Speaker 1: Alson media.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: All right, it could happen here.
Speaker 4: It's me, it's Robert, and we are gathered here today
Speaker 4: to talk about one of the most annoying things that
Speaker 4: can happen on your telephone, which is that you can
Speaker 4: be sent a tweet from Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 2: Which is just no one needed that.
Speaker 4: It's already really bad. I see really bad things on
Speaker 4: my telephone every day. I don't need to see a
Speaker 4: tweet from Gavin Newsom. If you're not familiar with this,
Speaker 4: you're living a better life than me.
Speaker 3: Proud of you.
Speaker 4: But I'm going to give you some context here for
Speaker 4: those of you who are not familiar. Gavin Newsom is
Speaker 4: the governor of California. He's also kind of been the
Speaker 4: presumptive of twenty twenty eight Democratic candidate for quite a while.
Speaker 4: He's term limited out running for California governor again, so
Speaker 4: he won't be doing that, and his term will end
Speaker 4: in January of twenty twenty seven. He had for a
Speaker 4: while tried to dismiss claims that he was interested in
Speaker 4: the presidency, but he's been a lot more of it
Speaker 4: about it recently. Yeah, I don't believe any claims that
Speaker 4: he was not interested in this for a long time.
Speaker 4: He has definitely tried to cast himself this summer as
Speaker 4: the sort of leader of the resistance type figure. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he hasn't done that by, for instance, ordering the California
Speaker 4: National Guard to go home, protecting people from the massmen
Speaker 4: with guns snatching them in the street, or even standing
Speaker 4: up for trans kids. Instead, he has focused on I
Speaker 4: guess what you could generously call Twitter trolling, like it's well,
Speaker 4: we're going.
Speaker 3: To get into it. It's extremely annoying.
Speaker 4: So about a week ago now, I think the eleventh
Speaker 4: of August was when he began Newsom began his social
Speaker 4: media rebrand. He did this by posting about himself in
Speaker 4: all caps as America's favorite governor. His posts since then
Speaker 4: have mimicked the Donald. Trump has a pretty distinctive posting.
Speaker 3: Style, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Newsom's are written in all caps, which Trump doesn't
Speaker 4: tend to do. Trump tends to capitalize sporadically and as
Speaker 4: far as I can tell, entirely randomly. But Newsom's doing
Speaker 4: it in all caps. He uses over uses exclamation marks.
Speaker 4: I should say this beef between the two of them
Speaker 4: is not new right. Trumps has called him new scum
Speaker 4: on true social and I don't think Trump can claim
Speaker 4: the intellectual property to new scum.
Speaker 3: I've seen that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like it's up there with like hair Gel,
Speaker 4: Hitler and Ussolini. Like anyway, if you if you're buying
Speaker 4: a firearm in California, you will hear someone say one
Speaker 4: of these things almost without fail.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The claim the newsman's team is making is that he's
Speaker 4: like holding up a mirror to Trump's bigot tree by
Speaker 4: doing this Trump style posting. But I think in doing so,
Speaker 4: he's really illustrated the difference between him is not as
Speaker 4: profound as you'd think or hope. He in one example,
Speaker 4: called Scott Presler Nancy Mace. It's got Presler, gay conservative
Speaker 4: right wing figure, and then he was called out for
Speaker 4: miss gendering presler By.
Speaker 2: This will shock and amaze you, Tommy.
Speaker 4: Laurn Wow yeah, which yeah, no one knows, okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: he responded, quote, you sound woke. This really isn't funny.
Speaker 4: It's just Bigo tree like comparing gay ment to women
Speaker 4: is an old, worn out and lazy jab.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when you combine.
Speaker 4: This with him having right wing figures like Charlie Kirk
Speaker 4: and Steve Bannon on his.
Speaker 2: Podcast and it just for reference, folks, I don't know
Speaker 2: how much detail we can get into legally here, but
Speaker 2: this being our business, we are aware of the numbers
Speaker 2: different podcasts do. And Gavin Newsom's podcast is not like
Speaker 2: it does. Okay, but there's certain podcasts about, for example,
Speaker 2: bad people in history that lap at several times. So
Speaker 2: like the star power that Gavin Newsom has, I'm not
Speaker 2: seeing it. We're not talking about a guy who has
Speaker 2: shown evidence that he is capable of on his own,
Speaker 2: generating like a super loyal fan base or continued interest
Speaker 2: in his personality. Now, I'm not saying that's that on
Speaker 2: its own isn't a bad thing. A lot of politicians
Speaker 2: who are very competent at certain things are not competent
Speaker 2: at that, and in fact, most of the worst politicians
Speaker 2: we have are also the people who are the best
Speaker 2: at that and building a fan base, so to speak.
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is that Gavin Newsom is obsessed
Speaker 2: with doing something, being this Trumpian populist figure that he
Speaker 2: has not exhibited faculty for. Right, Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, And that's what I'm saying too, is a
Speaker 4: he's confusing engagement with actual political action.
Speaker 2: Right, And he's confusing the kind of engagement that you
Speaker 2: get on social media when it's someone else's algorithm, And
Speaker 2: a lot of the engagement is like, not people who
Speaker 2: are going to vote for you or support you, but
Speaker 2: people who the algorithm is pushing your content to because
Speaker 2: it knows they'll get pissed.
Speaker 3: Off by it, right exactly.
Speaker 2: That I'm not against you know, pissing off conservatives, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't help you necessarily, right, Like, there's not a
Speaker 2: clear benefit to us in this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good things piss off conservatives, but pissing off conservatives
Speaker 4: are not inherently a good or useful thing.
Speaker 3: It's just a thing.
Speaker 2: It's not enough, right, Like, I again, it can be
Speaker 2: I'm not sometimes that's necessary just for morale purposes alone.
Speaker 2: But again, I don't really think Gavin Newsom is making
Speaker 2: the right scared. I don't think he's breaking their morale.
Speaker 2: I think he's just kind of creating content that people
Speaker 2: on the left are sharing because it pisses them off.
Speaker 2: People on the right are sharing because it makes them laugh.
Speaker 2: I think they think it's sad more than anything else.
Speaker 2: And obviously you've got a chunk of like a decent
Speaker 2: chunk of like centrist dim types who like Newsom, and
Speaker 2: I guess maybe it's working for some of them, But
Speaker 2: I don't think it's broadening his support. I think there's
Speaker 2: a single voter, especially in a fucking swing state, who
Speaker 2: is like, I wasn't going to vote for Gavin Newsom
Speaker 2: until I saw him mimicking Donald Trump's tweets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, like he is doing, in a sense what
Speaker 4: Harris did, which is this consistently failed Democrat political strategy
Speaker 4: that they seem so addicted to that no amount of
Speaker 4: losing will break them of it, which is moving to
Speaker 4: the right to try and capture moderate Republicans. Right, they've
Speaker 4: done this, everything's Trump took the Republican Party closer closer
Speaker 4: to fascism right, Like, I want to give an example
Speaker 4: of this. His Gavin Newsom talking to Sean Ryan about
Speaker 4: transgender athletes.
Speaker 5: I'll be cannon with you. I looked at that issue
Speaker 5: and I said, boy, they're just exploiting this. It's a
Speaker 5: handful of people. What the hell is this? It's being weaponized.
Speaker 5: It was just another cultural issue. Intel two years ago,
Speaker 5: there was a state track championship. We had a trans
Speaker 5: athlete that was successful, and there was a video of
Speaker 5: the girl that lost and she was devastated, and that
Speaker 5: video went around everywhere and it was very emotional, it
Speaker 5: was very real. I remember calling my team man, I said,
Speaker 5: this is legit, and I did this podcast with Charlie Kirk. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 5: he brought it up and he said, tell me that's
Speaker 5: not fair. I said, it's not fair. You're right. My
Speaker 5: party was pissed. Lgbtqcucus furious with me because I don't
Speaker 5: think it's fair.
Speaker 6: It's not.
Speaker 5: But because you oppose sports doesn't make you homophobic, and
Speaker 5: my party needs to stop saying that.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, I know who he thinks this is going
Speaker 2: to help. He believes it's a religion. Effectively among a
Speaker 2: lot of establishment dims that there's a whole huge chunk
Speaker 2: of voters who are just itching to vote for a
Speaker 2: Democrat if they weren't in favor of all of these
Speaker 2: icky cultural issues that are hard to touch that the
Speaker 2: right is, it spends so much time harping on, and
Speaker 2: I think part of what they're seeing and where a
Speaker 2: lot of the logical disconnect comes into effect, is that
Speaker 2: they see how much money conservatives and time and discourse
Speaker 2: conservatives spend talking about this and obsessing over it, and
Speaker 2: they believe, well, oh, if we just kind of fold
Speaker 2: on these people, then we've taken this great weapon out
Speaker 2: of their arsenal, and they'll be helpless because they're stupid.
Speaker 2: And I don't think these are fundamentally very smart people
Speaker 2: in the political sense of the world. I think they
Speaker 2: bad politicians. I think they're bad. I think they were
Speaker 2: good politicians in terms of a competency sense at a
Speaker 2: prior age to get to where they were, But the
Speaker 2: ground has changed and intelligence is largely a product of adaptability,
Speaker 2: and they have not proven adaptable. And I think what's
Speaker 2: actually going to happen, because we've seen that, is if
Speaker 2: they throw trans people under the bus as they're actively
Speaker 2: talking about doing the right will grab another chunk of
Speaker 2: their coalition and start ruthlessly trying to destroy that group
Speaker 2: of people, and these people's suggestion will once again be Okay,
Speaker 2: well we gotta, you know, throw those people under the bus,
Speaker 2: because then we'll deny them that weapon, and eventually you
Speaker 2: won't have any Democrats left.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, right, they'll come off to same sex marriage'll
Speaker 4: come off to fucking interracial marriage, and Newsom will try
Speaker 4: and find the middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Like where he has.
Speaker 3: Received praise for this, he's in the legacy media.
Speaker 4: I want to quote here from a cal Matter's op ed,
Speaker 4: which suggests that Newsome was quote someone trying to hold
Speaker 4: space for a hard conversation in his podcast.
Speaker 3: He's not.
Speaker 2: You don't have conversations with Charlie Kirk. He's never had
Speaker 2: a real one in his life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the conversation is not hard to have, right, trans
Speaker 4: people deserve the same fucking rights as everyone else. It's
Speaker 4: very easy to have. Also, he's having this conversation with
Speaker 4: someone who agrees with him, Like, I would love to
Speaker 4: see him tell a young trans woman that she can't
Speaker 4: play on the fucking third s during the high school
Speaker 4: volleyball team, because then he's going to see a kid
Speaker 4: cry too. I don't want to go over the lake
Speaker 4: trans people and compete sports like I've made my living
Speaker 4: as an athlete for much of my life. This is bullshit,
Speaker 4: and it's fundamentally disrespectful to women athletes to continue to
Speaker 4: suggest it they're biologically inferior. But I do want to
Speaker 4: talk more about Gavin you some slide into mean politics.
Speaker 4: His press office claimed that after the fires in LA
Speaker 4: claim this in New York Times in a piece of
Speaker 4: our link, he was troubled by the misinformation that came out.
Speaker 4: Apparently was his first fucking time in encountering misinformation on
Speaker 4: the internet. Like oh wow, Yeah, Well, when you think
Speaker 4: about the ease with which he lies, right, yeah, absolute
Speaker 4: comfort he has, bullshitting it sort of makes sense until
Speaker 4: it hits him. He doesn't care because he's too So
Speaker 4: they decided to take the fight to the internet. I
Speaker 4: guess they began with Star Wars memes. And then when
Speaker 4: the redistricting debate in Texas, so we've covered extensively on
Speaker 4: executive disorder was kind of reaching its peak, Newsom sort
Speaker 4: of begun this sign I know you are, you said,
Speaker 4: you are, But what am I kind of tendency In
Speaker 4: his posting, he posted in all block capitals, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to shout Donald Trump. If you do not stand down,
Speaker 4: we will be forced to leave an effort to redraw
Speaker 4: the maps in CAA to offset the rigging of maps.
Speaker 3: In red states.
Speaker 4: But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts,
Speaker 4: we will do the same. Thank you for your attention
Speaker 4: on this match. Sorry it's hard to readcause it's entirely
Speaker 4: unpunctuated apart from at the end there. These tweets aren't
Speaker 4: on his personal account or the official governor of California one.
Speaker 4: They're on an account called governor use some press office,
Speaker 4: but that count does have their little gray tick mark
Speaker 4: that you can get in Twitter now for like government accounts.
Speaker 4: Then he moved on to AI generated images and signed
Speaker 4: his post with initials like Trump does, claiming Kid Rock
Speaker 4: had endorsed him, which isn't true. Incidentally, they did this
Speaker 4: exactly a year after Donald Trump posted an AI generated
Speaker 4: image of Taylor Swift with the Swifties for Trump montage,
Speaker 4: which shows how much time they spend looking at Trump's
Speaker 4: post rather than doing anything fucking useful. Then they moved
Speaker 4: on to mocking Greg Abbott for using a wheelchair, saying
Speaker 4: he rolled over for Trump again, like, you do not
Speaker 4: build a political coalition by mocking people with disabilities. There
Speaker 4: are a million things to fucking hate Greg Abbott for.
Speaker 4: I could spend an hour talking about the loathsome shit
Speaker 4: he has done, but using a wheelchair is not one
Speaker 4: of those things. If you cannot find anything else, that
Speaker 4: really shows a paucity of democratic politics right now, let's
Speaker 4: take a break and we'll come back.
Speaker 2: Awesome, All right, we're back.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, and probably predictively, Newsom has received praise from all
Speaker 4: over the legacy and media for these posts. The NYT quoted,
Speaker 4: it's actually unclear of they quoted. I don't know if
Speaker 4: this was just a mistake that they haven't corrected. But
Speaker 4: it was phrased like she said it directly, but it
Speaker 4: wasn't in quotation mark, so I'm a little unclear. I'm
Speaker 4: just gonta assume they quoted this.
Speaker 3: Lady.
Speaker 4: Sarah Roberts, a director for the Center of Critical Internet
Speaker 4: Inquiry UCLA, said, quote, mister Nuisan's posts are perhaps grabbing
Speaker 4: so much attention because they stand out for the rest
Speaker 4: of democratic party's ineffective approach of playing it safe and
Speaker 4: proceeding as if its business as usual, and then just
Speaker 4: to double down on this useful podcast idiot, John Favreau
Speaker 4: tweeted quote, I mean, it's pretty clearly a parody of
Speaker 4: Trump's absolutely insane, all caps off to nonsensical posts. Probably,
Speaker 4: while all the people in my life who aren't political
Speaker 4: junkies keep reaching out to say they don't know much
Speaker 4: about Newsom but think the tweets are hilarious, humor and
Speaker 4: mockery can be quite effective, neither of them say what
Speaker 4: they are effective for. Right, No one seems concerned that
Speaker 4: these make no material difference, and he is doing them
Speaker 4: instead of doing things that make material difference. Right, I'm
Speaker 4: going to play another clip from Chris Hayes here before you.
Speaker 8: Governor Gavin Newsom and his team have figured out a
Speaker 8: very entertaining way to deal with Donald Trump at his
Speaker 8: own rhetorical level.
Speaker 2: They've got a new social.
Speaker 8: Media strategy that is both I got to say, pretty
Speaker 8: damn funny and I think extremely effective, mocking the President
Speaker 8: with a spot on impression of his very weird communication stock.
Speaker 8: Since Newsom jumped into the ongoing redistricting fight. His official
Speaker 8: Twitter account has been posting Trump style. Donald has finished.
Speaker 8: He is no longer hot. First the hand so tiny,
Speaker 8: and now me, Gavin C. Newson have taken away his step.
Speaker 8: Many are saying, we can't even do the big stairs
Speaker 8: on Air Force one anymore, uses the little baby stairs
Speaker 8: now sad as all the Trump trademarks, all capital letters,
Speaker 8: random quotation marks, little parentheticals, complete unhinged absurdity.
Speaker 9: I thought that's a good one.
Speaker 8: I hate kid Rock reference to Trump's infamous I hate
Speaker 8: Taylor Swift. Another drags a vice president to it. Not
Speaker 8: even JD just Dance Vans can save Trump from the
Speaker 8: disastrous maps war he has started. Not even his eyeliner
Speaker 8: lines look as pretty as California map lines.
Speaker 9: He will fail as he always does.
Speaker 8: Sad and I, the peacetime governor of our nation's favorite,
Speaker 8: will save America once again. Many are now calling me
Speaker 8: Gavin Christopher Columbus Newsom because of the maps. Thank you
Speaker 8: for your attention to this matter. Beyond the mockery of
Speaker 8: Trump's text post, Newsom has also been posting Trump style
Speaker 8: AI generated images of himself, including this I think absolute
Speaker 8: masterpiece of Newsom deep in a moment of reflection or
Speaker 8: prayer link by three Maga icons and the laying of
Speaker 8: hands Kid Rock who he hates, Tucker Carlson, and the
Speaker 8: angelic spirit of the recently departed Hulk Holgan again a
Speaker 8: spot on mockery Trump, who.
Speaker 9: Isn't doing any of this satirically.
Speaker 8: What has been equally hilarious has been to watch the
Speaker 8: joke just go soaring over the heads of Trump's sick
Speaker 8: ofphants in the media for.
Speaker 9: The last week.
Speaker 10: Devin Newsom, Why am I giving him advice? You had
Speaker 10: to stop it with the Twitter thing. I don't know
Speaker 10: where his wife is. I want his wife. I would say,
Speaker 10: you are making a fool of yourself. Stop it, Do
Speaker 10: not let your staff tweet. And if you're doing it yourself,
Speaker 10: put the phone away and start over. And if you want.
Speaker 10: He's got a big job as governor of California, but
Speaker 10: if he wants an even bigger job, he has to
Speaker 10: be a little bit more serious.
Speaker 8: Yes, right, be more serious, stop posting exactly like the
Speaker 8: President the United States does. Newsome's account responded to that
Speaker 8: advice quote, Dana ding Dong Pirno never heard of Hegel
Speaker 8: today is melting.
Speaker 9: Down because of me.
Speaker 8: God and c Newsom Fox hate that I am America's
Speaker 8: most favorite governor ratings King saving America. Trump has lost
Speaker 8: his step and Fox is losing it because when I'm
Speaker 8: type American that wins. Thank you for your attention this
Speaker 8: matter again. It is just it is a stark reminder
Speaker 8: with someone else doing it of how truly utterly deranged
Speaker 8: our current president sounds whenever he communicates, and also how
Speaker 8: accustomed we've all become to this very very weird behavior.
Speaker 3: I know, we wouldn't be talking about this serus. He
Speaker 3: was just bad tweets.
Speaker 4: Right, We're talking about it because I think it shows
Speaker 4: a fundamental and ability of the DNC to meet the
Speaker 4: moment right now. Yeah, we're talking about it because people
Speaker 4: are dying, Yes, and more people will die as a
Speaker 4: result of this administration's policies. Other people are being imprisoned,
Speaker 4: and like I, you know, the damage being done you know,
Speaker 4: to medical science, to the future of humanity, to the
Speaker 4: future of this country is tremendous and escalating. And the
Speaker 4: fact that like this is the best a major a
Speaker 4: major contender for the Democratic presidential candidate in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: eight has been able to pull out so far is
Speaker 4: like terrifying.
Speaker 2: Like and again, obviously no one should be reliant upon
Speaker 2: the dims. But unfortunately, also like, what are you got
Speaker 2: to do? What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I don't have the resources of the Democratic Party. I
Speaker 2: don't have a bunch of elected leaders listening to me. Like,
Speaker 2: because of the status of our situation, individual people in
Speaker 2: small groups in towns, and you know, we talk about
Speaker 2: mutual aid on this show, we talk about unions. All
Speaker 2: of these increased personal resiliency. They increase the ability of
Speaker 2: groups and of individuals within groups to be resilient. But
Speaker 2: none of that is going to stop the fucking DHS
Speaker 2: from turning into the SS right Yeah, and the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party clearly fucking isn't either. But the fact that this
Speaker 2: is what they're doing instead of effective resistance is I mean,
Speaker 2: it's important. I wish there was more to say than
Speaker 2: we should know how badly they're failing us. Right, Yeah, Like.
Speaker 4: A world where Democrat gets elected in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 4: it's getting less awful less quickly, and we should want them, yes, right,
Speaker 4: Like I'm not one of these Like acceleration is.
Speaker 2: No, I just I don't think that's going to help either, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right now.
Speaker 4: It is accelerating and it is bad. There are so
Speaker 4: many obvious challenges Democrats can make. And I want to
Speaker 4: play Robert. Have you seen this Graham plant for Senate
Speaker 4: campaign ad?
Speaker 9: No mane all right, I'm going to.
Speaker 4: Play this for you, like I think it's good as
Speaker 4: a contrast, right, But.
Speaker 11: I love most about man of the people. I have
Speaker 11: never met people who are more hard scrabble, even in
Speaker 11: a place that requires you to work like two or
Speaker 11: three different jobs. We have watched this state become essentially
Speaker 11: unlivable for working class people, and it makes me deeply angry.
Speaker 11: My name is Graham Plattner, and I'm running for US
Speaker 11: Senate and Maine to defeat Susan Collins. A decade of
Speaker 11: military service, going overseas, farming oysters to feed my community,
Speaker 11: diving to lend a hand to other fishermen, trying to
Speaker 11: start a family. But everywhere I've gone, it seems like
Speaker 11: the fabric of what holds us together is being ripped
Speaker 11: apart by billionaires and corrupt politicians profiting off of destroying
Speaker 11: our environment, driving our families in the pop and crushing
Speaker 11: the middle class. I did four infantry tours in the
Speaker 11: Marine corps in the army. I'm not afraid to name
Speaker 11: an enemy, and the enemy is the oligarchy. It's the
Speaker 11: billionaires who pay for it and the politicians who sell
Speaker 11: us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins.
Speaker 11: I'm not fooled by this fake charade of Collins deliberations
Speaker 11: and moderation. The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz
Speaker 11: is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling us
Speaker 11: out and not giving a damn. People know that the
Speaker 11: system is screwing them. They know it in their bones.
Speaker 11: Nobody I know around here can afford a house. Healthcare
Speaker 11: is a disaster. Hospitals are closing. We have watched all
Speaker 11: of that get ripped away from us, and everyone just
Speaker 11: trying to keep it all together. Why can't we have
Speaker 11: universal health care like every other first world country. Why
Speaker 11: can't we take care of our veterans when they come home.
Speaker 11: Why are we funding endless wars and bombing children? Why
Speaker 11: are CEO is more powerful than unions? We fought three
Speaker 11: different wars since the last time we raised the minimum wage.
Speaker 11: I'm not pretending to have all the answers, but I
Speaker 11: know that I'm asking the ray questions. When I tell
Speaker 11: people around here that I'm running for Senate, sometimes the
Speaker 11: initial reaction is what. But when I tell them why,
Speaker 11: I'm doing it because I truly do believe that we
Speaker 11: can build a system that is going to represent working people,
Speaker 11: the number one response has been, well, thank god, somebody's
Speaker 11: going to do it. You're supposed to fight for the
Speaker 11: things you love. This is our home, and I will
Speaker 11: fight tirelessly for it for you. It's maner's first in
Speaker 11: Maine always.
Speaker 2: I mean, that didn't seem bad.
Speaker 12: No, it's good.
Speaker 2: That's that's a solid ad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like the BA is reasonably low. But like
Speaker 4: that dude hit it, I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, Like I would say that's just
Speaker 2: outright good, like if I were if I were crafting
Speaker 2: an ad to run from other than the fact that
Speaker 2: he's lived a different life, but like how he's talking
Speaker 2: about the oligarchy, how he's talking about the life act
Speaker 2: of progress on things like minimum wage and how unacceptable
Speaker 2: it is, and like how the difference between Susan Collins
Speaker 2: and Ted Cruise is that at least Ted Cruise is honest, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm on board this guy. Yeah, this guy seems like.
Speaker 3: He rips, But I would vote for that dude. Like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: he might turn into a fucking fatimen, but.
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, they can all get milkshake ducked. But
Speaker 2: he's saying the right things at this point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's remarkably straightforward, right like yeah, and yeah, that
Speaker 4: seems to evade most Democrats.
Speaker 2: He's he's got the audio of a car ad But
Speaker 2: I guess if it works, it works. That's the thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not familiar with the Platinu race,
Speaker 2: so I'm not sure where the polling showing.
Speaker 4: This video is like two days old, Like he's extremely fresh.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I will say that visually it hangs together. Dude,
Speaker 4: Jesus the same open soel wetsuit. I do, Like he
Speaker 4: didn't just buy all this shit, Like didn't buy an
Speaker 4: axe and chopping for the first time in this video,
Speaker 4: right right right, He.
Speaker 2: Didn't do the normal weird democrat trying to reach out
Speaker 2: to a rural thing of like posing awkwardly with a shotgun.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like this is a dude, and just like physically
Speaker 4: he appears to have done some work with his hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he looks like a working class guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's compare this to like Newsome has not done
Speaker 4: the material things that he could be doing instead of
Speaker 4: tweeting right. Trump didn't call it the California National guid
Speaker 4: under the Insurrection Act. He used Title ten, Section yeah
Speaker 4: one two four zero six of the US Code. That
Speaker 4: section states orders for these purposes should be issued through
Speaker 4: the governors of the states. It also outlines the procedures
Speaker 4: for DC which we don't care about here. I didn't
Speaker 4: see why he could at least try to force the
Speaker 4: issue in ordering the guard to go home. He's pursuing
Speaker 4: a court case yet, but leg forced the crisis because we're.
Speaker 3: Already in one.
Speaker 4: He has not taken a single meaningful action to stop
Speaker 4: I snatching people from our communities in California, nor has
Speaker 4: his Attorney General taken a single meaningful action to stop
Speaker 4: individual sheriff's departments from violating SB fifty four. SB fifty
Speaker 4: four if you're not familiar as a California Values Act,
Speaker 4: which limits which which inmates can be transferred to ice
Speaker 4: custody and when. It doesn't oblige anyone to transfer them,
Speaker 4: but it does allow them to transfer them if certain
Speaker 4: felonies have been committed in the last fifteen years. The
Speaker 4: San Diego Sheriff has been accused of violating this are
Speaker 4: linked to a KPBS article on that where they transferred
Speaker 4: to someone who, according to claims in the article, had
Speaker 4: a twenty one year old conviction. Where As I said
Speaker 4: before the cutoff fifteen years, Newsom could do something about
Speaker 4: the surveillance which is being installed all over California. These
Speaker 4: license plates readers at the ones at San Diego has
Speaker 4: spent thousands, if not billions of dollars on these license
Speaker 4: plate readers have had their information shared with federal agencies
Speaker 4: more than one hundred times in May alone.
Speaker 3: According to cal Matters.
Speaker 4: That is a violation of California law. Specifically, it's Senate
Speaker 4: Bill thirty four, which limits the sharing of licensed plate data.
Speaker 4: Rob Bonto issued an advisory, but again, this is resulting
Speaker 4: in our communities being harassed. Right Californian's being snatched. Newsom
Speaker 4: has done nothing about that. He could stand up for
Speaker 4: unhouse people, but instead, alongside Todd Glory, he has led
Speaker 4: the charge against Todd. Glory is seemingly intent on driving
Speaker 4: our city into debt to pursue Castrow approach against thee
Speaker 4: unhoused Newsome posed for a photo shoot destroying unhoused people's property.
Speaker 4: He hasn't done a single thing that puts him at
Speaker 4: any risk. Right. He's presenting himself in this Sean ram
Speaker 4: podcast the big risk taker because he spoke out about
Speaker 4: fucking teenage girls running, right, But he hasn't put his
Speaker 4: neck on the line once for marginalized people in california're anywhere.
Speaker 2: Else, absolutely not.
Speaker 4: I think where I want to end is I don't
Speaker 4: want you to engage with Newsom's tweets like that doesn't help.
Speaker 4: He's going to mistake that for making a difference, right,
Speaker 4: because I think for a lot of people in the
Speaker 4: legacy media and probably knew some of his friends, the
Speaker 4: real tragedy of what's happened in the last eight months
Speaker 4: is that they have to see scary, nasty stuff on
Speaker 4: their telephones. So seeing something funny on their telephone seems
Speaker 4: like an antidote because it's not their community, it's not
Speaker 4: their people, and it's not people they fundamentally give a
Speaker 4: shit about either. That I think is why to them
Speaker 4: this seems effective and hopefully to you, as it does
Speaker 4: to me, it seems completely ineffective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. How much else to say, it's
Speaker 2: nice to see guys like Platner at least seem to
Speaker 2: be figuring it out. I've been looking into it, and
Speaker 2: there's there's not much polling. There's not really any polling
Speaker 2: because I how recently he announced his bid to show
Speaker 2: how well he's doing. Other than that, the video has
Speaker 2: got like two and a half million views something like that,
Speaker 2: which is good and seems to be spreading well online.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't translate electorally. What we do have electorally
Speaker 2: is that polls in Maine show that the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: is historically unpopular, including with Democrats. This is from a
Speaker 2: July survey. There's a good article in PBS that's just
Speaker 2: they roll right over. Many Democrats think their party is weak.
Speaker 2: Ap n O RC whole finds. Oh sorry, this is
Speaker 2: actually no, sorry, this is overall across US adults. Sorry.
Speaker 2: The initial article I had seemed to be saying that
Speaker 2: this was just in May. No, this is this is nationwide, right,
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think that what Platner has seen,
Speaker 2: the opportunity he's seen is real that there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are not at all interested in
Speaker 2: voting for a Republican who have not been swayed to
Speaker 2: the right, who identify as Democrats but hate the party
Speaker 2: and think it is weak. Right, Like about two inten Democrats,
Speaker 2: according to this poll, described their party positively. One intent
Speaker 2: said it was empathetic and inclusive. That's terrible, right, and
Speaker 2: that is that I mean, that shows that just what
Speaker 2: we were saying kind of based on our gut, which
Speaker 2: is it's a bad idea to hang people out to
Speaker 2: dry because you don't think you can defend them. You
Speaker 2: think that it'll be beneficial politically to make the choice
Speaker 2: to you know, let them die basically. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 2: it seems like Democrats largely are responding by saying, well,
Speaker 2: this party doesn't give a shit about us, and they
Speaker 2: are ineffective. They can't do fuck all, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's definitely what's happening. So, yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 2: Platner is gonna win, but I'm growing more convinced every
Speaker 2: day that there is opportunity for people who are actually
Speaker 2: willing to fight these bastards. Yeah, and you understanding that
Speaker 2: fighting these bastards isn't just like, well, let's give them
Speaker 2: almost everything they want and hope that somehow lets us win.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking of like not leaving people out to dry,
Speaker 4: for instance, talking about trans women in sports, he says
Speaker 4: it's abstraction from the things that impact Americans materially every
Speaker 4: single day. Then he said, I'm dedicated to a quality
Speaker 4: and justice for all in this country. And I think
Speaker 4: the specific topic has become such a touchstone of the
Speaker 4: media discussion because it pulls away from the conversation that
Speaker 4: needs to be happening is getting every American affordable healthcare.
Speaker 4: It's not the best response, it's not the worst one either, Like,
Speaker 4: and I think he is right. For most of these
Speaker 4: conservative people, they don't care about women's sports, right, They're
Speaker 4: not there when women are getting shit priced, women are
Speaker 4: getting shit TV time.
Speaker 3: This for them is just a culture war issue.
Speaker 4: He also called the genocide and Gazara a genocide, which
Speaker 4: is something that it's like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I enjoyed the line about where we're just killing
Speaker 2: kids with bombs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that he He didn't mince his
Speaker 4: words about it. When asked by ABC, he said he's
Speaker 4: following the leader of Israeli scholars on genocide on this issue.
Speaker 4: So yeah, like, it's remarkably easy, right to build a
Speaker 4: coalition right now of people who are fucking mad. And
Speaker 4: a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because they
Speaker 4: were sick of this same smami bullshit. Some of them
Speaker 4: are to vote Johnal Trump because a hateful, terrible, fucking
Speaker 4: people right. Just to be super clear, Yeah, but like
Speaker 4: it's so easy, and yet it seems to be evading,
Speaker 4: Like you say, the presumptive nominee, that this guy who
Speaker 4: for for nearly a decade we have assumed we'll run
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty eight. And I guess I know, fuck
Speaker 4: Gavin Newsom. I hope that he does not succeed with
Speaker 4: his presidential campaign missions.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right, well that's yeah, most of what I
Speaker 2: got to say about that son of a bit.
Speaker 13: Yep, me too. Let's roll out, Bye bye.
Speaker 14: Hello everyone, I'm welcome to it can happen here. My
Speaker 14: name is Daniel Kurd, and I'm a writer, analyst, and
Speaker 14: researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate professor
Speaker 14: of political science and a senior non resident fellow at
Speaker 14: the Arab Center Washington. I'm also occasional co host of
Speaker 14: The Fire These Times. Today, I want to talk about
Speaker 14: the attacks on American universities in American academia and what
Speaker 14: role Palestine plays in all of this, and maybe end
Speaker 14: on what's being done to stop it. So you may
Speaker 14: or may not have heard about the attacks on universities
Speaker 14: in academia, but given the general onslaught of disastrous news,
Speaker 14: even for those of you who have noted something is
Speaker 14: happening in higher education may not be keeping up with
Speaker 14: the details. So let me give you a brief summary.
Speaker 14: A number of universities, including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and UCLA,
Speaker 14: have been investigated for campus anti semitism related to pro
Speaker 14: Palestine protests on those campuses over the past two years.
Speaker 14: From there, the Trump administration has escalated by slashing federal
Speaker 14: funding that those universities receive and forcing those universities to
Speaker 14: settle with the administration not only monetarily, but also by
Speaker 14: implementing changes to how their universities are run. So, for example,
Speaker 14: Columbia University agreed to pay the Trump administration two hundred
Speaker 14: and twenty million dollars punish seventy students involved in the
Speaker 14: protests in a variety of ways, including by expelling them,
Speaker 14: and they agreed to monitor and report their programs for
Speaker 14: unlawful dea goals, that's a quote. One of the ways
Speaker 14: Columbia has agreed to monitor, as the Intercept reported in April,
Speaker 14: is by appointing a vice provost in charge of monitoring
Speaker 14: the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department, in
Speaker 14: particular for quote balanced curricula. The faculty in that department
Speaker 14: will no longer run that department, and as the Middle
Speaker 14: East Studies Association, in a statement back in March noted, this,
Speaker 14: placing the department under administrative receivership is a quote fundamental
Speaker 14: abrogation of the autonomy of university governance. This comes at
Speaker 14: a time when the Trump administration has also attacked the
Speaker 14: National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Speaker 14: National Institutes of Health. All of these are federal funding
Speaker 14: sources for the majority of research that happens at universities
Speaker 14: across disciplines the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities. The Trumpet
Speaker 14: administration has also attacked foreign students and the processes by
Speaker 14: which they are able to get visa study in the
Speaker 14: United States, which is just another way to get at
Speaker 14: a major revenue source for many universities. But why is
Speaker 14: the Trump administration doing all this. Here is Vice President JD.
Speaker 14: Vance speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in twenty
Speaker 14: twenty one.
Speaker 6: We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in
Speaker 6: this country.
Speaker 9: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 6: The universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursued
Speaker 6: deceit and lies. And it's time to be honest about
Speaker 6: that fact. And we subsidize, we support, and in our
Speaker 6: own ways all of us reinforce the power of universities
Speaker 6: to control our lives and control how we live them.
Speaker 6: So much of what drives truth and knowledge as we
Speaker 6: understand it in this country is fundamentally determined by, supported by,
Speaker 6: and reinforced by the universities in this country.
Speaker 14: So that's Vance before him and Trump won the election,
Speaker 14: identifying that universities are sites of power. Therefore, he argues
Speaker 14: very explicitly that conservatives must destroy these sites of power
Speaker 14: or submit them to their will. Are universities truly sites
Speaker 14: of power? The short answer is yes, for two reasons.
Speaker 14: Number One, as Vance themselves identifies, universities produce knowledge, and
Speaker 14: that knowledge produce that universities drives innovation in the private sector,
Speaker 14: in tech, in health, and weapons, manufacturing, universities are a
Speaker 14: main engine of economic growth. In fact, universities are part
Speaker 14: and parcel of American global power. They are a major
Speaker 14: source of that power for the United States, whether in
Speaker 14: the students and scholars they attract, whether for their research
Speaker 14: that they produce that various arms of the American government
Speaker 14: can use, or whether for the legitimization that universities provide
Speaker 14: for certain frameworks like the frame market liberalism, etc.
Speaker 7: Etc.
Speaker 14: So, really, universities largely generate power for the powers that be,
Speaker 14: But sometimes universities are also sites of power that can
Speaker 14: challenge orthodoxies. With greater inclusion of scholars and students from
Speaker 14: a variety of backgrounds, we get a diversity of thought.
Speaker 14: And because of how universities are supposed to run in theory,
Speaker 14: as governed by faculty and as sites of free inquiry,
Speaker 14: that means sometimes occasionally knowledge is produced that can challenge
Speaker 14: power too. That sometimes occasional knowledge production is too much
Speaker 14: for the jd vances of today's politics, though, so they're
Speaker 14: cracking down. The number two reason why universities are sites
Speaker 14: of power is because they offer a promise of social mobility.
Speaker 14: And that's generally true too, even the most modest regional
Speaker 14: public school in America still offer some of the highest
Speaker 14: quality of education you can get around the world, but
Speaker 14: that shot at upward social mobility that you can get
Speaker 14: with the university of education is definitely getting harder and
Speaker 14: costlier and less accessible. There's this book by Mark Busque
Speaker 14: I highly recommend reading, titled How the University Works. In it,
Speaker 14: the author details how as universities became more corporatized, tuition increased,
Speaker 14: university workers were disempowered, and the value of a degree plummeted.
Speaker 14: And this process started way before Trump. Clifford Ando, professor
Speaker 14: of Classics and History at the University of Chicago, wrote
Speaker 14: for Compact magazine recently on what's happening at the University
Speaker 14: of Chicago right now for those who may be unaware.
Speaker 14: At the University of Chicago, the university is stopping PhD emissions,
Speaker 14: it's increasing enrollment numbers, it's slashing budgets, it's even proposing
Speaker 14: to teach some courses using chat GPT. Ando argues that
Speaker 14: this current dismantling of University of Chicago that we're witnessing
Speaker 14: is again not Trump related, but can be traced to
Speaker 14: this corporatization of the university where universities prioritized money making,
Speaker 14: technology and investments, and as he writes, quote fundamentally corroded
Speaker 14: policymaking at universities. So to get a high quality education today,
Speaker 14: at a university that isn't trying to trap you as
Speaker 14: cheap labor or doesn't just use overworked adjuncts to teach
Speaker 14: courses to avoid paying faculty their worth, you need to
Speaker 14: either come from money, or you need to be highly
Speaker 14: highly exceptional, or you need to accrue exorbitant amounts of debt.
Speaker 14: And yet, and yet, marginalized people still made advances in
Speaker 14: this system. We saw, for example, more African American presidents
Speaker 14: of universities, more women, We saw diversifying scholarship courses, pathways
Speaker 14: for students as universities became more inclusive. That's what diversity,
Speaker 14: equity and inclusion efforts did. Imperfect as they were, and
Speaker 14: even though the university as an institution continues to exploit labor,
Speaker 14: continues to exploit their own students, often doesn't deliver enough
Speaker 14: on the promise of social mobility. Even delivering a little
Speaker 14: was too much for the Jdvanss of the world. They
Speaker 14: don't want upward social mobility for some Americans, and they
Speaker 14: don't want those challenges to power, even at the margins,
Speaker 14: so they're cracking down. The attacks on Harvard, Brown, George Washington, UCLA,
Speaker 14: the list goes on, is predicated on attacking DEI Diversity,
Speaker 14: equity and inclusion. Conservatives alleged that universities taking a person's
Speaker 14: background into consideration and admissions or in hiring or in scholarships, etc.
Speaker 14: All of that violates anti discrimination laws. And our conservative
Speaker 14: Supreme Court, in its recent ruling in the cases of
Speaker 14: Students for Fair Admissions versus University of North Carolina and
Speaker 14: Students for Vera Admissions versus Harvard, agreed they overturned the
Speaker 14: two thousand and three Grotta versus Bollinger case that had
Speaker 14: allowed higher education institutions to consider race and admissions. And
Speaker 14: all of this comes at a time after decades of
Speaker 14: the university an institution eroded itself. But I would say
Speaker 14: attacking DEI wasn't effective enough, especially after the Black Lives
Speaker 14: Matter movement. Saying DEI is bad is a harder sell
Speaker 14: for an American public fifty one percent of which say
Speaker 14: they support Black Lives Matter. And this was according to
Speaker 14: a twenty twenty three study by the Pere Research Center. Now,
Speaker 14: fifty one percent isn't overwhelming, but it's not nothing either.
Speaker 14: So conservatives to attack the university have had to exploit
Speaker 14: the weaknesses that already exist within the academy. That has
Speaker 14: meant exploiting the way the university's institution has become sensitive
Speaker 14: to money and endowments and donors, and that has meant
Speaker 14: exploiting the way the university has not actually been a
Speaker 14: site of free inquiry or expression for particular people and
Speaker 14: particular topics. And by exploiting and expanding that gap, they
Speaker 14: are now trying to take those freedoms away from everybody.
Speaker 14: This is where Palestine comes in. The truth is attacks
Speaker 14: on student protesters for Palestine, attacks on scholars who work
Speaker 14: on Palestine or speak on Palestine. That all started before Trump,
Speaker 14: and that has become the blueprint for attacking universities and
Speaker 14: academic freedom. Generally, they're using the pro Palestine protests, pro
Speaker 14: Palestine programming, or just any knowledge production about Palestine as
Speaker 14: an excuse to allege anti Semitism. Enter into these investigations
Speaker 14: and demand the universities do what they want. After the
Speaker 14: Hamas October seventh attacks, we saw student protesters detained like
Speaker 14: Mahmud Kriil Columbia and remaisa ouster Get Tufts and many more.
Speaker 14: We have seen diplomas withheld, like what Virginia Commonwealth University
Speaker 14: attempted to do to many students, including students sitting in Hadad.
Speaker 14: We have seen professors put on leave or fired like
Speaker 14: what Muhlenberg College did to Mora Finkelstein. The list goes
Speaker 14: on and on, but again, a lot of this pattern
Speaker 14: started before Trump. In a November twenty twenty three poll
Speaker 14: conducted by political scientists Mark Lynch and Shibley Telheme called
Speaker 14: the Middle East Scholar Barometer, the results show that sixty
Speaker 14: six percent of faculty members who study the Middle East
Speaker 14: quote self censor when speaking about the Middle East in
Speaker 14: an academic or professional setting, and that number goes up
Speaker 14: to seventy seven point four percent when talking about Israel Palestine.
Speaker 14: On the Israel Palstonin issue in particular, almost fifty two
Speaker 14: percent of scholars have concerns about pressure from external advocacy groups,
Speaker 14: and of those who said they self censor, a full
Speaker 14: eighty three percent said the issue they most feel the
Speaker 14: need to censor themselves about is anything related to criticism
Speaker 14: of Israel. This is a crazy number if you consider
Speaker 14: that of the same group, only one point six percent
Speaker 14: of respondents said they censored criticism of US policy, and
Speaker 14: a full ninety eight percent of assistant professors untenured professors
Speaker 14: who work on the Middle East quote feel the need
Speaker 14: to self censor when speaking about the Palestinian Israeli issue
Speaker 14: in an academic or professional capacity. Part of this story,
Speaker 14: the censorship story, is the large scale adoption of the
Speaker 14: International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti Semitism. Back during
Speaker 14: his first term, President Trump's Executive Order on Combating Anti
Speaker 14: Semitism directed government bodies to take the IRA definition into
Speaker 14: consideration when enforcing Title six, which is a part of
Speaker 14: the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four that prohibits
Speaker 14: discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
Speaker 14: The Biden administration didn't overturn any of that either. They
Speaker 14: implemented that executive Order themselves throughout their tenure. And this
Speaker 14: definition is one definition of anti semitism that critics say
Speaker 14: conflates criticism of Israel with anti semitism. In fact, the
Speaker 14: main drafter of the IRA definition, ken Stearn, has expressed
Speaker 14: concerns that this definition is being used as a quote
Speaker 14: blunt instrument to label anyone an antisemit, and it's for
Speaker 14: that reason that Human Rights Watch and one hundred and
Speaker 14: four other organizations signed a letter urging the UN not
Speaker 14: to use this IRA definition. As a result, there are,
Speaker 14: of course, a number of competing definitions of antisemitism, such
Speaker 14: as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, that has a more
Speaker 14: nuanced understanding of one criticism of Israel becomes antisemitism. As
Speaker 14: their website notes, the Jerusalem Declaration is a product of
Speaker 14: an initiative that originated in Jerusalem and includes in their
Speaker 14: numbers international scholars working in anti Semitism studies and related
Speaker 14: fields including Jewish Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, and Middle East. But
Speaker 14: of course the IRA definition is the one that the
Speaker 14: Trump administration wants to follow and the one that universities
Speaker 14: are adopting. Maybe it goes without saying, but I'll say
Speaker 14: it anyway. It's not because this administration that engages with
Speaker 14: the far right and propagates conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement,
Speaker 14: It's not like they actually care about anti Semitism. It's
Speaker 14: just a tool. As Jewish organizations working to combat anti Semitism,
Speaker 14: such as the Nexus Project explicitly point out it's a
Speaker 14: way to quote weaponize anti semitism by attacking free speech
Speaker 14: DEI foreign students, and in this environment we can understand
Speaker 14: why there's so much fear to speak up and so
Speaker 14: much self censorship. You can be falsely accused of anti
Speaker 14: semitism for bringing up Palestine as a topic of discussion,
Speaker 14: for trying to study what's happening, for trying to produce
Speaker 14: any sort of knowledge on what's going on. I also
Speaker 14: really want to score that this self censorship and fear
Speaker 14: that already existed in a space in academia is a
Speaker 14: worsening trend today, but it definitely existed before October seventh too.
Speaker 14: Take it from me as someone who studies Palestine in
Speaker 14: American academia. Palestinian scholars have long been under attack in
Speaker 14: the American academy. But after October seventh and before Trump,
Speaker 14: this of course got worse. External actors and donors got
Speaker 14: involved in campus governance. As we saw in Harvard and
Speaker 14: many other places, University administrations cracked down on students, professors, everyone,
Speaker 14: often preemptively doing the work of the right wing because
Speaker 14: they thought that taking away freedoms from some groups wouldn't
Speaker 14: come back to bite them. And this is how Palestine
Speaker 14: is now one of the cudgels that Trump is using
Speaker 14: to attack universities and the academy. And it's an effective
Speaker 14: cudgel because some liberals in universities and outside universities can
Speaker 14: also be persuaded to attack scholarship on Palestine and students
Speaker 14: who speak on Palestine. But those exceptions to academic freedom
Speaker 14: that have long existed in the academy are now being
Speaker 14: used to attack everyone. A quick note here to outline
Speaker 14: what academic freedom for a faculty member actually means. As
Speaker 14: the American Association of University Professors the AAUP notes on
Speaker 14: their website, academic freedom has these main elements. Number one,
Speaker 14: the freedom to discuss relevant matters in the classroom. Number two,
Speaker 14: the freedom to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and
Speaker 14: creative expression, and to publish the results of such work.
Speaker 14: Number three intramural speech freedom from institutional censorship or discipline
Speaker 14: when addressing matters of institutional policy or action. And number
Speaker 14: four extramural speech freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when
Speaker 14: speaking or writing. As citizens. So faculty members are allowed
Speaker 14: to speak on matters as citizens. Being a faculty member
Speaker 14: and being a member of the university community does not
Speaker 14: take away their right to be citizens. That last one
Speaker 14: is worth emphasizing. To maintain universities as sites of free
Speaker 14: inquiry and knowledge production, there has to be academic freedom,
Speaker 14: and that freedom includes teaching, research, intramulo speech, and extramural speech.
Speaker 14: You can't censor people you don't like or don't agree
Speaker 14: with and think your institution and your university will continue
Speaker 14: to function. You certainly can't do that and think the
Speaker 14: right wing won't sniff it out and use it against you.
Speaker 14: So what's to be done? Things are happening, People are
Speaker 14: fighting back, and just like Palestine has been the Canarian
Speaker 14: the coal mine for so many things, including the assault
Speaker 14: on American academia, Palestine may be one of those crucial
Speaker 14: issues that helps academics and students and faculty to organize
Speaker 14: in this moment. For example, because of the arrests of
Speaker 14: pro Palestine students and their attempted deportation, the American Association
Speaker 14: of University Professors, alongside the Middle Ease Studies Association and
Speaker 14: the Night First Amendment Institute, sued the Trump administration over
Speaker 14: this policy of arresting and threatening deportation for a lawful
Speaker 14: speech on Palestine. The AAUP is also now ap plaintive
Speaker 14: in a number of cases challenging the Trump administration on
Speaker 14: a tax on DEI, attempting to abolish the Department of Education,
Speaker 14: cuts and federal funding of research, etc. An attacks on
Speaker 14: students and faculty after October seventh, which set off this
Speaker 14: whole barrage of attacks on university since then, have galvanized
Speaker 14: people to demand their university administrations uphold academic freedom. In
Speaker 14: twenty twenty four, nearly forty chapters of the AAUP were
Speaker 14: founded or re established across the US. Even professors who
Speaker 14: don't teach or study the Middle East or Palestine are
Speaker 14: starting to speak out about the dangers of these moments
Speaker 14: and these trends. I think people are starting to realize
Speaker 14: that American universities will have to uphold their ideals of
Speaker 14: faculty governance, free inquiry, free thought for everyone, or they
Speaker 14: really will cease to exist. That's all I have for
Speaker 14: you today. I'll be back soon to talk more about
Speaker 14: the latest developments in Palestine. Stay strong, everybody, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 7: Welcome to Ikadath to hear a podcast about things falling
Speaker 7: apart and also sometimes about how not to put them
Speaker 7: back together and how to fail to put them back together.
Speaker 7: I am your host, Miya Wong, and today we are
Speaker 7: going to be talking about the place where the anti
Speaker 7: trians crusade began, North Carolina, and about the recent spade
Speaker 7: of anti trans bills that have been passed there. And
Speaker 7: with me to talk about this is David Forbes, an
Speaker 7: editor and journalist with a trans news network and the
Speaker 7: Asheville Blade. David, welcome to the show.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 7: I think some people, if you're listening to the show,
Speaker 7: you may remember that North Carolina is the state that
Speaker 7: passed the first bathroom bills. But what has gotten significantly
Speaker 7: less attention is a everything that happened after that, and
Speaker 7: b a series of two really sweeping and hideous anti
Speaker 7: trans bills that have been passed in the last month
Speaker 7: or so. And David wrote a really really good piece
Speaker 7: for Transnus network about both these bills and also how
Speaker 7: democrats in the state helped pass them.
Speaker 9: So I want to.
Speaker 7: Talk about that, and I guess the place to start is,
Speaker 7: can you talk about what these two bills HB aight
Speaker 7: oh five and SB four four to two got started.
Speaker 9: Sure, So of the two, HBAH five is the more
Speaker 9: sweeping broadly, at least, they're both terrible anti trans bill.
Speaker 9: It affects everything from changing your birth certificate to state
Speaker 9: health plans not covering trans healthcare to really ominously like
Speaker 9: what jail or prison you get put into if you're
Speaker 9: a train person and you're arrested. That one, it's kind
Speaker 9: of a laundry list of far right anti trans ideas.
Speaker 9: The other SB four forty two is one of those
Speaker 9: where it takes some digging. And here I'm really thankful
Speaker 9: that TNN's policy analyst, who I think you y'all have
Speaker 9: had on your ftim's Kareem Green into the show, was
Speaker 9: actually there to yes, was a huge help in reviewing
Speaker 9: this bill. I've been covering with North Carolina politics and
Speaker 9: it's various horrors for a long time. But even still,
Speaker 9: it's good to have like legislative expertise on that. And
Speaker 9: SA four forty two changes the definition of child abuse
Speaker 9: to not include transphobic child abuse. Essentially, it was written
Speaker 9: against the very fictional specter of like, oh, if you
Speaker 9: have questions about this trans stuff and you get your
Speaker 9: kids pronouns wrong. DSS could come like snatch them overnight,
Speaker 9: which is not a thing that has ever happened, no,
Speaker 9: including them, especially North Carolina, like yeah, yeah, so, but
Speaker 9: what it does is just bluntly open the way, especially
Speaker 9: in the state foster care system, for just anti trans
Speaker 9: bigotry across the board. You know, at this point it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 9: placement can't be NYE based on someone's religion or their
Speaker 9: race and being a transfer, you know, it's like that's
Speaker 9: that's being added those predicted identities. It's also essentially letting
Speaker 9: the ground work for just even more legal sanctioning of
Speaker 9: conversion therapy, which is of course torture and abuse. I
Speaker 9: think cream summed up as that if you if you
Speaker 9: don't have a trans can do abuse, foster care will
Speaker 9: provide one for yeah, which is it's really bleakah we chuckle,
Speaker 9: but it's we chuckle and like gallows humor because he's
Speaker 9: that absurd. So SB four forty two was the one
Speaker 9: that kind of went through the whole legislative process first,
Speaker 9: and in some ways it had less of a party
Speaker 9: line treatment than HB eighth five eventually did so you know,
Speaker 9: say credit where do but NC Senate Democrats, of whom
Speaker 9: there aren't terribly many, but there are some did universally
Speaker 9: vote against this bill. They were like, no, we're not
Speaker 9: approving it. However, the GOP has a two thirds majority
Speaker 9: in there, so it's really not as necessary. They can
Speaker 9: put in sially over right a vito and there where
Speaker 9: things really came down to as North Carona House, and
Speaker 9: they are nine Democrats joined with the Republicans to pass this,
Speaker 9: and then it got to the desk of Governor Josh Stein,
Speaker 9: who won in a landslide last year like North Fromine Democrats.
Speaker 9: Despite how Jerry mayor of the state is, which we'll
Speaker 9: talk about more in a little bit, actually did pretty well.
Speaker 9: The GOP no longer had a supermajority in the House,
Speaker 9: and the Democratic candid for governor, former Attorney General Josh Stein,
Speaker 9: won in a route. So essentially that was supposed to
Speaker 9: prevent bills like this from becoming law, because okay, if
Speaker 9: the Dems held the line in the North Carolina House,
Speaker 9: the Republicans on the supermajority, then the governor vetos it,
Speaker 9: then they can varide of the video that didn't happen
Speaker 9: so not only did non Democrats side with Republicans Stein sign.
Speaker 7: The bill, yeah, which is hideous.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and it was it was bleakly insulting the way
Speaker 9: he did it too, because it was just like he
Speaker 9: didn't even issue a statement or oh, like, well we
Speaker 9: still believe in trans rights. This is a bureaucratic thing
Speaker 9: or even bother to make an excuse. It was just
Speaker 9: tuck in a list of bills that he signed that
Speaker 9: day alongside like some other bureaucratic stuff involving like retirement
Speaker 9: communities and recognizing driver's licenses. So it's it's definitely kind
Speaker 9: of insult to injury sort of situation. Interestingly, North Carolina's
Speaker 9: gay inc organizations, you're kind of like the mainline nonprofits
Speaker 9: and in North find there's like a quality and see
Speaker 9: there's a campaignsion the quality, which is regional is based
Speaker 9: in the state here in Aashville. They actually had been
Speaker 9: very strongly against this bill, despite some Democrats supporting it,
Speaker 9: but they stopped short as will become a theme with
Speaker 9: condemning or attacking any of the Democrats who did, which
Speaker 9: was a giant signal that this is not an issue
Speaker 9: you're really going to fight Democrats on. So the governor
Speaker 9: then thinks, well, there's no political capital be lost signing
Speaker 9: this thing. On the same day, he did veto HBATO five,
Speaker 9: along with a bunch of other bills targeting, you know,
Speaker 9: in quote marks dei measures, which are basically attempts to
Speaker 9: smash out anything that's not far right and further research
Speaker 9: shape the state, and he did veto those. The language
Speaker 9: you use, though, was definitely what a lot of us
Speaker 9: become used to. It's the oh, this was divisive. No
Speaker 9: trans people mentioned, no trans healthcare mention, no trans rights mentioned,
Speaker 9: just vaguely, well, this is divisive and it's a distraction.
Speaker 9: So HBAO five does actually go back to the legislature,
Speaker 9: and one Democrat had voted for HBAO five, so there
Speaker 9: was a tension turning of Okay, is this guy gonna
Speaker 9: still vote for a veto override Representative Dante Pittman, because
Speaker 9: it's a big deal, supposedly anyway, for a Democrat to
Speaker 9: defy their own governor. It's one thing when it's like
Speaker 9: you're just okay, you know the bill's going to pass.
Speaker 9: It's still horrible, but it's supposedly a harder bar to
Speaker 9: reach or at least that's what there is. You know,
Speaker 9: ostensibly pro Queer Democrats are telling us for them to
Speaker 9: go on the record and be like, no, I'm joining
Speaker 9: with the other party to override your veto and like
Speaker 9: give you the middle finger, essentially. But what happened when
Speaker 9: he got to the House, he actually did did vote
Speaker 9: to hold with the veto. But another representative we've been
Speaker 9: out on a pretty dubious excused absence when HBOO five
Speaker 9: was originally their Democratic rep Nasif Maajid, voted in favor
Speaker 9: and that was enough to make it law. So the
Speaker 9: one thing that among Queer and transcing with Carolina, who
Speaker 9: liked a lot of other places, voted very heavily against
Speaker 9: the Republicans, you know, for the Democratic candidates and all.
Speaker 9: That's one reason they did fairly well last year to
Speaker 9: stop exactly the sort of legislation becoming law. It just
Speaker 9: became law, and it did so thanks to members of
Speaker 9: the Democratic Party and in one bill, the Democratic governor.
Speaker 7: Both of these bills are unbelievably draconian, like these are
Speaker 7: things that even like two years ago, like banning state
Speaker 7: funding for like all trans healthcare.
Speaker 9: Well for the state health plan, we should specify.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, sorry, it is like the state healthcare but
Speaker 7: and this is at least my understanding of it, is
Speaker 7: that this is a ban on.
Speaker 9: All ages, yes, for anyone on the state health care plan.
Speaker 9: So if someone is a state employee or a teacher, yeah,
Speaker 9: or like your kids are exactly. And it's kind of
Speaker 9: Actually it's close to home for me because I grew
Speaker 9: up poor in North Carolina and one of the only
Speaker 9: reasons we had healthcare growing up was so my mom,
Speaker 9: as poorly paid as she was, was a public school teacher. So,
Speaker 9: you know, it's a trans kid in where I was.
Speaker 9: Now where we know, you know, it's easier for trans
Speaker 9: kids to know who they are. It's not quite as
Speaker 9: a race as it was back in the nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 9: get health care. A trans adult who's a teacher can't
Speaker 9: have their health care covered anymore.
Speaker 7: And that's a thing that like two years ago, Ron
Speaker 7: DeSantis wasn't calling for this. No, right, the Daily Wire
Speaker 7: at that point, like two years ago is explicitly calling
Speaker 7: for trans extorminacious things, but they're not specifically proposing adults
Speaker 7: can't use trans healthcare. That's not a thing like, yeah,
Speaker 7: that was that was even on the table, and now
Speaker 7: you have like, you have a Democrat overwriting their own
Speaker 7: governor's veto to get this through.
Speaker 9: Yes, a Democrat in a solidly blue district. Magine's district
Speaker 9: is in the middle of Charlotte, which for folks who
Speaker 9: may I mean, it's going to sit like Charlotte's the
Speaker 9: largest city here, and it is not known for being
Speaker 9: like at least on voting law, as it doesn't go
Speaker 9: for the GOP generally.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and then this is the same point that I
Speaker 7: want to make about this bill, like redefining what child
Speaker 7: abuse is like even by the standards of sort of
Speaker 7: like far right anti trans bills, those are really weird
Speaker 7: and radical.
Speaker 9: Korean said it was one of the worst that she'd
Speaker 9: seen in the country as far as like on the
Speaker 9: childcare front.
Speaker 7: From my covering of this too, Yeah, this is one
Speaker 7: of the worst things I've ever seen. And the Democratic
Speaker 7: Party passed.
Speaker 9: It passed with nine Democrats in favor, and the governor
Speaker 9: signed it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's unbelievably horrifying. Yeah, And the fact that the
Speaker 7: queer wargs in the state were unwilling to condemn the
Speaker 7: Democrats who passed this is just horrifying.
Speaker 9: It is and actually goes one further than that because
Speaker 9: afterwards they didn't even bother to put out perfunctory Oh,
Speaker 9: we're disappointing Governor Stein. You know, we will continue to
Speaker 9: try to fight this legislation in court or something like that.
Speaker 9: They did nothing. Yeah, they just they went silent. So
Speaker 9: and you know, their combinations of SB four forty two,
Speaker 9: especially before this bill passed, they were all correct. It
Speaker 9: is horrible. It does sanction child abuse. It is horrific
Speaker 9: on every single front. It is a catastrophe. It is
Speaker 9: draconian all that. It didn't stop being so when Democrats
Speaker 9: started supporting it. Yeah, the kids hurt by this family's
Speaker 9: hurt by this aren't going to be any less hurt
Speaker 9: because a Democrat signed on to it.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And before we go to break the thing I
Speaker 7: want to sort of close this section with is that, like,
Speaker 7: you know, I think it's a very very common thing
Speaker 7: to focus on, like, Okay, why are you focusing on
Speaker 7: the Democrats right now when the Republicans are doing all
Speaker 7: of this stuff? And this is a case where very explicitly,
Speaker 7: and this is the dynamic I think you've seen across
Speaker 7: the board with for example, like Chuck Schumer like helping
Speaker 7: to get their Republican budget through right. Yes, the stuff
Speaker 7: the Republicans are doing, a lot of it can't be
Speaker 7: implemented without the support of the Democrats. And the Democrats
Speaker 7: have been willing to support the fascist governments implementing this stuff,
Speaker 7: and that makes them a collaborationist party, yes, in a
Speaker 7: lot of extremely important cases. And when that happens. In
Speaker 7: North Carolina is one of the places at the forefront.
Speaker 7: And it has been at the forefront for like a decade,
Speaker 7: for nearly a decade. Yeah, for nearly a decade. It's
Speaker 7: like eight years, seven seven, eight years nine nine. As
Speaker 7: of this year, it's nine years since HB two. Good
Speaker 7: lore along in the spring of twenty sixteen, sixteen, Yeah,
Speaker 7: oh that is yeah. This is do not do not
Speaker 7: go to sleep at five in the morning and then
Speaker 7: try to do math live on the area. It will
Speaker 7: come for you too, really truly. It was China subtract
Speaker 7: sixteenth of twenty Okay, this is this, this, this, this
Speaker 7: is this is your one moment of levity and a
Speaker 7: bunch of extremely bleak shit. Isn'ta be a trying and
Speaker 7: failing to do math on air? Look, I can drive
Speaker 7: that's I'm thinking to it. But what we were seeing
Speaker 7: here is the way in which like resistance to the
Speaker 7: GUOPN this is a place like North Carolina is a
Speaker 7: state where in the midst of a just unbelievable national
Speaker 7: right wing turn right queer people turned out to stop this. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and their reward for their resistance was the people that
Speaker 7: they had put in charge of defending them, and in
Speaker 7: as staggering of an example of the banality of evil
Speaker 7: as I've ever seen, just signed this horrific piece of
Speaker 7: anti trans legislation that couldn't have been passed without them
Speaker 7: into effect in the same thing as like fucking as
Speaker 7: a bunch of regulatory bullshit.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and then Gaying did nothing.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 9: The groups they're supposed to lobby at the football this
Speaker 9: is the point of their existence, did nothing.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 9: At that point, they just they let they let it go,
Speaker 9: you know, on the next fundraising cycle, onto the next
Speaker 9: AI meme to on your page to boost you know,
Speaker 9: content generation or whatever.
Speaker 15: And here we are, and we are back.
Speaker 7: Now for the brevity of this show, I am not
Speaker 7: going to go into my giant rants about how this
Speaker 7: is what happened with mid Rand and the French socialists
Speaker 7: and how Midrand and the Socialist Party institute of neoliberalisab
Speaker 7: in France. But Comma, we are instead of doing that
Speaker 7: or me going on another rant about the abromation of
Speaker 7: social movements by the NIS of Bolivia, or another rants
Speaker 7: about the seventeen different iterations of this that we've seen
Speaker 7: over the year. See my episodes on Lula, see many many, many,
Speaker 7: many many things I've done. We're gonna go back and
Speaker 7: talk about this in the context of North Carolina because
Speaker 7: I think there's a really very a very important thread
Speaker 7: that David you have been pulling on in this piece
Speaker 7: and in general that is really not well understood anywhere.
Speaker 7: That is about the structure and function of the Democratic
Speaker 7: Party in the South and the way that North Carolina
Speaker 7: has functioned is it's sort of like the moderate human
Speaker 7: face of like the Greensboro massacre. Oh my, yeah, And
Speaker 7: this is one of those where to start thing.
Speaker 9: There's a quote that I have in the piece by
Speaker 9: civil rights historian Timothy Tyson that, since I read it,
Speaker 9: I think over a decade ago, really just kind of
Speaker 9: hit me like a hammer and is kind of simple
Speaker 9: at the experience I've seen as a you know, impoverished
Speaker 9: trans woman living in North Carolina and covering local state
Speaker 9: government and how federal government works on the ground here too,
Speaker 9: like beneath the green ivy of civility but a stone
Speaker 9: wall of coercion. Yeah, and that is one of the
Speaker 9: better summaries, and it applies other circumstances too, but it
Speaker 9: is it just perfectly sums up kind of the historical
Speaker 9: real the North kind of Democratic party. And when Tyson
Speaker 9: was doing that, he was tracing this whole history from
Speaker 9: the eighteen ninety eight Wilmington Cudaeta and massacre, which is
Speaker 9: one of the most decisive events in American history. And
Speaker 9: I'd even say in like the history of the rise
Speaker 9: of fascism too, to the current day. He was writing
Speaker 9: the late nineties, and it is part of a project
Speaker 9: of history. And one of the terms they were using
Speaker 9: was has this progressive mystique while you were having governors
Speaker 9: on their southern states during the Civil Rights era, where
Speaker 9: you know, giving angry speeches from courthouses and things like that,
Speaker 9: and North Carolina was trying to be the moderate example
Speaker 9: of the South. Oh, you know, we put money into
Speaker 9: look at all these schools and roads were building this
Speaker 9: college system. We're building. We just built Research Triangle Park.
Speaker 9: You know, we're attracting. You know, it's the too busy
Speaker 9: to hate kind of myth. And on that note, they
Speaker 9: generally were more careful about repression, but it still happened.
Speaker 9: You know, North caronin doesn't make the headlines and something
Speaker 9: of the like Selma did, for example, But there was
Speaker 9: a history of riots and a brutal attempts of repression
Speaker 9: from the forties all the way to the seventies in
Speaker 9: North Carolina, and they happened like in almost every city,
Speaker 9: major city there is here, you know, and some that
Speaker 9: weren't so major.
Speaker 7: That's the thing that we've talked about a little bit
Speaker 7: on the show with the Holy Week uprising and the
Speaker 7: sort of the whole wave of riots kind of culminating
Speaker 7: in the assassination of Martin Luther King. But like, yeah,
Speaker 7: like statistically, most of the riots that happened in that
Speaker 7: entire period happened in these small and midsized cities. Yeah,
Speaker 7: that have just like the historical memory of which has
Speaker 7: been completely fucking buried. Yeah, and with Carolina, as you saying,
Speaker 7: like it's one of the critical sights of this. Yeah,
Speaker 7: Durham was rioting in the forties. Yeah, like that, that's
Speaker 7: how far back it goes.
Speaker 9: And I think a lot of time people think, oh, well,
Speaker 9: not much happened in this era, and I think it's
Speaker 9: just a lack of knowledge of history, especially radical history.
Speaker 9: Did it not happen or was it suppressed and then erased?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, and that.
Speaker 9: Happened a lot of this, So you had, you know,
Speaker 9: and figures like Governor Terry Samer at the time, who
Speaker 9: was you know, famous North Carolina Democrat, And yeah, if
Speaker 9: the klan was like openly marching to murder people, he
Speaker 9: might say like, Okay, look a massacre's bad news. We
Speaker 9: are going to like put the state troopers out to
Speaker 9: them from doing that. But a lot of the rights
Speaker 9: activist end up dead, yeah, you know, or there's still
Speaker 9: like violent crackdowns, you know, the Greensboro if he was
Speaker 9: a side at both of some really well organized like
Speaker 9: civil rights efforts and sit ins and more radical action too,
Speaker 9: but also have a lot of repression. You know, by
Speaker 9: nineteen seventy nine, when the States boosters are portraying, you know,
Speaker 9: all that upheaval is a thing of the past. This
Speaker 9: anti racist marched or anti clan Mark, specifically organized by
Speaker 9: this communist group in Greensboro, was massacred. The clan and
Speaker 9: Neo Nazis came in. They just opened fire on people.
Speaker 9: Largely they were acquitted later and in ensuing years, a
Speaker 9: lot of investigation has been done into this and various
Speaker 9: levels of local and state and aft the fact federal
Speaker 9: law enforcement were very complicit and things ranging from just
Speaker 9: kind of trying to sweep it under the rug to
Speaker 9: outright especially the local level like cooperating with the clan.
Speaker 9: A lot of them were either aware this is going
Speaker 9: on and did nothing to stop it, or even actively
Speaker 9: fed the clan information. There's a book recently called Morningside
Speaker 9: that goes into a lot of a lot of this
Speaker 9: detail that courage folks take a look at. But like,
Speaker 9: that's the reality of North Carolina, and that's the reality
Speaker 9: beneath the progressive mystique. And one of the historians quote
Speaker 9: the piece mentioned that this is an exquisite instrument of
Speaker 9: social control because you've kind of already framed the discussion as, oh,
Speaker 9: it's just this genteel civil thing. We'll hear you out.
Speaker 9: Just be a little more patient. But if stuff ever
Speaker 9: really escalates, there is the option of just flat out
Speaker 9: smears violence and massacre, and knowing the history of North Carolina,
Speaker 9: you know a lot of this was directed at black
Speaker 9: North Carolinians, but also it was used to crush labor stuff.
Speaker 9: A lot of the people killed in the Greensboro massacre
Speaker 9: were also organizing in the textile mills. And North Carolina
Speaker 9: under the Democrats under their moderate period, had and continues
Speaker 9: to have some of the most draconian anti labor laws
Speaker 9: in the country, which takes some work. So that's kind
Speaker 9: of the reality in North Carolina and of the Democratic
Speaker 9: Party here, and they lean on that mystique heavily, and honestly,
Speaker 9: I think a lot of it is they evoke because
Speaker 9: you know, we're we're the defenders of the sane, sensible
Speaker 9: civil status quo. Even sat Mustein's statements about Hbao five
Speaker 9: when he did veto it, it's like, well, this is divisive,
Speaker 9: it's making too many ways. We need to get back
Speaker 9: to business, which they mean not as the business garnment.
Speaker 9: They literally mean business. We're marketing the state and making
Speaker 9: more money, and everything means making more money for the gentry.
Speaker 9: So that's kind of the reality North Carolina beneath this
Speaker 9: kind of you know how, how things supposedly are better
Speaker 9: and more progressive here in the end of the day,
Speaker 9: you can still get massacred.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think on a sort of structural level, right,
Speaker 7: I think there's going to be people who are being like, well, Okay,
Speaker 7: why the fuck do I give? Do I give a
Speaker 7: shit about North Carolina? And one And this is something
Speaker 7: that you point out in the piece, and something that's
Speaker 7: really obvious if you spend literally any time in the South.
Speaker 7: Is that what I think? It's thirty six percent of
Speaker 7: the South is like, what's what's the actual number? I
Speaker 7: should have looked this up before.
Speaker 9: So of the national population of queer and trans people,
Speaker 9: thirty six percent live in the South, which is far
Speaker 9: more than any other region, like by a wide march,
Speaker 9: I think, under the same twenty twenty three calculation. And
Speaker 9: there was another reason story they came out spifickly about
Speaker 9: trans people. All these have faults. It is a general
Speaker 9: rule that trans people, especially in areas where they are
Speaker 9: more legally and violently marginalized, are wildly undercounted. But it
Speaker 9: maps to about the same numbers I think of trans
Speaker 9: people in the country. The ESME population is about thirty
Speaker 9: three to thirty six percent live in the South, and
Speaker 9: in the twenty twenty three one the next highest amount
Speaker 9: live in the Midwest, which is kind of different from
Speaker 9: how you see things portrayed that you know, we're just this, ye,
Speaker 9: this coastal you know, elite bohemians on a few coastal cities.
Speaker 9: As a matter of fact, there are a lot of
Speaker 9: trains people in the South and the Midwest. Yeah, we've
Speaker 9: been here for ages, We're still here. Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 9: it's it's it's North Carolina, it's Texas, it's fucking New Orleans,
Speaker 9: West Virginia, Florida, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and again like in terms of like, okay, so
Speaker 7: I'm not in those places, like A, but we all
Speaker 7: have a responsibility to all queer people, like as core
Speaker 7: people right like we have we have, we have a
Speaker 7: responsibility to each other, and we should fucking fight for
Speaker 7: each other. And b you can look at what happened
Speaker 7: in North Carolina, and it was deliberately This is the
Speaker 7: place where the right wing's anti trans strategy was born,
Speaker 7: and it was exported from the success that they had
Speaker 7: in North Carolina to the entire rest of the fucking country, Yes, right,
Speaker 7: with the bathroom bills. And this is something we're going
Speaker 7: to get into a second with the way the Democratic
Speaker 7: Party like didn't react to those bathroom bills. The last
Speaker 7: point that I want to make here is that this
Speaker 7: strategy of control is also very similar to the one
Speaker 7: that the Democrats use in places like San Francisco, where
Speaker 7: you have this sort of progressive veneer over. You know
Speaker 7: that the consolation well, I guess, I guess the constellation
Speaker 7: of class forces is getting more similar as as big
Speaker 7: tech moves into like that part of the South. But
Speaker 7: you know, it's this constellation of like, oh, hey, we
Speaker 7: are the queer rights Party, but our actual interests are
Speaker 7: this combination of housing developers' landlords and tech giants, and
Speaker 7: so as a method of social control, we're going to
Speaker 7: do this like, hey, we're extremely pro trends stuff, and
Speaker 7: then we're going to throw a whole bunch of fucking
Speaker 7: trends homeless people into concentration camps. Yeah, and that's the
Speaker 7: thing that like, you know, we're going to I'm going
Speaker 7: to talk more about this on the show another time.
Speaker 7: With the ways that Trump's anti homeless executive orders, some
Speaker 7: of the models for it are the way that sweeps
Speaker 7: have been working in places like Oakland's. We've talked about
Speaker 7: this on the show before, but yeah, this mechanism of
Speaker 7: social control is one that's really really widespread. And the
Speaker 7: South operates as a laboratory for that too, in the
Speaker 7: same way that it operates as the laboratory for the right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I think that's really important, because this is
Speaker 9: the point I can't I can't hone this point enough
Speaker 9: and make it sharp enough. Frankly, folks need to take
Speaker 9: it really seriously. Whether you cut the South or not.
Speaker 2: Fascist do.
Speaker 9: The var right does, and they have for a long
Speaker 9: long time view did not as a place to ignore,
Speaker 9: but as a place to consolidate power and try out
Speaker 9: their tactics. Too often, the left, even the queer left,
Speaker 9: has not. We have all suffered for it. Yeah, and
Speaker 9: this is this is the whole thing for the historical
Speaker 9: left right. Like one of the things that broke the
Speaker 9: American labor movement was the defeat of the CIO in
Speaker 9: the South.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean all the way back to I mean
Speaker 7: events you were literally talking about, like the defeat of reconstruction.
Speaker 7: But this is, this is why this country is like this,
Speaker 7: And if you don't want the country to be like this,
Speaker 7: you have to fucking fight in the South. Yes, that's
Speaker 7: all we've got time for for today, but tomorrow we
Speaker 7: will be back talk about the long and sordid history
Speaker 7: of the Democratic Party's progressive venear in North Carolina and
Speaker 7: what truly lies beneath it, and we will look how
Speaker 7: the original response to the twenty sixteen bathroom bills set
Speaker 7: the stage for both Democratic Party in North Carolina's passing
Speaker 7: of anti trans laws today and the future of the
Speaker 7: rest of the country. Welcome Dick, It Appened Here a
Speaker 7: podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes about how
Speaker 7: claiming that you were going to put things back together
Speaker 7: and then not doing it makes things fall apart even worse.
Speaker 7: I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we're going
Speaker 7: to be continuing with part two of my interview with
Speaker 7: David Forbes, an editor and journalist for the Trans News
Speaker 7: Network in the Asheville Blade, about the history of the
Speaker 7: North Carolina Democratic Parties progressive veneer over their agreement with
Speaker 7: Republican policy, and importantly, how the Democratic Party's original response
Speaker 7: to the anti trans bathroom bills from twenty sixteen paved
Speaker 7: the way for where we are today. So enjoy, let's
Speaker 7: talk about the original bathroom bills, because I think there's
Speaker 7: some knowledge well okay, I don't know. It's been almost
Speaker 7: a decade. Yeah, so I think people may have forgotten
Speaker 7: how this all start. Is let's talk about the first
Speaker 7: bathroom bills, what happened, and then how the Democrats kind
Speaker 7: of ensured that they would stay in place.
Speaker 9: Sure, so there is the big one everyone knows about
Speaker 9: is HB two because it became kind of internationally famous
Speaker 9: as the North Carolina bathroom Bill, and even I think
Speaker 9: for folks who memories may have faded, it has come
Speaker 9: up recently as kind of a benchmark, and often a
Speaker 9: misinterpreted one. Is we're about to get into for how
Speaker 9: far things have shifted, because on paper, it looks like
Speaker 9: this really horribly backfired, and in some ways it did. Initially,
Speaker 9: HB two was a bill that was kind of slapped
Speaker 9: in last minute. It clearly drew from the larger anti
Speaker 9: trans far right policy circles which North Caroin Republicans are
Speaker 9: highly connected to. Those kind of Dems often kind of
Speaker 9: view themselves their own little like institution, like where the
Speaker 9: Democratic moderate it's like North North carnd Democrats have always
Speaker 9: been at their best. People of that tuation we talked
Speaker 9: about the Republicans here were like, okay, we're now in power,
Speaker 9: which they were starting in twenty eleven. Let's try out
Speaker 9: this stuff from ALEC. Let's try out this stuff from
Speaker 9: some obscure right wing think tank. And that meant they
Speaker 9: were plugged in when in the wake of Obergefell, and
Speaker 9: also in North Carolina as well, the year before you'd
Speaker 9: had equal marriage for that whole swath of the South
Speaker 9: was kind of imposed by a federal court order or
Speaker 9: recognized by federal court order. So they were like, Okay,
Speaker 9: this isn't working. There is not just more d there
Speaker 9: is more de facto on the ground popular acceptance of
Speaker 9: equal marriage. Now that's not the wedge was previously. So
Speaker 9: what do we shift to wile we shift to trans people,
Speaker 9: And so North Caron legislators very eager to try out
Speaker 9: far right policies. The North Caron GOP is far right
Speaker 9: even by Southern standards, which is interesting because the state's
Speaker 9: very split as far as like votes and demographics go.
Speaker 9: So twenty sixteens rolled around four years earlier, the Dems
Speaker 9: had done the usual thing they'd run a super conservative,
Speaker 9: super pro business, white guy Democrat. He got trounced by
Speaker 9: Pat McCrory, who was the former mayor of Charlotte, and
Speaker 9: Rain is like, Oh, I'm a moderate, sensible Republican. I'm
Speaker 9: going to bounce out the legislature a little bit. But
Speaker 9: unlike too many outside the region and the state who
Speaker 9: kind of wrote oka in North Carolina just becoming this
Speaker 9: red state now like other Southern states have, they knew
Speaker 9: their hole was actually really precarious. Now they jerrymandered extensively,
Speaker 9: so extensively that like North Carolina. The same year as
Speaker 9: HP two pass stopped being recognized as a democracy by
Speaker 9: the the policiers a study a matter of fact, the
Speaker 9: district Carolina they did a whole commentary later that year
Speaker 9: that these were the most rigged districts, the most area
Speaker 9: districts they'd seen, not just in the US but anywhere
Speaker 9: in the world. So that is where we live, That's
Speaker 9: where we lived for some time. But the governor's like
Speaker 9: the statewide, so he's in a more precarious position, and
Speaker 9: they wanted a wedge issue in their view to drive
Speaker 9: out conservative votes. They also hate trans people and want
Speaker 9: to hurt us. So this HB two said that trans
Speaker 9: people can't go into bathrooms unless they use the one
Speaker 9: matching their birth certificate in any state building in North Carolina.
Speaker 9: And this technically also includes like local government buildings, includes
Speaker 9: like social services, it includes like any educational setting pretty much.
Speaker 9: So this was clearly a slab dash affair. They didn't
Speaker 9: even have like an enforcement mechanism in there. But I
Speaker 9: did a few other things too, I think people forget about,
Speaker 9: which is it also stripped the ability of localities to
Speaker 9: make their own minimal wage rules, So it was also
Speaker 9: an attack on labor because those always go together and
Speaker 9: not unrelated. Trans and quick people are only working class demographics,
Speaker 9: which I don't think gets set enough, and also essentially users.
Speaker 9: On reaction to Charlotte adding gender identity to its existing
Speaker 9: non discrimination ordinance, there's was a local one, but in reality,
Speaker 9: you know, if Chartte had never done that, they would
Speaker 9: have done a bill like this pretty shortly. Anyway, it
Speaker 9: was kind of just the excuse. And they also struck
Speaker 9: down all non discrimination ordinances across the state, like local
Speaker 9: non discrimination ordinances. So this is a broad attack with
Speaker 9: trans people as kind of the point of the spear
Speaker 9: as it were, like the ones most in the front lines.
Speaker 9: It's a familiar pattern. You go after trans rights, you're
Speaker 9: also going after broad rights for any marginalized group because
Speaker 9: non disformation stuff is being struck down left and right.
Speaker 9: And also you're attacking labor yep. So you know, it
Speaker 9: really kind of set the model for things to come.
Speaker 9: HB two sparks a massive international backlash. I think the
Speaker 9: indestment was four hundred million. The state lost four hundred
Speaker 9: million as companies pulled out, events pulled out. There was
Speaker 9: a boycott, a fairly effective one, honestly, that was started
Speaker 9: as grassroots though gay inc groups and even like just
Speaker 9: random nonprofits and some Democratic Party officials later joined in
Speaker 9: on it. So the money's being hemorrhage left and right.
Speaker 9: McCrory's being turned into a national laughing stock, if anything,
Speaker 9: is proving a rallying point for the other side. Because
Speaker 9: twenty sixteen rolls around and in a year where Trump
Speaker 9: takes North Carolina and generally the Republicans do fairly well
Speaker 9: throughout the South, even in a swing states like NC,
Speaker 9: McCrory loses. He loses to the Attorney General Roy Cooper
Speaker 9: as a Democrat. Now, I would never say his pro
Speaker 9: trains are about again some major betrayals he did. He
Speaker 9: was more willing to say, at least perfunctory statements about
Speaker 9: trains rights than any northbound Democratic politician as a statewide
Speaker 9: level before and honestly since, including the current governor. And yeah,
Speaker 9: he proceeded to win, so he gets in office. North
Speaker 9: Carolina gentry are historically plenty fine with big a treat,
Speaker 9: but the Republicans had by this point broken one of
Speaker 9: their cardinal rules, which is they fucked with the money. Yeah,
Speaker 9: because like the state was losing money, They were losing
Speaker 9: business deals, corporate headquarters and stuff. And this is a
Speaker 9: lot of what the status quo, very antire labor says.
Speaker 9: Quote that North kid Democrats and Republicans had generally both
Speaker 9: supported in varying ways was in danger and you know,
Speaker 9: some of them persons were losing money. So they basically
Speaker 9: tell the Republicans in early twenty seventeen to knock it off, like, Okay,
Speaker 9: you've gone far enough. It didn't work, you lost the election.
Speaker 9: They still do the Jerry manner had a lot of
Speaker 9: power in the state legislature, but they didn't have the
Speaker 9: governor's office anymore, so you know, repeal this, like we're
Speaker 9: getting too much bad to see. And what really escalated
Speaker 9: it was basketball is kind of a religion in North Carolina,
Speaker 9: especially college basketball, and the NCAA said, look, we'll pull
Speaker 9: the tournament out of HB two is still in the books.
Speaker 9: And at that point there became like these back and
Speaker 9: forth sessions. Earlier in December, there was this compromise effort
Speaker 9: where supposedly Charlotte would strike its non discrimination stuff on
Speaker 9: its end. It was currently like the source of legal challenge.
Speaker 9: They'd gone to court to fight to uphold it. And
Speaker 9: this should have been a warning sign. The governor, ELEC. Cooper,
Speaker 9: at that point brokeer kind of this deal where okay, Charlotte,
Speaker 9: you take trains people out of your non screaming short
Speaker 9: and insa of your own accord and the state will
Speaker 9: repeal HB two. Well that didn't happen. They did the
Speaker 9: first part, and then the least legislators were like, okay,
Speaker 9: well that's nice, we're not doing anything about this. That
Speaker 9: should have been a lesson about complying in advance, but
Speaker 9: it didn't really seem to take Sadly, so HB two
Speaker 9: wastll in the books. By March, you know, March Madness
Speaker 9: is coming up and all that, And so they finally
Speaker 9: do a repealed and this is still hailed as oh,
Speaker 9: look like back in the day, like even Republicans, some
Speaker 9: Republicans would like repeal a trans bill when it got
Speaker 9: this big backlash. Their federal funding was being threatened as
Speaker 9: well for the state. It's not like federal education funding
Speaker 9: and all. That's not what happened though, And what happened
Speaker 9: I think is actually was a lot more ominous and
Speaker 9: a lot more revealing. What passed instead was honestly a
Speaker 9: second bathroom bill called HB one four to two or
Speaker 9: HB two point zero, as a lot of activists and
Speaker 9: queer folks in the ground Transfer the Ground dubbed it.
Speaker 9: And what this bill did was it technically took out
Speaker 9: the bathroom ban, but it's put in a bunch of
Speaker 9: byzantine provisions about who could use the bathroom wins, so
Speaker 9: it would still take a court case for a trans
Speaker 9: woman to go use the women's bathroom. It kept all
Speaker 9: the anti labor stuff, and it kept all the non
Speaker 9: discrimination stuff struck down for years, like you couldn't pass
Speaker 9: local manscration protections for years, and at this point the
Speaker 9: pressure is mounting the Democratic Party for the first time
Speaker 9: most of a decade, their votes in the legislature actually
Speaker 9: matter because the Republicans they're split between kind of the
Speaker 9: capitalists who are hate trains that were using this as
Speaker 9: a wedge issue and now the money's being fucked with
Speaker 9: they're ready to repeal it, and some of the others
Speaker 9: who are like, no, no, we really are dedicated to
Speaker 9: hating trans people. The state can burn as long as
Speaker 9: trans people's lives are made more miserable. So they have
Speaker 9: the votes in their own caucus to pass this. So
Speaker 9: for once DEM's had a lot of power and they
Speaker 9: could have easily been like no floor or peel or nothing,
Speaker 9: and they probably would have gotten it through. They did not.
Speaker 9: They sided with the Republicans. They passed this mess that
Speaker 9: essentially kept the status quo. It was just barely enough
Speaker 9: for the NCAA, who even noted they even know their corporation.
Speaker 9: Basically they know it was reluctant that they were, you know,
Speaker 9: putting the tournament back in NC, but they did. The
Speaker 9: governor knew. Governor Democratic governor signed it. I probably forget
Speaker 9: as mentioned earlier. HB two passed with two Democratic votes.
Speaker 9: In the first place, this is like not a new
Speaker 9: trend of this happening. Heck, anti queer stuff even well
Speaker 9: before that would often pass with democratic support as well
Speaker 9: as Republican support, often be signed by democratic governors, So
Speaker 9: this is not an entirely new thing. And this is
Speaker 9: also a point where you can see gay Ink splitting
Speaker 9: a bit because gay Ink did actually had actually condemned
Speaker 9: h two point zero, but once it became passed, they
Speaker 9: either offered tempted statements or they backed down, and so
Speaker 9: the lesson from HB two wasn't okay. Back in the day,
Speaker 9: you know, nine years ago, trans rights used to be
Speaker 9: more of a consensus, even among moderate conservatives, at least
Speaker 9: basic protections for it. And a good example was how
Speaker 9: unpopular hbtw was it was repealed under all this backlash.
Speaker 9: It did get a backlash, but it wasn't really repealed.
Speaker 9: And as a matter of fact, what the far right
Speaker 9: learned was that when it comes down to it, the
Speaker 9: Democrats North Carolina, it turned out, elsewhere will fold if
Speaker 9: trans rights has made an issue.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know, and you can watch everything that
Speaker 7: has happened and since with trans rights has just been
Speaker 7: the Democrats folding over and over and over again and
Speaker 7: getting weaker and weaker language until we're in this place now,
Speaker 7: you know, Like and I think the thing that is
Speaker 7: a little bit different is that like you used to
Speaker 7: have to like claim you had done something about the
Speaker 7: anti trans bill, and now you can just sign it
Speaker 7: yeh and it becomes law. And this is something that
Speaker 7: has does played out across the country. Like there have
Speaker 7: been a lot of states where Democratic governors have signed
Speaker 7: anti trans bills, yes.
Speaker 9: Or vita pro trans bills like in California.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And you know even in states where like Pritzker,
Speaker 7: the governor of Illinois, has been being held up as
Speaker 7: like the big pro trans people I've seen. I see
Speaker 7: like even trans leftists doing this, and you know, like
Speaker 7: there are a lot of things in Illinois that are
Speaker 7: very good for trans people. Because of the weird Pritzker corruption,
Speaker 7: his sister is trans. And also the moment the government
Speaker 7: was like, oh, hey, we're gonna like sort of make
Speaker 7: a big show of threatening like healthcare funding, Pritsker just
Speaker 7: folded and let all these hospitals stop providing transcrir to youth,
Speaker 7: even though it is literally a violation of Illinois like
Speaker 7: of Illinois discrimination legislation. Yeah, they just back down and
Speaker 7: refuse to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And the way that this starts that there is a
Speaker 7: gap between the rhetoric of someone like Pritzker being like,
Speaker 7: oh no, like we support trans rights. Trans rights are
Speaker 7: in an important civil rights issue, and then you watch
Speaker 7: them like allow a bunch of hospitals in Illinois to
Speaker 7: stop providing character trans kids. And the place where that
Speaker 7: ends is more and more Democrats just straight up voting
Speaker 7: for this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And it's and the Democrats, you know, as you're talking
Speaker 7: about with with HB two is like you know, there
Speaker 7: were there were Democratic votes on that one.
Speaker 9: Yeah, HB one four two especially yeah, the compromise, but
Speaker 9: even h ME to itself, Yeah, there were there were
Speaker 9: Democrats who score that too.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And so this is this is I think the
Speaker 7: critical part of this is that like this stuff only
Speaker 7: can happen with the support of the Democrats. And that's
Speaker 7: why it's happening. It's because because like, and this is
Speaker 7: this is something that's incredibly important. Right now, We're like
Speaker 7: all of the ship that is happening, all these Republicans
Speaker 7: are doing are hideously unpopun like thirty percent approval ratings
Speaker 7: across the board for like, all of this just hideously
Speaker 7: hideously hated. The only way it can happen is if
Speaker 7: the Democrats go collaborationists inside with the Republicans, and that's
Speaker 7: what they're doing.
Speaker 9: Nazis always need Whislims.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and they're relying on the image of resistance to
Speaker 7: distract everyone from the fact that they're helping these policies
Speaker 7: go through. And if you want to stop them, you
Speaker 7: have to stop them from collaborating.
Speaker 9: I think I also brings up the kind of the
Speaker 9: third element in this. You've got the are always fascist,
Speaker 9: increasingly fashionst Republican Party, You've got the increasing collaborations Democratic Party,
Speaker 9: and especially on queer and trains rights, you have gay
Speaker 9: inc which and I go into some examples in the piece.
Speaker 9: After HB two point zero they put out some prefernatory statements,
Speaker 9: but then they turn to gatekeeping and the ensuing years
Speaker 9: they very consistently tried to stifle any activism that was
Speaker 9: more radical or more principled to try to get this
Speaker 9: stuff off the books, and especially if it came to
Speaker 9: holding Democratic officials feet the fire. I literally have an
Speaker 9: example in the article that I was physically therefore and witnessed,
Speaker 9: where a director of the canvass and Equality sees the
Speaker 9: mic as it was being passed some candidates to answer
Speaker 9: a stronger question from some transactivists and change the question
Speaker 9: to something that didn't actually put any pressure on them
Speaker 9: at all, like just kind of absurd, petty stuff like that.
Speaker 9: But the coom of effect has been that, you know,
Speaker 9: they turned to thinking about their political careers and their fundraising,
Speaker 9: and when push comes to shove again and again, they've
Speaker 9: shown they won't hold Democrats' feet to the fire. If anything,
Speaker 9: they will tell the trains people trying to hold their
Speaker 9: feet the fire to shut up. So if you know
Speaker 9: that the lobby, the official lobby that's supposed to, you know,
Speaker 9: ostensibly on some level stand up for some mild version
Speaker 9: of trains and queer rights, will never give someone any
Speaker 9: shit for breaking ranks, not even like we can dem
Speaker 9: officials so and so and they're bigotry or whatever more
Speaker 9: we are sorely disappointed in or anyone of the boiler
Speaker 9: play things. They won't even go that far. That's too
Speaker 9: far for them. So you have Democrats collaborating and a
Speaker 9: gay ink structure that has taken the energy and funding
Speaker 9: out of lat of other queer activism, but will absolutely
Speaker 9: will not fight when Democrats are involved. So if you're fascist,
Speaker 9: all you have to do is get some Democrats involved.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and that's that's how you give VICHI friends Like
Speaker 7: that's yeah.
Speaker 9: And honestly, this is it's a question I put to
Speaker 9: folks because you know, look, I'm honestly dealing with the
Speaker 9: North Caround Democrats is one of the things that made
Speaker 9: be an anarchist. So so it's you know, I've not
Speaker 9: had any faith in them for a very very long time.
Speaker 9: But for folks that you know, kind of do put
Speaker 9: a little more energie into electoral processes, I just you know,
Speaker 9: so questions the piece I think are worth asking them,
Speaker 9: Like what's the point of people who are just to
Speaker 9: support your enemies? Yeah, what's the point of people that
Speaker 9: you elect, maybe even like get out you know and
Speaker 9: dock doors or whatever to get elected, who then don't
Speaker 9: do the one thing they're elected to do? And God
Speaker 9: asked too for some of the folks who support some
Speaker 9: of these gay ink ords, I was like, if they
Speaker 9: won't fight, now, what is the point of them, Why
Speaker 9: do they deserve any support from US as a community,
Speaker 9: or is it far past time to look to other alternatives.
Speaker 9: There was only lesson hbto taught as well, which is
Speaker 9: if you want even the most die hard bigot to
Speaker 9: start losing their nerve to attack their money and their power,
Speaker 9: and then you don't stop if say, oh you have
Speaker 9: to compromise with a pragmatic solution, you ignore them, laugh
Speaker 9: in their faces, do whatever, but you keep pressing them
Speaker 9: because that was their thing. HQ too, there was a
Speaker 9: really effective campaign to boycott and it did have a
Speaker 9: substantial effect. You know, the lovely weapon of vicious mockery
Speaker 9: really came in handy, and even the Hulgans didn't like
Speaker 9: becoming a national laughing stock. So there were less about
Speaker 9: how stuff could be fought as well. And the more
Speaker 9: radical history in North Carolina, you know, there are there
Speaker 9: are quier radicals here. You know, my city was hit
Speaker 9: by a massive hurricane last year, and honestly was a
Speaker 9: lot of US radicals getting out in the ground that
Speaker 9: kept things from getting even worse. And you know, and
Speaker 9: just folks on the ground pitching in outside of government structures,
Speaker 9: not waiting for the official nonprofits who were either devastated
Speaker 9: or had not planned for this. So there are other alternatives,
Speaker 9: you know, and or heck that the hell I have
Speaker 9: to remember I could curse here that the fact that
Speaker 9: civil rights the low Attenson has gone to sitidence, and
Speaker 9: there was a lot of organizing in those movements. It's
Speaker 9: a lot more Miltonant than folks. Remember that also went
Speaker 9: along three decades of riots and cities throughout the state
Speaker 9: before the old order even began to budge a little bite.
Speaker 9: And the lesson from that Democrats and North kind of
Speaker 9: status quo. And I see throughout the South and throughout
Speaker 9: the country it only budgets even starts to move when
Speaker 9: the cost of continuing the way it is become far
Speaker 9: too high.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And our job is to impose that cost. Yes,
Speaker 7: because if we don't impose that cost, they're going to
Speaker 7: keep pushing and they are going to continue to write
Speaker 7: us out of existence until they have the guns to
Speaker 7: do it.
Speaker 9: Yeah. And honestly, that is that is a mentality I
Speaker 9: think a lot more people need to need to absorb.
Speaker 9: And I think one of the lessons from you know,
Speaker 9: fighting the far right at some points for my entire
Speaker 9: like adult life, basically even a little bit before then
Speaker 9: in North Carolina is that the more you fight than
Speaker 9: the weaker they are. But also, and this is this
Speaker 9: is something one of the more experience transfernds the South
Speaker 9: I know has emphasized you won't always win, you can
Speaker 9: always inflict a cost. Yeah, and I think a little
Speaker 9: more like thinking outside of elections, a little more bloody
Speaker 9: minded determination can really come in hand of the sense
Speaker 9: of like, if our enemies are like, okay, court rules
Speaker 9: against us, we're still pressing the attack. Okay, election goes
Speaker 9: against us, We're still pressing the attack. I think we
Speaker 9: can do way meaner and way better than they than
Speaker 9: they do on that front. Yep, something goes against us,
Speaker 9: that's nice, We're still pressing the attack. You know, there's
Speaker 9: nothing in this healthscape of an empire we have to
Speaker 9: abide by, especially not in the South.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So if something doesn't go our way once, okay,
Speaker 9: learn regroup, redouble, make sure you inflicted some costs, go
Speaker 9: out and inflict more of them.
Speaker 7: They're not invincible, trust me. Yeah, another gender is possible.
Speaker 7: You just have to go out and fight for exactly.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So I think on that note, David, where can people
Speaker 7: find your work.
Speaker 9: You can find my stuff for trans News Network at
Speaker 9: Transnews dot Network, including this most recent piece. And you
Speaker 9: can find some of my local reporting as part of
Speaker 9: the Ashville Blade co op at Asheville Blade dot com.
Speaker 7: Awesome. And y'all at both the Transduced Network and the
Speaker 7: actual Bladey've been doing a bunch of absolutely incredible work.
Speaker 7: Thank you, and I encourage everyone to support both because ideally,
Speaker 7: the function of journalism is to be the targeting mechanism
Speaker 7: of the class, and these are these are two groups
Speaker 7: of working class trans journalists to do.
Speaker 9: It, and both organizations are worker run.
Speaker 3: I should add.
Speaker 7: Yep, this has been it could happen here, Go fight them.
Speaker 12: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our weekly
Speaker 12: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 12: what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. This episode,
Speaker 12: I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans, working the
Speaker 12: week of August twenty first and August twenty seventh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we sure are.
Speaker 12: I can't believe Cracker Barrel would do that. It's outrageous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's clearly the biggest news.
Speaker 12: Thankfully they switched it back. They took the cracker out
Speaker 12: of the barrel, and thankfully though they've.
Speaker 2: Reversed course put the cracker back in.
Speaker 12: I really don't understand how it's how it's woke. I mean,
Speaker 12: I do understand, because I understand how this messaging works, but.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter anytime anything happens, and they can see
Speaker 2: a backlash forming you after the fact, because people were
Speaker 2: starting to get pissed off about the fucking cracker barrel
Speaker 2: thing in the same way, like that happen with fucking
Speaker 2: Games Workshop earlier this year, like they redid their logo
Speaker 2: in a shitty way. It's the same like animal bullshit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's everyone's doing it.
Speaker 12: It's it's it's it's not woke. Yeah, it's just incentivizing
Speaker 12: like capitalist conformity. This is why they've changed all of
Speaker 12: the buildings of like you know, McDonald's pizza Hut to
Speaker 12: the same structure, so you can use the property and
Speaker 12: resell it over and over and over again without having
Speaker 12: to do this big renovation. It's just all about capitalist efficiency.
Speaker 12: It's not about woke.
Speaker 2: It's got nothing to do with woke. But there's people
Speaker 2: whose whole like Chris Rufo, whose whole job is sitting
Speaker 2: around and as soon as you started to see the
Speaker 2: backlash forming it and realize like, oh, there's probably gonna
Speaker 2: be a spree of these companies coming in with these
Speaker 2: new minimalist logos, because it's clearly a trend in like consultancies,
Speaker 2: right like it started happening. This is not the first one.
Speaker 2: So I'm just gonna look around until I see one
Speaker 2: of these that feels like it's got culture war potential,
Speaker 2: and cracker Barrel is an obvious one, like if I'm looking,
Speaker 2: if I was looking out there, that's when I would
Speaker 2: pick right, Like.
Speaker 12: I think they're also responding to, like, you know, the
Speaker 12: past few years where we've been removing like racist caricatures
Speaker 12: from logos right with like like Entermima's and like Lando
Speaker 12: Lakes and using this in a similar way, except they
Speaker 12: took quite the white guy leaning against the barrel. Yeah,
Speaker 12: so it's part part part of that whole backlash as well.
Speaker 12: It's funny though I have seen like I don't I
Speaker 12: don't know if it's from Chris Rufo, but you know,
Speaker 12: people similar in that orbit talking about how this thing
Speaker 12: actually is wokeism because minimalism is based on brutalism, which
Speaker 12: was invented by communists. So actually turning everything into this
Speaker 12: minimalist design is actually a plot from the Frankfurt School,
Speaker 12: the Communists taking over.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, it doesn't matter outside of the fact
Speaker 2: that people, whenever you buy into it, like you're you're
Speaker 2: helping to feed like if you like, even dunking on.
Speaker 2: That's part of the problem is that like, yeah, just
Speaker 2: talking about this shit at all fuels the feedback loop, right,
Speaker 2: And that's that's what this is, is a feedback loop
Speaker 2: that they're very good at manipulating for political purposes. And
Speaker 2: I'm not going to sit here and lecture you and say,
Speaker 2: like stop commenting on this, stop talking about this stuff,
Speaker 2: but we do need to understand that this is the
Speaker 2: olds in the audience will remember the old Simpsons Halloween
Speaker 2: episode where the different like mascots from different companies like
Speaker 2: come alive and start murdering people in town. And the
Speaker 2: solution that's an old ad man gives everyone is like, well,
Speaker 2: if you want to stop the monsters, just look away.
Speaker 2: Advertising feeds on attention, you know, and as every once
Speaker 2: everyone ignores the monsters, they go away. And unfortunately that's
Speaker 2: not how things actually work, because there's three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty million people in the country and so whatever you
Speaker 2: choose to do about this isn't going to matter. But
Speaker 2: the feedback loop is going to continue unabated. That much
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 12: Say cracker barrel has fallen and like Christ after three days,
Speaker 12: has rose again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Great. Anyway, speaking of memes, unfortunately, we should talk
Speaker 2: about this horrible mass shooting that is probably going to
Speaker 2: be the big story this week. I mean, I hate
Speaker 2: to reduce it to that, but yeah.
Speaker 12: We're recording this on Wednesday, a few hours after the shooting.
Speaker 12: This is in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was a mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school,
Speaker 2: Annunciation School. This happened earlier the day that we're recording this,
Speaker 2: So that's going to be Wednesday, August twenty seventh. As
Speaker 2: of right now at about two eleven pm PST, two
Speaker 2: children are dead, Seventeen people, mostly children, are wounded. The
Speaker 2: shooter is also dead, and the shooter has been identified
Speaker 2: as Robin Westman, who graduated from the school in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 12: Their mom also worked at the school until very recently yeap.
Speaker 2: And that's not at all an unusual kind of situation.
Speaker 2: Mass shooters at schools often are either attending the school
Speaker 2: or recently graduated. There's been a couple of cases where
Speaker 2: a family member worked at the school. Like this stuff
Speaker 2: is all pretty standard for somebody shooting up a school.
Speaker 2: What's different is one of the things that's different is
Speaker 2: that the shooter basically followed in Brenton Terrant the christ
Speaker 2: shooters footsteps by covering their firearms and the gear that
Speaker 2: they were wearing and draw like I guess drew or
Speaker 2: painted on. I'm not sure. It looks like with like
Speaker 2: a white paint pat like whiteout or something like that,
Speaker 2: a white paint pin and covered it. In the names
Speaker 2: of other mass shooters, references to racial annihilation memes like
Speaker 2: the Removed Kabab meme, which is in short, a memes
Speaker 2: celebrating the Bosnian genocide, and it was a meme that
Speaker 2: was specifically Brenton Tarrant had signaled in his like manifesto
Speaker 2: and I think on his gun he had a remove
Speaker 2: Kebob reference. But it's something he signaled and it was
Speaker 2: on the shooter's firearm. As well as the names, I
Speaker 2: mean Tarrant, there's references to tarrent On there, Timothy mc
Speaker 2: McVeigh tem mcvay's name, just the word McVeigh is painted
Speaker 2: on there. Ted Kazenski, the Unibomber.
Speaker 12: A whole bunch of other more recent mass shooters people
Speaker 12: who are in like the mass shooter fandom, yeah, as
Speaker 12: well as just a collection of memes from like old memes.
Speaker 2: Too utterly unrelated to shooting, Like there's a loss meme
Speaker 2: on there, and if you're a lot of people are going, wait,
Speaker 2: what the fuck really? And if you're too young for
Speaker 2: a loss, they're used to be a wet well. I
Speaker 2: think there still is a web comic called Control Alt Delete.
Speaker 2: It started in like the early two thousands. It might
Speaker 2: have gotten started in the late nineties, and it was
Speaker 2: part of like this, there's this boom in webcomics in
Speaker 2: the late nineties when suddenly the people are able to
Speaker 2: make their own comics online and make livings off of them.
Speaker 2: A whole bunch of guys made gaming comics after Penny Arcade,
Speaker 2: which is like the big one that blew up, And
Speaker 2: one of them was Tim Buckley, who did a comic
Speaker 2: called Control All Delete that was not good and he
Speaker 2: tried to have a serious storyline where his character's girlfriend
Speaker 2: has a miscarriage, and the strip in which he finds
Speaker 2: her having a miscarriage is called loss. And it's gotten
Speaker 2: to the point where people are abstracting the four panels
Speaker 2: into like a minimalist line representation of how the blocking
Speaker 2: look like. It's a bit people have done everything like
Speaker 2: put loss memes on everything, like that's the joke at
Speaker 2: this point, more than a reference to the show is like,
Speaker 2: look at this new crazy place. Somebody put a loss meme,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it's a game, and a lot of
Speaker 2: what we're seeing with the shooter is like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is the natural extent of a bunch of things, and
Speaker 2: a fucking mass shooter putting a loss meme on the
Speaker 2: bear or on the side of their gun before shooting
Speaker 2: up a school is the natural furthest craziest extent of
Speaker 2: the loss meme. Right.
Speaker 12: If this is anything, it is like a mimetic shooting.
Speaker 12: It is based on a whole bunch of memes about
Speaker 12: other mass shootings as well, specifically in the way that
Speaker 12: engages in like anti semitism and racism and includes slurs
Speaker 12: and catchphrases. It's not in the way that the shooter
Speaker 12: actually believes these things ideologically, it is just to gesture
Speaker 12: to them as they exist in the lineage of other
Speaker 12: mass shootings. It is like it's a perfunctory use of
Speaker 12: slurs and of messaging that just kind of wraps around
Speaker 12: this whole like nihilistic fandom culture around other mass shooters,
Speaker 12: and like that is that's what this shooting is. I've
Speaker 12: watched now like seventeen minutes a video of the shooter
Speaker 12: like showing off their weapons, going through their like diaries
Speaker 12: and journals, inspired by a whole bunch of like Eastern
Speaker 12: European mass shooters as well, and this shooter reminds me
Speaker 12: of participants of what's called the true crime community or TCC.
Speaker 12: Not as in like the genre of true crime podcasts
Speaker 12: or documentaries, but it's more of an online fandom based
Speaker 12: on a personal obsession with mass killers themselves and specifically
Speaker 12: school shooters. And this community encourages reenactments and tries to
Speaker 12: get some people to do their own mass shootings. Yeah,
Speaker 12: and this is not the first one of these we've
Speaker 12: had in this past year. Now, the shooting in Wisconsin
Speaker 12: last December. I spent the repnow, which we reported on
Speaker 12: on Nikodeppen here was also in this variant of like
Speaker 12: Columbiner True Crime Community Shootings. Repnow's name is on one
Speaker 12: of this shooter's rifles. Yes, there was a shooting in
Speaker 12: Tennessee a few months later which also referenced Repnow, done
Speaker 12: by a black white supremacist in cel whose manifesto was
Speaker 12: full of like plagiarized memes and other manifestos. It's about this,
Speaker 12: like yeah, this complete lack of meaning, Like they they
Speaker 12: scattershot all of these memes and references and like bits
Speaker 12: of manifestos and images to just to make this whole
Speaker 12: mess of stuff to look at. But none of it
Speaker 12: actually means anything.
Speaker 2: Well, and the draining of meaning, the flattening of meaning
Speaker 2: is part of the po that's the point taking is
Speaker 2: taking a man who shot fucking fifty people to death
Speaker 2: and turning that into the same thing as a twenty
Speaker 2: year old joke about a comic strip in terms of
Speaker 2: its impact and severity, Because if that's no more serious
Speaker 2: or meaningful or painful than fucking a joke about Tim
Speaker 2: Buckley's dumbass cartoon. Like once you get someone in a
Speaker 2: mind state where they accept that they're willing to accept
Speaker 2: a lot of terrible things, right, And the goal here
Speaker 2: is creating content in the form of mass shootings, right,
Speaker 2: Like that that is the goal, and that is also
Speaker 2: what people are consciously. A lot of people want to
Speaker 2: be a part of themselves. You mentioned the last year's
Speaker 2: shooting that committed by Samantha Rupp now, but there's also
Speaker 2: I found a December thirtieth, twenty twenty four article in
Speaker 2: Wisconsin Public radiowpr dot org their website. It talks about retnow,
Speaker 2: but it also gives the story of thirteen year old
Speaker 2: Jamie Sitz, who killed herself in twenty twenty four and
Speaker 2: was a member of the true crime community. The police
Speaker 2: went through her phone and they found a bunch of
Speaker 2: memes and reference and like her contributing to online discussions
Speaker 2: and telegrams and stuff for PCC. She was obsessed with
Speaker 2: the Columbine Kids, right, She like engaged in a lot
Speaker 2: of those conversations, and she was posting about her plan
Speaker 2: to kill herself, but she was not interested in carrying
Speaker 2: out like a mass shooting or killing other people. And
Speaker 2: that fit in fine within the discourse like people encourage
Speaker 2: presents basically, right, Like, yeah, I think part of the
Speaker 2: thriller hitary is just wanting to feel like you sitting
Speaker 2: on your ass on the computer, you are impacting the
Speaker 2: world in part because like you feel like that's the
Speaker 2: only chunk of the world that you've got right like,
Speaker 2: and that's you know, tied into like the hopelessness and
Speaker 2: the nihilism of all of this. I found a random
Speaker 2: poster on Reddit in a discussion of the TCC community.
Speaker 2: I actually really liked this person's summary of it. And
Speaker 2: this is like seven years old. Interestingly enough, it's not
Speaker 2: a new phenomenon. It dates back to inter war period Germany.
Speaker 2: There were many Germans at the time who were fascinated
Speaker 2: with the topic of extremely grisly murder and torture, especially
Speaker 2: such instances where sexual arousal was involved. The German language
Speaker 2: even has a word for it, lust mort or lust murder.
Speaker 2: Serial killers were on the rise at the time, and
Speaker 2: many of them claimed to get extreme amounts of carnal
Speaker 2: pleasure from the act of killing or maiming. And there
Speaker 2: is this weird vein. I found another study as I
Speaker 2: was looking into this that uses the true crime community term.
Speaker 2: It's from twenty fifteen by Naomi Barnes of Utah State university,
Speaker 2: and it was like looking into fandoms that had grown
Speaker 2: up around serial killers and around spree killers online. And
Speaker 2: Naomi is using the word true crime community for just
Speaker 2: the general term of people who are interested in true crime,
Speaker 2: not in the way that you and I have been
Speaker 2: using it.
Speaker 12: Yeah, because we're using this term to refer to like
Speaker 12: a specific than them around like around these shootings, not
Speaker 12: the general milieu of like true crime podcasts and like
Speaker 12: documentaries and people who are into that sort of content.
Speaker 12: We're referring to a much more niche group of people
Speaker 12: online who operate on like Telegram, discord, tumbler, and other
Speaker 12: social media accounts. Right, it's based around like specifically like
Speaker 12: like an obsession over actually doing these acts and like
Speaker 12: and and like they like cause play as these people.
Speaker 12: This isn't like your you know, average white woman who
Speaker 12: likes listening to true crime podcasts. This is this is
Speaker 12: something very different.
Speaker 2: No, and that's that's important. But it's also important to
Speaker 2: note that, like what you've been talking about, this this
Speaker 2: need to recreate and not just prior to actually carrying
Speaker 2: out a shooting, because most of them don't ever do that.
Speaker 2: There's this need, this obsession with the aesthetics to want
Speaker 2: to own clothing and objects and whatnot that like look
Speaker 2: like Eric Adyllon or whatever.
Speaker 12: Right the column by bandshirt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that that And this does extend to the shootings,
Speaker 2: Like there's a number of shooters who have like worn
Speaker 2: that KMFD I'm sure because one of the columnbind guys wore.
Speaker 12: It cementthro up now and I believe this recent shooter
Speaker 12: also had had a KMDS shirt picked out.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting about that twenty fifteen study is that
Speaker 2: it is looking at the true crime community because column
Speaker 2: biners were already a thing. There'd been a number of
Speaker 2: copycat attacks, but the kind of social fandom around like
Speaker 2: that aspect of it had not really taken hold in
Speaker 2: a mass level in a way that the internet and
Speaker 2: virality could really make use of.
Speaker 12: It involved on Tumblr like in that era. Yes, it's
Speaker 12: more like an infant compared to like the fully grown
Speaker 12: version that it is now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what's interesting to me is this this paper
Speaker 2: kind of catches the communities it's starting to calv off.
Speaker 2: And so there's a chunk of the paper where she's
Speaker 2: quoting from a couple of different people who went and
Speaker 2: visited in one case they visited like Adam Lonza's house
Speaker 2: and the Sandy Hook Elementary School, and it's people visiting
Speaker 2: places like that, sites associated with like mass shootings and
Speaker 2: the like. And she gives this mix of people being like, oh,
Speaker 2: like the first person he quotes who went to lands
Speaker 2: of houses, like, I was actually just really sad and
Speaker 2: I just wish none of it had ever taken place,
Speaker 2: Like it was all really horrible and it made me
Speaker 2: feel bad. But then a bit later she gives you
Speaker 2: responses from people who have the opposite reaction, Like there's
Speaker 2: this fella Paul, who does not specify which murder site
Speaker 2: they visited, but specified that it was a place where
Speaker 2: a murder victim's body was found. And Paul responded, Honestly,
Speaker 2: I felt a static, like, Wow, I'm going to a
Speaker 2: place someone was killed. What if there are ghosts the
Speaker 2: murderer him or herself? I was absolutely off. My kid.
Speaker 2: We dug up some dirt and we keep it in
Speaker 2: a little glass bottle.
Speaker 12: It's like a religious pilgrimage, right right, And that's the static,
Speaker 12: and that's what this starts to document.
Speaker 2: And that's where I'm like, oh, this is this study
Speaker 2: is mostly about an unrelated just a normal fandom. But
Speaker 2: you can see the bits like already popping up in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, these people who are having these astatic almost
Speaker 2: again like almost like psychosexual experiences being at the site
Speaker 2: of a mass shooting.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and the further centry that is then doing one yourself.
Speaker 12: And obviously this also is like a part of like
Speaker 12: a suicidal drive, a suicidal attention. A lot of people
Speaker 12: kill themselves in the course of the act, right, it's
Speaker 12: a way of making your suicide not just be about yourself.
Speaker 2: Right. And there's more to say about like the culture
Speaker 2: of fame in this country and like how how virality
Speaker 2: and whatnot has made it so that like these people
Speaker 2: tend to get what they want, or at least they
Speaker 2: know they've got a good chance of getting what they want, right,
Speaker 2: they're obviously not around to experience it. But like, as
Speaker 2: long as you do something sufficiently like weird and bloody,
Speaker 2: you're likely to get a good amount of attention for
Speaker 2: a while.
Speaker 12: So that's the actual like background of what this shooting was.
Speaker 12: I think now we should probably mention how the shooting's
Speaker 12: being talked about more broadly, Yeah, because it takes a
Speaker 12: very different angle from the actual like nihilistic, like TCC
Speaker 12: fandom aspect. It it is making this more about like
Speaker 12: woke contemporary politics I suppose.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Cash Betel's announced that he's investigating this as an anti
Speaker 12: Catholic hate crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is just not true. I mean, it's almost
Speaker 2: certainly by a Catholic, ors somebody who was raised gath Like.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All the people who hate Catholics most are often lapsed Catholics.
Speaker 12: Very early on, people started claiming that this shooter was
Speaker 12: trans Now a few years ago, they did change their
Speaker 12: name to Robin, and the name change petition stated that
Speaker 12: at the time they identified as female. At this point,
Speaker 12: we still know very little about the actual shooter beyond
Speaker 12: like the videos they posted on YouTube of their weapons
Speaker 12: and a journal written in cyrillic and a note that
Speaker 12: they left to their parents discussing their fear of dying
Speaker 12: of cancer due to vaping. I've not been able to
Speaker 12: look at their Internet presence or activities in the intervening
Speaker 12: years since changing their name, and their current gender identity
Speaker 12: is still not very clear. In a translation of their
Speaker 12: cyrillic journal, they discuss detransition quote, I don't want to
Speaker 12: dress girly all the time, but I guess sometimes I
Speaker 12: really like it. I know I am not a woman,
Speaker 12: but I definitely don't feel like a man. I regret
Speaker 12: being trans. I wish I was a girl. I just
Speaker 12: know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we
Speaker 12: have today. I also can't afford that I only keep
Speaker 12: my long hair because it is pretty much my last
Speaker 12: shred of being trans. I'm tired of being trans. I
Speaker 12: wish I never brainwashed myself. I can't cut my hair now,
Speaker 12: as it would be an embarrassing defeat and it might
Speaker 12: be a concerning change of character that could get me reported.
Speaker 12: It just always gets in my way. I will probably
Speaker 12: chop it on the day of the attack.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 12: Discussion of gender takes up a very small percentage of
Speaker 12: the journal. Most of their writing is about admiration for
Speaker 12: previous mass shooters and fantasizing about killing children from a
Speaker 12: very young age. On the cover of their journal, alongside
Speaker 12: a bunch of other like gun stickers, they do have
Speaker 12: a defend a quality progress flag sticker with an AK
Speaker 12: forty seven YEP. From my perspective, this is just another
Speaker 12: one of those memes that they're wrapping into everything. On
Speaker 12: one of their magazines. They wrote, I am the wokeler,
Speaker 12: why so queerious? Right on the other side of the
Speaker 12: magazine had an antiqueer slur. So I view this type
Speaker 12: of stuff in the same way I view the inclusion
Speaker 12: of like the Lost Meme or like Ted Kaczinski or
Speaker 12: all this other stuff. This this like memafied version of
Speaker 12: trying to throw everything at the wall just to make
Speaker 12: everything mean nothing right. And it's it's extremely like obnoxious
Speaker 12: and annoying.
Speaker 2: But it it works.
Speaker 12: But yeah, it works. And I don't know what else
Speaker 12: I want to say on this, on like the trends angle.
Speaker 2: We don't want to deny that like this is going
Speaker 2: to cause a problem, that this is going to be
Speaker 2: used by the right, Like there will be there will
Speaker 2: certainly be rhetoric. And I've already seen rhetoric from you know,
Speaker 2: Jack Posobic in that crowd around it.
Speaker 12: About trans people targeting Catholics.
Speaker 2: Well, this is why these people shouldn't have weapons or whatever,
Speaker 2: like this is why we should put them all in.
Speaker 2: And I don't I'm not going to minimize that that
Speaker 2: didn't start with this, that that kind of rhetoric, that
Speaker 2: conversation and this is useful to that crowd, and you
Speaker 2: know that is that is bad. I don't we don't
Speaker 2: know what's going to happen or to what extent this is.
Speaker 2: Like we're talking right now that they clearly would like
Speaker 2: to use this and are trying to use this. One
Speaker 2: thing that I would point out, and I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is certainly not an on balance optimistic thing,
Speaker 2: but making Americans focus on a mass shooting for more
Speaker 2: than a day or two not as easy as it
Speaker 2: used to be.
Speaker 12: No, yeah, which is really devastating. It's not good that we're.
Speaker 2: There, but like two people dead, I'm just saying, like
Speaker 2: Americans ignore way bigger numbers all the time now the right,
Speaker 2: You know, there's not always a media campaign like going
Speaker 2: to be with this beyond trying to make this huge.
Speaker 2: But also they've done that before, right, they did that
Speaker 2: with the rep Now shooting, right Like, there were attempts
Speaker 2: to make that and it didn't.
Speaker 12: Every mass shooting they have tried to pain it's been
Speaker 12: done by a transperson, and I think in some ways
Speaker 12: that has depowered this rhetoric as a tactic. Yeah, by
Speaker 12: claiming every shooter is trans. Most Republicans already believe that
Speaker 12: to be the case. So whether this person either was
Speaker 12: trans or used to be trans, it may not matter
Speaker 12: that much to the right because they already think every
Speaker 12: shooter is trans. Trump's already targeting queer people. The right
Speaker 12: doesn't need an excuse to go after queer people. I
Speaker 12: don't think an event like this will make the hammer
Speaker 12: come down much harder. This could be a boy who
Speaker 12: cried wolf situation for the anti trans right, since their
Speaker 12: base already thinks that every mass shooter from the past
Speaker 12: three years is trans. I did a whole episode on
Speaker 12: this last year, called fake trans Terrorists. The Gun Violence
Speaker 12: Archive says that there have been two hundred and eighty
Speaker 12: six mass shootings in the United States so far in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty five. If one or two trans people do
Speaker 12: a mass shooting, that would still mean trans people, at
Speaker 12: one percent of the population, are less likely to do
Speaker 12: a shooting compared to CIS people. There was like one
Speaker 12: legitimate trans mass shooting targeting a school a few years
Speaker 12: ago in Nashville, and if this happens to be the second,
Speaker 12: I don't think that this new brain Rod Columbine true
Speaker 12: crime community shooting will make much of an impact on
Speaker 12: trans people nationwide. Think of how quick conservatives moved on
Speaker 12: from the Zizians, and certainly being trans is not a
Speaker 12: motivating factor of this shooting. If you look at their
Speaker 12: writing and videos posted on YouTube before they did this,
Speaker 12: this nihilistic meme maximalism has no trans causation. It has
Speaker 12: nothing to do with being trans. There's no coherent or
Speaker 12: ideological leftist screed, there's no pronoun pins. Their journal talk
Speaker 12: both about quote unquote hating fascism and inequality, while also
Speaker 12: hating Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Indians, calling Somali's subhuman and criminal,
Speaker 12: writing that quote white people should rule the world unquote,
Speaker 12: but that minorities should quoe unquote have rights. While talking
Speaker 12: about ideological Nazi killers, they remarked, quote, I don't often
Speaker 12: find myself aligning with these killers specific ideologies unquote. They
Speaker 12: said that they disliked racism but also were racist. They
Speaker 12: wrote about killing quote unquote fags while also calling themself
Speaker 12: one on one of their weapons. This shooter and all
Speaker 12: the memes and rhetoric they use is most similar to
Speaker 12: the Repnow shooting last December in Wisconsin in terms of
Speaker 12: the neo Columbiner school shooter obsession, as well as the
Speaker 12: white supremacist mimetic black in cell shooting in Anoc, Tennessee,
Speaker 12: last January. All these shootings are heavily referential, contradictory, and
Speaker 12: intentionally incoherent. Right, every single extremist political faction is represented
Speaker 12: there because that that is the point, is combining all
Speaker 12: of these references to previous mass shooting. So they're incorporating
Speaker 12: everything they can and things that they just think are funny,
Speaker 12: like just a whole bunch of like meaningless memes.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 12: And that's vastly more important than whatever gender identity the
Speaker 12: shooter happens to have right now at this point in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, anyway, folks, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of people going the sky is falling over what
Speaker 2: this is going to mean for people and how this
Speaker 2: is going to be used, And obviously this is terrible.
Speaker 2: I'm not telling you not to feel terrible about a
Speaker 2: mass shooting.
Speaker 12: You should feel bad about the actual mass shooting.
Speaker 2: You should feel bad about the mass shooting. The sky
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy's been falling, right, Yeah, Let's give
Speaker 2: this one a little bit to see if it makes
Speaker 2: the sky fall any faster or if in a week
Speaker 2: We're like, no, this guy's still falling at about the
Speaker 2: same rate, which isn't good. It's just what happens. It's
Speaker 2: where we are, all right, ads, and we're back.
Speaker 12: We can safely leave the brain rot in the previous
Speaker 12: section and now talk about something totally real. The economy.
Speaker 2: Yes, the economy which never kills people.
Speaker 7: Okay, so speaking of things that have never killed any one, eye,
Speaker 7: that's so not true. The Volkershaw killed so many people.
Speaker 7: But a very very critical rubicon was crossed on Monday
Speaker 7: of this week when Trump attempted to fire a member
Speaker 7: of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. Now, Lisa Cook
Speaker 7: is refusing to step down under the fairly obvious justification
Speaker 7: that the president does not have the power to do this.
Speaker 7: Trump has been cooking a very weird thing, accusing her
Speaker 7: of mortgage fraud as a as a way to remove
Speaker 7: her from the Federal Reserve Board. But Trump does not
Speaker 7: have the power to do this. So we are in
Speaker 7: the midst effectively of a confrontation over this, where Lisa
Speaker 7: Cook has continued to just not actually leave her position
Speaker 7: at the Federal Reserve and is going to court. This
Speaker 7: is an extremely significant escalation of what up until this
Speaker 7: point had largely been a series of attacks on the
Speaker 7: Federal Reserve's governor, Jerom Powell. There are a few factors
Speaker 7: here that one of the most important things is Trump's
Speaker 7: anger over continuing high interest rates or sort of high
Speaker 7: interest rates. Trump wants to slash interest rates because he
Speaker 7: thinks it will make the economy grow more. Now, when
Speaker 7: I said this was the crossing of the rubicon, what
Speaker 7: this is is this is the beginning of the fight
Speaker 7: over whether the Federal Reserve is going to be an
Speaker 7: independent density right. Trump has been attempting to, as we've
Speaker 7: talked about in the show, appoints Stephan Miran as another
Speaker 7: one of the governors on the Federal Reserve's board. Miran
Speaker 7: very explicitly wants to eliminate the independence of the Federal
Speaker 7: Reserve for what to talk about exactly what that means
Speaker 7: in a second, But I want to read this quote
Speaker 7: from Fortune magazine interport on it describing a JP Morgan
Speaker 7: analysis of the situation, because this has really spooked a
Speaker 7: bunch of major financial institutions for very obvious reasons. Quote
Speaker 7: in a note on Friday, JP Morgan analysts, led by
Speaker 7: chief economists Bruce Cassman highlighted key proposals such as giving
Speaker 7: atwill power to the President to fire FED board members
Speaker 7: and fedbank presidents, giving Congress control of the Fed's operating budget,
Speaker 7: and shifting the Fed's regulatory responsibility over banks and markets
Speaker 7: to the Treasury. So this is what Stefan Mihern has
Speaker 7: been proposing. This is what looks to be the long
Speaker 7: term plan of Trump and the people around him. Eliminating
Speaker 7: the Federal Reserve is a long, long time goal of
Speaker 7: the far right for an extremely convoluted variety of reasons.
Speaker 7: The FED in and of itself is an extremely confusing entity.
Speaker 7: Its creation has spawns a full century of academic arguments
Speaker 7: about what the States even is, and it's complicated to describe.
Speaker 7: Also because most of the information will not most, but
Speaker 7: a significant portion of the information about it is just
Speaker 7: anti Semitic conspiracy. Because this is eliminating the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 7: In the return to quote unquote sound money is one
Speaker 7: of the key elements of a massive network of sort
Speaker 7: of right wing, very old right wing conspiracy theories. But
Speaker 7: I think that the thing that's best understood by people
Speaker 7: kind of is just about the Federal Reserve is the
Speaker 7: FED printer meme. And the Federal Reserve is the body
Speaker 7: that creates money like that is, that is authorized to
Speaker 7: create the US dollar. That is why it's a Federal
Speaker 7: Reserve bank. It is critical on a level that is
Speaker 7: difficult to express to the entire functioning of the world economy. Now,
Speaker 7: the Federal Reserve Board is technically a government entity, but
Speaker 7: it is it was set up explicitly to be quote
Speaker 7: unquote non political. Now the extent to which that's true
Speaker 7: is fuzzy, obviously, But the point of it was so
Speaker 7: that there would be a large scale financial institution that
Speaker 7: controls like the money supply effectively, that that controls enormous
Speaker 7: portions of US sort of macroeconomics policy through its due
Speaker 7: is control of interest rates would not be able to
Speaker 7: be like directly interfered with by the President or Congress.
Speaker 7: That is that it's the whole point of this, you know.
Speaker 7: It is effectively a measure to instill confidence that the
Speaker 7: US isn't going to just like turn the printers on
Speaker 7: and print a bunch of money from every other capitalist
Speaker 7: in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like so much. When that promise goes away,
Speaker 2: what happens, I don't know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, and this is something that I think, I
Speaker 7: think is not understood very well.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: The current conflict is largely over Trump wanting to be
Speaker 7: able to control the Federal reserves interest rates. Right, So
Speaker 7: he wants he wants the lower federal interest rates to
Speaker 7: make it make it cheaper to borrow money because he
Speaker 7: thinks this will pump more money back into the economy
Speaker 7: and this will make the economy grow. And he thinks
Speaker 7: that he's being like sabotaged by the Fed. The Fed's
Speaker 7: worried about inflation. But I actually think that focusing just
Speaker 7: on that part of the Federal Reserve is significantly underestimating
Speaker 7: how important the Federal Reserve is to the entire structure
Speaker 7: of the economy. There are so many just sort of
Speaker 7: random things that it does that are not particularly well understood.
Speaker 7: I was talking about this earlier in a meeting, but
Speaker 7: nificant portion of the gold held by countries around the
Speaker 7: world is literally just kept in a vault under the
Speaker 7: New York Federal Reserve building. And that's just the sort
Speaker 7: of seemingly random thing that it does. I was reading
Speaker 7: about its payment system for reasons that I'll talk about
Speaker 7: in the episode to do about this next week. It
Speaker 7: just in a footnote about the payment system, there is
Speaker 7: a part where it says that the Federal Reserve runs
Speaker 7: the payment system for the World Bank. So this is
Speaker 7: something that is a critical, critical, an extremely complicated center
Speaker 7: of the entire capitalist world.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: Its payment infrastructure has trillions of dollars a year and
Speaker 7: moving through it. If this infrastructure stops working or breaks
Speaker 7: a little bit, a lot of the very subtle management
Speaker 7: of the economy of the Federal Reserve does can stop working.
Speaker 7: And you know, again we've been talking mostly about interest
Speaker 7: rates and its ability to sort of print money, which
Speaker 7: is over simplification. But you know, for exameple the Fed
Speaker 7: also does these things like carries out these like massive
Speaker 7: overnight repo agreements, like inject liquidity into the market. There's
Speaker 7: all of these massive we are talking billions and billions
Speaker 7: of dollars of financial interventions that you basically never even
Speaker 7: hear about that have been stabilizing the economy since two
Speaker 7: thousand and eight. And this apparatus, if it is dismantled,
Speaker 7: if it has directly seized control of by Trump, and
Speaker 7: and part of what's going on with this board is
Speaker 7: that Trump is trying to get a majority of the
Speaker 7: people on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
Speaker 7: to be his appointment so that he can control it directly,
Speaker 7: and so they can start bringing it under directly under
Speaker 7: the control of I mean the president effectively. Right, this
Speaker 7: is something where if you unleash the doge people on
Speaker 7: the Federal Reserve and the payment systems, the settlements and
Speaker 7: clearance systems stop working. We are talking about a catastrophe
Speaker 7: that it's unclear to me whether it's even been modeled.
Speaker 7: There are so many different complicated things that this institution
Speaker 7: does that these people do not understand particularly well at
Speaker 7: all and think that they can use to just sort
Speaker 7: of permanently create a bubble economy that they can ride.
Speaker 7: And this is the first sort of shot over the battle.
Speaker 7: Isn't even the right where this is the first engagement
Speaker 7: over the fight for that. There's also been a lot
Speaker 7: of sort of taco analysis of this, arguing that this
Speaker 7: is actually Trump backing down from trying to fire Jerom
Speaker 7: Powell to just try to fire one of the Reserve
Speaker 7: board members that's not backing down. There's also a chance
Speaker 7: to heal that if this works, he's going to try
Speaker 7: to fire Powell too. So we're going to We're gonna
Speaker 7: keep watching a situation. I'm going to talk more about
Speaker 7: it next week when we know more, and also talk
Speaker 7: about what the Federal Reserve is as an institution. And
Speaker 7: we're going to continue monitoring the situation because it is
Speaker 7: extremely important and handing the keys over to these people
Speaker 7: is something that is dangerous enough that it is creating
Speaker 7: significant pushback among the actual people in finance and in
Speaker 7: the banking system who matter.
Speaker 2: Great, Well, it's so good. I mean, we'll see if
Speaker 2: this means anything other than more suffering for you know people.
Speaker 2: I guess that's where I am as like, is there
Speaker 2: even a level of fucking with the money that Trump
Speaker 2: can do that that's enough to seriously cause consequences for him?
Speaker 2: And there must be, but it's just hard to imagine
Speaker 2: if there was.
Speaker 7: It's this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. I mean, that's the fun thing with
Speaker 2: the big stories we've got this week is they're all like, well,
Speaker 2: could get a lot worse, could just stay as bad
Speaker 2: as it is right now. Well, we'll continue to wait
Speaker 2: to see what's going to happen with all of that.
Speaker 2: Speaking of something that we don't have to just wait
Speaker 2: and wonder what's going to go on, because the news
Speaker 2: changes every single week. Here's the tariff.
Speaker 1: Songs Jazz Bob Rock, Jazz, bo.
Speaker 7: Oh boy so and yet another instance of the whole
Speaker 7: Trump backing down thing not happening. The tariffs on India
Speaker 7: that Trump had been threatening for the purchases of Russian
Speaker 7: oil have in fact taken effect. The terriff right on
Speaker 7: India is now fifty percent. This is a significant barrier
Speaker 7: to any trade between India and the US. It is
Speaker 7: again sort of unclear whether India is going to bow
Speaker 7: to the political pressure here because as with many of
Speaker 7: these terriffts. We've talked about this situation with Brazil fairly
Speaker 7: extensively on this show. The thing about imposing tariffs on
Speaker 7: a country to get them to fall in line with
Speaker 7: the American policy is that it pisses off everyone in
Speaker 7: the country, regardless of whether or not they would traditionally
Speaker 7: be US allies. And so there's you know, it creates
Speaker 7: a massive countervailing pressure against the financial incentive to fall
Speaker 7: in line and stop buying Russian oil. I also, very
Speaker 7: briefly want to talk about something that I think is
Speaker 7: a sort of part and parcel of the tariff policy
Speaker 7: that Garson you mentually want to talk about, which is
Speaker 7: like the US purchasing ten percent of Intel.
Speaker 12: Yes, socialism has been achieved.
Speaker 2: We did it.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 12: Now you can finally call Trump a national socialist.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And this is sort of a intensification, I guess
Speaker 7: of a agree that we talked about a while back
Speaker 7: where Intel was talking about giving part of its profits
Speaker 7: to the US. This is just the US government is
Speaker 7: just buying a stake in these companies. And this is
Speaker 7: actually a very very weird maneuver by the US because
Speaker 7: the US has obviously bought companies before, right, this is
Speaker 7: how a lot of the bailout worked. But the thing
Speaker 7: about if you look at the bailouts from two thousand
Speaker 7: and eight and you look at the US like purchasing
Speaker 7: the automakers, the US got these really weird specific shares
Speaker 7: that don't give any kind of controlling interest and are
Speaker 7: the direct rationale for this that the US should just
Speaker 7: own part of the chip manufacturers because they're effectively like
Speaker 7: domestic national security resources. Significant portions of the market think
Speaker 7: that this is going to be a continuing tread and
Speaker 7: the US is going to continue buying stakes in these companies.
Speaker 7: There is a sort of symbiotic relationship here in the
Speaker 7: sense that, like, on the one hand, it's obviously not
Speaker 7: great to have sort of stakes in you bought by
Speaker 7: the US governments and have US government federal policy directly
Speaker 7: dictating what these companies do. But on the other hand,
Speaker 7: it creates for these actual companies themselves, It creates a
Speaker 7: sort of symbiosis right where these people now have effectively
Speaker 7: guaranteed state backing that can bail them out of all
Speaker 7: of their unbelievably terrible business decisions around basing all of
Speaker 7: their production around AI. So yeah, and this is all
Speaker 7: sort of part of the same hypernationalists direct national socialism,
Speaker 7: if you will. Yes, kind of natural sentence, but.
Speaker 12: The most stupid form we've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know. There's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 7: hype about this being like American state capitalism or something,
Speaker 7: and I just ignore that, just just ignore it. It's bad.
Speaker 7: I think it's it's in the same category as a
Speaker 7: lot of the things here, which is that Trump administration
Speaker 7: is trying to consolidate as much power over the economy
Speaker 7: as they can, both in Federal Reserve and through just
Speaker 7: straight up taking controlling parts of companies. This is a
Speaker 7: trend that's going to continue, and it's not good.
Speaker 12: Do you know what is good?
Speaker 5: Though?
Speaker 12: You beat me to that exactly, that's right. The fact
Speaker 12: that we get a nice ninety to to I don't know,
Speaker 12: one hundred and twenty second break to listen to these ads.
Speaker 12: All right, we are back. There has just been so
Speaker 12: much news this week. It's kind of outrageous. Trump is
Speaker 12: continuing his attacks against the Smithsonian for going woke. He's
Speaker 12: promised a Department of Justice lawsuit against California for their
Speaker 12: new redistricting map. A GOP house probe has begun to
Speaker 12: investigate if the DC crime stats have been faked this
Speaker 12: whole time, making it look like crime is low even
Speaker 12: though it's obviously super high as we all know. Yeah,
Speaker 12: as Mia said, we have socialism now with ten percent
Speaker 12: of intel and Trump and Hague says announced that they
Speaker 12: want to change the name of the Department of Defense
Speaker 12: back to the Department of War because it quote unquote
Speaker 12: sounds stronger.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, this is this is the.
Speaker 9: Only one of those that I that I actually agree with.
Speaker 7: They should do this, like calling it anything other than
Speaker 7: the Department of war is incredibly dishonest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder that I'll make get a harder short
Speaker 2: of get people on board increasing funding.
Speaker 16: He used to be called the Department of War, and
Speaker 16: it had a stronger sound. And as you know, we
Speaker 16: won World War One, we won World War two, we
Speaker 16: won everything.
Speaker 17: Now we have a Department of Defense with defenders. I
Speaker 17: don't know if you people want to standing behind me,
Speaker 17: if you take a little vote, if you want to
Speaker 17: change it back to what it was when we used
Speaker 17: to win wars.
Speaker 9: All the time, that's okay with me.
Speaker 13: All right, that's coming.
Speaker 16: You let me know if you want to do it.
Speaker 16: I think Department of War. It just sounded me and
Speaker 16: he said, sir, behalf of the Department of Defense.
Speaker 7: Defense.
Speaker 16: I don't want to be defense only. We want defense,
Speaker 16: but we want offense too, If that's okay, So you'll
Speaker 16: make a decision.
Speaker 17: But you know, as Department of War, we won everything.
Speaker 16: We want everything, and I think we're going to have
Speaker 16: to go back to that.
Speaker 12: All right, man, cool stuff happening in the uffal office.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do like that when he starts that speech,
Speaker 2: he has to go like we won World War one,
Speaker 2: Like he's like, there's a question at the end there
Speaker 2: where he's like he's he's like, he's like, just make sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't really remember if we won that one or not,
Speaker 2: but we definitely won the second one and others.
Speaker 12: When as to how he would go about change the name,
Speaker 12: as it requires an Act of Congress, Trump replied to quote,
Speaker 12: We're just gonna do it. I'm sure Congress would go
Speaker 12: along if we need that. I don't think we even
Speaker 12: need that, But if we need that, I'm sure Congress
Speaker 12: will go along.
Speaker 2: I don't know that we do we need I don't know.
Speaker 2: If what you need to change the name of the
Speaker 2: Department of Defense, you do, Yeah, you do. That makes
Speaker 2: sense to do that.
Speaker 7: Auto macro sense.
Speaker 17: Right.
Speaker 7: What Trump is suggesting here is wouldn't wouldn't it simply
Speaker 7: be more efficient if there was simply a fearer, a
Speaker 7: single person to make all the decisions?
Speaker 12: He said a lot of things in that vein recently,
Speaker 12: is like Congress being more of a symbolic, symbolic branch
Speaker 12: of government that if if we need them, they'll probably
Speaker 12: just agree with me.
Speaker 7: But like we don't.
Speaker 2: Really that's your standard dictator stuff.
Speaker 12: That's how he's been talking about it recently now. Earlier
Speaker 12: this week, a redacted transcript of Gillaine Maxwell Gillan Jizline
Speaker 12: Maxwell's meeting with Trump's DOJ has been released, where she
Speaker 12: denied that she ever witnessed President Trump engage inappropriate behavior, saying, quote,
Speaker 12: I actually never saw the President in any type of
Speaker 12: massage setting. The President was never inappropriate with anybody, and
Speaker 12: the times that I was with him, he was a
Speaker 12: gentleman in all respects unquote. She also denied allegations that
Speaker 12: Prince Andrew ever had sex with a minor in her home,
Speaker 12: saying that a substantiating photograph is quote unquote fake.
Speaker 2: Well, I can't imagine why she'd lie, and.
Speaker 12: Also claimed that there is no Epstein quote unquote client
Speaker 12: lest So yeah, that all about wraps that up. I
Speaker 12: think we got to the bottom of the whole Epstein case.
Speaker 12: We don't need to worry about this anymore.
Speaker 2: I would say, of all of those, the one of
Speaker 2: those that I might have believed before she denied it
Speaker 2: was that there wasn't an additional client list outside of
Speaker 2: what we've already seen, like his black we bele O. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't surprised if they didn't keep all of that
Speaker 2: many notes on a criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I don't think there's a list of being like,
Speaker 12: here's all of my pedophile friends in one place.
Speaker 2: Here's what does make me wonder now, and this really
Speaker 2: is the first time I am which is that they
Speaker 2: clearly came to her with a list of here is
Speaker 2: all of the things you need to say you didn't see, like.
Speaker 12: Maybe or she's just savvy enough to know what to say,
Speaker 12: Like I even think, yeah, we don't even need to
Speaker 12: an allege a larger conspiracy here. I think everyone involved
Speaker 12: in this is quite savvy and knows what they should
Speaker 12: say and shouldn't say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think the conspiracy is obvious, Like
Speaker 2: that's that's all there is. There doesn't need to be
Speaker 2: an explicit quid pro crow here. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me that she brings up Prince Andrew.
Speaker 2: If nobody brought that up to her, she was asked
Speaker 2: about it. That's what I'm saying is I believe there's
Speaker 2: a conversation. We're not privy here too, where she got
Speaker 2: marching orders in exchange for getting you know, she's basically
Speaker 2: out on work release, right.
Speaker 12: I don't need to jump to such outrageous conspiratorial beliefs
Speaker 12: such as that.
Speaker 2: I'm okay with it at this point. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know what to what extended it was, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know this is this is pointless, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know if this helps with his base. I don't
Speaker 2: know that his bass is going to be like, well
Speaker 2: if Gilan Maxwell says it, nope, yeah.
Speaker 12: I mean people have responded positively, like Margor Taylor Green,
Speaker 12: who was previously going on a slight offense that on
Speaker 12: the Epstein things, has now fully come around being like, well,
Speaker 12: there you go. It's it turns out Trumpet isn't a
Speaker 12: pedophile after all. Thank goodness, that was a close call there.
Speaker 2: I know this is being disseminated to his influencer network,
Speaker 2: right and to the network of people that he uses
Speaker 2: for stuff like this. I'm wondering about the actual like
Speaker 2: voter base, fan base, like time will tell, and the
Speaker 2: folks who are a step or two further than Marjorie
Speaker 2: Taylor Green, like the like the people who are more
Speaker 2: like on the Rogan side of things, like does this
Speaker 2: really move the needle for them?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 2: I hate having the cares like is Joe roganm gonna
Speaker 2: buy this shlot, but this does seem like, yeah, shameful
Speaker 2: even for him.
Speaker 12: I mean, I think a lot of people can see
Speaker 12: that there is an incentive for going to say certain things,
Speaker 12: and I think people people are smart enough to understand that.
Speaker 12: I don't think she's going to tell the Trump's own
Speaker 12: DOJ about like a smoking gun involving Trump. Why would
Speaker 12: that help her try to get a pardon from the President.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think I think I think the important thing
Speaker 7: for this is that like, the people who are going
Speaker 7: to believe this are the people who just don't want
Speaker 7: to believe that Trump did this, and this is this
Speaker 7: is a reinforcing thing that you can feed them. But
Speaker 7: the question is what answer for everyone else? And it's
Speaker 7: not particularly compelling for them.
Speaker 12: All Right, we have four executive orders to get through
Speaker 12: before we close this episode, starting off with cashless bail.
Speaker 12: On Monday, Trump signed two executive orders targeting cashless bail,
Speaker 12: one specific to Washington, d C. Which directs law enforcement
Speaker 12: to charge people federally and hold them in federal custody,
Speaker 12: and to use federal funding and services as leverage to
Speaker 12: pressure DC to change its cash less bail policies. The
Speaker 12: other executive order targets cashless bail nation Why, and asks
Speaker 12: the Attorney General to make a list of quote states
Speaker 12: and local jurisdictions that have, in the Attorney General's opinion,
Speaker 12: substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pre
Speaker 12: tray release from custody for crimes that pose a clear
Speaker 12: threat to public safety and order, including offenses involving violent,
Speaker 12: sexual or indecent acts, or burglary, looting, or vandalism. The
Speaker 12: Attorney General shall update this list as necessary.
Speaker 7: Quote.
Speaker 12: So, using that list, Trump's cabinet will then quote identify
Speaker 12: federal funds, including grants and contracts currently provided to cashst
Speaker 12: bail jurisdictions that may be suspended or terminated unquote. So
Speaker 12: it's trying to bribe states and local municipalities to cease
Speaker 12: cash's bail policies using federal funds, the same way that
Speaker 12: they've tried to do for a whole bunch of other
Speaker 12: anti WOUE policies Trump has tried to force onto unwilling states.
Speaker 12: Second Executive Order from August twenty fifth, titled Prosecuting Burning
Speaker 12: of the American Flag. Let's start with a clip from Trump.
Speaker 12: I don't want to just place super long Trump clips
Speaker 12: because they know that can be annoying. But the way
Speaker 12: that he talks about disorder is kind of more interesting
Speaker 12: than the way the order is written. But we will
Speaker 12: talk about some of those smaller details included in the
Speaker 12: actual text. But here's a clip from c SPAN.
Speaker 17: Flag burning all over the country. They're burning flags all
Speaker 17: over the world. They burn the American flag and as
Speaker 17: you know, through a very sad chord. I guess it
Speaker 17: was a five to four decision. They called it freedom
Speaker 17: of speech. But there's another reason, which is perhaps much
Speaker 17: more important. It's called death. Because what happens when you
Speaker 17: burn a flag is the area goes crazy. If you
Speaker 17: have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You could do
Speaker 17: other things, you can burn this piece of paper, you could,
Speaker 17: and it's when you burn the American flag. It incites
Speaker 17: riots at levels that we've never seen before. People go
Speaker 17: crazy in a way. Both ways. There's some that are
Speaker 17: going crazy for doing it. There are others that are
Speaker 17: angry angry about them doing it. Do you want to
Speaker 17: discuss that?
Speaker 9: Sure?
Speaker 18: What the Executive Order does? Their charges your Department of
Speaker 18: Justice with investigating instances of flag burning and then where
Speaker 18: there's evidence of criminal activity, that where prosecution wouldn't fall
Speaker 18: afoul of the First Amendment, and instructs the Department of
Speaker 18: Justice to prosecute those who are engaged in these instances
Speaker 18: of flagburn and what.
Speaker 7: The penalty is going to be.
Speaker 17: If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail,
Speaker 17: No early exits, no nothing, You get one year in jail.
Speaker 17: If you're burn a flag, you get. And what it
Speaker 17: does is insight to write, I hope they use that language.
Speaker 17: By the way, did that insight to riot?
Speaker 7: I love it?
Speaker 12: He is to check, yeah, because God forbid him actually
Speaker 12: mean what he's citing?
Speaker 7: Trump trump auto pen.
Speaker 12: That's right. So included in the order, it says, quote,
Speaker 12: notwithstanding the Supreme Court's ruling on Fristman protections, the Court
Speaker 12: is never held that American flag desecration, conducted in a
Speaker 12: manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action, or
Speaker 12: that is an action amounting to quote unquote fighting words,
Speaker 12: is constitutionally protected see taxes fee Johnson unquote. The order
Speaker 12: directs Theatory in General to enforce criminal and civil laws
Speaker 12: against acts of American flight discration that cause harm unrelated
Speaker 12: to First amendment expression, which could include charging people with
Speaker 12: violent crimes, hate crimes, a legal discrimination against American citizens,
Speaker 12: what violations of American civil rights, crimes against property and peace,
Speaker 12: as well as conspiracies and attempts to violate in aiding
Speaker 12: and abetting others to violate such laws, so it's like
Speaker 12: an anti rioting thing. The dj will also look for
Speaker 12: cases where American flag discretion could violate applicable state or
Speaker 12: local laws, such as open burning restrictions, disorderly conduct laws,
Speaker 12: or destruction of property laws, and will refer such matters
Speaker 12: to state and local authorities for potential action. Finally, the
Speaker 12: Secretary of State shall deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas residents,
Speaker 12: permitsture realization proceedings and other immigration benefits, or seek to
Speaker 12: deport any foreign national that has engaged in American flag
Speaker 12: to secretion activity. So that's how they're going to go
Speaker 12: after it. Rob, Are do you anything to say on
Speaker 12: this flag burning thing?
Speaker 2: I mean they're waiting. I mean, and they didn't wind
Speaker 2: up waiting long. Someone did it immediately as they knew
Speaker 2: they would, so that they can get a case that
Speaker 2: they can take up to the Supreme Court. So we'll see,
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens. We'll see. Yeah.
Speaker 12: Yeah, they want to prosecute one of these things and
Speaker 12: appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court to
Speaker 12: maybe change that ruling so they can apply it more broadly. Right,
Speaker 12: So it's part of the same test that they've done
Speaker 12: with a number of other things that seems unconstitutional, It
Speaker 12: seems to violate Supreme Court rulings. Yeah, but the point
Speaker 12: is to test that and see if they can change it,
Speaker 12: just like they did with abortion.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can we go further and if this works, if we
Speaker 2: feel like we made progress on this, can we start
Speaker 2: pushing and saying other things our incitement?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 12: You know?
Speaker 2: Can we start going after people who aren't even present
Speaker 2: who write something that is like, well, this was incitement
Speaker 2: to write because they wrote about the police murdering this guy. Right,
Speaker 2: like a party of free speech strikes again. This is
Speaker 2: the kind of thing where can I wargame out? Would
Speaker 2: they try this? If they can get that far? Yeah
Speaker 2: they will. If they can get that far. Will they
Speaker 2: get that far?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 2: Is the Supreme Court going to give them everything they
Speaker 2: want on this? I don't actually know, Like I really
Speaker 2: don't know. So I'm going to try not to doom
Speaker 2: spiral too much, just you know, let's see, none of
Speaker 2: us have any choice in the matter at this stage.
Speaker 12: Finally, let's address the quote additional measures to address the
Speaker 12: crime emergency in the District of Columbia. So it's another
Speaker 12: executive order from August twenty fifth. Trump wants to establish
Speaker 12: an online portal for Americans with law enforcement experience quote
Speaker 12: or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join
Speaker 12: federal la enforcementities to support the policy goals described in
Speaker 12: Executive Order one four three three. That's the Making a
Speaker 12: DC Safe and Beautiful Order from a few weeks ago. Right,
Speaker 12: the Secretary of Defense is instructed to create and begin manning, hiring,
Speaker 12: and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia
Speaker 12: National Guard who will be deputized to enforce federal law.
Speaker 12: To quote the order quote, the Secretary Defense shall immediately
Speaker 12: begin ensuring that each state's National Army Guard and Air
Speaker 12: National Guard are resource trained, organized, an available to assist federal,
Speaker 12: state and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and
Speaker 12: ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate,
Speaker 12: as appropriate under law. In coordination with respective Adjuncts General,
Speaker 12: the Secretary Defense style designate an appropriate number of each
Speaker 12: state's trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for
Speaker 12: rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition, the Secretary Defense
Speaker 12: shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick
Speaker 12: reaction force that shall be resource trained and available for
Speaker 12: rapid nationwide deployment. National Guard walking streets of DC are
Speaker 12: now carrying firearms after first being deployed without their service weapon,
Speaker 12: and since the operation in DC he began on August seventh,
Speaker 12: or now been over a thousand arrests, including dozens of
Speaker 12: undocumented immigrants. Currently, the Pentagon is planning to deploy thousands
Speaker 12: of National Guard to Chicago to continue Trump's alleged crime crackdown.
Speaker 19: I would have much more respect for Pritsko. If he'd
Speaker 19: call me up and say, I have a problem, can
Speaker 19: you help me fix it? I would be so happy
Speaker 19: to do it. I don't love not that I don't
Speaker 19: have the right to do anything I want to do.
Speaker 19: I'm the President of the United States. If I think
Speaker 19: our country is in danger, and it is in danger
Speaker 19: in these cities, I can do it no problem going
Speaker 19: in and solving you know his difficulties, but it would
Speaker 19: be nice if they'd call and they say, would you
Speaker 19: do it?
Speaker 2: He's hurt, poor guy. They want to ask him for help.
Speaker 12: His little fewings. He's gonna have to He's gonna have
Speaker 12: to deploy the national goal without putschool's.
Speaker 7: Approval, you know.
Speaker 2: Gang. In all of this focus on the people being
Speaker 2: killed and persecuted by the government, I don't think any
Speaker 2: of us has stopped and spent enough time thinking how
Speaker 2: does Donald Trump feel?
Speaker 12: And shame on us, you know, shame on us. But
Speaker 12: it's not just Chicago. On Friday, the Pentagon told Fox
Speaker 12: News at upwards of seventeen hundred National Guard troops will
Speaker 12: be mobilized in nineteen states to be deployed across the
Speaker 12: country to assist ice in the nationwide hunt for undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 12: The Guard will be activated in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada,
Speaker 12: New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia,
Speaker 12: and Wyoming, with effective status ranging from August through mid November,
Speaker 12: and operations expected to start in early September. Importantly, as
Speaker 12: we saw in DC, national guard from other states might
Speaker 12: deploy two other states. Specifically, in the case where Trump
Speaker 12: doesn't get cooperation from the governor who is in control
Speaker 12: of the national Guard of each state, he can deploy
Speaker 12: national Guard from somewhere else, like what he did in DC,
Speaker 12: pulling national Guard from other Red states being deployed to
Speaker 12: d C but mobilized in those Red states. So national
Speaker 12: guards from all of these states could be deployed in
Speaker 12: a town near you, no matter where you live. And
Speaker 12: this operation specifically with these like seventeen hundred National Guard
Speaker 12: troops is specifically to assist ice. His plan to do this,
Speaker 12: like anti crime deployment in Chicago, is a separate yet
Speaker 12: similar plan. It's also pulling from national Guard. But these
Speaker 12: things are two separate operations according to White House officials.
Speaker 7: And I think one of the important things about this
Speaker 7: is that, you know, obviously there's the part of this
Speaker 7: where it's like, yeah, they want to at the very
Speaker 7: least look like they're just occupying cities and they are
Speaker 7: arresting huge members of people, But they also just don't
Speaker 7: have the manpower to do this kind of stuff, which
Speaker 7: is why they're pulling the National Guards. Why they're trying
Speaker 7: to expand the number of people on ICE. This is
Speaker 7: why they're pulling National Guard out to do this kind
Speaker 7: of stuff, which that like they don't actually have the
Speaker 7: repressive capacity to just occupy cities and they're trying to
Speaker 7: find the manpower to be able.
Speaker 20: To do it.
Speaker 12: So we will keep an eye out in September for
Speaker 12: these possible military deployments around the country. Yep, hey everyone,
Speaker 12: this is Garrison recording a short update on Thursday since
Speaker 12: we have a little bit more information about the Minneapolis,
Speaker 12: Minnesota school shooting. So right after we recorded, rumors started
Speaker 12: circulating that this shooter was linked to neo Nazi, satanic
Speaker 12: pedophile groups nine A and seven to six four. Someone
Speaker 12: on Twitter found a neo Nazi forum account that they
Speaker 12: alleged belonged to the school shooter. This account used in
Speaker 12: nine A symbol, and an affiliated Twitter account made other
Speaker 12: nine A references. These claims gained a lot of traction
Speaker 12: from leftist accounts and armchair experts on Twitter and Blue
Speaker 12: sky Lots. People were very eager to talk about something
Speaker 12: else besides that this shooter was trans and many pinned
Speaker 12: the blame on seven sixty four, the child exploitation group
Speaker 12: that operates on discord and telegram that Blackmaile's children and
Speaker 12: encourages some to commit acts of violence like school shootings.
Speaker 12: I talked about seven sixty four on my Nihilist Violent
Speaker 12: Extremism episode from earlier this year. As these claims spread online,
Speaker 12: I remained skeptical because this shooter did not seem to
Speaker 12: really fit the profile of a nine A or seven
Speaker 12: six y four grooming victim. This shooter did not really
Speaker 12: seem like an O Nina acolyte. They more closely resembled
Speaker 12: the True Crime Community fandom. And while sometimes True Crime
Speaker 12: Community or TCC may use O Nina references because other
Speaker 12: mass shooters have or because previous mass shooters have been
Speaker 12: affiliated with Nina and really groups, I did not see
Speaker 12: much evidence linking this shooter to nine A based on
Speaker 12: the videos they posted to YouTube, And while some Nazi
Speaker 12: Satanist types have helped facilitate the Columbiner or TCC fandom,
Speaker 12: there was no solid evidence linking a group like seven
Speaker 12: to six' four to this latest. Shooting the shooter was
Speaker 12: in their mid. Twenties they weren't a fourteen year old
Speaker 12: being groomed into doing a mass, shooting and then On thursday,
Speaker 12: morning the forum account alleged to be The minneapolis shooter
Speaker 12: and the source of claims calling them a NINE a
Speaker 12: or sen six four grimmy victim started posting again on the.
Speaker 12: Forum it wasn't the shooter's. Account the shooter did not
Speaker 12: fit that. Profile they weren't in a Cult Nazi. Satanist
Speaker 12: they were obsessed with mass, killers and translations of their
Speaker 12: cerecict journal have helped to substantiate. THIS a journal entry
Speaker 12: discussed taking pleasure in dressing up as a school. Shooter
Speaker 12: quote TODAY i assembled a school shoot cosplay. Quote and
Speaker 12: in translations of their, journal they made explicit references To
Speaker 12: True Crime COMMUNITY, tcc saying that they might cringe if
Speaker 12: they joined an ONLINE tcc community and it could make
Speaker 12: them not want to follow through on doing an. Attack
Speaker 12: doing ONLINE tcc fandom as mostly full of. Posers, QUOTE
Speaker 12: i think joining a community would alienate my future, unquote
Speaker 12: and QUOTE i feel a very small portion OF tcc
Speaker 12: feels AS i. Do harbor's admiration of intent. Unquote one
Speaker 12: more update BEFORE i closed the episode earlier, today On,
Speaker 12: THURSDAY Rfk junior was asked if he would now be
Speaker 12: looking into if gender transition drugs cause. Violence he responded
Speaker 12: by saying that they were already doing studies looking into,
Speaker 12: that and then quickly pivoted to talking about quote launching
Speaker 12: studies on the potential contribution of some of THE ssri
Speaker 12: drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might
Speaker 12: be contributing to violence. Unquote this lines up WITH Rfk
Speaker 12: junior's general focus on psychiatric DRUGS SSRIs depression, medication as
Speaker 12: he has previously. Stated that's all for us today On
Speaker 12: It Could Happen.
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