trumpet, like, you know, the two people who control the world.
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Speaking of, uh, Trump did talk about receiving a letter from president Zelensky asking to return to the negotiating table and, uh, bragged about freeing another weed smoking teacher in a Russian jail. Uh,
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returning him home to america and oddly enough trump met with the mother of this teacher in butler pennsylvania right before he got shot which led him to to point towards the comparator family again pronouncing it in a completely new and different way all of the members of the family seemed very not thrilled to be there completely blank expressions quite quite odd extremely weird
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yeah so this this is where he ended the speech was talking about you know getting shot and then kind of went on a very long 10 minutes almost gpt-esque ramble about like america i didn't take any notes on it because it just sounded like word salad but there is a few other miscellaneous things from the speech i do want to mention before we close out trump bragged about stopping all government censorship and having brought back free speech to america saying it's back
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Which is, you know, slightly humorous amidst reports of grants being pulled for using quote-unquote the bad words, wrong words, as well as a truth social post, a truth made earlier today, Wednesday, saying all federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.
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American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. No masks. So in one moment, you can celebrate bringing back free speech. And in the other, you can call for deporting people who protest or imprisoning students for protesting on their own university campuses. Very, very typical Trump double speak type stuff.
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Well, yeah, and these are things that have happened already. Half of this speech was celebrating things that he's already done.
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The other half was, like, asking Congress to help him do more things mixed in with these weird propaganda moves, like making this 13-year-old brain cancer survivor an honorary Secret Service agent and admitting this very square-looking teenager into West Point, who, by the way, this... This teenager has the most cop phenotype I've ever seen before. It's crazy. I was shocked.
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I'm like, whoa, they found him. The cop phenotype. There he is.
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It's so odd because like... Trump spent this speech talking about how, you know, like, we're bringing back merit-based hiring. We have, quote, ended the tyranny of DEI across government, private sector, and military, as he then just did to DEI hires on stage. But, you know, who am I to say? So that's kind of all I have to say on the Trump speech right now.
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I will briefly, very briefly, talk about the Democratic response. The Democratic response was done by Senator Slotkin from Michigan, who opened by saying, "'America wants change, but there's a responsible way to make change and an irresponsible way.'"
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trying to paint Doge as this very irresponsible and brash way to achieve efficiencies, something that we all obviously want the government to move more towards.
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She warned about how Trump's actions may result in a recession, warned about losing Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits, quoted Musk, who recently called Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, and attacked Musk and the 20-year-old Doge members for using their own servers to access your sensitive data.
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slotkin spent a lot of the rebuttal praising ronald reagan odd for a democrat i would say i don't know why strange don't know why you as the opposition party are continuing to base your politics on praising bush and reagan very cool opposition party bros very fun stuff um she also said i've lived and worked in many countries i've seen democracies flicker out i've seen what life is like when a
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Yeah, I bet you have. Former CIA agent. She also mentioned doom scrolling. So that really shows how the Democrats have the finger on the pulse here when doom scrolling is mentioned as something not to do, saying instead you should hold your elected officials, including me, accountable, watch how they're voting, go to town halls, demand they take action. And organize.
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Pick up one issue you're passionate about and engage. Doomscrolling doesn't count. Join a group that cares about your issue and act. If you can't find one, start one. And that was the bulk of the 10-minute Democratic response. Oh boy, what a fun day in American politics that was. Any final thoughts, James, Sophie?
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Bad. Bad. Bad. The Democrats are unwilling to do anything actually serious. Once again, the attempts at quote unquote fact checking the speech are also incredibly pathetic to look at.
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There's this New York Times fact check, which I will close on just because it made me and the rest of our group chat very upset.
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which outlined this long paragraph from Trump saying, over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States, many of whom were murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities and all throughout the world. Because of Joe Biden's insane and very dangerous open border policies, they are now strongly embedded in our country.
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But we are getting them out and getting them out fast. And the fact check for this very, like, false claim is, quote, fast is a relative term. This statement is misleading. It only focuses on the ending sentence saying that we're getting these immigrants out and we're getting them out fast. Ignores calling many of these 21 million people human traffickers, gang members, and criminals.
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does not say that we never have had open border policy. It's crazy. Even the liberal fact-checking is completely pathetic and toothless. And fact-checking doesn't work. It's not useful anyway. That's why I'm not spending this whole episode fact-checking Trump's claims. But the fact that you're going to parrot
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This insane anti-immigrant rhetoric and only fact check Trump saying that we're going to get these immigrants out of our country fast, calling it a relative term. And this is the reason that the statement is misleading. This completely shows how Democrats completely lost
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Any momentum on the immigration topic, same thing with the trans topic, they're actually unwilling to push back on changing populist sentiment because they're automatically agreeing with the actual conceit. Yeah. Anyway, that got me upset, and then I watched Yaoi and then went to bed. So, there we go. Glad you got your Yaoi, Harrison.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Robert Evans, Neil Wong, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman.
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This episode, we are covering the week of February 27 to March 5. Number go down. Public humiliation ritual of Vladimir Zelensky and the age of US global supremacy is over. Welcome to the end of the American empire.
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I am upset about how landy and everything is becoming. I feel like you have to be almost forced into being an accelerationist now. There is no other way out. Did you watch the Democrats last night, Garrison? It's like this non-consensual accelerationism. Yeah, yeah. That like... People have spent years trying to resist this accelerationist push that even now I'm seeing analysts embrace.
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I guess we have to be accelerationists now, which is very bizarre to see.
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Speaking of, let's start talking about Ukraine. Yeah, a place which accelerated. And that Oval Office meeting that happened last Friday. That was a little bit odd, wasn't it, folks? Harrison, say thank you. Thank you. Yes, I realize I've been under your employ for four years now. I've said thank you many times.
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So I don't know. I'm sure people saw like a two minute clip or something. I watched the full 10 minute section, which is much more crazy. Yeah. And like in Trump's push to get like this ceasefire deal, Zelensky's hesitation has been because Putin has broken multiple ceasefire deals. So how can we be sure that he will respect this one?
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And that's kind of what jumpstarts this extra combative exchange between Trump, Zelensky and eventually little boy J.D., I don't know. Robert and James, you're war understanders.
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Well, and like, you know, Trump was yelling about, you know, World War Three and then and then and then Vance chimes in. He's particularly incoherent with his with his little like thank you speech.
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And I think, Robert, I think I think you pointed out to me earlier, like why Vance jumped in on this the way he did in like a way to establish dominance when Vance and Trump have very little cards to play, because this is a guy who has been like at war for years now. Uh huh. And like they need to feel superior to that.
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And that's why it's a public humiliation ritual, because that's the only method they had right now.
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He actually was fairly submissive in this exchange. He was letting Trump talk way over him. Zelensky did not raise his voice. I don't, frankly, I don't understand how people even deluded themselves into thinking this makes Zelensky look bad or like he wasn't proper.
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This was clearly a coordinated trap from the entire White House team, from the press corps, talking about why he doesn't wear a suit. And someone like Rubio, a neocon that has more of this geopolitics focus, he was literally sinking into the couch as this was happening. Rubio was not thrilled at this.
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Definitely Bush. And I don't know, like... Zelensky was literally kicked out of the White House on Friday. He's now trying to find a way back into the negotiating table. On Monday, the United States suspended all military aid to Ukraine after Trump has continued to inflate the numbers in regards to the amount of military aid we have sent to Ukraine, often by a magnitude of $200 billion.
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And I don't like, this was one of the first things that me and Robert noticed at the RNC, like how much Ukraine was like a top issue for them. Like people wouldn't shut up about Ukraine. And it took us a few days to like acclimate, be like, okay, like why, why are they talking about it in this way? Like it was, it was, it was very odd.
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I know Robert did a deep dive on that last year with friend of the pod, Rudy Giuliani.
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That's exciting. A little taste for all you listeners. This is very much a part, in my mind, a part of Bannon's push for like this quasi-Douganism, this idea of a multipolar world of Trump and Putin with Putin expanding power into Europe while Trump tries to seize control over more parts of North and Central America, you know, taking, uh, the Panama Canal, eventually Canada and Greenland, uh,
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You know, like both people wanting, you know, more more Arctic land that will be useful considering climate change. And Russia already has their fair share. So that's why, you know, Greenland is so essential for national security. Like Trump talked about endlessly in his joint session speech, I guess. Yeah. Mia, do you want to add something about this mineral thing before we go to break?
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This week, we are covering the week of January 29th to February 5th, and oh boy, has this week felt like a month. I am absolutely exhausted, and...
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Let's start, I guess, by talking about what Trump did Tuesday night. He had a press conference with both himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce that the United States would, quote unquote, take over the Gaza Strip, resulting in, quote unquote, long term ownership.
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Previously on that day, Trump also signed an order pulling out of the United Nation Human Rights Council and cutting off aid to UNRWA. Let's start with this topic. Hopefully we will have a later episode, maybe next week, covering what's happening in Palestine. But, you know, this is, as of right now, the current most development.
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Yeah, there was a real, oh shit, really, vibe. I'm not sure how long Trump and Netanyahu have actually had this entire thing planned. That is a distinct possibility that this has been Netanyahu's goal for a while, and this impacted his negotiations with Biden, knowing that he wanted this to be the outcome, where the U.S. basically just takes and holds the territory of Gaza as a U.S.
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It's in line with the Manifest Destiny territorial expansion Trump has been talking about the past few weeks. I mean, Joe Biden laid the groundwork for this by giving Israel the actual bombs and materials to do the demolition side of this project.
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And now Trump continues to discuss relocating Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan while promising to turn Gaza into, quote unquote, the Riviera of the Middle East. Level it out. Create an economic development, unquote.
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Yeah, it's like, this is like, we're doing a second larger genocide. This is like the finishing touch.
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I'm more scared that they're going to get away with it. I think I'm more scared that things will go fine for them. And this just becomes like an actually stable U.S. territory in the Middle East.
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All right, let's transition to our new segment titled Stinky Musk, which I came up with last night, Delirious. And yes, it's bad. No, I'm not going to fix it. South African gang does a hostile takeover of the United States.
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Elon Musk and a gang of overly online Gen Z interns are doing an oligarchic cyber coup of the federal government, starting with the Office of Management and Budget and moving on to USAID, General Services Administration, the Treasury, and as of recording, NOAA, as well as many other agencies, smaller agencies, bigger agencies. that they are infiltrating both physically and digitally.
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Employees of these agencies have been locked out both physically and digitally as the Doge team ransacks various departments and accesses sensitive data with no oversight. And that's like government data about you, possibly in the hands of a literal Nick Fuentes-pilled Groyper intern.
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Security officials who tried to resist Musk's seizure of classified materials have been fired, and Doge personnel threatened to call the U.S. Marshals to be let into buildings. I have some more info on this as we will go on, but I guess this is an okay time just to discuss.
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I mean, based on how much of what Musk is doing is just bypassing Congress and doing a very kind of typical oligarchic coup. He's doing all those steps. And if you look at what happened in South Korea a few months ago, we are not at the point where congressmen are literally climbing over fences, barricading doors.
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But like their lawmakers like were willing to do that. And there is like I think waiting from people to like wait and see if our lawmakers are going to be willing to do the same to like protect the actual like functional aspects of our government. And like things are already happening. Like we are in some ways kind of already at this point.
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The USAID website is now completely removed, leaving only a note that claims that all personnel have been put on administrative leave, including overseas personnel. This essentially leaves a whole agency shut down, but all done without an act of Congress or even an overstepping executive order from Trump.
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It was just the unelected Elon Musk who decided to and carried out the closure of a government agency. which should actually be criminal. There is statutes that are designed to stop this from happening, just no one's enforcing them because they control almost every aspect of government.
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Musk has also closed the IRS direct file tax system, which has now forced taxpayers to use third-party paid services. He's doing this one by one.
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Essentially what Elon is doing right now is exactly what he did to Twitter, except to the entire United States of America. And like, by the end of this process, it still might function on some level, right? Like Twitter still kind of functions, but it's just worse in every way. It, it, it's worse. It doesn't have the quote unquote good features it used to. It's, it's buggy. It's full of Nazis.
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It's just, it's, it sucks more like the previous version was, was already bad and harmful, but the new one is just worse without the aspects that made it semi worthwhile. And like, I, I'm going to do an episode like next week, like kind of about, about this, like specifically and, and how Musk is Twitterifying the entire government and,
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Using, like, all of the same tactics, like refusing to pay leases on buildings, installing beds in agency headquarters to make employees sleep there overnight, having teenagers review code of, like, long-standing employees. It's the exact same process. And if you didn't like what happened to Twitter, that process is now happening to the government itself.
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Before we close this segment and pivot to ads, I do want to shout out the work that Wired is doing right now. Oh, man, yeah. Wired Magazine is doing some fantastic reporting on this. The D.C. attorney is currently promising to go after individuals who post about Doge employees.
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They might end up going after some of these Wired journalists who identified this Gen Z Doge team that is wreaking havoc throughout the government with no oversight. Wired provided what should be legally required and necessary information. identification of public workers who Musk is trying to keep secret. The DC attorney and Trump's DOJ is very mad about that.
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They might end up going after these people. But fantastic work coming out of Wired right now. If you want to keep up to date on Musk's takeover, I strongly recommend checking out their work. I'll post some of those in the sources below. Let's go on a quick ad break and then come back to talk about the continuing kind of fake trade wars and immigration. Sick. All right, we are back.
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I'm going to pivot towards James and Mia to discuss tariffs and immigration. Take it away.
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Well, and because Trudeau announced that he would be targeting, you know, like retaliatory tariffs specifically at red states, we now have people calling him Dark Woke or Dark Trudeau, you know, for very different reasons than they used to call him Dark Trudeau. Oh, Garrison.
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And we were all expecting Chinese tariffs. Having 25% tariffs to Canada was not something I thought was like a looming threat.
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We're all waiting on the courts and we're all deeply concerned. Yeah, well, there you go. One final break, and then we'll come back to end and discuss Trump's targeting of teachers in relation to gender ideology. Welcome back. So last week, Trump signed an executive order titled Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.
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And part of its focus was to prevent teachers from calling trans students by their names and preferred pronouns, even promising to inflict legal punishment for doing so. Basically, like mandating dead naming, misgendering and forcibly detransitioning students. This order specifically took aim at quote-unquote social transition, right?
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This is like the non-medical social aspects of transitioning, like changing gender names, pronouns, you know, what facilities you use, socialization. And like this stuff has historically been, you know, the most common form of transition for minors. It's the easiest to do. You don't even like need your parents' help.
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But this order blames schools for indoctrinating children in, quote, radical anti-American ideologies, unquote, which they include gender ideology as a part of.
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The order tries to mandate a national school bathroom ban, restrict participation in school sports, and states that within 90 days, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Attorney General shall provide Trump with a, quote, unquote, ending indoctrination strategy, unquote, To quote from the order, quote,
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the Attorney General shall coordinate with State Attorneys General and local district attorneys in their efforts to enforce the law and file appropriate actions against K-12 teachers who violate the law by, one, sexually exploiting minors, two, unlawfully practicing medicine by offering diagnoses and treatment without the requisite license, and three, otherwise unlawfully facilitating in the social transition of a minor."
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So basically, the goal is to try to make... calling a student by their name and pronouns illegal, and wrapping this in either with some form of like sexual exploitation, practicing medicine without a license, and using those as justifications for making this practice illegal.
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Now, in response, school districts in Columbus, Ohio, Harrisburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland announced that they would not comply with the order and continue to defend their trans students, according to journalist Aaron Reed. Seattle Public Schools published a statement reaffirming their commitment to protecting LGBTQ students and staff.
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And later, the California Department of Education pushed back on the legality of Trump's order. Other blue cities and states have stayed quiet in the week since the order, with teachers and parents calling on places like the New York City public school system to take a stance on if they will stand up for their trans students. So this is one side of the coin right now.
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The other side is healthcare, which we will close on. Now, in relation to Trump's executive order from his first week, entitled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, Now, some hospitals have begun complying in advance by canceling patient appointments for gender-affirming care.
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Denver Health and University of Colorado Health sacrificed the care of their patients for Trump's promise of continued funding by announcing that they would no longer be offering care, including blockers and hormone replacement therapy for patients 18 and under.
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The Virginia Commonwealth University and Children's Hospital of Richmond have also ceased providing gender-affirming care to those under 19.
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This past Monday, thousands of people gathered outside at the NYU Langdon Hospital in protest of the hospital's choice to proactively comply with Trump's order to restrict healthcare after the cancellation of two appointments for trans patients under the age of 19. Now, after these protests... which saw thousands of people protesting out in the streets.
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After this, the New York Attorney General sent a letter to the state healthcare systems saying that the state law requires that hospitals provide gender-affirming care and claimed that the federal funding would not be impacted by an executive order. And this really hammers down to the point that none of these executive orders are self-enforcing.
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These all require proactive implementation by local actors. Dr. Jeremy Birnbaum was quoted in the New York Times. He's a pediatrician at the state-run University Hospital of Brooklyn. He was quoted as saying, quote, I am willing to go to jail to continue to provide your care, unquote.
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You really can, like protest hospitals that comply in advance. Same thing with schools. These are targets that can provide actual pressure, and there's probably people on staff who are very sympathetic, and they just might be too scared to take a stance right now. And we have some breaking news as of this morning.
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State Attorneys General from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Nevada, Vermont, and Wisconsin... released a statement saying that Trump's executive order banning trans health care is unlawful and that the hospitals have a duty to provide care. So this is like the most optimistic thing that we've seen so far.
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Now, obviously, these are blue states. This is not going to impact red states who already have these types of bans either in process or are going to have them down the line. Georgia just put out
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a trans health care ban this morning for you know a bill that'll reach our senate in the next few weeks but this is this is the current situation protests seem to have applied a degree of pressure that has gotten state's attorney general to actually make a statement on this issue yeah i will say like so i still teach right i teach at a community college and sometimes uh through that we also teach high school students if you are an educator or someone in health care
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We will be covering all these topics more in depth in our regular daily episodes. I have a mind-boggling, very frustrating episode on Musk and the Trump campaign's promises of abolishing different departments of government, as well as a deep dive on affirmative action and DEI and wokeness in the coming weeks.
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And I'm sure we will all be focusing on different parts of this in our continuing episodes. But that does it for us today. See you on the other side.
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Yeah, I will pull that up on the Anarchist Library and give that a read myself.
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Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's even a lot of anarchists in Montreal today as a booming anarchist movement, but it still is a little funny.
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And when you say libertarian, you don't necessarily mean the... I mean anarchists. Yes, yeah.
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A very little anarchist danger is enough anarchist danger to stir up the establishment.
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Yes, this is going to come out, I think, right after New Year's.
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They're giving out food. They're healing the sick.
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Sure, of course. As was our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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Jesus and his affinity group of 12 traveling around the countryside, stirring up all kinds of trouble.
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Seeding revolt against the Roman Empire. We got to stop them.
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Yeah, no, it's a super successful recuperation. And that's why I do find, as much as it has some problems, liberation theology, especially the version in the South, to be kind of compelling. I wouldn't consider myself a Christian necessarily, but... As a religious sect goes, I am interested in what liberation theology kind of does and how it tries to re-radicalize forms of Christianity.
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Look, who doesn't have a U.S. military base these days? Come on. Cut them some slack. That's right, that's right. Andrew, I thought you were pro-internationalism, but here we go.
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Yeah, that is, that is, you know, what I was assuming, but I didn't want to, you know, make a fool out of myself.
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Which is honestly progressive considering the time.
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Unfortunately, no. My Spanish is actually quite famously bad. I really should work on it.
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See, that's usually me. I'm just happy to have it be someone else. So James doesn't laugh at me for reading too many books, but not practicing saying things out loud as a kid.
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Yeah, that is always been my struggle, is reading their vowels like my vowels, and it produces some sometimes quite comical pronunciations, which is really, really my bad.
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I mean, yeah, as long as it's someone else, then it's not them.
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Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. I hope you've been enjoying the holiday season. I know I have. Or at least I've been trying to. It's difficult because I keep getting distracted by this funny feeling. Like there's something watching over me up in the sky. Something buzzing around. And at first I thought this might just be Santa's sleigh. But then I realized, no, no, no, no, no.
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This is actually a drone. And oh boy, am I not the only one. Drone fever is just sweeping the nation right now with the New Jersey drone panic somehow making headlines based on unconfirmed and very disputable reports. The New Jersey drone thing isn't real. This is mass hysteria.
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Almost all of these incidents of UFOs, UAPs or mysterious drones are actually just like regular airplanes going to the airport, airplanes that you can track online via flight radar. These aren't nuclear scanning drones. These aren't secret government military projects. These are either like legal registered hobbyist drones in some cases, but really just mostly airplanes.
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A few weeks ago, there was a really cloudy day over the New Jersey coast. And that day, all of the drone sightings stopped because you couldn't see up in the sky. You couldn't see the airplanes. But yeah, the New Jersey drone panic isn't real. The reason why there's blinking lights flying over LaGuardia is that those are airplanes taking off and landing at an airport.
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This whole panic was boosted by unconfirmed social media reports and local news sites trying to gain clicks. And somehow this just broke through into the national mainstream discourse. But fears over invasive drones isn't necessarily unfounded.
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Though the ones that you should be worried about aren't UFOs or nuclear scanning drones, but are actually police drones, which are becoming all the more commonplace. More and more cities this year have adopted police drone programs. So for this episode, I'm going to rerun my episode from early in 2024 about police drones.
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Now, in the past year, there's also been a great increase in the reporting on police drones, including a fantastic Wired investigation titled The Age of the Drone Police is Here. They analyzed nearly 10,000 individual flight records from July of 2021 to September of 2023, containing more than 22.3 million coordinates.
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The investigation showed that poor communities, especially working class and immigrant communities, were disproportionately surveilled, with police drones in Chula Vista flying over neighborhood blocks on the west side more than 10 times longer than blocks on the suburban east side.
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And considering Trump's second term, fears over widespread police surveillance are only more relevant, especially in immigrant communities and even in instances where drones like this fly over places like abortion clinics. And these fears are not unfounded.
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In 2020, the San Diego Union Tribune discovered that the Chula Vista Police Department was sharing its license plate reader data directly with ICE. Now, it's still unclear how many drones Chula Vista PD currently has, but as of 2022, they had 32 of these high-definition camera-mounted drones, drones which have now done over 20,000 flights since 2018.
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All of this will get discussed more in depth in the episode. But for an update, later I discuss a court case to secure the public's right to access drone footage. And this case is still ongoing. Last spring, the city tried to appeal to the California Supreme Court, who ultimately declined to take up the case.
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basically reaffirming the lower court's ruling against the police to withhold drone footage. This case is, once again, back to trial court to finalize details of how certain footage should be released. So without further ado, here is my episode from the 2024 Consumer Electronics Showcase, Police, Drones, and You. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, I'm Garrison Davis.
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Now, last week, I spent a few days in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Showcase. Most of the time at the convention, I was just walking around the show floor, looking at various new types of surveillance equipment, AI products, and various other bullshit that was being peddled to the many, many industry attendees of CES. But I was also able to go to a few panels.
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Now, panels are really interesting because you get to hear people who are working inside industries talk about stuff that they don't usually really publicly talk about very much. And on the first day of the convention, I went to a panel about drone technology. Half of the panel was about how Walmart is launching new delivery drones in Dallas, Texas. The other half was about police drones.
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And that's what we're going to be talking about here today. How the police are using drones, why they're using drones, and how you can probably expect to be seeing a lot more drones up in the sky piloted by either an AI or a police officer. So let's get started. Chula Vista is the southernmost kind of medium-sized city in California, with a population of 278,000 people.
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Chula Vista has a police force of 289 sworn officers, as well as 120 civilian employees. On top of their nearly 300 officers, they operate a drone fleet, 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, launching high-def camera-mounted drones from four locations throughout their small city.
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I'm going to quote from an article from the MIT Technology Review, which did a deep dive onto Chula Vista's police drones back in February of 2023. Quote, Chula Vista uses these drones to extend the power of its workforce in a number of ways.
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For example, if only one officer is available when two calls come in, one for an armed suspect and another for shoplifting, an officer will respond to the first one. But now, CVPD's public information officer, Sergeant Anthony Molina, says that dispatchers can send a drone to surreptitiously trail the suspected shoplifter, unquote.
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And this really gets at the heart of how these drones are going to get used. They exist to funnel more people into the criminal justice system. Instead of having to choose between two calls, one of which actually could relate to saving someone's life, the other just a petty crime, now the police can easily follow someone doing a petty crime while responding to other calls and eventually catch up.
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It's a way to just expand the amount of people that can be arrested and thrown into jail. Nowadays, drones are pretty common tools for police. Over 1,500 departments currently use drones, usually for special occasions, though, like search and rescue, crime scene documentation, protest surveillance, and sometimes tracking suspects.
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But at the moment, only about a dozen police departments regularly dispatch drones in response to 911 calls. The first of which was Chula Vista PD, who launched their, quote, drone as first responder program back in 2018, with the goal of having an unmanned aerial system or drone be proactively deployed before an officer is on scene.
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Now we'll hear from Chief Roxana Kennedy of the Chula Vista Police Department talking on the drone technology panel at CES.
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The way police are able to deploy drones used to be a lot more limited. The use of drones is regulated by the FFA, the Federal Aviation Administration. In most cases, the FFA requires that both hobbyists and police departments only fly drones within the operator's own line of sight.
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But starting back in 2019, agencies and vendors could start applying for a Beyond Visual Line of Sight, or BEVLOS, waiver from the FFA to fly drones remotely, allowing for much longer flights in restricted airspace. Chula Vista PD was the first department to get a BEVLOS waiver. The MIT Tech Review estimated last year that roughly 225 more departments now have one as well.
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Now, I've watched a lot of videos of police talking about why they're using drones, of drone training companies talking about why police drones are so important. In one video on their website, this guy from Skyfire Consulting was talking about how police may not have had to kill Tamir Rice if they simply had a drone watching beforehand so they could see that it was a toy gun.
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Which is a ridiculous thing to say, because in the 911 call that jump-started this entire police interaction, it was expressed that the caller thought the gun was probably a toy. And this notion that simply if police have more ability to surveil, they'll be able to respond safer and apply less deadly force, I think is a pretty suspect premise.
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Now, the effectiveness of drone technology in law enforcement is challenging to verify and quantify. The MIT Tech Review cannot find any third-party studies showing that drones reduce crime, even after interviewing CVPD officers as well as drone vendors and researchers. Quote, nor could anyone provide statistics on how many additional arrests or convictions came from using drone technology.
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I was able to find some data on CVPD's website talking about how many drone-initiated interactions resulted in arrests, but quantifying additional arrests seems to be a little challenging. Now, if you look at Chula Vista PD's own drone response stats,
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The vast majority of deployments, I estimate around 70%, are for what the Director of Investigations for the Privacy Rights Group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, refers to as, quote, crimes of poverty, unquote, which he believes will be the target of most drone policing, as opposed to violent crime. Nearly 30% of Chula Vista's drone deployments are for what's categorized as disturbances.
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Almost 15% are for psychological evaluations, 10% are for, quote, check the area and information, over 7% are for welfare checks, 6.5% is for, quote, unknown problem, and over 6% is for suspicious person, and another 6% for traffic accidents. Now, some drone deployments do result in patrol units not having to be dispatched, but CVPD also says that drones have existed in thousands of arrests.
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And I'm really not sure if having a drone following someone around is the best thing for a 5150 psych evaluation. The presence of a police officer doesn't always make the situations better either. But I don't see having a drone be a really calming presence if you think someone needs mental help. Funding a whole fleet of heavy-duty surveillance drones and paying dedicated operators costs money.
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Now, it's unclear to me how many drones Chula Vista PD currently has, and on their website, they list 10 different drone models currently being in their fleet, most of them really expensive DJI drones, like the DJI Matrix, the DJI Inspire, the DJI Phantom, the DJI Maverick, as well as drones from a few other random companies.
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But nevertheless, Chief Kennedy is very grateful for their local police foundation for heading up the funding for their DFR drone first responder program. Let's hear from her.
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We'll get back to the chief's offhanded mention of legal battles in a bit here, but Chula Vista's budgetary situation may not be as dire as the chief makes it out to be.
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On top of their current $55 million operating budget, back in 2020, the La Prensa newspaper revealed that departments in San Diego County had secretly been getting hundreds of millions of dollars in high-tech police equipment, including armored vehicles, facial recognition and phone-breaking software, license plate readers, drones, riot gear, among other miscellaneous technology, as a part of a DHS grant program due to their close proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Chula Vista was one such department, and as of 2020, so four years ago, they had already received over $1 million in grant funds from this DHS program titled the, quote, Urban Area Security Initiative.
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Considering Chief Kennedy's budgetary concerns, drones actually have a lot of upsides financially, as they are often a lot cheaper than alternative surveillance methods, as well as being relatively easy to deploy remotely, either with a joystick or just by clicking a point on a map from a comfy office building.
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Issues around this ease of use was pointed out by Dave Moss, the director of investigations for the privacy rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who was quoted in the MIT article saying, quote, Up until the last, like, five to ten years, there was this unspoken check and balance on law enforcement power. Money.
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You cannot have a police officer standing on every corner of every street. You can't have a helicopter flying 24-7 because of fuel and insurance is really expensive. But with all these new technologies, we don't have that check and balance anymore. That's just going to result in more people being pulled through the criminal justice system, unquote.
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Advancements in technology are leading to further normalization of police surveillance. Ten years ago, would people react to news of a 24-hour police drone program the same way they would now? What was once the threat of Big Brother has since become a very sought-after and fetishized nanny state.
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In the V for Veneta graphic novel, anarchist writer Alan Moore imagined a fascist Britain characterized by surveillance cameras around every corner. And now cities around the country are setting up their own street-mounted cameras linked to private security cameras and ring doorbell cameras to create a network of live coverage around a whole city, which is instantly accessible to police.
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The more widespread consumer adoption of new technologies like small camera-mounted drones and doorbell cameras, the more acceptable it seems for police to add such technology to their arsenal of surveillance tools. It almost becomes expected.
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Chula Vista PD has routinely declined to answer why their drones are always recording both to and from the scene, and the department has put in a lot of effort into managing the backlash against their expanding drone program.
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Chief Kennedy's claim here is difficult to back up, because CVPD have refused to show the public any of the drone footage they routinely collect. But if we take the chief at her word here anyway, she admits that the drone goes back to recording at street level as soon as there's another 911 call, as they record everything on the way to a scene.
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And the way she phrases this whole tilt feature is quite misleading because the camera never actually stops recording. She just claims that it tilts slightly upwards in between 911 calls. But it's still capturing footage up to three miles away the entire time it's in the air. Police in Chula Vista have flown over 18,000 missions with their drones. That's a lot of footage.
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When talking about the privacy concerns had by some residents of Chula Vista, Chief Kennedy really emphasized how much her and the department really care about listening to community feedback and how data transparency is so important to CVPD.
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Later on in the panel, Chief Kennedy said that CVPD is quote-unquote extremely transparent about their flight data and quote-unquote have nothing to hide relating to their use of surveillance drones. Which is a curious claim considering the fact that CVPD has historically kept all drone footage hidden from the public and has fought in court to do so.
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Despite the chief's emphasis on the police's commitment to transparency and the importance of listening to community feedback, even going as far as to consult the ACLU when developing their drone program. For years now, the Chula Vista Police Department has denied all FOIA and public records requests for any drone footage.
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In response, Arturo Castanares, a Chula Vista resident and owner of the local bilingual newspaper La Prensa, filed a lawsuit against the city. CVPD argued that all drone footage should be categorically exempt from the public records requests on the basis that the footage could be used for a future investigation.
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Just last December, only a few weeks before CES, the California 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that this blanket exemption is invalid. and that not all drone first responder footage could be classified as part of a pending or ongoing criminal investigation, pointing to examples such as 911 calls about a roaming mountain lion or a stranded motorist.
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And police were not happy about this ruling. I'll talk about their reaction at the end of the episode. But controlling the narrative about the drone first responder program has been of the utmost importance to Chula Vista police, as the chief herself expressed at the panel.
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That is quite the claim there. To paraphrase the Electronic Frontier Foundation, without public access to their drone footage, it makes it very difficult to assess how much privacy you have in Chula Vista and whether police are even following their own rules about when and whether they record sensitive places like people's homes, backyards, or public protests.
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And that's why this recent ruling and the legal precedent it sets is a huge win for actual transparency and marks the first step towards the public finally getting a look at how these drones are being used in Chula Vista.
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With drone first responder programs spreading to police departments across the country, modeled after the one in Chula Vista, combined with the increasing presence of stationary street level cameras, the ability for police to be watching everywhere without the need for on the ground officers creates what the EFF refers to as, quote, a fundamental change in strategy with police responding to a much, much larger number of situations with drones.
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resulting in pervasive, if not persistent, surveillance of communities, unquote. Speaking of persistent surveillance, near the end of the panel, the chief announced that Chula Vista PD is planning to expand their 10-hour-a-day drone first responder program to a constant 24-hour-a-day drone surveillance program.
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More than doubling the department's capacity to have eyes in the sky would mean a lot more work hours for drone operators, as well as a large increase in the amount of video files being stored indefinitely. But Chief Kennedy claimed that they're looking into offsetting costs by replacing some of the drone piloting team with AI-assisted piloting and autonomous devices.
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So to explain how these AI autonomous drones would work, it's essentially this box about the size of a truck bed that can either be mounted in like a police pickup truck or be stored on various rooftops around the city. And someone just needs to point at a place on a map and the drone will fly and pilot itself around obstacles and basically circle around an area to do surveillance.
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And you can call it back when you're done. This would require... A whole bunch of drones to just be launching and being piloted by themselves. You wouldn't have to train random police officers to become FAA licensed pilots. And you could just have the whole thing in the box like it's called a drone in the box. And these are only going to become more common and cheaper.
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Imagine having 10 of these throughout a city, launching from like 10 different rooftops, being able to fly around by themselves, constantly going around communities, constantly going to GPS coordinates linked to 911 calls, creating a whole wealth of footage instantly available to police, live streamed from the air.
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Matt Sloan, the founder of Skyfire Consulting, a company here in Atlanta that trains law enforcement agencies on the use of drones and DFR programs, thinks that we'll start seeing autonomous deployment of police drones within the next year or two as police budgets increase and become allocated for unmanned aerial systems.
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He referred to the state of drone use by police as, quote, rapidly escalating. Chula Vista likes to market itself as a pioneer of the smart city movement, which consequently makes them able to receive a whole bunch of grant funding. Now, the idea of the smart city is built around having a massive amount of data to automate certain city services.
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So for this idea to work, there needs to be a way to collect that data. And these drones are a major part of that. The website for the city of Chula Vista also lists projects like electronic transportation, adaptive traffic signals, an app for non-emergency city services, as well as, quote, crime mapping and police dispatch modernization, unquote, as also being smart city initiatives.
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Live 911 is a new piece of software that allows patrol officers to listen to live stream to 911 calls directly and pinpoints the location of the caller via GPS. Now, I don't even have time to get into the many reasons that this could be a bad idea, but simply put,
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Police do not need to respond to every call that goes into 911, let alone be giving random cops this ability to self-dispatch on their own. It just seems like that could have many, many consequences. But anyway, back to drones. According to a 2020 article in the newspaper La Prensa,
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Cities in San Diego County, like Chula Vista, have received equipment such as tethered drones used for stationary surveillance, pole cameras, license plate readers, and cell phone cracking technology used to circumvent passwords from the Urban Area Security Initiative DHS grant program.
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A lot of these technologies have use in the smart city idyllic plan for data collection to automate city services. After the drone panel was over and I was walking around the show floor at CES, I couldn't help but notice all of the smart cameras and AI image recognition systems being advertised for law enforcement applications.
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Software that can almost instantaneously scan through a wealth of footage and track people's movements, run facial recognition, and identify every article of clothing. Versions of this type of software are already in use by many police departments, and they will only get better, cheaper, and more common. In effect, what this does is remove a lot of the detective legwork.
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Instead of having to manually map someone's movements and track down what niche Etsy shirt someone's wearing, these AI systems can now do this all automatically.
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To quote the MIT Tech Review article on CVPD's DFR drone program, "...as the technology continues to spread, privacy and civil liberty groups are raising the question of what happens when drones are combined with license plate readers, networks of fixed cameras, and new real-time command centers that digest and sort through video evidence."
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This digital dragnet could dramatically expand surveillance capabilities and lead to even more police interactions with demographics that have historically suffered from over-policing, unquote. Pedro Rios, a human rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee and a member of Chula Vista's Community Tech Council, was quoted in the MIT article saying, quote,
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People in the community have no awareness of what images are captured, how the footage is retained, and who has access. It's a big red flag for a city that says it's at the forefront of the smart city movement."
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If they truly have nothing to hide and are extremely transparent about the use of their camera-mounted drones, I wonder why they've spent years in court fighting to keep every second of drone footage from being seen by the public.
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Luckily, after Chief Kennedy talked for like 30 minutes about how much they care about community engagement and how transparent they are with their flight data, I was able to ask the chief how their commitment to transparency relates to the recent lawsuit she just lost over hiding drone footage. And I also threw in a question about drones at protests. Let's take a listen.
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Yeah, a question for the chief. So I know you talked about the importance of listening to the community and community engagement. And I'm not sure this is the case for your department, but other departments who've kind of followed suit, for your example, have been using drones to, like, surveil First Amendment activity stuff.
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And I know you recently lost a court case regarding the availability of drone footage. So I'm curious about kind of what... what the rationale for that footage is and how that plays into this idea of trying to be transparent with the community for how these drones are being used.
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Now, this is either a straight-up lie or a huge cope and a gross mischaracterization. But more on that in a sec.
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So yeah, there were no more questions after mine. I kind of shut down that possibility. Anyway, okay, so... First of all, the line between a protest and a riot is meaningless. Police can declare a riot for any reason they see fit, including people being in a road marching. I've seen this happen dozens of times, nearly hundreds of times, actually.
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So just moving on from that immediately, let's go back to the court case. The city of Chula Vista did lose the argument that they were trying to make. They did lose the case.
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The 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that claiming exemption from the Public Records Act was unlawful and sent the case back to trial court to hammer out the details of how much footage is subject to public disclosure and figure out a process for standardizing the release of the footage.
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Now, the same day I attended this panel in Las Vegas, January 9th, the city of Chula Vista requested an appeal to the California Supreme Court to prevent the release of their aerial video footage. There is a 60-day waiting period where the high court will decide whether or not to take the case.
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And if they decline, finally, it will go back to trial court to decide on the process of how selected drone footage shall be made publicly available.
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The police are now currently claiming that making DFR footage adhere to the Public Records Act would violate the privacy of Chula Vista residents captured in the videos, which perhaps demonstrates that the aerial videos should have never been captured in the first place. I'm going to read a press release from the city's communication manager, quote, unquote.
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So the city is both trying to argue that having to manually review each requested file to determine if the video in question is related to a pending investigation, as well as redacting personal information captured on camera, would be way too costly and time-consuming.
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City officials claim that reviewing and redacting videos from one month to obscure faces, license plates, and backyards would take a full-time employee around 230 days. I'm going to read a little bit more from the city's recent statement, quote, unquote.
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Somehow, the city is missing the point that this is the very reason the drone footage is being requested to learn the actual nature of this highly influential drone first responder program that's being adopted across the country. If the existence of this footage is such a massive privacy violation, that implies that the recording of said footage itself implicitly violates people's privacy.
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And the harder police fight to hide their sweeping collection of aerial footage, all the more suspicious this entire program seems. So that is what I have to say about Chula Vista's drone first responder program. In about a month and a half, the Supreme Court of California will make their decision on whether or not they're going to hear this case.
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If they decline, then the precedent will be set statewide against this exemption of the Public Records Act. by hiding drone footage. So that will be really cool.
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And then hopefully within the next year, we'll finally be able to see what some of this footage actually looks like, how good their cameras are, how much they can zoom in, all of the details of how much of the city they're capturing, all this kind of stuff, how often the drones are in the air, all of those types of things that will be easier to highlight once we can actually take a look at the footage.
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And I assume that going through and releasing requested files from one month We'll probably end up not taking 230 days, but I do know how the police love to love to stretch out these public records requests for as long as they can. As the request that this lawsuit stems from dates all the way back to April of 2021. So hopefully, hopefully more than three years later, we'll finally get a look.
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Special thanks to LaPrensa for starting this lawsuit and doing all of the hard work to actually force the police to be transparent. And if you want to read more, I'd recommend checking out their website, LaPrensa.org, as well as the MIT Tech Review piece, which provided some really, really useful information to fill in the gaps between my own research.
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So yeah, thank you for listening to It Could Happen Here. It certainly could happen here in terms of seeing more of these little fuckers flying around in the air.
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How much crossover was there between revolutionaries or workers' rights people or anarchists in Cuba and places like this? Because I assume there was a lot more growing sentiment in Cuba based on how that whole situation turned out in the next 20, 30 years. And I feel like there would be a decent number of crossroads, or at least some travel between some of these other nearby places.
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Totally. Well, and it shows just how like pop in the 1920s were kind of like everywhere. Like, yeah. Well, they're looking at like labor movement in the United States or like everything that you've been talking about these last few episodes about Latin American anarchism, like always in like the 1920s, there was always just like crazy shit going down consistently. For sure.
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Well, and similarly, once we start getting into like the early 30s, I remember in the last few episodes that you've done, you see the resurgence of like right-wing populism, like really hard.
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And all of this revolutionary potential that's been growing the past few decades all gets co-opted or channeled into right-wing nationalism, right-wing populism. And that's a whole other pivot that happens, not just the more communism statist one in the 20s.
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I think part of that rebirth is just because of how tied anarchism and anti-fascism is.
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I think inadvertently the rise of fascism may actually give birth to the rise of more anarchists as people get involved in anti-fascism because these things are so like you know, sister movements in many ways. I think that may be a contributing factor. That's certainly how I kind of got into this sort of stuff was through anti-fascism.
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And I suspect that that may have also been the case even a hundred years ago.
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I mean, it is a bit of a blueprint for what anarchism continues to be in many ways, even with the rise of distroism in the past decade or so, and popular anarchism. Less newspapers, more zines being held together by possibly one or fewer stables.
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I am a zine enjoyer. I have many zines. But we also have to evolve with the times in some ways. Not everyone's going to be reading newspapers. Not everyone's going to be reading booklets. Unfortunately, as much as I encourage people to do so, I do think there is value in attacking the information
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ecosystem that people more, more often use that includes, you know, podcasts that includes your fantastic videos on YouTube. Thank you. Thank you. And, uh, yeah, I agree.
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That's what I was wondering is if instead of widely distributing Sterner's actual books, was there some Sterner-influenced newspaper that people were running?
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That's so funny. That's so emblematic of where we still are with anarchism. Oh, that's good. That's good.
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Yeah. The tighter they hold their grip, the more systems will slip through their fingers. Yeah. Yep. Which is the line from the theory twink in season one. Yeah. And I think what makes the Endor so special is this does fill in this gap of like, when we jump into like A New Hope, you have this fully like complete like rebel alliance, right?
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It is an alliance of different rebel cells that have come together to do like a large scale military action. It takes a lot of buildup to get an alliance of rebel cells. A whole bunch of individual rebel terrorist cells usually have a very hard time working with each other. And it's very hard to get them to coordinate.
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And Endor is the story of watching these many different cells slowly start to figure out that maybe it would make more sense if we worked together instead of just doing random small crimes and hits on individual planets or imperial processing plants. The ability to see these cells come together is what makes, I think, Andor so special.
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And for the rest of the season, we're going to move forward a year at a time, all the way up to the beginning of Rogue One, where then we do have the completed Rebel Alliance. So I'm excited to watch that develop.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is the first episode that started differently in like 12 weeks. You're right.
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That's not what it's called. This is It Could Happen Here Executive Disorder, the weekly newscast where we cover, you know, everything happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by...
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uh federal no no new mexico state mexico municipal judge municipal judge robert evans that's right neil wong and uh james stout we're covering the week of april 24th to april 30th yes and we're sponsored by hymns not yet but hopefully when they release thems we will we will accept their contract money one day robert what's going on with your fellow judges
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I guess, you know, speaking of the Pope, Trump himself has announced his running for the Pope ship. Why not?
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Solidarity with the Wisconsin judiciary, or at least one of them. At least one of them.
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It could subject her to even more violence from the state, from wherever she's trying to flee from.
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Yeah. That's why you don't see very many of these things happening in states where people regularly carry firearms. Right.
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Yeah. What about the other like weirder case of the New Mexico case, the judge in New Mexico?
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Mm-hmm. All right, we are back. I am now going to discuss a, I believe the word is a flurry of executive orders that happened the past week because there was a ton. This was a huge week for actions through executive order. We've tried to summarize a few of these that have like or a few orders that have come in the past few months.
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But but yeah, definitely the ones that happened last week are much more notable. And I will go through them one by one, starting off with an attempt to possibly repeal large sections of the Civil Rights Act. Trump signed an order to, quote, eliminate the use of disparate impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible.
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Disparate impact is a legal theory that seeks to address discriminatory policies that on their face may appear neutral but actually continue decades old like discrimination and segregation. This order from Trump revokes presidential approval for Title VI anti-discrimination regulations from the 60s and 70s, and orders all agencies to, quote, The order calls for the Attorney General to, quote,
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Cabinet members were also instructed to review all pending investigations, civil suits, consent judgments, permanent injunctions, and government positions that rely on spared impact theory. That includes Title VII and VIII of the Civil Rights Act, which protects equal employment and fair housing. This is kind of part of a larger attack on civil rights in general.
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Obviously, the past few months we've seen this with DEI stuff. But last week, the DOJ essentially closed its existing civil rights office, re-signed a dozen senior career attorneys, curbed investigations into police misconduct and violations of voting and disability rights. Plus, the Education Discrimination Division is now being directed to protect women's sports.
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And the Immigrant and Employee Rights Division was told to investigate companies that, quote, unlawfully discriminate against U.S. workers in favor of foreign visa workers, unquote. So that's how they think they're going to be defending civil rights is by keeping trans girls out of sports and going after foreign visa workers.
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Basically, they're trying to turn federal civil rights infrastructure against those whom they were meant to protect in the first place. The next order kind of outlies something I'm calling cop nation. It's called, quote, strengthening and unleashing America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent civilians. This is kind of like a proto-martial law order.
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It's what you would do beforehand to strengthen police, but not actually declare martial law. It's setting kind of the path towards that, or at the very least, strengthening law enforcement to the degree to which it butts up against what martial law would be.
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The order calls to, quote, unleash high-impact local police forces, protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by state or local officials, and surge resources to officers in need, unquote.
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It directs the Attorney General to create a mechanism to have private sector law firms provide pro bono legal defense to police officers who, quote, unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law, unquote.
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So this tries to make it harder for police to be held accountable for civil and criminal misconduct, basically extending qualified immunity to the criminal realm.
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According to Business Insider, quote, following previous executive orders targeting a number of elite firms, nine law firms have agreed to deals with the president and collectively agreed to provide 940 million in pro bono legal services to support the president's policies, unquote.
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This order also calls to use federal resources to increase pay, expand training, and strengthen legal protections for police officers, as well as to, quote, seek enhanced sentences for crimes against law enforcement officers, promote investment in the security and capacity of prisons, and increase the investment in and collection, distribution, and uniformity of crime data across jurisdictions, unquote.
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The Attorney General is directed to review and remove any previous accountability restrictions placed on to local or state law enforcement agencies that might unduly impede the performance of law enforcement functions.
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And then finally, quote, Attorney General and Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist state and local law enforcement and shall determine how military and national security assets training non-lethal capabilities and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime, unquote.
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So moving more military and national security resources over to state and local law enforcement. and directs the AG to go after state and local officials that obstruct criminal law by, quote, prohibiting law enforcement officers from carrying out duties necessary for public safety or unlawfully engage in discrimination or civil rights violations under the guise of DEI.
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Do you want to discuss anything with this, you know, anti-ACAB executive order here and what it might actually, like, do in reality besides, you know, expanding, like, legal protections for cops?
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Well, and it also specifically empowers individual peace officers against any perceived restrictions that local or state officials might be putting on them. Yeah. And I think that's what makes it more super worrying for me. It's like enabling the police state aspect of the executive branch saying, hey, individual cops, we support you more so than whatever local jurisdiction you are under.
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And if the local jurisdictions try to restrict your ability to do violence, restrict your ability to do your job, we are going to help you to make sure that you have the legal and physical capacity to continue your job as you see fit.
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Both to defend your individual actions and then also go after the people in charge of you. Like both of them.
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is concerning especially in a climate of like migration crackdown right like this this data sharing will help them further target migrants well and this relates to another executive order uh for protecting american communities from criminal aliens basically it targets sanctuary cities uh the attorney general and the dhs secretary will publish a list of sanctuary jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration law and federal funds those districts will be suspended or terminated
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And if those districts remain sanctuary districts after officials have been notified of their status, then necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures shall be pursued to, quote, end these violations.
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Section 1 of this order lists several federal criminal laws that they say are being violated by these sanctuary districts, including, quote, obstruction of justice on lawfully harboring or hiring illegal aliens.
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Conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to impede federal law enforcement, assisting aliens in violating federal immigration law could also violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, unquote. So they're even wrapping in RICO here for state and local officials who are trying to protect immigrants in their communities.
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There's a few other executive orders I want to mention, including one that requires professional truck drivers speak English. I think this is actually just to mask the consequences of the tariffs with the fact that a lot of truck drivers are losing their jobs. Yes.
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So this is to hide those layoffs or try to force people to get laid off if they don't speak good enough English or to create pretext to have these layoffs be justified as we see the shipping industry slowly collapse because of the tariffs.
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Another order that's just more frustrating, I guess, to me and like worrying long term about the future is, quote, advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth. And I'm actually going to play a video here of Trump signing this order.
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This clip is super interesting to me because it demonstrates just how little Trump knows what's really going on. This is the first time he's seen this order. He has to get explained what it is before he signs his name on it. They're just handing him these things and he's just signing papers. He is not dictating which things he actually wants to happen.
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He just gets handed stuff and there's cameras on. He's like, hey, this is to help AI with kids. And you're so smart about AI, Mr. President. He's like, yes, I am, as he signs his name. The actual text of this order is really freaky.
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Quote, by fostering AI competency, we will equip our students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to adapt and thrive in an increasing digital society. Early learning and exposure to AI concepts not only demystifies this powerful technology, but also sparks curiosity and creativity, preparing students to become active and responsible participants in the workforce of the future.
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To achieve this vision, we must also invest in our educators and equip them with the tools and knowledge to not only train students about AI, but also to utilize AI in their classrooms to improve educational outcomes. James, how do you feel about that as an educator yourself?
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And they're like really committing to this. The end of the order directs the Secretary of Education to provide grant funding to, quote, improve educational outcomes using AI, including but not limited to AI-based high-quality instructional resources, high-impact tutoring, and college and career pathway exploration, advising, and navigation, unquote.
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I have one more thing I want to read here. This is actually a presidential memorandum, not an executive order, but this calls to investigate Democrat and grassroots funding platform ActBlue, alleging, quote, schemes to launder excessive and prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees, unquote.
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ActBlue has been the target of conspiracy theories for years, starting with James O'Keefe, and Elon Musk has recently targeted ActBlue with, quote, Bizarre conspiracy theories on how ActBlue functions and is used to funnel money to Antifa and George Soros money getting moved over to all of these Tesla vandals. Crazy stuff.
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But specifically, Trump is calling the Attorney General and Treasury Secretary to, quote, investigate allegations regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising platforms to make straw or dummy contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees and to take appropriate action to enforce the law, unquote.
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I think this whole thing, beyond trying to, you know, harm the Democrats' ability to like win elections in the future as a form of like election meddling, is also just like a big smokescreen away from a CNN investigation last year into deceptive practices used by political fundraising platforms WinRed and ActBlue, which found that the Republican platform had more than seven times the fraud complaints sent to the FCC than ActBlue during the period of 2022 to 2024.
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with the fundraising platform targeting aging seniors who thought they were personal friends of the Trump family, with propaganda and emails that tricked them into signing up for recurring donations in what they thought was a personal correspondence to President Trump. It's a really worrying investigation. It'll be linked below.
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And, like, you know, meanwhile, you have Elon Musk literally offering people millions of dollars to, like, get people to sign up to vote and sign petitions. And yet they're going to try to investigate, you know, fraud in Democrat and grassroots fundraising, which I'm sure there is a little bit of.
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But according to this investigation by CNN, so much more fraud on the Republican fundraising platform.
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Anyway, that is the flurry. We're going to go on one more break and then come back to close out on some immigration and tariff updates.
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The last thing that we'll mention is that Mohsen Madawi, the U.S. green card holder who was arrested by ICE at his citizenship interview, has been released from ICE custody as of April 30th by order of a Vermont judge. This is really the first piece of good news we've had in relation to Trump's crackdown on Palestinian protesters and student protests.
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So yeah, Madawi's case will still continue, but he will not be in ICE custody for the duration of this case.
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We'll be following up on both these stories as they progress. But that does it for us today here at It Could Happen Here. We reported the news.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is definitely like the tea party does have a sizable chunk of the blame here.
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Yeah, you have the materialists on the evil side, and you have the post-materialists on... Well, no, okay, so this is...
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Those things are what is causing our economic problems or housing problems. And then you have other instances like with like Mexico and Canada where they tie in the trade war with this like fentanyl thing being like, you know, like immigrants are bringing fentanyl over the border and And we're using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to stop fentanyl.
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So they're bringing in even more aspects regarding immigration and tying it directly to our trade wars with these massive countries, some of our most important trading partners.
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It's a good time. It's great. Something that Mia has probably called for before, but under different circumstances. Hey, look, have I ever publicly called for the arrest of a judge? I'm not sure I have. Maybe, probably not, because, like, arresting power itself is a little bit problematic. Hashtag problematic.
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Trump does keep lying about starting negotiations. Yeah, he's just lying about this. The Chinese government says, no, we have not started negotiations.
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You don't want to switch to costing $50,000, available in 10 years, pre-order now? Sorry, no, available in 20 years? I forgot about the environmental impact surveys.
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My favorite Gramsci. Gramsci. Whatever. Gramsci? How do we say this guy's name? Gramsci? Gramsci. Gramsci? Gramsci. See, you fucked up too. Yeah. My favorite Gramsci quote. We're entering the Chinese century.
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I, for one, am very excited to see the anarchist-liberal re-globalization alliance finally fighting in the streets of Seattle to regain globalization full circle.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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With God Emperor Mark Carney in charge, he will usher in a new era of Canadian progress and global supremacy. As climate change worsens, the Canadian economy will suck up all of the dependency and resources from the U.S. in the late 20th century. And finally, we will have a Tim Hortons in every country in the planet.
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Because you'll probably do this again in two years, but okay.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Now, oddly enough, Japan walked away with more power than either of those countries. Yeah, yeah. A little bit odd considering the conditions that led to this happening.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Dark Woke is back. Ten more years of liberal supremacy. Bankers in control in the great nation of Canada. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout. We are discussing the 2025 Canadian election, which I may be slightly exaggerated in the opening there. But the election did happen yesterday or two days ago, whenever you're listening to this.
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I was up all day on CBC and on elections.ca, checking in on all the charts and all the stats to see how this kind of upset election went. And oh boy, did it go. James, how much do you know about Canada and elections?
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I guess, yeah, we are both citizens of the Commonwealth. So there we go.
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But yes, we do have queen on money. Queen on money. So that's another thing I understand. We have a parliamentary system, like... Do I say England or Britain or UK?
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Well, we have one of those too, but it's less confusing because it's just one country. We don't try to be three countries like you and the UK, Britain and England do.
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Yeah, luckily, Canada's doing just fine. Debatable. But certainly this election has gone probably slightly better for global stability and stopping the advance of far-right populism than certainly what it looked a few months ago. Yeah. For people who don't know, yes, Canada has a parliamentary system. People do not elect their prime minister directly.
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They elect the MP in their district, which is called a riding. It's a first-past-the-post system, so whoever gets the most votes in each riding, they get their representative sent to parliament. the party with the most representatives, they take control of the government, and that is who the prime minister is.
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And the next prime minister of Canada will be Mark Carney, who assumed the prime minister role like last month, winning the liberal election after Justin Trudeau resigned in January. And before we get into some of the results, at first a little bit of an election kind of background.
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So liberals have been in power for nearly a decade, slowly getting less and less popular as the cost of living has risen. Last election in 2021, the liberals kept their minority government in But the leader of their party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, continued to decline in popularity. By the end of 2024, his approval rating was just 22%, or net negative 52.
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Conservatives were up 25 points in the polls. It was a near certainty that they would sweep the next election. Trudeau announced his resignation on January 6th, kind of the January 6th of Canada, if you think about it. Former banker Mark Carney won the party election in March of 2025. Carney quickly called for an election to write off the peak of anti-Trump sentiment sweeping across Canada.
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This was following Trump's talk of annexing Canada and the global trade war and tariffs directed at the American neighbor upstairs. Next door? I don't know.
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Which is maybe a northern standpoint, but who cares? Now, this election or an election would have happened by October 2025 regardless. But calling it early was a smart move by liberals, as this was the first time in three years that they had led in the polls before.
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Support for other third parties like the Quebecois Bloc and the National Democratic Party, the NDP, had slowly been shifting towards the liberals. And we saw this in the results Monday night. At this point, the liberals are projected to win 168 seats, falling barely short of the 172 majority.
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There's still, as of time of recording, still a possible path for them gaining a majority government, but it's fairly unlikely it'll probably be a minority government. The Conservatives have won 144 seats, the Bloc Québécois 23, and the NDP a measly 7, with the Green Party snagging 1. Liberals also secured the largest vote share, 43.6% of the vote compared to the conservatives, 41.4%.
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Though because of a vote efficiency, basically how spread apart certain votes are, this has still led to much more seats for the liberals than the conservatives, right? If you have more conservatives voting in a district that's going to go conservative anyway, those extra votes don't necessarily mean there's going to be more representation in parliament. That's the vote efficiency idea.
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Well, this is kind of what happens in Canada. The election system in Canada is pretty swayed towards the Liberals because of how much more dispersed they are versus most Conservative supporters in the Western provinces, Saskatchewan, Alberta, a bit in BC, and a growing presence in Ontario. But yeah, the Liberals kind of always get a bit of a boost in the election.
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Now, we did have record high early turnout in Canada, 7.3 million people cast their vote early during Easter week. The full turnout is higher than it was the past few elections, but it matches pretty much to the 2015 election. So to get a majority government, you need 172 seats.
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This allows you to not have to worry about no confidence votes, which trigger new elections, and you don't need to work with other parties to pass legislation.
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Now, this will probably be a minority government with the libs having to work with a small number of remaining NDP and block seats to run the government, which one could consider a good thing in terms of being pushed maybe towards some better policies rather than just like liberal supremacy.
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But it also means government will be more unstable and it kind of gives the conservatives more room to wiggle. So it's definitely a mixed bag. As reporting first came in for Atlantic Canada, it showed that this would be a tighter race than what the Liberals were hoping for.
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During election night, it seemed Conservatives were on track to pick up two seats in Newfoundland, though in the end, the Liberal incumbent barely kept their seat, beating the Conservative challenger by 12 votes in Terranova, the Peninsulas. The Libs did fare much better in Quebec, though. They flipped 11 seats. This was the best performance by liberals in Quebec in years.
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Now, conservatives gained some seats from the liberals in Ontario under Doug Ford, with conservatives flipping seats around the Toronto suburbs. One of the biggest stories of this election was just the complete NDP collapse, the progressive kind of democratic socialist new democratic party. They're currently projected to lose 17 of their 24 previously held seats.
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The NDP basically gave Carney this election. Jagmat Singh lost his seat. That's the leader of the NDP. He lost his seat to Wade Chung, a liberal, and stepped down as leader on Monday night. Part of what makes this such a big setback for the NDP is that because they fail to win at least 12 seats, they actually lose official party status in Parliament.
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Parties have to win at least 12 seats to be recognized as an official party in the House of Commons. Official parties get to have offices in parliament, extra staff. They get to ask questions in legislative sessions and can sit on committees. Now, the NDP did previously lose party status in 1993, winning only nine seats in that election. But this performance was slightly worse, hitting only seven.
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So this is going to be a big shakeup. The NDP is going to have to be forced to rebuild. which is maybe necessary based on kind of a degree of NDP stagnation the past decade. They're kind of caught in like 2017 politics, in my opinion, though Singh did lead them to pass some significant legislation. And progressive policies do have a degree of popularity in Canada.
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The NDP was polling about the same as the Liberals just three months ago. The movement that we're seeing is from NDP voters scared of Polyev and Trump, so they moved to Carney to avoid splitting the left vote, as Carney was seen as more capable of beating Polyev than the NDP leader Singh and certainly Justin Trudeau.
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Now, funnily enough, some of this quote unquote strategic voting actually did end up splitting the vote in a place like B.C. and specifically Vancouver, which recently has gone strongly NDP. But this year, the conservatives were able to snag three seats because enough previous NDP voters ended up going liberal in an attempt to gain a liberal majority vote.
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But that resulted in neither the NDP nor the liberal candidate actually individually getting enough votes to win the riding. Let's talk about vote share compared to the last 2021 election. So liberals did fairly well this election, especially compared to previous ones. They gained over 10 points compared to the last election in 2021. Conservatives also didn't do badly, actually.
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Like they actually did okay. This certainly wasn't the result they were wanting, but they did not do bad. They gained over seven and a half points this race. Reliable conservative voters still voted conservative, and they were able to siphon off some support from other parties, with conservatives doing slightly better than what polling predicted, but a lot of very close races across key districts.
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Now, where all those extra votes or vote movement is coming from is all of the third parties. The Green Party and the Bloc Québécois both dropped over a point. The far-right People's Party dropped four points, and the NDP dropped 11.6. Huge, huge losses for the NDP. Most of those voters probably going liberal, although some may just not have voted.
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One of the more interesting parts about this election is that the conservative party leader, Pierre Polyev, lost his parliamentary seat. He lost to liberal Bruce Fanjoy by about 4,000 votes. Oh, damn. 4.6% of the vote. So this is going to probably cause a bit of an upset in the Conservative Party.
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There might be some internal conflict over whether Polyev should continue as party leader, though he did not step down from that position during his concession speech Monday night. James, do you have any thoughts here before we pivot to ads?
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Yes. The reason why it's such an upset is because they were like destined to win as almost like divinely written into fate like three months ago. And the fact that they fumbled this is going to be like a massive like historical footnote. Not even a footnote. This is like a historical topic is how conservatives fumbled this election.
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And we will talk more about the background of the lead up to this race and those dynamics that James mentioned in the next segment after these ads. OK, to talk more about the lead up to this race and Trump's influence on this election, I talked with Lance from the Serfs, a fellow Canadian who talks about politics just as much as I do.
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So here is that interview that I recorded just a few hours before the polls closed in Canada.
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And you're Canadian, importantly. I am Canadian, but I have been resigned to living in the States for quite a while. I actually just had some Canadian family visit me, and they kept making fun of me for living in the States, specifically because the States are trying to take Canadian territory, seemingly.
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So now I'm getting a lot of hate from my Canadian family members for living in America, which is interesting. Yeah.
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A little bit. I am dual, but we'll see how long that matters. So I want to talk a little bit about kind of the background of this election, because I think this is maybe the most interesting Canadian election in the past 10 years, specifically because of how much the results have always felt inevitable, but the actual results have like flip-flopped.
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Three months ago, four months ago, I'm sure that me and you may have predicted probably something resembling a conservative sweep, not to put words in your mouth.
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Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Well, and I know like a decent chunk of the Alberta economy is now in great jeopardy because they can't sell Fuck Trudeau merchandise.
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Yeah. Well, you know, if you ignore the oil, which will probably be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I guess we talk a little bit about kind of what led to this universal hatred of Justin Trudeau in like the past, like, like five years, just like ever so briefly.
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Yeah, I mean, to go back to that COVID thing, I was in Calgary in spring of 2022, and I was getting made fun of in bars and clubs for wearing a mask at that point in time. That is Alberta. But yeah, no, that was definitely strong. We certainly saw degrees of that here in the States as well.
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But yeah, it's a little bit of that general anti-incumbent sentiment was growing so much last year, which you saw levied against the Democrats in the States. Yeah. And certainly against the liberals and the way that the liberals in Canada have kind of been able to maneuver away from that in the way that like the Democrats haven't is super interesting.
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It's not necessarily like replicable, especially for U.S. politics, but it still is interesting. I guess like on the conservative side, their leadership changed in 2022, right? Yeah, I think so.
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That's when Paulibert became leader of the conservative party, which is like, you know, closed ranks and like coalesced the past 10 to five years or so. And they've been, they've been gaining a large, or had been gaining, you know, a large degree of popularity the past two, three years, not necessarily because of who their party leader is, but because they are simply not the liberal party.
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At least that's kind of what it seemed like to me. Cause like, Approval ratings for Paul Le Verre has never been, like, great, but the Conservative Party has still been gaining popularity, at least previous to the past few months.
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Yeah, he had a pretty substantial makeover the past few years to make himself presentable in this way. Yeah, very Carlson-esque, very Ben Shapiro goes to Home Depot and gets some wood. Yes. Definitely pulling from that vein, although maybe a bit more successfully.
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And, like, at least from my perspective, it feels like the degree to which Pierre kind of hitched himself to, like, the Trump populist wagon the past few years, especially, like, with, like, sentiments, like, growing in, like, the Western provinces that kind of mirrors some of the Trumpian rhetoric, that type of stuff was getting popularity.
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And now, because he put, if not all his eggs, but some of his eggs in the Trump basket, this has, like, backfired in, like, popular opinion groups.
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when it comes to his ability to succeed as, like, a politician and, like, gaining support, because we've seen so much anti-Trump polarization based on, like, the 51st state stuff, based on the tariffs, and, like, Carney has been able to weaponize that pretty effectively against Pierre. Absolutely.
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Like, initially, like, the way, like, popularity points shifted was, like, by, like, 20 points, which was, like, huge.
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I guess I'd like to talk a little bit now at the end here about Mark Carney himself and kind of what this means for the Liberal Party. He was the governor of the Bank of Canada starting in 2008. Then he became governor of the Bank of England and managed them through the Brexit fiasco. Brexit was not his idea.
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He was not pro-Brexit, but he just happened to be holding the reins of the Bank of England during that time period. Returned to Canada, has served as an informal advisor to Trudeau. and now is the, is the leader of the liberal party. He's a very, I don't know.
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He tries to like project this sense of like, he's like a, like a reasonable man, which, which, which he, you know, in some ways is like, he's like, he's like kind of boring. He works in banking, right? Like he's, he's not like overtly charismatic, but he doesn't have like the, the like youthful, like bumbling presence of like Trudeau. Like he just, he seems, he seems kind of basic. I don't know.
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No, it is interesting that how much this election has almost mirrored the American two-party system with the Bloc Québécois as well as the NDP. Like, probably, most likely, right, this is before the results, but probably going to be losing seats to both the liberals and the conservatives.
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And, like, I think, like, a big part of this election, I think, is similarly looking back at the past 10 years is how much I think the NDP has, frankly, fumbled and probably needs to do a major overhaul to really regain trust in the voters. And...
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Yeah, it's going to be tough because I think like for the progressives in Canada, it's kind of been convenient for the liberals to have a minority government because they need to work with NDP.
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Thanks to Lance again for talking with me about the Canadian election. It's time for one more ad break and we'll come back to discuss the future of the Canadian government. Okay, we are back.
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Let's talk a little bit more about Trump's undue influence in the 2025 Canadian election, because it is a little bit odd for a foreign leader to be exerting this much influence in the votes of a separate country. Now, this was an election that was previously about liberal stagnation and wanting change in economic policy.
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This was kind of leading the conservative popular support the past two, three years. And very suddenly, this whole election changed and it became about who Canada trusted to oppose Trump. And who who Canadians wanted to be like the face of Canada in this new like global trade war and this fight against a hostile neighbor. And Trump did not help this.
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On election morning, Trump released a statement basically endorsing himself as the leader of Canada. Oh, great. Saying, quote, good luck to the great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power for free. To the highest level in the world.
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Have your car, steel, aluminum, lumber, energy, and all their businesses quadruple in size with zero tariffs or taxes. If Canada becomes the cherished 51st state of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this landmass would be. Free access with no border. All positives with no negatives. It was meant to be.
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America can no longer subsidize Canada with hundreds of billions of dollars a year that we've been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a state.
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This is the rhetoric that really produced a liberal victory. And Trump did kind of back off this stuff in the past few weeks. And it's very funny to see him go like full throttle the morning of the election in case anyone was like on the fence about whether they really was worrying about like Trump. This just this is like such a crazy Hail Mary. And we can see this in some polling stats.
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On Trump's inauguration day, the Conservatives in Canada were leading 44.8% in the polls compared to the Liberals' 21.9% and the NDP's 17.6%. But as Liberals searched for a new leader and as Trump took office, the Conservative lead slowly started to slip.
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The president began referring to Canada as the 51st state, called the prime minister, quote unquote, governor, and threatened to impose huge tariffs to stop a non-existent fentanyl smuggling crisis through the Canadian-U.S. border. By April, the conservative lead had fully flipped over to the liberals, who rose to 44% in the polls, conservatives falling to 37%, and the NDP around 8.5%.
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And these are pretty close to the final results. This number is very accurate for liberal support. Conservatives got a little bit more than 36% of the vote, and NDP got a little bit less than this 8.5. This is according to data from CBC and Abacus. This was very much a leader's election, meaning that one of the biggest factors driving votes was who people wanted the prime minister to be.
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And Mark Carney is much more popular, despite being kind of an unknown figure, which kind of actually helps in popularity. Carney was so much more popular than Polyev. The past three months, Carney has steadily gained in popularity, getting 46% approval, whereas Polyev has slowly declined in popularity.
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I talked about this a little bit with Lance, but the degree to which he's aligned himself with this anti-woke, far-right populism rhetoric really bit him in the ass these past few months. He would have done fine against Trudeau, certainly. He was really riding off that anti-incumbent wave. But he is not like a loved figure across Canadian politics, even among some conservatives.
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The two most important factors driving Canadians' vote, according to Abacus, was reducing cost of living and dealing with Donald Trump. Younger voters seemed to be more focused on cost of living and changing policy, around 57% of voters 18 to 29, while older voters, around 56% of boomers, were more concerned about stopping Trump.
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The very first topic in the Canadian prime minister debate was tariffs and US threats to Canadian sovereignty. This is seen as like a very real issue up there. And like hatred against the U.S. is genuinely growing. Like people are very upset. Canadians are very upset about what Trump and the U.S. has been doing. It's being seen as like a genuine, like intense betrayal.
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The Buy Canada movement's been gaining a lot of support with people trying to only purchase Canadian products. And this has resulted in a real cultural moment in Canada united against the United States.
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the degree which trump doing this global trade war has catalyzed negative sentiments around this like far-right populism global global wave that we've been seeing has really been a boon to neoliberal hegemony the the past few years you'll see like any i mean obviously like i take voter interviews in like legacy media with a huge pinch of salt right because it's
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Yeah. And, like, in Canada, I think it's less personality-driven. Like, actually, Canadians are very against personality politics.
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It's more, like, competency-driven. And this is where Carney was really able to succeed is because he's not a compelling personality, but he is, like, a professional. Yeah. And that is why he was elected. Carney helped Canada weather the 2008 financial collapse better than almost any other Western nation. He is genuinely good at his job of being like a neoliberal like bank economy guy.
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And specifically with these tariffs, this is the guy that you want to handle this global trade crisis because this is like what he has done his entire life. He's never been elected to office before. He is just an economy guy. And we saw this in head-to-head matchups with Carney versus Polyarv, rating certain things like finding common ground to solve a dispute, where Carney was 12 points ahead.
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Standing up to a bully, Carney's 8 points ahead. Managing household expenses, Carney's 6 points ahead. Sitting beside you on a long airplane flight, Carney's 6 points ahead. Right. Captaining a ship through a rough storm. Carney, five points ahead. That's what you need. You need a seafarer. Only five points ahead on seafaring. Hosting the best party. Carney, one point ahead. And we'll see.
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Well, the funny thing is the conservatives are still better in those types of physical things, like putting out a kitchen fire, Polyev is up two, and putting up a shelf, Polyev's up six. Those are the only two ones measured where... The conservative candidate edged out the liberals is putting out a kitchen fire and putting up a shelf.
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But all other things like solving disputes, standing up to bullies, managing like expenses, like household expenses. Carney Carney came out. I'm going to read a few lines from Carney's celebration acceptance speech here. And I'm just going to read them and not play clips because he blends English and French. And that's going to be annoying. No offense to our French speakers out there. Garrison.
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It's going to be annoying to play for a podcast. It's not going to do it for the crowd. Quote, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never happen. We are once again at one of those hinge moments of history.
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Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades, is over. But it is also our new reality.
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We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons. Unquote. Unquote.
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And yeah, this is the type of rhetoric that's going to be, I think, successful in Canada right now and probably in the next like few decades is Canada is going to try to take the spot that America used to used to hold as like the center of like global power, especially with climate change, with, you know, crop crops slowly, slowly needing to be moved north.
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I think as as as global warming progresses, Canada is in a spot to be like a new emerging like world power. And with the degree to which America is just kind of giving up that role under Trump, it's remarkable. Someone like Carney is very interested in in gaining that that degree of superiority.
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Now, I'm going to read a few comments from our listeners who I asked to send over their thoughts on the Canadian election. And yes, this is a limited sample size. It's based on the politics of people who listen to this show. But I still think there's some interesting points here outlining what's happened in this election. Quote,
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Mark Carney might not be far enough left for my tastes, but he immediately made gas cheaper, a tangible improvement for my broke ass. And with the way he's been polling, I'm settling on voting for him to keep the conservatives out with their stated anti-woke agenda. Parenthesis, bigoted. Another person said, quote, quote, This is something I've seen other people express, is like...
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With this kind of Obama-esque, you know, serious man in charge, this like return of neoliberalism, will this just set the stage for like the material conditions for someone like Trump to emerge in the next 10 years? This is a fear that I've seen people express. I don't think it is an inevitability because this is not America in 2012 or 2016. This is Canada in 2025. The world is different.
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But I can understand this fear. Lastly, I'll read from one other commenter from Blue Sky, quote, I understand the drive to keep the Conservative Party out of office, but I'm also terrified of what the Liberal Party will do to this country if they can keep campaigning on that very basis in perpetuity. It's good that we will probably avoid the worst.
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It's terrible that progress is on hold until the Conservative Party is no longer a contender, which could take decades. I also do not expect the Liberal Party to meaningfully change the conditions that are pushing voters towards reactionary politics to begin with, unquote. So kind of a similar sentiment there.
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I think the role for progressives in Canada right now is either to rebuild the NDP or infiltrate the Liberals, probably rebuilding NDP in most cases because they are going to have to have new leadership and seriously reevaluate their strategies going forward. James, any notes here, I guess?
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I think this is why some people are excited about the minority government, although it is less stable. Yeah. They could be swayed by some more of the progressive agendas from the NDP because they'll need NDP or bloc cooperation to run the government.
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Like, and the Canadian Liberal Party is not necessarily the, like, American Democratic Party.
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step on gaza is different like the canadian liberals have have restricted arms arms trades and arms deals to israel the past year carney has not thrown trans people under the bus the same way some democrats have the past year um like these are these are different people i think you know canada is a different country than the united states for now garrison
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And I think what we can see here is that this Canadian election, although it was close, it still was a rejection of Trump-style politics. Most Canadians do not want Canada to go the way of America. There's been a subset of Canadians, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, who have been trying to push for this, like, mega-style, like, Canada-first rhetoric. And this was denied.
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I think you were seeing more support for conservatives under Doug Ford with this more, like, moderate conservatism. I think that's something to, like, watch out for more. But, like, this Trump-style politics was... was rejected across the country.
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And Carney was able to figure out a way to make people trust him to be a genuine combatant against Trump and usher in a new golden age of neoliberal trade in the face of Trump's chaotic and anti-market sentiments.
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Yeah. Well, and frankly, you know, a better liberal party or a liberal NDP coalition would be willing to engage with the idea of like taking trans refugees from these extremely hostile countries, which is just something they've not like, you know, publicly talked about. But as things get worse in the States, we will see. Yeah.
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So yeah, that is what I have to say as a Canadian who lives in the United States. My thoughts on the Canadian election. You know, it could have been worse. It is odd to see Canada almost accidentally replicate America's two-party system. So even if this was a rejection of Trump-style politics, This climate of fear did result in replicating America's two-party system, which is kind of interesting.
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The amount of which the third parties lost support with support going just towards conservatives and liberals. That is one of the big stories of this election. The NDP blowout, one of the big stories. And Polyev losing his seat, I think, is at the very least a nice cherry on top for this election.
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Hi, I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode.
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Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time.
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And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big?
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You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Well, and the it being rebellion and the here being a galaxy far, far away. And the now being long, long ago. For this episode.
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Be like Cassian Andor and liberate Andor season two from Disney and watch it however you feel comfortable doing so. Yeah.
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The IRA, some of the IRA, like post Al Qaeda, like prison. Yes. Resistance, rebellion. Yeah. Yes. For how terrorist cells like form underneath.
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Yeah, let's start with the first episode. So undercover rebel agent Cassian Andor steals an experimental TIE Avenger, crashes it on a jungle planet, and then finds himself in a sectarian split between this other rebel cell who just had like a disastrous operation. Their leader got killed, so no one's really sure who should be running things.
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They capture Cassian because they think he's an Imperial pilot, and he tries to negotiate with them as their infighting continues on. Meanwhile, Imperial intelligence agents converge to develop a plan on how to squash potential resistance on the planet Gorman, as they plan to extract Kalkite minerals from the planet's core, potentially endangering the stability of the planet.
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To build the Death Star, by the way. Yes, to build the Death Star.
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Mon Mothma, the senator from Chandrila, who eventually becomes a rebel leader in the Star Wars movies, is helping to plan the Tradcath wedding for her daughter against Mon Mothma's own wishes. And she runs into some difficulties with someone who helped her clean up some of her financial blemishes to help finance the rebellion. So this is most of what happens in this first episode.
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Some of Andor's previous comrades from Planet Ferex are on this farming planet, and they're nervous about a potential inspection. So I guess, specifically, do we have anything we want to talk about on this first episode?
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I think they're part of the Ministry of Enlightenment is what they call it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Incredible name. They have some of the best bits from this meeting.
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Quote, hasn't there always been something a little arrogant about the Gorn? Yes. Very good. It's very good. Yeah, they talk about how they create false news stories and influence public opinion to be weaponized in favor of the Imperial project. The Ministry of Enlightenment stuff is very good.
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The other line I really like is from Dedra, one of the main characters from the previous season, who is this female ISB agent.
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And she talks with Krennic, Ben Mendelsohn's character, about how propaganda really only gets you so far. And instead, what they will need to work on is actually controlling the Gorman resistance from the inside. You need to count on rebels to do the wrong thing at the right time. So about astroturfing... some kind of insurgency that can actually, in the end, service the empire's interests.
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And this is what she's talking about for her project being is actually helping to influence the way that the resistance operates on the planet instead of just focusing on public opinion and propaganda and military might.
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They report directly to the Emperor. No other people beneath the Emperor knows what's happening.
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And even the Emperor doesn't really know all of the details at this point.
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Damn. All right. Let's go on a break and then come back to talk about episode two. Yeah.
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Let's do episode two. The Empire arrives on this farming planet to complete inspections on Coruscant. Our little slimy weasel, Seryl Karn, keeps rising through the imperial ladder at the Bureau of Standards.
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mon mothma's financial schemes to help secretly fund the rebellion start coming undone as one of her like backers or like the guy who's moving the money around for her yeah he's helping her wash her money one of her collaborators take hola starts to uh kind of back out or or ask for uh ask for some assistance and is getting erratic in his behavior as he's going through a divorce.
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Yeah. If I don't get something out of this relationship, I might be forced to do something else to ensure my safety and financial security. Meanwhile, Cassian is still on this jungle planet held captive by these sectarian leftists who start firing at each other and totally, totally break down.
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Japanese Red Army. And Cassian barely escapes over the course of this multi-day conflict with the remnants of this rebellion cell. Let's talk a little bit about this leftist infighting plot point.
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My pay is famous. Yeah. He knows who, like, the leader is because Luthen's team has been, like, supplying them with weapons. Yeah. But they don't know about, like, the internal structures of each of those groups for, like, OPSEC reasons.
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These are fucking jokers. Like, I'm doing a serious job.
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And as this group is interrogating Cassian, trying to figure out who he is, they keep trying to dig into what rebel group Cassian is a part of and who he's working with. And he's refusing to give them this information because that's good security culture. And they're like, but you know who we work with. And he's like, yeah, you shouldn't have told me that. Yeah, you shouldn't have said that.
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there's so many super long like tracking shots this season where they're going through like massive sets yeah with with all like like singular like one takes and like you know all the previous star wars shows are filmed on these like digital sound stages with like you know led screen backgrounds but like you cannot achieve this level of like in real life like fidelity on like a digital background screen like these are huge sets like specifically the shandrilla set is like
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massive as you walk around like Mod Mothma's like Senate estate or whatever for this, for this trad cath wedding that we'll talk more about in the next episode. Yeah. Just like really, really like excellent craftsmanship going into this.
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Let's talk about the finale of this little three-episode arc. Cassian's trying to contact Luthan and learns that his friends on the farming planet are actually being subject to some kind of imperial inspection. He's advised to not go there, but of course he does anyway to check on his friends, as is Star Wars tradition, a la Luke Skywalker in Episode V.
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People on this planet are trying to evade this inspection by forging emergency work orders, but their scheme falls apart. They might have been ratted out by one of the top guys running this silo, and imperial officers arrest and interrogate people for not having proper work visas.
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Yeah, Brasso. The guy who hits the cop with the brick in the finale of season one.
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Yeah, and as well as young terrorist Willem, who throws a pipe bomb into a crowd of stormtroopers in the finale of season one. So these three are in hiding on this farm planet and are now in trouble because these imperial inspections and immigration officers are on their tail. On Shandrila, Mon Mothma talks to Luthen, who's there for work because he's like an artifact, like a dealer,
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But she tells Luthen that the guy that they were working with to help Mon Mothma secretly fund the rebellion is showing some erratic behavior and may need to be, like, you know, bribed to keep quiet. Luthen, being smart and serious, knows that, no, no, no, no, no. You cannot simply bribe this man into silence. This man needs to get taken out right now. You need to close this.
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He's threatening to snitch. This guy needs to get dealt with immediately. The other plot point that I don't think we'll have much to talk about, but is very excellent. Our slimy weasel, Cyril Karn, and his new abusive girlfriend, Dedra, have Cyril's wonderful mother over for dinner in just a fantastically uncomfortable scene in less happy occurrences.
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As the Imperial officers investigate and search this farming planet, one of them tries to sexually assault Bix. inside their little RV home. Bix kills him, and eventually Andor arrives with a TIE Avenger, takes out this Imperial battalion, and Bix and Andor and the kid are able to escape, and Brasso unfortunately dies in a high-speed speeder chase.
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Hide. Hide. It's a stressful environment. It's a realistic fuck up, right? It sucks, but it's realistic.
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That's not true. Also, you're like a few days older than me. Come on. That's unbelievably not true. I am over half a decade older than you. Is that real? No, that can't be real. Yeah. We'll talk about this afterwards. I don't think that's true. Let me pull up my Mia Wong docs file to check. One sec. Okay.
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Well, that is an aspect. I think it also proves there you can operate in that zone because Matt Mothman is still a very important figure.
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And you have someone like Luthen who can put on nice clothes, can do this persona and extract intel at this party. In one of the previous episodes, he's like talking with this guy who introduces his son who is in the Imperial Navy. And he was talking about like a recent operation on a planet. And Luthen was like, oh, really? Tell me more.
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And like, it's like you can still extract information at these like places where power is like flaunted and exchanged. Yes, they are still bad. But if you are like an aspiring rebel. Yeah. You can use these places to your advantage. But no, there absolutely still is this juxtaposition of, yeah, this like, you know, riotous party with like this horrific ice raid.
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And yeah, the material conditions in these people's lives is very different. Even if Mon Mothma is doing good stuff, still as like an imperial senator, her everyday life is very different to someone who is having to hide from like ice agents. Yeah.
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Yeah, is to do drugs, drink, and dance. Yeah. That's how you exist under the horrific conditions that the Empire forces you to live under. Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah. the last thing I do want to mention, uh, is just a big shout out to Cyril, to Cyril Karn's, uh, Italian Jewish. Oh yeah. Um, oh yeah.
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However, one of the interesting parts about this little dinner party is how Cyril Karn's FBI agent abusive girlfriend, the moment Cyril is out of the room, she takes control of this mother using all of her imperial interrogation and intimidation tactics. Yeah. And it's like, no, no, no. You don't understand how this relationship is going to go. I am in charge here.
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I will dictate when Cyril can see you, how I will dictate how your relationship with your son is going to go. Because like Cyril is like my like pet. Like I run everything and things will go according to my wishes.
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Well, I don't know. He's like a weird stalker. He is a little bit of a stalker. And she is like, I think you can absolutely interpret some of her behavior as a degree of emotionally abusive. As a fascist couple. Before they're dating, maybe? I don't know. Fascist for fascist couple.
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I think there's elements, including the earlier scene of them in the apartment, where both of them are very uncomfortable around each other.
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His uncle's a dick! She does threaten to send his uncle to forever jail. Yeah. No, I can see how you would read it that way. I think I definitely do interpret this scene a little bit differently. Yeah. And I think the beauty of good writing is this ability to look at this relationship in multiple ways.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for me and you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. This week, we're covering the week of February 19 to February 26.
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And AFD won the majority of like working class, unemployed and male votes.
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Yeah, I mean, and people frame these results as slightly better than expected. Slightly. Previous polling showed AFD being slightly better in results, and that dipped after Vance and Musk started really trying to push AFD both in person and digitally. So you saw a slight dip there.
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people hate musk and trump so much in the rest of the world that like their endorsement could be something of a kiss of death electorally yeah yeah like the conservative party in canada has been growing pretty exponentially uh in terms of like popular support the past few years as the liberals have like tanked and now those trends actually started to reverse
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The Canadian like liberal polling is up 10 points. The conservative polling is down. Conservatives might not even be able to control parliament in the next election as they were like expected to. And it'll be interesting to see like if this if this anti like far right United States trend continues to more countries beyond like Germany and Canada.
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But I'm still I'm still eagerly eagerly waiting for the next Canadian election.
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Let's go on a break and return to talk more about the crumbling world and USAID.
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All right, we are back. I'm going to throw to James to do a segment on USAID.
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And there is like ongoing legal fights over this issue on Tuesday, February 25th. Another judge ordered the Trump administration to resume hundreds of million dollars of funding towards USAID. And there's no indication Trump's going to follow that order. They're already planning to appeal again. They have already appealed before.
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And we've seen them continually deny court orders from judges, fine loopholes, fine workarounds. And Musk and Trump continue to just openly float, like defying the order of the court. Representative Andy Ogles introduced... Articles of impeachment against a specific quote-unquote activist judge, this will go nowhere. They don't have nearly enough numbers to make anything like this happen.
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Yes, well, and they have openly floated just, like, defying orders because they're interpreting the actions of the judges as, like, themselves unlawful. But Musk has himself called to impeach judges who violate the law. And I believe his most recent pinned X post...
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reads quote if any judge anywhere can block every presidential action everywhere we do not have a democracy we have a tyranny of the judiciary so what a great legal mind shit we were saying and back in 2023 So this will continue. I mean, I'm really, really waiting for a final showdown between Trump, Elon, and, you know, maybe the Supreme Court.
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And, you know, seeing if they will actively defy a ruling from the Supreme Court if they indeed rule against Trump and Musk. But until then, I feel like we're just kind of all chugging along as the Trump administration, you know, very, very unconstitutionally defies the authority of the court.
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In some related news, last week, President Trump signed an executive order stating that the president can change laws. Cool. Erroneously citing Article 2, which only calls for the president to, quote, faithfully execute the law. I'm going to quote from the order.
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The president and the attorney general, subject to the president's supervision and control, will interpret the law for the executive branch instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. The next section is titled reigning in independent agencies.
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It reads the federal trade commission, the federal communications commission and securities and exchange commission have exercised enormous power over the American people without presidential oversight. These agencies issue rules and regulations without the review of the democratically elected president. They also spend American tax dollars to set priorities without consulting the president.
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Voters and the president can now hold all federal agencies, not just cabinet departments, responsible for their decisions as the Constitution demands. Unquote. This is absurd. This is extremely dangerous. One of the most blatant attempts at power that we've seen since Dick Nixon. This is going to get litigated, but this is crazy.
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The fact that we have a president saying that he has the ability to interpret the law, something that specifically he cannot do. That's why we have three branches of government. Just openly claiming that power is very worrying. Again, I feel like every episode on executive disorder, I say that I'm very worried, I'm very concerned, but that does continue to be the case.
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Speaking of shopping, I just got a fantastic Swedish M90 field jacket. It looks great. It fits tight. I'm very happy. Garrison's becoming a milserp. We will go on break once again to come back to talk about the Navy and the FBI.
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we are back let's now talk about the navy arguably one of the gayer branches of the military uh besides the besides the drone operators oh you're you're really missing out on the marines as multiple marine veterans have told me the u.s marine corps is the gayest place i've ever been The Marines are like part of the Navy, right? Come on.
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So, meanwhile, there's shakeups in the Navy and the Marines relating to Trump's anti-trans executive orders. And we have obtained an ALNAVE memo directed to all Navy units and Marine Corps from February 25th. that outlines the Department of Navy's guidance on how to implement the anti-trans executive orders.
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Now, this includes ending programs and policies related to quote-unquote gender ideology all across the Navy, as well as only using assigned sex at birth on official documentation. I will quote from the statement, quote, D.O.N.
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entities will review policies for, quote-unquote, intimate single-sex spaces and take appropriate action to ensure such spaces are designated by sex and not gender identity on installations, facilities, ships, and any other infrastructure under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy, unquote. So this will force women into bathrooms and barracks with men.
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It's in line with the stuff that Trump's been talking about and the stuff that he's been signing, but we are slowly getting more and more of these implementation guides getting sent around to various departments. James?
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It's not great. I'm going to wait before I do reporting on the implementation guides for visas. I know there's been a lot of articles in The Guardian and a few trans journalists have conflicting interpretations of a few Department of State cables regarding the issuing of visas to people who are trans. Specifically, I think the main cable that we've seen
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allows the continued issuance of visas, but that would only match what the case officer or whoever is handling the actual visa information, whatever they determine to be the assigned gender at birth to be. That's how it would get issued. But I'm going to wait to report on kind of the rest of the nitty gritty details because there is conflicting...
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information from these policy wonks, lawyers, and journalists themselves who are trying to figure out what the full implications of those cables are. We are aware of them. We've been talking about them in our chat. Yes, they are bad, but I don't necessarily want to overblow the scope of some of these things just to induce panic.
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when really this is all kind of very in line with Trump's earlier orders to only have male and female documentation that matches assigned gender at birth.
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I'm also going to note, we obtained information on the Department of Defense removing travel coverage for abortion. On January 18th, the Department of Defense Travel Management Office removed a section from their joint travel regulations that outlined travel allowances for, quote, non-covered reproductive health care, quote, meaning like abortion and assisted reproductive technology like IVF.
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Now, this change was directly in compliance with Trump's executive order to enforce the Hyde Amendment, which Mia has talked about lots before on the show. And then on February 4th, they actually reestablished coverage for assisted reproductive technology, so probably just IVF, but abortion was not reestablished.
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Correct, correct. For our last main story, I'd like to talk a little bit about updates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump goon, rap producer, and children's book author Kash Patel has been confirmed as FBI director. And Patel is joined by far-right podcaster and conspiracy theorist Dan Pancino, who has been appointed deputy director.
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Again, I don't want to just be talking about how kooky everything is in this new administration, but this is wild. No, no, no.
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So, not great. Not great. Last week, Patel told senior officials he wants to relocate upwards of 1,500 employees from D.C. to field offices around the country. And in a statement on last Friday, which is February 21st, Patel said, quote, "...anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life and our citizens here and abroad will face the full wrath of the DOJ and the FBI."
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If you seek to hide in any corner of this country or planet, we will put on the world's largest manhunt, and we will find you, and we will decide your end state, unquote. Agents and government employees have warned that under Patel, the Bureau will be on course to refocus efforts away from far-right street fighters and accelerationists and towards the nebulous BLM Antifa.
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In related news, on Tuesday, a far-right extremist named Joe Kent was confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent is a former Special Forces and CIA operative. He's described himself as an American first populist and has strong ties to the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer.
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Kent has praised Joey Gibson for standing up to Antifa, and Kent himself employed a proud boy to consult on a failed congressional campaign in 2022. Kent has historically advocated that the FBI refocus their efforts to target Antifa.
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And this is, like, all amidst a report from The Guardian suggesting that the Nazi accelerationist group The Base has had a decent resurgence in activity and recruitment efforts inside the United States.
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So not cool stuff happening. Read the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I guess I'll close unless we have any other thoughts on Kent or Patel or our podcaster deputy director. What are you supposed to say?
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I would like to close on three more funny news moments from the past week. Elon Musk danced around with a chainsaw at CPAC while multiple of his ex-wives and baby mamas pleaded for him on Twitter to respond to emergencies regarding his children.
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Including that weird far-right journalist and Babylon Bee contributor who's had an increasing spat with Musk and now, I believe, has filed for complete custody of their child. Yeah, well, I mean, good luck, I guess.
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Tesla stock is down nearly 30% this month. There's been a real pressure on him because people in Europe are refusing to buy Teslas and a boycott upset at him for doing the whole Nazi salute and being a Nazi thing. And finally... In some very sad news, a crypto trader killed himself live on a Twitter space in order to start a meme coin. Sorry, sorry. On an X space in order to start a meme coin.
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How do we feel about this, folks? I know it's a dark time for our community. They did start the meme coin.
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It depends. Yeah. Well, I think that's it for us. We reported the news again.
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Also, testosterone is... Yes, it is a controlled substance. It does flow in the bodybuilding community. Yeah, it's not well controlled.
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Then it is good to hear. I know a lot of trans people have essentially trauma with, with aspects of the medical community establishment, whatever. And like, you know, not, not all practitioners, maybe as much in our camp as maybe you are.
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And I would encourage people if they are, if they're still looking for care through like these, these sorts of channels, you should, you should try to find out where other trans people in your city are already going. Yeah.
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Yeah, there's there's certainly like clinics will have stuff on their website that indicate that they either specialize in this or they offer this as opposed to, you know, maybe just a general general practitioner who may not be, you know, the greatest in this vein. And like this, this still happens. I've talked to a lot of friends recently.
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who've spoken about having increasingly uncomfortable experiences with nurses or doctors when they're trying out like different clinics or different providers, university providers. So it is definitely worth doing some research beforehand so you know the place you're going is going to be like with you, which is just an unfortunate reality of being trans.
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But that has been the case for a long time and it only continues to be a factor when considering care.
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Earlier this episode, we talked about hope, and as important and as useful as that can be, it is also super crucial that people know how they're actually able to organize and actually try to get things done. After this last election, I'm sure many of you, like myself, were flooded with posts and performative calls to action. Now is the time to organize your community.
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but never with any real information on what that actually means or how to go about it. But something like the Starbucks Union is actually a very direct way to do that, especially if you're a barista.
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Yeah, so this episode is also going to be a little bit different because the idea is to cover each week of stuff that's happening vis-a-vis the White House. And it's been two weeks since inauguration day. And we are recording usually on Wednesdays. So there'll be, you know, a day or two there that we will record the week after.
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But we have a whole bunch of stuff today because we are covering essentially two weeks. I'll start with some of the transgender executive orders that happened last week. There was an order defining two sexes assigned at conception, which made plenty of biologists scratch their heads.
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A lot of this is just going to impact the ability to change your gender marker on federal documents for the next four years. You know, passports and also removing the X gender marker from federal documents. There's also a new directive that pride flags are not to be flown on federal buildings.
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Also, a separate one, I don't think we have included here in the research doc, about how brutalist and modernist architecture is now not allowed to be used on new federal buildings. You have to use Greek or Roman-inspired architecture because they project power. So all of those Greek avatar statue Twitter accounts have a complete cultural victory now.
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This actually is like bad, you know, very, very 1930s, you know.
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Well, and specifically is, like, calling, like, you know, modern architecture, brutalist architecture as, you know, as, like, weak or bad or things that get restricted. Yeah. On a more somber note, part of this two-sex conception thing also means that a whole bunch of trans women are now being sent to men's prisons.
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And, like, a lot of this stuff is stuff that we knew was going to happen, and it did happen quite immediately. Yeah.
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And this is just the start. I guess we'll throw over to Mia for some more executive action done on the woke gender ideology angle.
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Obviously, that gives worries for stuff that we've been talking about for years for how they might try to start bumping up the age for these HRT bans. This also could be them not really realizing what they're doing to some extent, because this could also just be copying, I believe, an Alabama or an Arkansas ban, and that was the highest age used in any of these state healthcare bans.
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They could just be copying that over because it is the highest one, and I'm not sure how much they've thought about their capacity to start arbitrarily raising that number.
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They're probably going to try to rewrite it. They might make it more targeted against, you know, woke, whatever that means. Yeah. It may not be as, like, broad as this initial memo, but they're certainly going to try again.
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most of the capacity of the federal government and it's going to take a lot of effort for them to sort through which of these things they could afford to turn off so that they don't end up like turning off the nuke police right yeah critical support to abolishing the nuclear security team yeah they did what biden couldn't do abolish the police yeah let's go on a quick ad break and then we will return to report more of the news
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All right, we are back. I guess I will turn over to our immigration and border correspondent, James Dow. That's me. Yes, please report the news.
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The only word we're allowed to use is a flurry of executive orders.
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Like this is like following the law, like this is like the process.
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Well, and this is something that Hegseth has previously been in favor of and he has now been confirmed. Yes.
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Okay, we are back. I have a few other notes I want to add for the woke front that I'm reporting on right now. I think there's been a lot of conflation between DEI and what we would consider affirmative action. DEI refers to these specific corporate training policies and diversity initiatives, which is separate from DEI.
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long-standing affirmative action policies, which has been used both in the corporate world and in the government for decades at this point. And what a whole bunch of this DEI rollback type stuff is essentially doing is just openly discriminating against people who are not straight white men. It's like, if you are a straight white man, we cannot hire you because that would mean we are doing DEI.
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And this is what a lot of the stuff that we're seeing kind of looks like. There was a mass email to federal agencies about DEI and calls to report DEI policies in their department if they're going by other names, right? So that would be stuff like affirmative action, right?
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If there's anything that is about trying to increase the diversity in your workforce or any quote-unquote woke topics, including gender ideology, anything, anything that seems vaguely woke You're supposed to now report to make sure that gets removed because that's not part of the new federal government.
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I believe someone from the NSA did leave a tip on that email line reporting DEI masquerading as another name. Similar to this, there was a memo or an email that was leaked to Ken Klippenstein from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which basically said that they're not going to be observing any woke holidays anymore. including Martin Luther King Jr.
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's birthday, Black History Month, Women's History Month, the Holocaust Remembrance Day, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, Juneteenth, Women's Equality Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month, with a small asterisk saying that the pause on observing these will not affect the federal holidays, which would be MLK and Juneteenth.
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Although, who knows, they might try to even remove some of those as being federal holidays. I did wonder that. Like, at some point, you're going to lose people when you take away their days off work. Right, right.
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So, like, I think they might leave those, like, actual federal holidays in, but you're not allowed to observe any of these other awareness months or, you know, Pride Month, Black History Month. Like, you're not allowed to... acknowledge that at all in these federal agencies now, at least for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Support for most of Trump's executive orders does fluctuate.
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According to a poll from Reuters, the support for closing all DEI offices is actually pretty split. 51% oppose The closing of these offices, according to their poll, 44% are in favor. And it's very segmented, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America. Pretty disliked with 70% being in opposition.
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Pardoning J6 protesters, new tariffs or taxes on Canadian goods, and ending birthright citizenship are all around 60-30, 60 opposed, 30% in favor. Trump, during his first week, did see a record high approval rating that has slowly, I think, gone down. But, I don't know, it's hard to gauge the level of general enthusiasm for his actions right now.
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And there's I think part of the general strategy that we're seeing is there's just so much happening every single day that you can't even keep track of it all, let alone like internalize it. Like he's he is trying to sign as many of these orders every day so that both the courts, all of these like NGOs, advocacy groups are always working. And we're never sure what is real. Right.
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We're never sure what's going to stick around all of these memos about funding and grants. It's just so exhausting. And that's like part of the design is that this just feels like a constant stream of nonsense that we maybe have to deal with. Maybe we won't. One of the more odd things is Trump openly embracing manifest destiny language, which I guess isn't actually odd.
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That's actually makes sense. It's just one of those things that it feels very Rubicon-esque. But he does have this new distinct focus on territorial expansion. During his inaugural address, he praised, quote unquote, our American ancestors for having, quote, won the Wild West. Now, apparently, the call about Greenland to Denmark did not go very well.
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Denmark did not realize how serious Trump was and was apparently quite angry during that phone call. And, you know, seemingly upset that Denmark is not going to easily hand over Greenland he seems to be pivoting more towards retaking Panama.
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Which is something that he also mentioned in his inaugural address.
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The quote from the inaugural address is, quote, the United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth and carries our flag into new beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars. Wow. Yeah. I don't know. What do you have to say? That's not a good thing. I think that's bad.
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Like, obviously, that's, you know, not great, not ideal. You know, invading Panama, not ideal. Going to war with Greenland, slightly more funny because it's cold. I think specifically he's focused on, like, why he believes the U.S. has a vested interest in Greenland isn't just picking out a spot on the map I think this also could be related to trying to prepare for climate change.
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Having territory in the Arctic is going to become an increasingly valuable commodity to have. And I think there is a part of this that could be legitimately on that side. Because, I mean, I don't know, maybe Trump should just get really into Alaska.
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But I don't know. I think it's also generally not super useful to make huge generalizing statements about what this type of stuff Trump is doing right now and how it will reflect on his entire presidency. People have been doing this kind of about Trump's flip-flopping opinions on TikTok. you know, being very into like, you know, saving TikTok and then calling it worthless.
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But then going back to actually making sure that Microsoft buys it or something. And, you know, people are very easy or quick to like jump onto these sorts of things. Trump's flip-flopping tendencies, maybe not sinking every single easy bucket and acting like these would be emblematic of his entire presidency. And like, that's not the case. That does not actually mean that. Trump just says things.
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Even though he's going to call TikTok worthless does not mean that he's going to not do that easy layup. We're all aware of how much he just says what is on his mind. And I think these sorts of things do not necessarily mean that he's going to plummet to being the most unpopular president ever because he refuses to use the right messaging around TikTok or something.
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The other economic situations he might walk us into would be much more affecting to his general popularity. Yeah.
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Yeah. So I think similar to how, you know, it was annoying in the first like resist lib era to take every single crazy statement Trump says seriously or like, you know, do this performative outrage over every single thing he does.
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I think it's also useless to do fast memetic reactions that form generalizing statements about, you know, how how something that Trump is doing is emblematic for the rest of his term. And now he's like doomed to failure. I think those statements are actually pretty useless and at the very least are not helpful right now. Let's close by talking about Guantanamo.
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I guess Robert and James, I'll have you take this.
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Is that this episode for this week, everyone? I think that's the episode.
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This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. And yeah, it's happening. The past few years, I've been writing about how the religious right has been trying to roll back trans rights, take away gender-affirming health care, and essentially remove trans people from public life.
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And the day that I'm writing this, President Trump just issued an executive order aiming to ban gender-affirming healthcare for everyone below the age of 19 in the United States, with promises to weaponize the Justice Department and alter the national health guidelines for gender-affirming care. And unfortunately, this is just the start.
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But this won't be a wallowing in the doom and gloom episode, nor will I be laying out the foolproof solution to get us out of this predicament. Instead, we'll be hearing from two people who are trying to do something to affect change in the physical world. Last month, Mia and I talked with Neha and Cassie, who are organizers and baristas with Starbucks Workers United.
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And they also co-facilitate that union's trans rights action committee called TRAC. And specifically, the topic of this episode is how to use union organizing as a way to fight for trans rights and secure access to gender-affirming healthcare. Which is, unfortunately, an increasingly critical issue.
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We've already had conservative states like Tennessee pressuring private insurance companies to drop covering gender-affirming care by blocking insurers from contracting with the state's Medicaid program, basically holding it hostage.
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And now, with the federal government threatening gender-affirming care and seemingly more and more restrictions kind of on the horizon, working outside the state and not relying on government programs like Medicare and Medicaid will only become more necessary. And union organizing is one way to do that.
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A union contract, union infrastructure, and the collective resources of you and your fellow union workers can help protect trans people in the workplace and get us the things we need. If you already have a union at your workplace, you can get more involved and fight to prioritize trans rights.
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And if you don't have a union, you can work to secure access to gender-affirming care through unionizing your workplace and having healthcare protections as a core part of your contract. For more on that topic, I'm going to play the conversation between my fellow union member, Mia, and Neha and Cassie from Starbucks Workers United. And I'll occasionally pop back in to provide some context.
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But it is not just healthcare that is under threat right now. Just days into office, Trump already started to roll back Biden-era federal discrimination protections. Last Monday, the Trump admin sent a memo ordering a freeze to all federal grants, loans, and aid.
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requiring a sort of audit to ensure the recipients of those funds use the money in a way that, quote, conforms to the administration priorities, unquote, and not to promote, quote, DEI and woke gender ideology, unquote. On Tuesday, a judge temporarily halted the order, and on Wednesday, the White House revoked the directive.
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But this clearly demonstrates what the new priorities are for the conservative government. And they will most certainly try this again, probably in a more targeted, discriminatory fashion to limit the general backlash. But even as the government starts openly allowing discrimination, or even encouraging it, discrimination protections is still something that unions can write into their contract.
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Now, if you don't have union organizing experience, this could all seem a little intimidating, even if you already have a pre-existing union at your workplace. Mia has done a whole bunch of episodes on unions and labor organizing on this podcast. You could certainly look to for more information and a bit of encouragement.
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In 2023, Neha co-founded TRAC, the Trans Rights Action Committee, which is a subcommittee of the Starbucks Union that was started to help advocate for trans rights within the union and share information about the challenges trans workers were experiencing.
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We asked Neha about the process of getting this focus on securing trans healthcare through your union to be something that the union collectively fights for.
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Track's logo says trans rights are labor rights, a phrase one of Neha's coworkers came up with to express the idea that even if your state becomes an unsafe place for queer and trans people, trans people will still fight to ensure that their workplace, their store, is a safe place for any trans person who works there.
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As the functioning of the state and the federal government becomes more and more alienated and distant, or in many cases, increasingly hostile to the likes of you and me, one of the few ways we can still exert power over our lives is through unions, regardless of whether you live in Portland, Oregon, or Oklahoma City.
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And specifically, as access to trans health care becomes more and more of a growing issue, this is becoming more of a core issue itself that you can organize around and can actually build a union around.
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And do you know what else is important? Being subservient to the capitalist impulse of pivoting to ads. Okay, we are back. Here's more of our interview with Starbucks Workers United.
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Something that Mia pointed out is that one of the few places trans people are actually overrepresented is in union organizing because trans people don't really have a safety net. Fewer of us can turn to or rely on family support. So union organizing is one of the ways we can directly fight for a better life.
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The Starbucks union is also fighting for guaranteed scheduling and better staffing at stores. And this relates directly to a worker's ability to access healthcare and gender-affirming healthcare. Part of Starbucks healthcare being somewhat inaccessible is that employees have to work a certain threshold of hours to qualify for benefits, including healthcare.
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Failure to get enough hours of work scheduled means losing access to your own health care. And this kind of reflects a more subtle form of employment discrimination.
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And obviously, this benefits all workers because everyone benefits from having enough hours to actually get the money you need to live. The Starbucks union started the official bargaining process with the company last April. And they were supposed to have their final bargaining session last December, based on a shared expectation that the contract would be closed and ratified by the end of 2024.
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So with less than a week's notice, they organized the biggest ULP strike in the union's history, resulting in 5,000 baristas at over 300 stores across the country going on strike on Christmas Eve. Now, this is not the kind of open-ended ongoing strike that you're probably more familiar with.
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A ULP strike refers to a short-term strike action directly tied to an unfair labor practice, which is any act by an employer that violates a worker's legal rights. And unlike ongoing strikes, ULP strikes can happen anytime, not just during contract bargaining. In fact, the Starbucks union has utilized ULP strikes the past few years to address unfair labor practices.
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Part of the shared agreement to finish the contract before the year's end was to also resolve outstanding unfair labor practices by the end of 2024. which did not happen, and thus the strikes. And this was a super tight turnaround to organize strikes of this scale.
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By having a representative or delegate from each store in the union present at bargaining, which is hundreds of workers, that provides a direct link to every store in the campaign. This was how the union was able to pull off a mass mobilization on an extremely tight turnaround.
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So when it's time to vote to go on strike, there's already workers across hundreds of stores around the country ready to organize their co-workers and get the word out. Contacts with union advocacy groups and a network of allies ranging from campus activists to LGBTQ organizations can also help spread the word about these strikes, raise awareness, and pull more numbers onto the picket line.
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On more of a big picture note, once you get these sorts of structures and networks from union organizing, you also gain the actual capacity to deploy them quickly in a way that actually lets you do rapid responses to changing situations. And that capacity is something that trans advocacy just hasn't really had in a long time.
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We're going to go on another ad break and return to finish up our interview with Starbucks Workers United. Okay, we're back. I'm now going to throw to Mia for a discussion on how union organizing can help strengthen trans advocacy in general.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Okay, we're back. Now, although Chung has at least temporarily halted ICE's efforts to detain or deport her, not all legal recourses have proven successful. This week, a U.S. district judge declined a request to block the deportation of Cornell student Mamadou Tal after the State Department revoked his visa.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
On March 31st, Tal released a statement, quote, Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favorable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs. I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted. Weighing these options, I took the decision to leave on my own terms.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
So Tal has elected for the quote-unquote self-deportation option, at least for now. I believe his case is going to continue, but he's not going to remain in the United States.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
I believe so, yeah. He's a British citizen. Now, interestingly, last September, Cornell University itself tried to revoke Tal's student visa for involvement in student protests, but he successfully appealed and was able to continue his African Studies PhD remotely.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Yeah, no, he entered this period of radio silence after he won his appeal last fall and then only started speaking publicly again once he began getting targeted by the Trump administration like the past month and a half.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Now, the scale that Mark Rubio and ICE are seeking for in regards to deportations is seemingly going to be increasingly large. On March 27th, Secretary of State Mark Rubio claimed that he has revoked over 300 student visas so far, saying at a press conference, quote, we do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas, unquote.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Now, there are a few ways the government is currently trying to find these quote-unquote lunatics. ICE seems to be targeting non-citizens who have been arrested or detained at Palestine protests, even if their charges were subsequently dropped.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This is the case for Chung and Srinivasan, as well as former student Lekha Kordia, a Palestinian who was arrested at Columbia campus protests in April of 2024. She is currently being held in an ICE detention facility in Texas.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Now, beyond arrest records, the government is utilizing the World Wide Web and social media to identify new and returning visa applicants and possibly current visa holders that, quote, support terrorist organizations, unquote. Social media screening of immigrants and visa holders has been slowly ramping up since 2014 and accelerated during Trump's first term.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
But a new directive from Secretary of State Mark Rubio, titled Enhanced Screening and Social Media Vetting for Visa Applicants, was sent out on March 25th and leaked by journalist Ken Klippenstein.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The directive cites two executive orders from Trump, measures to combat anti-Semitism and, quote, protecting the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats, unquote.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The State Department is now requiring consular officers to conduct a quote-unquote mandatory social media review with screenshotting for students and student exchange visitors with the intent of looking for evidence of quote, advocating for, sympathizing with, or persuading others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support a designated foreign terrorist organization, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Now, this applies to FM and J visas, so student exchange visas, academic visas, and vocational visas. The directive also instructs officers to search social media for, quote, conduct that bears a hostile attitude towards U.S. citizens or U.S. culture, including government, institutions, or founding principles, unquote. Which is kind of the most incredibly broad thing I've ever seen.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
There's already been an instance of US customs agents denying entry to someone who had a quote-unquote anti-Trump sentiments found on their phone. Now, though this new directive is focused on denying or revoking student visas, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to expand its social media data collection to U.S. citizenship, green card, and asylum applicants.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Basically, anyone and everyone in the U.S. immigration system, no matter their current status or what previous vetting they might have already gone through. Yeah.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
On March 5th, DHS issued a 60-day notice for public comment on a proposal for, quote, uniform vetting standards and national security screening, unquote, that includes the collection of social media information for all non-citizens applying for immigration benefits like citizenship or permanent residency. A statement from the U.S.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Citizenship and Immigration Service reads, quote, these efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
It's like crazy Red Scare level stuff.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Former immigration agents have suggested that they're probably going to use some AI system for this as they've already kind of used more primitive versions. But ramping up to this scale and with like this increased focus and like attention on quote unquote AI is going to affect the way that they do this vetting process. Absolutely.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Great. So though the government is trying to increase their social media screening, so far, they actually haven't had to do that much of their own research to identify targets for removal. On March 17th, a Georgetown scholar named Bidar Khan Suri was arrested by Homeland Security outside his home in Virginia, where he lives with his wife, who's a U.S. citizen, and their three kids.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
According to Suri's lawyer, masked agents, quote, refused to tell him the basis for the arrest, handcuffed him, and forced him into an unmarked black SUV, unquote. Later, his wife was informed that her husband's visa was revoked based on the social media posts and that Suri was sent to ICE detention in Louisiana.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Suri was, actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media. The Secretary of State issued a determination that Suri's activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable, unquote. Jesus.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Of course, any single post in support of Palestine is going to be seen as, quote unquote, promoting anti-Semitism, according to Mark Rubio. Suri's lawyer wrote in a court filing, quote, Dr. Suri is an academic, not an activist, but he spoke out on social media about his views on the Israel-Gaza war.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This episode is going to be about ice actions against students, scholars, and professors around the country and this wave of deportations targeting people engaged in pro-Palestine speech, protest, as well as some individuals who have been roped up in this new wave of deportations who have not publicly engaged in Palestine activism. Let's start on the evening of Saturday, March 8th.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Even more so, his wife is an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and the violence it has perpetuated against Palestinians, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Correct. And we'll get to that. Suri has no criminal record, and according to a colleague, he did not attend campus protests. However, Suri's lawyer writes that his family have been victims of a doxing campaign, with his wife stating that a website had, quote, claimed falsely that my husband and I have, quote, ties to Hamas, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The Homeland Security Assistant Secretary referenced that claim in a public statement on Twitter. And this harassment stems in part from Suri's father-in-law being Ahmad Youssef, a former advisor to Hamas. A federal judge blocked Suri's deportation as immigration court proceedings continue, but he still remains in ICE detention. What kind of visa was he on? He's not a green card holder.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
He received his visa to continue doctoral research on peace building in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's some kind of academic or exchange visa. I don't think we know the exact type that he has.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
I mean, obviously not if they're finding these green card people, but like... Well, I think specifically in this case, they're searching social media. They're not searching through their own databases. They don't care what kind of visa he has. They're looking at this doxing campaign that's been targeted at him and his family for like over a year and using that as the basis to deport him.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Even though his wife is a citizen...
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
His wife, whose father is Ahmad Yusuf, they can't deport her because she's a citizen, or at least they can't deport her right now. Who knows if they'll try to denaturalize in the future. Yeah. But this is the easiest person to target.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Yeah, and using social media to identify people who have never been arrested, never been charged with anything.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
We're going to finish our discussion on these doxing campaigns and ICE action-starting students after this ad break.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Mahmoud Khalil and his wife were returning home from dinner when plainclothes ICE agents followed the couple into their campus apartment building at Columbia University. A man wearing a Marvel graphic tee arrested Khalil for then unknown reasons and threatened to arrest Khalil's wife, who is eight months pregnant and an American citizen.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
All right, we're back. So right now, the two main vectors for ICE detention, whether you have a green card or a visa, seems to be previous arrests or these mass doxing campaigns. Now, someone like Mahmoud Khalil was never arrested or charged with a crime, but instead has been the target of harassment from both a local campus doxing account run by Columbia professors and fellow students,
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
When Khalil's wife brought his green card from their apartment, she says one of the ICE agents placed a phone call, informing someone Khalil was a permanent resident. to which the person on the phone replied, let's bring him in anyway.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
as well as larger right-wing Zionist organizations like Canary Mission. A few days before being arrested by ICE, Canary Mission posted a video naming Khalil as a quote-unquote siren emoji, suspected foreign national alert. So what is Canary Mission, if you're lucky enough to be unaware?
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Since 2015, Canary Mission has been collecting and publishing personal information of people they accuse of promoting, quote, hatred of the United States, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Now, they have profiles for a few legitimate American neo-Nazis, but many profiles only cite criticism of the Israeli government and its actions in Gaza as proof of alleged anti-Semitism.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And now there is increasing evidence that the government is using websites like Canary Mission to target students, professors, and scholars for ICE deportation, essentially outsourcing intel gathering from these pro-Israel non-government organizations. A few weeks ago, Canary Mission uploaded a profile for Rumeza Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
They included a picture, her resume, and linked to an op-ed she co-wrote last year for her student paper criticizing the university for its ties to Israel amidst the war in Gaza. For this, the Canary mission claimed Ozturk, quote, engaged in anti-Israel activism, unquote. Two weeks later, while walking alone to Iftar dinner for Ramadan, a plainclothes ICE agent approached Ozturk on the sidewalk.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
As he grabbed her arms and wrestled away her phone, five more agents surrounded her and pulled up their gator masks as neighbors began filming the arrest. Within 24 hours, she was moved to ICE detention in Louisiana.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
A statement from Homeland Security claimed that HSI, Homeland Security Investigation, had determined that Ozturk, quote, engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And Secretary of State Mark Rubio said, quote, we gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Yeah, there's no evidence she was even attending campus protests, let alone tearing up the university. She co-wrote an op-ed, and you should not be deported for engaging in protests on a university campus at all, right? This is blatantly unconstitutional, extremely worrying.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The fact that this person just got a profile in the Canary Mission website for writing an op-ed, and then this is used as justification for her deportation is still an even greater escalation.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Yes. On March 24th, Canary Mission published a new section of their website titled Uncovering Foreign Nationals. which lists the profiles of non-citizens who they believe qualify for deportation.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Another far-right pro-Israel doxing group called Batar, which even the ADL lists as an extremist group... Which is wild. Bataar says that they have given the Trump administration a deportation list of thousands of names, including citizens that they expect to be denaturalized. People like Mamadou Tal and Mahmoud Khalil have been targeted by both of these organizations.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Yeah. Like, uh, making light of the pager attack Israel did. I mean, making a threat, like, sure.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Or even just like, quote unquote, celebrating the deaths of people, right?
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The past week, ICE actions against students have seemingly accelerated. Ali Reza Daroudi, a doctoral student from Iran studying at the University of Alabama, was arrested by ICE on March 25th in the middle of the night at his off-campus apartment. Daroudi's entry visa expired, but he was allowed to stay in the States as he still maintained his student status.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
It's unknown why exactly he was targeted. He has no ties to protests or any notable online footprint.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
No. Simply, his entry visa expired. So if he left the country, he then would have to get another visa to get back in. But he can stay as long as he still has his valid student status. So not only is ICE trying to revoke these visas, but they're trying to essentially say that by revoking these visas, they are also attempting to strip them of their student status, which is like a separate step.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
During the arrest, Khalil's lawyer, Amy Greer, spoke on the phone with one of the ICE agents who said that they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil's student visa. Greer reiterated to the agents that Khalil was in fact a permanent resident with a green card. But the ICE agent just responded by saying they were revoking the green card instead.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
These things can get kind of very blurry, though.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Technically, the State Department does have that ability, but it's under the same like foreign policy risk designation.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And they'll justify it by saying, well, his visa already expired. So we're just removing him because his visa expired, even though that's not really how this works.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
No, because the University of Alabama did not elect to rescind his student status. He was a student in good standing. Yeah. And thus legally allowed in the United States.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Just this last week, ICE detained a University of Minnesota grad student at their off-campus housing. The university released a statement saying that they had no prior knowledge of this incident and had not shared any information with federal authorities. This person's name is still not released. Last week, a student at the Southern Illinois University had their visa revoked.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The school administration told their college paper that the university has no role in the visa revocation process. The Illinois governor's office is working with schools across the state to, quote, ensure they are being vigilant about what's happening on their respective campuses.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The governor's team has asked universities to communicate with international students about the general resources available to them through the institution. In addition, we have suggested that they revoke connect impacted students with legal resources that have been in place for several years, unquote, according to a statement sent to the university paper, The Daily Egyptian.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Tina Sickinger, which is a very cool name, the school's director of international student and scholar services, sent an email to the international student body of Southern Illinois University, advising them to carry photocopies of immigration documents with them at all times, as well as proof of enrollment and records of U.S. residences.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The email recommended that students, quote, use caution on social media and exercise discretion when participating in political demonstrations or protests, unquote. warning that though protests should be protected speech, quote, such activities can sometimes be misinterpreted and may carry risks to your immigration status, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Unfortunately, I think this is the university trying to look out for these students. Yeah, that's the best you could expect from them, really. And they are providing like legal resources to these students, but they're essentially saying like you shouldn't post anything or do any protests because then ICE might come kidnap you. Yeah. Which is... just a fucked up situation to be in.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And they don't have any other ability to stop this right now. I am curious what Pritzker is going to continue to do here, though.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
So that is the situation as it currently stands. I do have one final tidbit here just that highlights the absurdity of this whole situation.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
On March 24th, a lawsuit on behalf of Israeli Columbia students and relatives of Israeli October 7th victims was filed against Columbia Jewish Boys for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and individual Columbia students, including Mahmoud Khalil.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Khalil's a graduate student who has been studying at Columbia for over two years. Last year, Khalil emerged as a visible figure in the college encampment protests, becoming a public spokesperson and a lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Though never being arrested, Khalil faced harassment from right-wing Zionist doxing campaigns calling for his deportation.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The lawsuit alleges that these Columbia groups and students are the domestic propaganda arm of Hamas and even claims that these groups had advanced notice that the October 7th attack was going to take place. Oh, come on. So... The plan was kept secret among Hamas's own political allies in the region. But they gave an Ivy League university in New York City a heads up. A tip off.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Hamas didn't tell the Houthis. They didn't tell Iran. They didn't tell Hezbollah. Didn't tell Hezbollah, yeah. But they told student activist groups in New York City at the Columbia University campus.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Some of the quote-unquote evidence that they allege is that some of these activist accounts had renewed activity in October of 2023, before the attack happened. But this is just a simple coincidence. Obviously, these people did not have a heads-up that the October 7th attack was going to take place.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The lawsuit also argues that protest activity is not First Amendment protected speech, but in fact, quote, substantial assistance in the form of propaganda and recruiting services and in coordination with a designated foreign terrorist organization. Again, alleging there is some kind of communication between Hamas and student activists in New York City.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
I will end us with just this kind of final note. Now, while there are little signs that this would happen at a scale this large and this focused under a Democratic president, a degree of consent for this type of targeting was manufactured the past year as it relates to Palestine protests. with some liberals and democratic politicians associating activists as pro-Hamas terrorists.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And this is the consequence of that public perception building and the consent being manufactured for that framing. And now that the even more evil side is in charge, they can take that justification and run with it way further than what a Joe Biden or a Kamala Harris would have done. So it is far worse, but it's not in a political bubble.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This has been like a growing project for the past few years.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
They never defended the constitutionality of this speech. Nor would they have intervened to stop the deportation of someone like Tall if Cornell decided to revoke his status, right? Right, yeah. I don't think the Biden administration or a Kamala Harris administration would be directing these universities to take that action themselves.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Nor would they be, I think, revoking student visas at scale like this. No. But they would have let ICE do the stuff that ICE does if universities themselves elect to remove student visas or unenroll these students. And like a degree of the complacency here is placed on the actual university administrations, the university staff who have been vilifying these protesters for the past two years.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And when ICE did come for Khalil, disappearing him to a detention facility in Louisiana and cutting him off from communication with his wife and lawyer, Throughout all of this, he was not charged with any crime.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
It's also worth noting that since I've had to quote from so many government statements this episode, the Trump admin is continuing to correlate any expression of sympathy or solidarity with Palestine as explicit support for Hamas.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Basically, anything you say that's critical of the Israeli government, its actions in Gaza, are being interpreted by the Trump administration as anti-Semitism and support for the October 7th massacre. This is a false equivalency. What the government alleges should not be automatically taken as the truth.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
These tactics have been used for years to broadly smear pro-Palestine activists while also hurting anti-Zionist Jews. And I guess, like, finally, we are not necessarily endorsing every single thing that every single one of these students has said. Yeah. We do not necessarily agree with the framing of every single sentence that they have said. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Yeah, exactly. This is, like, completely separate to that.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Instead, ICE and the State Department are using a rarely used Cold War-era immigration statute that gives the Secretary of State the power to exclude or deport any non-citizen of the United States if there are, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that an individual's entry, proposed activities, presence, or activities in the United States would have, quote, potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Correct. No matter what they're saying, no matter if they have opinions on Hamas that differ from ours, no matter what they are saying at a campus protest, it should not result in ICE targeting them and hunting them down and forcing students who attend sit-in protests into hiding to defend their own rights and to keep their green cards.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This is a completely absurd and blatantly fascist, to use the now overused word, frankly. But this is. This is what that is. If this was happening in China, if this was happening in Russia, in other countries, people would be very quick to call out
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Well, I think that does it for us today at It Could Happen Here. We will continue to report on the targeting of students, scholars, and professors, and immigrants in general as the Trump administration ramps up its deportation efforts. If you would like to contact us about these topics, We have an encrypted email address at coolzontipsatproton.me.
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How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
It is end-to-end encrypted, so if you use another encrypted email service or another ProtonMail account to send the email, only then is it encrypted.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
And right after this happened, we discussed how this case was probably going to be used as a testing ground for employing these tactics on a more widespread scale, creating legal precedent. And sure enough, Khalil's case was not an outlier.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This was just the first public instance of the Trump administration's directed targeting of students they believe to be associated with protests against Israel and its actions in Gaza. And this wave of actions by ICE had actually already begun before Khalil's arrest.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The day before Khalil was arrested, ICE agents knocked on the door of PhD student Rajani Srinivasan, who a few days prior was suddenly notified that her student visa had been revoked. When ICE agents knocked, she did not answer the door. The next day, ICE showed up again to her Columbia University apartment.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Sreenivasan was not home, but upon hearing of Khalil's arrest just a few hours later, she decided to quickly collect some belongings and flee to Canada. Five days later, when ICE returned to her residence, but this time with a warrant, Sreenivasan was already gone. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised this as quote-unquote self-deportation. Yeah, they talk about this a lot.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
I don't believe so, no. It was just the fastest flight from LaGuardia. Out of the country. Out of the closest she could be.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
She is currently figuring this whole situation out still, navigating her legal options both in Canada and the States.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
there is no need for extradition because none of the people that we're talking about today were accused of any crime.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
which I think is in part why she made the decision to get out when she could. DHS claimed in a statement that Srinivasan advocated violence and was, quote, involved in activities supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
ICE's targeting her seemingly stems from being mass arrested while trying to return to her apartment from a picnic with friends on the same day as the Hamilton Hill occupation. She couldn't get home and was caught up in the crowd and was arrested among a hundred other people. She received two summons for obstructing traffic and failure to disperse, but her case was quickly dismissed.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Homeland Security claims that failing to declare these two summons is what caused her visa to be revoked. Okay. Interesting. That same week, ICE went after another green card holder at Columbia, a 21-year-old student named Yongsao Chung, a permanent resident who immigrated to the United States from South Korea with her family when she was seven.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
On March 9th, ICE agents visited her parents' home looking for Chung. And that day, she received an odd text message reading... This recent arrest was allegedly in reference to being detained, among others, at a sit-in protest at Bernard College on March 5th. Chung was charged and then released with misdemeanor obstruction.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
After receiving that sketchy text message, Chung got an email from Columbia Public Safety reading, quote, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has asked us to inform you that Homeland Security investigation agents are seeking to make contact with you in connection with an administrative warrant for your arrest.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Consistent with the university's practice, we wanted to share this information and their request with you. If you are represented by counsel, it may make sense for your lawyer to speak directly with DHS, unquote. Chung's lawyer decided to call, quote unquote, to Audrey from the police, who revealed that she was actually an HSI agent and that the State Department was revoking Ms.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Chung's residency status. Now, rather than opting for self-deportation or turning herself into immigration authorities, Chung decided to go into hiding and fight the deportation in the courts while trying to evade ICE detention. When ICE failed to locate her, they enlisted the help of federal prosecutors.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
To quote from the New York Times, quote, on March 10th, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor's office, told Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Chung's attorney, that the Secretary of State, Mr. Rubio, had revoked Ms. Chung's visa. Ms. Ahmad responded that Ms. Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Kobani responded that Mr. Rubio had, quote, revoked that as well, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
So this is the exact same language we saw with Khalil. And it displays a general uncaring towards who they are actually targeting and what their actual legal status is in the United States. They think they're going after people with student visas, but when it turns out they have green cards, that doesn't stop them. They still continue to do it anyway.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
On March 13th, ICE searched two residences on campus with warrants, citing a statute for harboring non-citizens, but Chung was nowhere to be found. Like Khalil, the Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration's foreign policy agenda. But her lawyers note that Chung was not by any means a quote-unquote movement leader.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
She was simply one of hundreds of students who joined in nationwide protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Her lawyers write, quote, Ms. Chung has not made public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high-profile role in these protests. She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
Chung had previously faced a university disciplinary process, which found she was not in violation of any university policy related to protests last year. Chung's lawyers filed a lawsuit to prevent her deportation, claiming that ICE's actions against Chung are illegal and unconstitutional.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
This lawsuit reads, quote, officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung's speech. ICE's shocking actions against Ms. Chung form part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech, unquote.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
On March 25th, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order halting efforts from ICE to detain or relocate Chung. The judge said that the government produced, quote, nothing in the record to indicate Chung is a danger to the community or a, quote, unquote, foreign policy risk, or that she was in any communication with terrorist organizations.
Behind the Bastards
How ICE Is Targeting Students for Deportation
The judge said that there would be, quote, no trip to Louisiana here, unquote. This is in reference to the big ICE detention facility in Louisiana. We'll be right back after this ad break.