Garrison Davis
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
Did you stumble across a gaggle of black and yellow clad militants in the street? Yellow and black.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
I have some friends right now who are in the D.C. airport, and it is chud central over there.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
repercussions for carrying out whatever actions they want to against people of color, queer people, et cetera.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
Yeah. Do you want to talk about what the Proud Boys were actually like up to on Monday?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
from years and years ago, not just from the Trump era, but from the stuff way before.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 166
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
Yes. Well, one and only that I know of, unless there's another one going around, which would be freaky. There might be.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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."
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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."
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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."
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 161
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
This guy who lied about prosecuting the Benghazi attackers and almost got SEAL Team 6 killed?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
Well, I mean, hopefully, allegedly, these products and services would never wish harm upon SEAL Team 6.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
Yeah, I don't think they can make a whole museum turn around in one day.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
Patel basically says as much on this episode of the X-22 report.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
The America of the ocean. And South America. So, you know, you're still supporting Americans. Just South Americans.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
So he also released a song, which was not on my wrapped this year, unfortunately.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
To which Cash replied, if nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares? Amazing stuff.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
Yeah, because you have guys like Kash Patel reading these files. There is nothing in there.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 160
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
And, like, this was the other thing that got massive applause was talking about, the rape gangs.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
That was Tasha Yar's planet with the rape gangs, Garrison? One of the more blackpilling things, certainly.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Actually, I think it might be time for an ad break.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
So much floor space. There's... We walked, what, 20,000 steps today?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I know there's people who work for Lucasfilm who listen to this.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Is it the co-founder or is it just like another one of their reps?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
He has the most I listen to AI generated music vibes out of anyone I've ever seen before.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Even like a robot handling a physical camera to make like, to make like choices on like shot framing and composition and like movement.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Well, do you know what? There's also nothing super intelligent behind.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
It kept saying the word ska in the music and saying the word Robert.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Repeatedly. While just doing random noises. After we had our fill of that, we did walk around the rest of Showstoppers.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Huge deal. I remember that, which sounds like a lifetime ago.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
It was just like a Linux laptop. It didn't have everything I want out of my own personal laptop.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
It doesn't need Wi-Fi to work. It just can cast from your phone.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
On my home screen of my phone. You know, things could always be worse.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Just steps away from A.I. Ska and the Donald Trump mask over the laundry folding robot.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Same. I was like destroyed emotionally after the DNC. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Wow. I guess I'll go now. I'll just clean out the aftertaste of that. That was even worse. Thank you.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
A sentence I never thought I would say. Yeah. And particularly the RNC Grindr episode, I still think is pretty good.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
The time to start figuring out those logistics is now. It's not waiting until 2027.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I guess just two recent things I've enjoyed. Finally finished The Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Yeah, I mean, and she was doing that with the Biden campaign as well.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
The Harris campaign. She was meeting with Harris multiple times. She kind of stayed at this like distant but like talkative place.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Dictator predictions. Maybe we get a new one. Maybe we get a new fancy one. I don't know.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Yep. Okay, my Assad prediction is he becomes a Russia Today host. That's my Assad prediction.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
We are merging with Tenet Media to bring out our friend Asar Al-Assad.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Yeah, I mean, we are verging into not doing predictions, just doing hopes and dreams.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
On Spotify Wrapped Day. So this is like what? Late November, early December. We don't really know. Spotify Wrapped Death Day predictions. Hmm.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I'm thinking, like, who's got to get through most of the year but not finish it out, you know? It's tough.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Kiss Kissinger was a long shot, too, because he was like arguably immortal. He kept living for so fucking long.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
The Whiter House, one could call it. Yeah. So true, so true. I mean, Garrison, no.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
You know, I actually haven't. I've been waiting to catch it in the theater.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
No refrigeration. It's better at room temp. Better at room temp.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I think that was the year before we talked about that.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
So make sure everyone has their own personal Project 2025 going into this next year. I think we will need it. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Matt Gaetz is like totally out of a job now. That's so funny. It's very funny.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I am fascinated for what they think will happen in 2030.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I've seen pictures. I think I may have watched it one time. Okay. Well, let's take a little watch.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Shittily animated. Yeah. It's like they just generated a Thomas Kinkade frame and then badly animated it.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
So this is like the competitor to Sora, I guess. It's the other big video generation.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
They spawned in a buddy. The running is very funny. Yeah, they spawned in a GTA.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Different levels of facial hair, different jackets he's wearing, different colors, jackets.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Palpatine is dispatched to the cops. I assume it's shot by shot, right? Each shot is going to require a lot of iterations.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
It's just... Yeah, I mean, again, unpacking what he actually is saying is unclear.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
He's just sort of trotting across the stage awkwardly. The way this model generates running is really uncanny. There he is drinking again.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
I would love to track his tattoos from frame to frame.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
And this has to be like one of maybe five people who are doing panels at CES who is like willing to say that.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Everyone loved and thought it was a great creative choice.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Thankfully, AI will never do any harm to animals or the environment.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
And all these things are trying to cram AI into.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Someone from Meta, Facebook, specifically their Metaverse division, which they're still trying to push for, by the way.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Honestly, a 100x mixed reality concert could go crazy.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
And it's about creating these customized experiences.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
And this created such a big backlash that they rolled this back. And they specifically announced this before CES.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Or is it all AI for that too? He described it as like email content.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Do you need drivers? Are you going to put a license plate on this?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
So we couldn't do the Samsung booth last year. Maybe I'll try it this year. But tell me about these smart houses.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
That does make you feel safe about sharing your personal data.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
There's not that much stuff. Very little actual shit going on. People slap the word AI onto everything now.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
You don't care. No. If you're getting a smart home, I don't think you really care about that.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Yeah, no, it doesn't seem very new. It doesn't seem very innovative.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
If we have high-powered smart glasses that look like a regular pair of glasses, I will get a pair eventually.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Their biggest inspiration, their quote-unquote North Star, was the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
The actual chatbot they had was, like, fine. It was actually pretty good at translation, you know, translating from Spanish to English.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
It was fine. Similarly, we went to this one. To get a nice jawline.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
So, you know, ways to help keep in touch with like your family, improve like your memory, like talk about your own life.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
This idea I find pretty distasteful in general. Replacing actual friends or human contact or in-home care with a fucking Alexa machine, essentially.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Or it won't change the subject either and continue conversation.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Because I still am like fundamentally opposed to this premise. Yes. And it's sad still, but aging is sad. Aging is sad, right?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Oh, well, I mean, paying rent's a great motivator. Sure. Yes.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Even the way this guy talked, you could tell he had like a very like empathetic voice, like genuine.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Yeah, or it'll even say if someone didn't take their meds today.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
So we'll give you that hint for tomorrow's episode. See you there. Well, see you all there.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
Well, I mean, I think specifically this is like trans, like queer stuff too.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 164
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
This actually is like bad, you know, very, very 1930s, you know.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
And, like, a lot of this stuff is stuff that we knew was going to happen, and it did happen quite immediately. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
The only word we're allowed to use is a flurry of executive orders.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
Like this is like following the law, like this is like the process.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
Well, and this is something that Hegseth has previously been in favor of and he has now been confirmed. Yes.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
'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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
Which is something that he also mentioned in his inaugural address.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
The other economic situations he might walk us into would be much more affecting to his general popularity. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
I guess Robert and James, I'll have you take this.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
Is that this episode for this week, everyone? I think that's the episode.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 167
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.