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Speaker 1: Also media, Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted

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Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So

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Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here

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Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for

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Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.

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Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,

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Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but

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Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.

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Speaker 2: Yet ready for anarchy in Atlanta?

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Speaker 3: It should be clear to all Americans that we have

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Speaker 3: a very serious left wing terror threat in our country.

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Speaker 4: State of the art, organized and well funded activists in criminals.

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Speaker 5: On April twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, after almost exactly

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Speaker 5: four years of protests, sabotage, encampments, and organizing against the

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Speaker 5: construction of a state of the art police training facility

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Speaker 5: dubbed copp City, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center officially

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Speaker 5: opened atop of the South River Forest Intocabb County, Georgia.

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Speaker 6: Why two three cuts.

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Speaker 7: The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is open? A handshake

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Speaker 7: between Governor Brian Kemp and are relieved Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens.

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Speaker 5: Getting here has not been an easy journey.

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Speaker 7: The opening of the one hundred and eighteen million dollar

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Speaker 7: complex for police fire and E nine to one one personnel,

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Speaker 7: which includes academic leadership and simulation centers, came after not months,

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Speaker 7: but years of public pushback.

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Speaker 5: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I've

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Speaker 5: been covering the combined Defend the Atlanta Forest Stop Cop

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Speaker 5: City movement on this show since twenty twenty one. I

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Speaker 5: first traveled to Atlanta to report on the ground from

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Speaker 5: inside of the protest encampments in spring of twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 5: and I moved to Atlanta to continue covering the story

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Speaker 5: more in depth in twenty twenty three. My coverage has

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Speaker 5: tracked the trajectory of the movement as well as my

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Speaker 5: ability as a reporter. But this will be my last

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Speaker 5: piece on the Stop Cop City movement. Every other reporter

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Speaker 5: mini series I've done on Stop Cup City was written

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Speaker 5: while the movement was still ongoing and the final outcome

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Speaker 5: had yet to be fully determined. Something that set the

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Speaker 5: movement in Atlanta apart was the genuine belief that this

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Speaker 5: fight was actually winnable, as opposed to the many lofty

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Speaker 5: aspirations of other anti police anarchists or leftist struggles. I

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Speaker 5: believe that we will win and COP City will never

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Speaker 5: be built. Where common turns of phrase and not just

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Speaker 5: repeated mindlessly as a protest chant, but deeply believed. But now,

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Speaker 5: six months after the grand opening of COP City, I

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Speaker 5: want to use this distance to offer a look at

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Speaker 5: the whole movement based on interviews and conversations I've had

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Speaker 5: with organizers, anarchists, and forest defenders, analyzing the movements rise

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Speaker 5: and fall and momentum, and why Atlanta is the bridge

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Speaker 5: between the twenty twenty protests during Trump's first term and

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Speaker 5: the current expansion of police surveillance, ICE activity and increased

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Speaker 5: state repression against quote unquote radical left terrorists. We don't

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Speaker 5: have enough time to retread a complete, in depth play

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Speaker 5: by play of the movement's history, most of which I've

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Speaker 5: already covered in previous episodes, but I will attempt to

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Speaker 5: break down the movement into a series of discrete phases.

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Speaker 5: After organizers learn about the plans to build COP City

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Speaker 5: in April of twenty twenty one, the movement to Defend

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Speaker 5: the Atlanta Forest first took form with an opening attack phase.

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Speaker 5: Throughout the entire summer of twenty twenty one, with tree

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Speaker 5: spiking and sabotage targeting construction equipment on the east side

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Speaker 5: of the forest, which a movie studio was planning to

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Speaker 5: develop at the time in partnership with local government. To

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Speaker 5: quote from an anonymous Atlanta anarchist quote, early stages of

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Speaker 5: the movement were very intentionally defined by lots of sabotage

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Speaker 5: and unapologetic militancy. Just absolute, this is what we're doing.

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Speaker 5: This is what we're about. This is the goal. If

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Speaker 5: you don't like it, that's cool, but then don't be

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Speaker 5: a part of this. That was just what we were doing. Unquote.

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Speaker 5: In September twenty twenty one, the Atlantic City Council voted

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Speaker 5: to approve the Land Lease Ordinance, authorizing the Atlanta Police

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Speaker 5: Foundation to use hundreds of acres of city owned land

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Speaker 5: in the South River Forest to build copp City. After

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Speaker 5: this vote, electoral strategy gets largely eshewed, and soon after

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Speaker 5: the next phase fully kicks off that fall with the

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Speaker 5: physical occupation of the forest and the start of the

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Speaker 5: pressure campaigns targeting subcontractors working on the construction project. To

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Speaker 5: again quote from an anonymous Atlanta anarchist quote, persistent encampment occupation,

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Speaker 5: lots of direct action happening, lots of sabotage happening, and

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Speaker 5: the cops just not knowing what to do at all.

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Speaker 5: Small incursions would get made, but they just had not

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Speaker 5: figured out what to do about it yet. There was

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Speaker 5: just kind of like free reign unquote. For the first

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Speaker 5: half of this occupation phase, the Atlanta police and de

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Speaker 5: Cab sheriffs seemed to be stuck in a form of paralysis,

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Speaker 5: not knowing how to disrupt the forest encampments or prevent

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Speaker 5: equipment sabotage. Meanwhile, the pressure campaign, inspired by the tactics

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Speaker 5: of the animal rights group Shack, showed early promise in

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Speaker 5: getting some contractors like Reeves Young construction and material suppliers

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Speaker 5: to drop out of the cop City project. But after

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Speaker 5: this stream of steady success from Fall of twenty twenty

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Speaker 5: one to May of twenty twenty two, the police were

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Speaker 5: forced to up the ante and started conducting large scale

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Speaker 5: raids in the forest to remove force defenders and damage

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Speaker 5: encampment infrastructure. Quoting an Atlanta anarchist quote, May of twenty

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Speaker 5: twenty two is the end of the paralysis phase for

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Speaker 5: the cops. We had our first grid sweep raids where

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Speaker 5: the paralysis phase is broken. You're getting your multi agency

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Speaker 5: large sweeps where they're really coming in and putting in

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Speaker 5: a lot of work. That really leads up to January

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Speaker 5: of twenty twenty three, so where Torte got killed unquote.

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Speaker 5: Prior to the police killing of Torti Guita during a

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Speaker 5: forest encampment raid on January eighteen, twenty twenty three, the

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Speaker 5: occupation phase proved highly effective in preventing pre construction, but

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Speaker 5: the killing and Tortiguita essentially marked the end of the

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Speaker 5: continuous occupation phase. What followed was a period of high

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Speaker 5: octane intensity. Let's call this the revenge phase. Quoting an

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Speaker 5: Atlanta anarchist, you get this kind of like trading blows

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Speaker 5: with the cops repeatedly during that time, and things are

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Speaker 5: getting pretty fucking crazy, hitting their highest pitch at March fifth,

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Speaker 5: during the South River Music Festival. On March fifth, a

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Speaker 5: few hundred people splintered off from the festival and marched

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Speaker 5: to the nearby Cop City construction site. The crowd repelled

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Speaker 5: police and construction equipment was set on fire. The cops

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Speaker 5: retaliated quick, swarming the area with all available units. In Atlanta,

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Speaker 5: kettled the festival and eventually arrested twenty three people, charging

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Speaker 5: them with domestic terrorism. After the events of March fifth,

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Speaker 5: the movement entered an odd limbo phase, with heightened tensions

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Speaker 5: among the stop Coop City coalition on the role of

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Speaker 5: direct action and sabotage within mass movement actions. During this period,

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Speaker 5: police fortified and regularly patrolled the perimeter around the forest.

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Speaker 5: Entry became heavily restricted. Following this denial of operating space,

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Speaker 5: the forest around the slated construction site was preemptively clear

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Speaker 5: cut to both prepare for construction and demoralize the movement.

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Speaker 5: But a month later, the bail fund and legal defense

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Speaker 5: nonprofit the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, was raided by police and

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Speaker 5: were later charged with money laundering and charity fraud. Just

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Speaker 5: a few days after the raid, the city Council approved

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Speaker 5: a sixty seven million dollar cop City funding package. The

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Speaker 5: next day, organizers announced referendum campaign to gather petition signatures

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Speaker 5: to put the cop City land lease ordinance on the

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Speaker 5: upcoming November ballot. Despite setbacks, there was still energy going

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Speaker 5: towards stopping cop City, but it was fragmenting in ways

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Speaker 5: that it hadn't really before there was no clear consensus

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Speaker 5: on the direction to take the movement. Previous periods of

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Speaker 5: shift in the movement were often marked by an organized

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Speaker 5: Week of Action, which was a convergence of people from

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Speaker 5: all around the country or even the world, who traveled

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Speaker 5: to Atlanta to partake in a week's worth of events, actions,

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Speaker 5: and protests against cop City, the Atlanta Police Foundation, and

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Speaker 5: contractors hired to build the facility. The summer of twenty

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Speaker 5: twenty three saw the sixth organized Week of Action, but

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Speaker 5: it too was caught in this limbo phase and without

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Speaker 5: the forest as an operating zone, the Week of Action

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Speaker 5: struggled to find its purpose, despite the surge in movement

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Speaker 5: participation around the city Hall budget vote earlier that June.

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Speaker 5: The next phase was the first to be positively determined

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Speaker 5: by the police, the repression phase, which really sets in

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Speaker 5: around August of twenty twenty three with the Rico indictment

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Speaker 5: charging sixty one people with racketeering, arson, and domestic terrorism.

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Speaker 5: State repression then evolved in the form of persistent surveillance

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Speaker 5: of activists, house raids, and additional charges, which leads to

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Speaker 5: the current trial phase. Quote an Atlanta anarchist quote, I

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Speaker 5: think an important aspect of this phase is obviously supporting

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Speaker 5: your defendants, preparing for the potential of long term prisoner support,

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Speaker 5: and also not letting the state be the one to

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Speaker 5: close the book by doing this, because you don't want

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Speaker 5: to let them define the near of this forever by

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Speaker 5: getting to put their rubber stamp on the end of

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Speaker 5: the trial and calling it Otherwise, the movement gets stuck

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Speaker 5: in this permanent zombie phase where we're still saying, stop

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Speaker 5: cop City is this thing that's happening when it's it's built,

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Speaker 5: It's built, it's right there, right like. It doesn't mean

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Speaker 5: that we all just go home, but it means that

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Speaker 5: you're like a veteran of this battle now and there's

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Speaker 5: new shit to do, new stuff to work. One. Even

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Speaker 5: in retrospect, people have been largely hesitant to assign blame

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Speaker 5: to a specific factor in why the fight to stop

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Speaker 5: cop City fell short of achieving its stated goal, But

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Speaker 5: we can track a decline in momentum which allowed the

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Speaker 5: state to gain the upper hand. For nearly three years,

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Speaker 5: state repression tactics failed to disrupt the growing momentum against

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Speaker 5: the Cop City project. Forest raids, arrests, and criminal charges

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Speaker 5: made little impact. The use of terrorism charges as a

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Speaker 5: repression tactic started back in December of twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 5: following an encampment raid resulting in six people being charged

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Speaker 5: with domestic terrorism. This was the first time that charge

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Speaker 5: has been used in Georgia, following its adoption in twenty

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Speaker 5: seventeen in response to the whitepremacist mass shooting by Dylan Roof.

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Speaker 5: Just a month after domestic terrorism charges were first deployed,

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Speaker 5: Tortuguhito was killed by police in another forest raid, but

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Speaker 5: this tragedy only seemed to strengthen the resolve of the

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Speaker 5: movement to fight cop City, which then only grew. Similarly,

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Speaker 5: the clear cutting of the force itself wasn't enough to

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Speaker 5: demoralize the people in Atlanta. Rather, the hesitation to build

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Speaker 5: on the momentum of a widely publicized direct action like

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Speaker 5: March fifth provided this state in opening while the movement

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Speaker 5: was stuck in limbo. Throughout this limbo phase, the movement

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Speaker 5: was adjusting from intensified momentum and the high octane aspects

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Speaker 5: to March fifth, But as the energy tapered down, the

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Speaker 5: state jumped on that dip in momentum then delta pretty

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Speaker 5: significant blow with the Rico indictment. The Rico charges in

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Speaker 5: August of twenty twenty three, followed by the series of

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Speaker 5: house raids in February of twenty twenty four, were a

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Speaker 5: pretty crippling one to punch that stifled the momentum to

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Speaker 5: almost a complete standstill. Quoting an Atlanta anarchist, a lot

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Speaker 5: of people will argue their opinions about what was the

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Speaker 5: stifling thing. I think some of the more electorally or

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Speaker 5: mass movement, big tent minded people would argue that, like

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Speaker 5: March fifth takes a lot of the wind out of

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Speaker 5: the sails. I think a lot of people would disagree

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Speaker 5: with that, just because like you can build on the

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Speaker 5: momentum of a March fifth, you can build on like

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Speaker 5: a triumphant battlefield victory, it's a lot harder to build

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Speaker 5: on just everyone getting more charges and also people getting

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Speaker 5: their doors kicked in really early in the morning. It's

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Speaker 5: hard to build on that. Despite the Rico charges, acts

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Speaker 5: of sabotage did continue, but isolated sabotage alone wasn't enough

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Speaker 5: to propel the movement. After the referendum campaign was effectively

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Speaker 5: nullified by the state and fall of twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 5: there was a lack of willingness among its organizers to

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Speaker 5: engage in serious efforts to get people engaged in mass

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Speaker 5: actions or pressure campaigns targeted against elected officials, something multiple

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Speaker 5: activists in Atlanta have mentioned to me as a contributing

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Speaker 5: factor to the eventual decline in momentum during this limbo

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Speaker 5: stage is a sort of failure to prefigure alternative strategies

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Speaker 5: and adapt after the forest occupation became impossible to maintain,

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Speaker 5: especially considering just how much weight people had put into

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Speaker 5: that strategy, but then did not come up with a

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Speaker 5: clear next step after the police were able to suppress

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Speaker 5: that tactic by completing their ODA loops and improving their

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Speaker 5: own strateg The ODA loop is a four step military

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Speaker 5: decision making model used across a large variety of professional fields,

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Speaker 5: including policing. Step one, observe, gather as much information as possible,

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Speaker 5: then orient, synthesize an information with background knowledge, decide on

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Speaker 5: the next course of action using that newly synthesized information,

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Speaker 5: and finally act and the results of your actions should

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Speaker 5: then send you back to step one. Failure to act

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Speaker 5: at all or too slowly often ends in defeat. To

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Speaker 5: quote an anonymous Atlanta anarchist quote. You need contingency lines, right,

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Speaker 5: either things that you're willing to escalate in the current

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Speaker 5: line of strategy that you're doing to make it still viable,

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Speaker 5: or a complete change in strategy. It could be changed

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Speaker 5: in tactics to something new and exciting. Either of those

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Speaker 5: are valid options. Doing both of them at the same

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Speaker 5: time can be extremely effective. But at the end of

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Speaker 5: the day, you have to when the cops start to

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Speaker 5: break out of paralysis. An example from any eco defense

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Speaker 5: or occupation, whether in Atlanta or somewhere else, when the

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Speaker 5: cops start to break out of that paralysis, you have

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Speaker 5: to escalate in some way. The occupation, the defense of it,

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Speaker 5: has to escalate in some way to prevent them from

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Speaker 5: feeling safe coming in or trying to, or the physical

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Speaker 5: space of action has to change because now they need

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Speaker 5: to recalibrate to oh, shit, like, not only is the

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Speaker 5: occupation less assailable than we thought because there's been a

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Speaker 5: change in tactics, but there's also a massive uptick and

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Speaker 5: shit going on everywhere else and that significantly impedes their

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Speaker 5: ability to have an ODA loop to do battle with.

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Speaker 5: You can even look at the ice pickups that got

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Speaker 5: a lot of attention in Worcester, Massachusetts. They were not

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Speaker 5: expecting that many people just to show up. You can

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Speaker 5: see when the crowd starts to hit like a critical

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Speaker 5: mass of rage and getting really close to those guys

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Speaker 5: that they fucking panic. They freak out like it. It's

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Speaker 5: very clear, even just in the small amount of their

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Speaker 5: faces and their movements that you can see that they

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Speaker 5: were panicking unquote. Similar scenes have since taken place in

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Speaker 5: Chicago and Portland, and I've seen this before with Bortec

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Speaker 5: during the twenty twenty protests in Portland. I think anyone

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Speaker 5: who has watched the cops retreat has seen this before.

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Speaker 5: But the more the same thing happens, the more you

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Speaker 5: get used to it, the more you experiment and find

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Speaker 5: ways to adapt and overcome. Quoting an Atlanta anarchist quote,

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Speaker 5: cops panic, and you can see it in the way

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Speaker 5: they walk like they weren't ready for that, and next

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Speaker 5: time they might be, which means you have to add

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Speaker 5: something new, a new spice has to get thrown in,

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Speaker 5: a new flavor profile. They'll get used to pushing through

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Speaker 5: crowds like that until someone hits them at the end

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Speaker 5: of the day, and whether you're like confronting them on

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Speaker 5: the ground or trying to get to the neighborhoods ahead

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Speaker 5: of time to knock people's doors to get them out.

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Speaker 5: Eventually cops will start to find ways to counteract your strategy,

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Speaker 5: but eventually you will have to reshift and recalibrate the

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Speaker 5: tools you are using to orient back to Atlanta. All

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Speaker 5: these instances I've mentioned amount to failing to take advantage

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Speaker 5: of key moments, whether that be in the aftermath of

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Speaker 5: March fifth, the seeming impossibility of continued forest encampments, or

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Speaker 5: of the city's blanket refusal to accept the results of

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Speaker 5: the referendum. In these moments, the police and the state

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Speaker 5: were able to determine where battle lines were drawn, and

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Speaker 5: quite literally so during the quote unquote block Cop City

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Speaker 5: protest in October twenty twenty three, where police easily repelled

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Speaker 5: a protest march from even reaching the road to the

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Speaker 5: Cop City construction site, and the state continued to push

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Speaker 5: their lines forward with the joint fbiatf raids on activist

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Speaker 5: houses in February twenty twenty four, which further stifled the

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Speaker 5: movement and was coupled with months to year year long

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Speaker 5: persistent surveillance and intimidation denoted by cops parked outside of

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Speaker 5: homes of alleged activists, mobile surveillance and hidden cameras placed

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Speaker 5: in front of activist homes and a local community center.

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Speaker 5: One of the more frightening incidents came in May of

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Speaker 5: twenty twenty four, where a resident of one of the

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Speaker 5: homes rated that February woke up in the middle of

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Speaker 5: the night to a bright light outside of the bedroom window,

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Speaker 5: only to find a lit road flare catching the wooden

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Speaker 5: railing of their porch steps on fire. One of the

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Speaker 5: things I've been reflecting on regarding Cop City is the

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Speaker 5: way people talked about fear as a tool. Frank Herbert's

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Speaker 5: Litany against Fear was a common refrain to overcome the

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Speaker 5: fear that this state used as a weapon. But the

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Speaker 5: first time I heard fear mentioned as an offensive measure

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Speaker 5: wasn't in reference to this state using fear. It was

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Speaker 5: in early twenty twenty two when I first visited the

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Speaker 5: forest encampment, and the anarchists talked about how the police

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Speaker 5: were scared of entering the forest, how delusions of Vietnam's

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Speaker 5: style booby traps demonstrated that the cups are not impervious

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Speaker 5: super soldiers. Instilling fear is a major aspect of police training.

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Speaker 5: They are susceptible to emotional impulses like all of us.

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Speaker 5: Quoting an Atlanta anarchist quote. But while we understand our

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Speaker 5: own fear, I think people often fall into the trap

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Speaker 5: of not understanding that the state is also afraid of them,

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Speaker 5: because the state feels like this monolithic machine, like this

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Speaker 5: unassailable entity, that it is not. It's made up of

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Speaker 5: people with flaws and emotions who have the same corrozol

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Speaker 5: response to being threatened that you or I do. A

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Speaker 5: big part of the lessons learned from an has to

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Speaker 5: be a willingness to engage with them in a way

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Speaker 5: that is personally endangering. That is the single way out.

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Speaker 5: They're human and they get scared. The fear that I

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Speaker 5: think had them so tight until May of twenty twenty

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Speaker 5: two was a fear that manifested itself in a lot

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Speaker 5: of paralysis. Fear is a normal human emotion to danger.

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Speaker 5: So whether you're the most hardened swat team guy going

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Speaker 5: up against the craziest to eco freak in the world,

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Speaker 5: fear is a normal reaction to that. But what really

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Speaker 5: had them so tight was fear as a matter of

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Speaker 5: them being paralyzed by it that they cannot find out

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Speaker 5: how to move. And once they did find out around

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Speaker 5: May of twenty twenty two, we really start to see

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Speaker 5: things change and like they were scared enough in the

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Speaker 5: woods to shoot someone to death, like they were still afraid.

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Speaker 5: We were able to instill an immense amount of fear

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Speaker 5: in our enemy, which is an absolutely necessary tool if

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Speaker 5: you're going to be on the very nimble, small green

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Speaker 5: team insurgency side of things, you have to make your

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Speaker 5: enemy afraid of the dark, but also you have your

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Speaker 5: defensive strategy against fear. You would hear all the time

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Speaker 5: in Atlanta, the whole let the fear wash over you

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Speaker 5: and through you mantra. That was a thing that people

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Speaker 5: talked about and said constantly, because you have to find

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Speaker 5: a way to move through that paralysis. Eventually, and with

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Speaker 5: the help of a multi agency task force, the cops

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Speaker 5: in Atlanta were able to move through that fear and

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Speaker 5: continue their actions. They were not totally paralyzed by it.

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Speaker 5: In contrast, the pseudo paralysis affecting Stop Cop City only

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Speaker 5: set in very late into the movement. As a cumulative

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Speaker 5: result of a coordinated sequence of oppression tactics. As the

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Speaker 5: movement has been winding down and transitioning to court support.

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Speaker 5: Something people in Atlanta have had to balance is the

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Speaker 5: urge to keep stop Cop City in this sort of

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Speaker 5: un alive zombie state where you're still kind of acting

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Speaker 5: like it's an ongoing thing, even though the immediate local

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Speaker 5: result is pretty clearly finished. But in keeping this kind

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Speaker 5: of zombie version of the movement alive, it prevents you

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Speaker 5: from actually moving on and internalizing what happened here and

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Speaker 5: using that for whatever comes next, which is at this

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Speaker 5: point a burgeoning police state and right wing power block.

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Speaker 5: Quoting an anonymous Atlanta anarchist quote, internalizing not just in

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Speaker 5: terms of like lessons learned and things that you need

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Speaker 5: to learn from and skill up on to keep that

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Speaker 5: honed combative edge in Atlanta, but to think about fighting

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Speaker 5: on a larger scope than just Atlanta. As the cops

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Speaker 5: took their lessons learned here nationwide in terms of how

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Speaker 5: they're doing repression towards Palestinian liberation movements, towards a lot

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Speaker 5: of the way that ICE operations are currently happening. That

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00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 5: necessitates that we also take our lessons learned here and

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Speaker 5: also go to a larger scale with them. Also, if

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Speaker 5: you never close the book yourself on this battle that

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Speaker 5: you're a part of, which people incurred a massive amount

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Speaker 5: of trauma doing at a certain point, this could just

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Speaker 5: remain like an open wound on you forever if you

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Speaker 5: let it. And it is probably unhelpful to keep seeing

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Speaker 5: the movement to stop cop City is doing a rally here.

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Speaker 5: Like when it's built, it's there, and now we need

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Speaker 5: to move on to other things. We need to move

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Speaker 5: on to other things that are larger than Atlanta. There's

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Speaker 5: still a police state to engage with here. You don't

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Speaker 5: need the container of this struggle to justify going out

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Speaker 5: and taking action against the police. And there are other

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Speaker 5: things happening in Atlanta. There's ice rates happening in Atlanta

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Speaker 5: in the north suburbs of the city. Cop City is

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Speaker 5: actively being in and if people want to continue stopping it,

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Speaker 5: they'll have to actually stop what the effects are which

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00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 5: are now happening on a nationwide scale. An early irony

387
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:15,200
Speaker 5: of the movement was that though cop City was conceived

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Speaker 5: as a training ground for police first, it became a

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Speaker 5: training ground for anarchists as topcop City became the first

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Speaker 5: mass movement following the twenty twenty George Floyd protests. Whatever

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Speaker 5: happened in Atlanta would demonstrate what activists have learned from

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Speaker 5: the twenty twenty uprising, as well as influence what future

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Speaker 5: movements against police expansion might look like. Atlanta Police Chief

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Speaker 5: Darren Sheerbaum expressed as much during the Public Safety Training

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Speaker 5: Center grand opening.

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Speaker 4: Because when Antifa put out its call for individuals to

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Speaker 4: rally here in this spot and on Peachtree Street from

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Speaker 4: across the nation and literally the globe, we were up

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Speaker 4: against a playbook we had never seen. At the Atlanta

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Speaker 4: Police Department, we ourselves put out the call for help,

401
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Speaker 4: and no sheriff said no, No police chief said no.

402
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Speaker 4: The Georgia State Patrol, the Department Natural Resources should ste

403
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Speaker 4: by side of this department, as did the FBI and

404
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:17,119
Speaker 4: the ATF because we all knew that that playbook was

405
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 4: successful here in Atlanta, Georgia, it would find itself across

406
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Speaker 4: this country and public safety would be stymied wherever we go.

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00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 5: While Atlanta served as this training ground for anarchists, in response,

408
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Speaker 5: the state also used the movement to test out strategies

409
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Speaker 5: for the next generation of counter insurgency tactics, well before

410
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 5: the cop City facility was finished being built. Now, with

411
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Speaker 5: this specific localized struggle at completion, both organizers and the

412
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:51,280
Speaker 5: state are carrying lessons forward as Trump expands police power,

413
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 5: deploys National Guard, increases ice operations, and continues repression against

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Speaker 5: organizers protesting the Palestinian genocide. To quote in Atlanta anarchist quote,

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Speaker 5: I think as a matter of reimagining the struggle that

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00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:08,200
Speaker 5: you're a part of, insurrectionary struggle is often an imaginative one.

417
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Speaker 5: And if you were part of this thing here, you

418
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Speaker 5: are now like a veteran of the fight in Atlanta.

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Speaker 5: This thing, like this specific thing that was defend the

420
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:21,639
Speaker 5: Atlanta force stop cop City, is something to be learned

421
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:25,919
Speaker 5: from and valued and also moved on from, and to

422
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:29,959
Speaker 5: move on from while taking lessons learned, experience gained, and

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00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,560
Speaker 5: connections made, and following those things through to their logical conclusion.

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Speaker 5: Such that the state has as well. They have taken

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Speaker 5: lessons learned from here and followed them through to their

426
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:45,280
Speaker 5: nationwide logical conclusions. We are necessitated to do that as well.

427
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Speaker 5: That doesn't mean you have given up. It just means

428
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Speaker 5: that there's new shit happening. It's helpful to re imagine

429
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 5: yourself not as just we're in Atlanta, we're doing stop

430
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Speaker 5: coop City, to now you are engaged in a nationwide

431
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Speaker 5: anti fascist struggle against like a fascist police state unquote.

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Speaker 5: This nationwide focus has always been an aspect of Stop

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Speaker 5: Cop City. One of the movement's key slogans was cop

434
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 5: City is Everywhere. Organizers did speaking tours around the country

435
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 5: to educate about the movement, and thousands of people from

436
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 5: all around the country and the world traveled to Atlanta

437
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,640
Speaker 5: to participate in weeks of action. The physical fight Top

438
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 5: cop City also expanded outside of Atlanta with solidarity attacks

439
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 5: and direct actions as a part of the tertiary targeting

440
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 5: campaign against subcontractors and insurance companies. This nationwide drift also

441
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 5: happened on the side of the state, with similar police

442
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 5: training facilities having been proposed in dozens of other cities,

443
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:49,120
Speaker 5: and the strategies of repression used in Atlanta have been

444
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 5: copied on a national level. Quoting an Atlanta anarchist quote,

445
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 5: Now the cops are spreading out and their strategies and

446
00:27:57,480 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 5: the strategies of repression both militantly on the ground and legally,

447
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 5: and even their propaganda and their messaging has gone outwards

448
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 5: from here, and so too, then must our lessons learned

449
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 5: both in how we prepare and engage in struggle in Atlanta,

450
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 5: but also how we make connections to the rest of

451
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 5: the country. People who came here are now back home

452
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 5: and will make connections to the people around them. The

453
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 5: cops in different cities, they have big conferences, They talk

454
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,480
Speaker 5: to each other, they learn from each other. There's no

455
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:28,679
Speaker 5: reason that we shouldn't be, you know, doing so with

456
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 5: caution and security culture. Don't have your Atlanta veteran hat on,

457
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 5: but we have things to learn from each other. And

458
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 5: if you were here, you've got a lot to potentially

459
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 5: teach people, even if that was just like here's how

460
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 5: we fucking run a kitchen where we cook for like

461
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 5: four hundred people in a day, or here's how we

462
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 5: sneak around in the middle of the night. This is

463
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 5: a representative of the Fire and Movement defense at a

464
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 5: cop City trial press conference from September twenty twenty five.

465
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 8: The horrors we predicted have come to pass. Federal agents

466
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 8: now stock communities from coast to coast, masked and unnamed

467
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 8: snatching people from buses, farms, kitchens, and churches. Who can

468
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 8: argue now that we were wrong to resist the endless

469
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 8: expansion of police power, now that Trump commands them, now

470
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 8: that they are his police. The very people who helped

471
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 8: lay the groundwork now scramble to distance themselves from his orders,

472
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 8: his camps, his federal troop deployments. But they built the logistics,

473
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 8: they funded the training centers, they expanded the surveillance. Liberal

474
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 8: governments like Atlantis helped pave the way for the descent

475
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 8: of our country into autocracy.

476
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 5: As Merlincrats of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund told the New Republic, quote,

477
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 5: what's happening in Atlanta is a vision of the future.

478
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 5: This is a test run of a represses playbook that

479
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 5: authorities on many different levels are experimenting with to discover

480
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 5: what they can get away with. Let's look at some

481
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 5: examples of expanding surveillance, increasing police resources, and these strategies

482
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 5: for counter insertaency that are spreading in the era of

483
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 5: Trump two point zero. In January of this year, Georgia

484
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 5: Representative Marjorie Taylor Green introduced a resolution titled deeming certain

485
00:30:25,760 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 5: conduct of members of Antifa as domestic terrorism and designating

486
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 5: Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, which the measure justifies

487
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 5: by referencing multiple instances of protesters in Atlanta being charged

488
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 5: with domestic terrorism. The Atlanta based surveillance company Flock Safety,

489
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 5: gained early notoriety for their camera towers placed around the

490
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 5: slated Copcity construction site in the South River Forest, which

491
00:30:55,160 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 5: protesters repeatedly toppled. Flock has grown massively the past four years,

492
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 5: with over eighty thousand quote unquote AI powered cameras in

493
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 5: forty nine states. These cameras complete over twenty billion scans

494
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 5: per month. Flock cameras and license plate readers have spread

495
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 5: all around the country and are used by all manners

496
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 5: of agencies, including ICE, as well as Texas sheriffs, who

497
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 5: have used the nationwide camera network to track pregnant women

498
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 5: seeking abortions. Border Patrol has used Atlanta's local Flock camera

499
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 5: network to make over three thousand and two hundred searches

500
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:37,760
Speaker 5: from January to November twenty twenty five. In April twenty

501
00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:41,960
Speaker 5: twenty five, President Trump signed an executive order titled Strengthening

502
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 5: and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement to pursue criminals and protect

503
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 5: innocent citizens. This order calls to quote unleash high impact

504
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 5: local police forces, protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly

505
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 5: accused and abused by state or local officials, and surge

506
00:31:57,360 --> 00:32:01,080
Speaker 5: resources to officers in need unquote. It directs the Attorney

507
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 5: General to create a mechanism to have private sector law

508
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 5: firms provide pro bono legal events to police officers who

509
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 5: quote unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during

510
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,840
Speaker 5: the performance of their official duties to enforce the law.

511
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 5: This tries to make it harder for police to be

512
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 5: held accountable for both civil and criminal misconduct, basically extending

513
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 5: qualified immunity to the criminal realm. The order also calls

514
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 5: to use federal resources to increase pay, expand training, and

515
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 5: strengthen legal protections for police officers, as well as to

516
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 5: quote seek enhanced sentences for crimes against LA enforcement officers,

517
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 5: promote investment in the security and capacity of prisons, and

518
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 5: increase the investment in and collection, distribution and uniformity of

519
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 5: crime data across jurisdictions. The Attorney General is directed to

520
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:57,719
Speaker 5: review and remove any previous accountability restrictions placed on local

521
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 5: or state law enforcement agencies that might unduly impede the

522
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 5: performance of law enforcement functions. And then finally, quote the

523
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 5: Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with

524
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 5: Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate,

525
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 5: shall increase the provision of excess military and national security

526
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 5: assets in local jurisdictions to assist state and local law enforcement.

527
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:26,440
Speaker 5: And shall determine how military and national security assets, training,

528
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 5: non lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized

529
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:37,520
Speaker 5: to prevent crime. As the police become further militarized, the

530
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 5: military prepares to do more policing. One of the executive

531
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 5: orders from Trump's police takeover of Washington d C contains

532
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 5: a section directing the Secretary of Defense to quote designate

533
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 5: an appropriate number of each state's trained National Guard members

534
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 5: to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization to assist federal, state,

535
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 5: and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances, and that

536
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 5: quote a standing National Guard quick reaction force shall be resourced, trained,

537
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 5: and available for a rapid nationwide deployment unquote. Later, in

538
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,919
Speaker 5: October of twenty twenty five, the Department of Defense sent

539
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 5: out memos to each state's National Guard mandating that each

540
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 5: state have their own Quick Reaction Forces operational by January first,

541
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:30,279
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six, with crowd control equipment and two full

542
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 5: time trainers by the National Guard Bureau being provided to

543
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:37,720
Speaker 5: each unit. The units contain, on average, five hundred troops

544
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:41,399
Speaker 5: per state, ordered to be ready to deploy within eight

545
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 5: to twenty four hours. The initial portion of the Bureau

546
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:49,399
Speaker 5: training courses cover how to quote form squad sized riot

547
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 5: control formations, employ a riot baton as member of a

548
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 5: riot control formation, how to supervise a riot slash, crowd

549
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 5: control operation, crowd management techniques, and de domestic civil disturbance training.

550
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:03,080
Speaker 6: Quote.

551
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 5: On September twenty second, Trump signed an executive order designating

552
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 5: Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Three days later, Trump

553
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:17,480
Speaker 5: signed the National Security Presidential Memorandum seven on Countering Domestic

554
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 5: Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, which calls for a new

555
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 5: national law enforcement strategy to quote investigate all participants of

556
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 5: these criminal and terroristic conspiracies and disrupt networks, entities and

557
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 5: organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can

558
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 5: intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.

559
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 5: The memo orders local joint Terrorism task forces to quote

560
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 5: investigate potential federal crimes relating to acts of recruiting or

561
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 5: radicalizing persons for the purpose of political violence, terrorism, or

562
00:35:54,560 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 5: conspiracy against rights, as well as investigating institutional and dad

563
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 5: and individual funders, including employees of organizations which are quote

564
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 5: responsible for, sponsor or otherwise aid in a bet the

565
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 5: principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct unquote. As previously described,

566
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 5: the Treasury Secretary will work with the Atorney General to

567
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 5: quote identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism

568
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 5: and political violence, and shall deploy investigative tools to examine

569
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 5: financial flows and coordinate with partner agencies to trace illicit

570
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 5: funding streams. The memo also instructs the IRS to quote

571
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 5: take action to ensure that no tax exempt entities are

572
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 5: directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism unquote,

573
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 5: and that the IRS shall refer organizations and their employees

574
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 5: to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.

575
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:55,799
Speaker 5: Quoting the memo one final time, quote, investigations shall prioritize

576
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:59,719
Speaker 5: crimes such as the following assaulting federal officers or employees,

577
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 5: conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to commit offense solicitation to commit

578
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 5: a crime of violence, money laundering, funding of terrorist acts,

579
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 5: or otherwise facilitating terrorism arson, violations of the Racketeer Influenced

580
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:18,719
Speaker 5: and Corrupt Organizations ACT RICO, and major fraud against the

581
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 5: United States. At Trump's White House ANTIFO roundtable meeting, Seamus Bruner,

582
00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 5: the director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, discussed

583
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 5: his theory of how a network of NGOs are funding ANTIFA,

584
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 5: and specifically mentioned Stop Cop City.

585
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,760
Speaker 9: There was an event in Atlanta called Stop Cop City.

586
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 9: Over sixty rioters were charged with domestic terrorism. These groups

587
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 9: received money for that from both the billionaire class as

588
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 9: well as tax payer money.

589
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 5: So On May one, twenty twenty five, Homeland Security Investigations

590
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 5: Secret Service and the acting ICE Director rated a home

591
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 5: in Irving, California, looking for a man who allegedly posted

592
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 5: flyers around Los Angeles containing the names, pictures, and phone

593
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:11,520
Speaker 5: numbers of ICE agents with text in Spanish reading careful

594
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:16,319
Speaker 5: with these faces. In April of twenty twenty three, three

595
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 5: activists were arrested for allegedly posting flyers identifying a police

596
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:25,320
Speaker 5: officer connected to the killing of Tortigita on the mailboxes

597
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 5: in that officer's neighborhood in Barlow County, Georgia, about forty

598
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 5: miles from Atlanta. The activists were charged with felony intimidation

599
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 5: and were later added to the Cop City Weako case.

600
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 5: To circle back to the topic of fear, the targeting

601
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 5: of people putting up flyers simply identifying cops or anonymous

602
00:38:56,160 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 5: ICE agents demonstrates how the state understands as a weapon.

603
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 5: That's why they did the reco charges, That's why they

604
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 5: do the house raids, that's why they do overt surveillance

605
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 5: where you're getting followed around by police. But they are

606
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 5: susceptible to fear as well. Through their actions, ICE demonstrates

607
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 5: a high level of fear. They are taking massive steps

608
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 5: to hide the identities of ICE agents on the ground

609
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 5: and punishing people who attempt to identify these agents. They're

610
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:29,239
Speaker 5: complaining about being compared to Nazis and called the Gestapo.

611
00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:34,240
Speaker 5: They're referencing very dubious statistics about an increase in assaults

612
00:39:34,280 --> 00:39:37,439
Speaker 5: against officers, and they are afraid enough to shoot their

613
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:40,440
Speaker 5: guns at unarmed people more than half a dozen times

614
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 5: in the past six months. They are scared and as

615
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:48,920
Speaker 5: evil and super soldiery as they may seem they are

616
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 5: indeed afraid, to quote an anonymous Atlanta anarchist quote, unless

617
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 5: you do something to keep them afraid, Eventually it will stop.

618
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 5: Unless you change your stread, change course, escalate in some

619
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 5: way that shatters their ODA loop, they will break free

620
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 5: of their paralysis and they will find a way through

621
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 5: their fear. So when that starts to happen, it's time

622
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:12,840
Speaker 5: to do something new and insane, because you have to

623
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 5: keep them afraid, because like by every moral right, they

624
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 5: should be. They should be fucking terrified to leave their homes.

625
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 5: And if they are too afraid to leave their homes,

626
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 5: then they can't go out and do their jobs at

627
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 5: the end of the day. That's their ODA loop right there.

628
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 5: The scale of fear as a tool of repression is

629
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 5: always exponentially larger than this scale of physical or legal repression.

630
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 5: It punches well above its weight. You can look at

631
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 5: Atlanta as a good example of this, and you can

632
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 5: even look at some of the arrests made in response

633
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 5: to Palestinian liberation protests. It takes black bagging six people

634
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 5: to paralyze six thousand because it's terrifying, because it's scary,

635
00:40:55,239 --> 00:40:57,880
Speaker 5: like it's fucked up. That's a bad thing to have

636
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 5: happened to you, And like, of course, people are afraid.

637
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 5: Fear is one of those things that if you're engaging

638
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 5: an anti fascist struggle, whether you're an anti fascist, whether

639
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,279
Speaker 5: you're an anarchist or whatever, all of us have an

640
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 5: ethical obligation to ourselves and the people around us to

641
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:15,319
Speaker 5: push through fear as an emotion, to find ways to

642
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 5: work with it, because it won't go away, and it shouldn't.

643
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 5: Fear can also keep you safe, but we are necessitated

644
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:23,840
Speaker 5: by the political moment we are in to find a

645
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 5: way to take extensive action in spite of that. Unquote.

646
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty was a lot of people's first experience with

647
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 5: mass protest, and some of the people then carry those

648
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 5: experiences into Copcity. But then for other people, Stop cop

649
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 5: City was their first experience. And now you have an

650
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 5: even younger generation of people, the Gen Alpha terrorists, who

651
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 5: aren't even old enough to have been involved in Atlanta.

652
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 5: But people are still looking at what happened in Atlanta

653
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 5: as this bridge gap between twenty twenty and twenty twenty five,

654
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 5: the movement to Stop Cop City as the bridge between

655
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 5: these two different eras of uprising and resistance against authoritarianism.

656
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:10,840
Speaker 5: As the Copsity chapter closes, activists in Atlanta want people

657
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 5: to carry on what's been learned in the contents of

658
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 5: their struggle onto whatever the next volume is. Because cop

659
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 5: City itself is in a sequence of events that have

660
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 5: happened beyond and longer than what me or anyone involved

661
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 5: in Copsity has been alive by generations. Cop City is

662
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 5: not Volume one. Cop City is volume like thirty two,

663
00:42:33,640 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 5: but at the same time, it's also the immediate prequel

664
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 5: to the rise of a nationwide expansion of police power

665
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 5: and surveillance led by a wanna be right wing strong man.

666
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 5: Quoting an Atlanta anarchist quote, a big lesson learned from

667
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:51,439
Speaker 5: Atlanta is that it is way safer to do shit

668
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 5: in the middle of the night than anything else. We've

669
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:57,720
Speaker 5: had exactly one arrest made over the years, and arrest

670
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 5: that's not gone to trial. This is an alleged crime

671
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 5: of one midnight sabotage action of the dozens and dozens

672
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 5: and dozens of ursins that have happened, and this arrest

673
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 5: happened very late into the movement, out of the dozens

674
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,720
Speaker 5: and dozens of attacks that have happened. Only one arrest

675
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 5: has been made after the fact. Another lesson learned is

676
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 5: the difficulty of daily counter surveillance and how much that

677
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:29,359
Speaker 5: requires militancy as a daily practice to again, quote from

678
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:33,759
Speaker 5: an anonymous anarchist in Atlanta, quote, militant anarchism as a

679
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 5: daily practice understanding your adversary not just as this thing

680
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:40,040
Speaker 5: that you meet on the field for twenty minutes of

681
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:42,920
Speaker 5: action and then you both go home and like call it,

682
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 5: but that they are constantly pursuing you, That you are

683
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 5: being like hunted for sport, and you have to evade

684
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 5: and maneuver constantly. That security culture is a persistent thing

685
00:43:55,920 --> 00:44:00,319
Speaker 5: throughout the years, that you are going to continually keep

686
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 5: having to be a part of it and do so

687
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 5: in a very disciplined way. Unquote. A lot of the

688
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:09,799
Speaker 5: success that Stop Cop City achieved was based on a

689
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:15,280
Speaker 5: willingness to take an extremely militant approach to pre figurative infrastructure,

690
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 5: which added longevity to the combative struggle. Both were necessitated

691
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:23,919
Speaker 5: as symbiotic elements of this same creature. Throughout the Cop

692
00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 5: City struggle, organizers and activists learned that if you're not

693
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:30,439
Speaker 5: always able to engage in a directly combative fight. Using

694
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 5: militancy and discipline in their infrastructural projects the same way

695
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 5: they would in a combative engagement helps prepare for what

696
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 5: will be necessary when things do turn combative. Quoting an

697
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 5: Atlanta anarchist quote, the state is this constantly churning machine,

698
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 5: like it is always trying to acquire new tools and

699
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 5: equipment and lessons, and we can't just sit still while

700
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 5: they do this and be like, Okay, Well, at some

701
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:57,879
Speaker 5: point in four to five years, a flashpoint will happen

702
00:44:57,920 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 5: at the place that I live, and I'll go out

703
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 5: there and I'll be like I was in Atlanta. So

704
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 5: I'll be good because I remember how to do all that.

705
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 5: Because if you do nothing for the next four to

706
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 5: five years, we're just going to be reinventing the wheel

707
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 5: over and over again, and all the fucked up trauma

708
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:18,359
Speaker 5: that you incurred doing that won't have been helpful at

709
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,280
Speaker 5: all if you don't remember the skills learned on the ground,

710
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 5: because all skills atrophy and get weaker over time. Looking

711
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,239
Speaker 5: back at stop Coopa City won't provide all the answers

712
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 5: to solve the problems facing the country today, especially in

713
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 5: light of the end result of the movement, but it

714
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 5: would be a mistake to overlook the ways stop Copacity

715
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 5: made a legitimate impact on the resulting facility and the

716
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 5: political situation in Atlanta and beyond. I think there's ways

717
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:52,359
Speaker 5: of looking at degrees of success the movement had while

718
00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 5: still recognizing its obvious shortcomings, considering the fact that there

719
00:45:56,280 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 5: is a facility called the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center,

720
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 5: but a small group of activists turned a proposed police

721
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:08,799
Speaker 5: training facility into a national political issue. Its opening was

722
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 5: delayed by years at at least thirty million dollars over budget,

723
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 5: and the current facility lacks the full mock city design

724
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 5: that it initially had, which inspired the cop City namesake.

725
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 5: Moving forward, both these successes and shortcomings will be internalized

726
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 5: by thousands of people who traveled to or lived in

727
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 5: Atlanta and joined in the movement to Stop cop City.

728
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 5: As Trump now signs executive orders expanding military equipment, federal training,

729
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 5: and legal protections for police, deploys the National Guard to

730
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 5: quell civil disturbance, and targets anti fascists, anarchists, and left

731
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:51,840
Speaker 5: wing activists or ENGOs as domestic terrorists. Quoting an Atlanta

732
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:55,440
Speaker 5: anarchist quote, What we are seeing is the logical conclusion

733
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 5: of our adversaries lessons learned in Atlanta, taking the things

734
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,240
Speaker 5: that they learned how to do here, the skills they honed,

735
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 5: taken to a nationwide scale. This is the logical conclusion

736
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:09,839
Speaker 5: of that, and there's a reason that they are doing that,

737
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 5: and if they are doing that, then we should also

738
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 5: do that. Like there's logical conclusions and escalations of the

739
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 5: things that we learned in Atlanta, that it would be

740
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 5: silly for us to not try and push those further,

741
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:29,239
Speaker 5: including expanding the physical and metaphysical terrain of battle. The

742
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 5: immediate terrain for Stop Coopcity was obviously the forest and

743
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:37,399
Speaker 5: now the cop City site itself, but there was also

744
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 5: the rest of Atlanta and all the other construction sites,

745
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 5: and then all these subcontractors around the country and everything

746
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:48,040
Speaker 5: that supplies them. This same model can apply to, say,

747
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:52,360
Speaker 5: the Palestine protests. There's a network that exists beyond Columbia

748
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 5: University campus that extends into the weapons manufacturing industry, which

749
00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 5: could be targeted beyond consumer boycotts, like what we saw

750
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 5: was shack but what we saw in Atlanta, where boycotts

751
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 5: were an aspect, but by far not the most effective aspect,

752
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 5: and in fact, forcefully inflicting monetary damage caused a much

753
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 5: greater degree of hurt to the companies involved in the

754
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 5: Copsity project as opposed to the infighting caused by a

755
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:26,760
Speaker 5: waffle House boycott. When reframing what the terrain of battle

756
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 5: could entail, it is actually intimidating to think about what

757
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:35,839
Speaker 5: the reality of stopping these things might look like. And

758
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:39,280
Speaker 5: as soon as you realize that these fights go beyond

759
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 5: a physical building, it becomes this love crafty and entity

760
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:49,399
Speaker 5: that exists everywhere, and it's unnerving to contemplate what you'd

761
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:54,320
Speaker 5: be forced to do to actually realistically confront that. Quoting

762
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 5: an anonymous Atlanta anarchist quote, it's important to not get

763
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,200
Speaker 5: trapped in the you know, we're doing an occupation on

764
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 5: college campus. We're just going to keep trying to do

765
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 5: an occupation on college campus over and over again, and

766
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:07,760
Speaker 5: the CoP's really good at clearing us up. But now

767
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 5: maybe this time. And I think a part of the

768
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 5: struggle here though, for people is when you decentralize like that,

769
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 5: the thing that you're doing starts to take on a

770
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 5: much different vibe. It can be everywhere versus this is

771
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:26,399
Speaker 5: the college campus where we're doing protest. I generally think

772
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, it starts to feel

773
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 5: a little bit too much like terrorismy, it starts to

774
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 5: feel too much like an insurgency, and you see the path,

775
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 5: you see the Pandora's box start to open up a

776
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 5: little bit, and you back off because it's scary and

777
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:43,920
Speaker 5: that this thing will kill you. This thing will try

778
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 5: and kill you eventually, if you push it far enough,

779
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:49,080
Speaker 5: it will try and kill you, and I might succeed.

780
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 5: And like, that's just the reality of engaging with fascism

781
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 5: combatively as an ideology, it's the reality of engaging with

782
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 5: advanced capitalism. That was the reality of engaging with the

783
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 5: police state, one that is well understood in Atlanta and

784
00:50:04,600 --> 00:50:08,319
Speaker 5: in many other places that this isn't a game. You're

785
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:11,480
Speaker 5: not going to get anywhere, just kind of sitting on

786
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 5: the same college campus green over and over again, hoping

787
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 5: for a different result. And as we've seen this year

788
00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 5: with the State Department cracking down on pro Palestine protests,

789
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 5: just sitting there on the college green doesn't prevent you

790
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 5: from being black bagged by the FEDS, taken to a

791
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 5: black site, and deported to close the episode. In September

792
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:39,360
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four, the Georgia Attorney General's Office dropped the

793
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:44,240
Speaker 5: money laundering charges against the organizers with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund,

794
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 5: though the defendants still remained on the reco indictment. Almost

795
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 5: a full year later, on September ninth, twenty twenty five,

796
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 5: the defense successfully argued that the State AG's office did

797
00:50:56,200 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 5: not have the jurisdictional authority to prosecute this sixth sixty

798
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:05,080
Speaker 5: one defendants under the state's Rico statute due to simple

799
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 5: procedural error in neglecting to first ask the governor if

800
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:12,160
Speaker 5: the AG's office could prosecute this case. Judge Farmer found

801
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:14,320
Speaker 5: that the AG does not have the authority to prosecute

802
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 5: count one of the reco indictment, the racketeering and conspiracy charges.

803
00:51:19,239 --> 00:51:23,080
Speaker 5: Without the sweeping Rico charges engulfing the sixty one defendants,

804
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 5: just five defendants would be left with Count two of

805
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 5: the indictment, the domestic terrorism charges, which the AG does

806
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:33,080
Speaker 5: have authority to prosecute, and Count three, the arson charge,

807
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:36,560
Speaker 5: though Judge Farmer indicated that that charge could also be

808
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 5: thrown out on a similar technicality. The prosecution is appealing

809
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:45,400
Speaker 5: this decision, and the defenses argued that the state domestic

810
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:49,200
Speaker 5: terrorism law violates a constitution and is far too broad

811
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 5: and should be altered or overturned. Judge Farmer has yet

812
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:56,560
Speaker 5: to rule on this, but he's expected to very soon.

813
00:51:57,640 --> 00:52:01,799
Speaker 5: Some of the sixty one defendants could face charges individually

814
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:04,600
Speaker 5: in Fulton in a Cab County, but that remains to

815
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 5: be seen. The referendum case is still under appeal in

816
00:52:09,080 --> 00:52:12,840
Speaker 5: federal court, and the case against Jack Mazurich is still

817
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 5: in pre trial. Just because the Cop City trial is

818
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:21,400
Speaker 5: finally progressing does not mean that movement participants are safe now.

819
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 5: Quoting an anonymous Atlanta anarchists quote, people should be very

820
00:52:24,920 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 5: mindful going into the trial phase that that does not

821
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 5: mean that they are safe. There is no statute of

822
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:32,840
Speaker 5: limitations on a lot of this stuff. Like with a

823
00:52:32,840 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 5: lot of radical movements, You're gonna have to hold a

824
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,359
Speaker 5: lot of that shit forever. Rely on support structures, rely

825
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:42,320
Speaker 5: on your community, be careful about who you talk to. Unquote.

826
00:52:43,320 --> 00:52:46,680
Speaker 5: As Stop Coop City becomes history, there will be an

827
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:50,480
Speaker 5: influx of people trying to define the legacy of the movement,

828
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:55,439
Speaker 5: whether that's through podcasts, documentaries, a college dissertation or who

829
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 5: knows how many books are incoming. There already has been

830
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 5: a true crimification of the movement in certain coverage which

831
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 5: grossly objectifies the life of Torti Guita, platforms police as

832
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 5: more objective than movement participants and removes autonomy from key

833
00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:18,000
Speaker 5: subjects to reframe the entire movement around other public facing individuals.

834
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:22,759
Speaker 5: To quote an Atlanta anarchist one final time quote, I

835
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 5: think a big lesson from Atlanta, and this is one

836
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 5: that we actually still have to win at is to

837
00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 5: not let outside forces, whether that be the state or capital,

838
00:53:33,280 --> 00:53:36,960
Speaker 5: define the ending. That is a scope of battle that

839
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 5: we are still engaged with and still have to win.

840
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 5: We need to close the book on it ourselves. We

841
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:46,919
Speaker 5: need to rubber stamp it ourselves. No other entity can

842
00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:50,319
Speaker 5: do that for us. It would be disastrous if they did.

843
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 5: Unquote this has been it could happen here. See you

844
00:53:56,520 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 5: on the other side. This is it could happen here.

845
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 5: Executive Disorder our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the

846
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:21,239
Speaker 5: White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.

847
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:23,880
Speaker 5: I'm Garrison Davis today I'm joined by James Stout and

848
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:27,120
Speaker 5: Robert Evans. Yes, this episode recovering the week of November

849
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:29,480
Speaker 5: nineteen to November twenty fourth.

850
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 1: Boy, this year's just blown by yeah fast, Yeah yeah.

851
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: They sped up the time stream. You know what else?

852
00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:39,759
Speaker 1: Sped up the time stream watching something on Twitter blow

853
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: up again. We can't seem to stop talking about this

854
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:46,239
Speaker 1: fucking website, and I'm tired of it. But the big

855
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: news this week from Elon Musk's fucking vanity propagana app

856
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: is see Everything Happen That they introduced a new feature

857
00:54:54,160 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 1: to let you know the location of the account and

858
00:54:57,160 --> 00:54:59,319
Speaker 1: also the number of like name changes, like how many

859
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,720
Speaker 1: user name change it's had since the account has started.

860
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 1: I would say within sort of progressive and liberal circles.

861
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,359
Speaker 1: The common interpretation of what's happened is best summarized by

862
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:13,839
Speaker 1: this Daily Beast headline, top MAGA influencers accidentally unmasked as

863
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:17,400
Speaker 1: foreign trolls. No shit Now, As is often the case,

864
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 1: this isn't entirely accurate. Not to say that there's not

865
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 1: a shitload of foreign trolls who are making money by

866
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:27,439
Speaker 1: pretending to be American MAGA influencers. There definitely are. We've

867
00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 1: known about this since well before this Twitter change. One

868
00:55:30,160 --> 00:55:33,040
Speaker 1: of the most prominent people on Musk's Twitter, Ian Miles Chong,

869
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:35,279
Speaker 1: is a Malaysian man who has never been to the

870
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:39,879
Speaker 1: United States and publishes nothing but maga content. Now, what's

871
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:42,759
Speaker 1: happened here? You can find going through there's a bunch

872
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:45,240
Speaker 1: of threads. There's threads on Blue Sky, threads on Twitter

873
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:48,239
Speaker 1: threads and various articles that are basically all copies of

874
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: each other that are collecting a bunch of these accounts

875
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: that have been busted, right. One good example would be

876
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:56,799
Speaker 1: the Magination verified account, which has almost four hundred thousand followers.

877
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:00,440
Speaker 1: Started in twenty twenty four, it's had five named changes

878
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: since October twenty twenty five, and it is based in

879
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:05,640
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe non EU.

880
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:06,879
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's mega nation.

881
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah yeah.

882
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 1: A lot of people have taken to mean like it's Russian,

883
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: right yeah. Another account is the Ivanka News Trump, which

884
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: displays as Ivanka Trump even though it has nothing to

885
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:19,400
Speaker 1: do with her, which it does note in its Twitter bio.

886
00:56:19,719 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: The account was started in twenty ten, it has had

887
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:25,680
Speaker 1: eleven user changes since August of twenty twenty four, and

888
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:28,399
Speaker 1: it is apparently based in Nigeria. You have to see

889
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:31,799
Speaker 1: it you're seeing like aload a shitload of stuff like this, right,

890
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,319
Speaker 1: and it's being taken unfortunately. I think this is a

891
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 1: mistake and I hate to be like the hey, guys,

892
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:39,359
Speaker 1: stop being happy about this, but you should because you're

893
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 1: wrong about what's happening here. Most people are like the

894
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 1: Daily Beast account posts some liberal Twitter account being like

895
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,760
Speaker 1: this is total armageddon for the online right. It's looking

896
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: like half of their large accounts were foreigners posting as

897
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 1: Americans all along. Now, let me clarify a couple things.

898
00:56:54,040 --> 00:56:57,359
Speaker 1: For one thing, nothing that Elon has done here, Nothing

899
00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: that Twitter has revealed has proven that these account exist

900
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:03,920
Speaker 1: in any particular country. I'm going to explain why a

901
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 1: lot of people use something called a VPN, and a

902
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: VPN masks the location that you're browsing and logging in from, right,

903
00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:15,279
Speaker 1: and you can use a VPN to look like you're

904
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: posting from almost any country on the planet. And there

905
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:21,960
Speaker 1: is no evidence whatsoever that Twitter has done anything at

906
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:24,560
Speaker 1: all to deal with this, right to like make sure

907
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:28,000
Speaker 1: that they're getting someone's actual location. A bunch of accounts,

908
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of like people have pointed out like, hey, look,

909
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:32,800
Speaker 1: this is saying I'm from a country that I've literally

910
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:35,760
Speaker 1: never been to, like, here's my information. I'm very transparent.

911
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:40,560
Speaker 1: And there have also been organizations, including liberal coded organizations,

912
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: that have been mistakenly identified as coming from a country

913
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: that they are not set up. And for example, the

914
00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 1: Planned Parenthood account was showing us from Germany, which has

915
00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: ignited this conspiracy theory on the right, the Planned Parenthood

916
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:56,200
Speaker 1: is some European fucking influence op in the United States. Now,

917
00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:59,240
Speaker 1: they used a VPN because they're in danger because it's

918
00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:00,640
Speaker 1: Planned parent right.

919
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:02,800
Speaker 5: No, I mean I ran into a very similar situation

920
00:58:02,920 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 5: because I mostly use Twitter to look at yowie now

921
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 5: and when I was in Germany last month, it wouldn't

922
00:58:09,080 --> 00:58:10,840
Speaker 5: let me look at the AWI without putting in my

923
00:58:10,880 --> 00:58:14,640
Speaker 5: government ID for like age verification, sure of course, and

924
00:58:14,680 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 5: then the state hits garrison, so obviously a non starter.

925
00:58:18,640 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 5: I'm not I'm not. I'm not giving X the everything

926
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:23,440
Speaker 5: app my government ID to allow me to look at

927
00:58:23,520 --> 00:58:25,640
Speaker 5: YAWI in Germany, so instead I had to put on

928
00:58:25,680 --> 00:58:28,040
Speaker 5: the VPN. So I'm back into States and then I

929
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 5: can look at the YAWI. So it's basically the same

930
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 5: situation between me and Planned Parenthood here.

931
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 1: Yes, I've said often that you and planned parenthood basically

932
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: identical beings. What's happening here is it is worth talking about.

933
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 1: But it's worth talking about not because we suddenly know

934
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 1: the truth that it's been revealed about. We don't really

935
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 1: know anything more than we did before this change came in, right.

936
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 5: Well except Robert, I mean the biggest the biggest news

937
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 5: is that the DHS has been a massad operation this

938
00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 5: last time.

939
00:58:53,600 --> 00:58:54,960
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, Yes.

940
00:58:54,960 --> 00:58:56,760
Speaker 5: Like we've always suspected.

941
00:58:57,440 --> 00:59:00,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the the Department of Homeland Security out I

942
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: think it was got listed as having been based in Israel.

943
00:59:04,760 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 1: This is not real. This isn't even x fucking up.

944
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:11,200
Speaker 1: Somebody just edited a screenshot and there's so many of

945
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: these going around, hundreds and hundreds of them, right that

946
00:59:14,080 --> 00:59:17,720
Speaker 1: this just kind of got shuffled in to the flood

947
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:21,320
Speaker 1: and a lot of people didn't catch it, right, and

948
00:59:21,360 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 1: it just gets integrated into people's beliefs about the world. Right.

949
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 1: This is a standard story with how Twitter works now.

950
00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:29,800
Speaker 1: And this is, by the way, is overall I think

951
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:32,440
Speaker 1: beneficial to Musk and his kind of people, which is

952
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 1: that we know less every day about the world. There's

953
00:59:36,160 --> 00:59:40,440
Speaker 1: more disinformation about what's happening. People are less keyed in

954
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:44,440
Speaker 1: on reality and more just getting locked into different delusions.

955
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 1: Like that's what the story is here, which is that

956
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: this app and the way that social media in general works,

957
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:54,440
Speaker 1: particularly in this age, each of these changes, even the

958
00:59:54,440 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: ones that get celebrated as having revealed something, are just

959
00:59:58,720 --> 01:00:02,200
Speaker 1: fogging up reality, and they're doing it in such a

960
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:04,479
Speaker 1: way as to make it so that like, no one

961
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 1: knows anything about what's going on. Right, this is like

962
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:09,920
Speaker 1: that this is the standard playbook that you've been getting

963
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:12,800
Speaker 1: out of like authoritarian regimes from forever. Right. What's important

964
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 1: is not that just their propaganda be out. It's that

965
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:18,160
Speaker 1: there's not really any any way for there to be

966
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 1: a consensus reality, because if there's at consensus reality, then

967
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:24,680
Speaker 1: you can't put together a large enough block of people

968
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:27,920
Speaker 1: who all believe basically the same things about reality to

969
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: stop what's going on. Right, That's what's happening here, And

970
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:33,960
Speaker 1: you're wrong if you're looking at this is good. If

971
01:00:34,040 --> 01:00:36,240
Speaker 1: you believe that this has blown up the right and

972
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:38,840
Speaker 1: that this has done damage to them, they're saying the

973
01:00:38,920 --> 01:00:41,920
Speaker 1: same things about you and about the left. Because a

974
01:00:41,960 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 1: shitload of people use VPNs and you can always cherry

975
01:00:45,120 --> 01:00:47,320
Speaker 1: pick a bunch of and I'm not again, none of

976
01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:48,760
Speaker 1: that I'm saying is not saying that they're in a

977
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:53,160
Speaker 1: shitload Like Elon has specifically incentivized foreign accounts in different

978
01:00:53,160 --> 01:00:56,800
Speaker 1: countries to make money by getting into the US culture war, right,

979
01:00:57,040 --> 01:00:59,600
Speaker 1: that is absolutely a big part of how Twitter works today.

980
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:00,520
Speaker 5: No denying that.

981
01:01:00,520 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that you don't know any more

982
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: than you did before this came out, because you have

983
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:05,720
Speaker 1: no way of knowing if any of these accounts are

984
01:01:05,720 --> 01:01:08,200
Speaker 1: based where X is saying they're based because of how

985
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:09,960
Speaker 1: VPNs work. That's what I'm saying.

986
01:01:10,520 --> 01:01:11,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what I've got to say.

987
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:17,360
Speaker 6: It's incredibly annoying. It's incredibly annoying that we have to

988
01:01:17,400 --> 01:01:20,800
Speaker 6: continue writing about eggs everything. The half of half of

989
01:01:20,880 --> 01:01:23,800
Speaker 6: Blue Sky is people just virtue signaling that are not

990
01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:26,280
Speaker 6: using Twitter, and I'm being mad at Twitter.

991
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 1: You know, it's the same Honestly, this will get me flat.

992
01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:32,120
Speaker 1: But it's the same thing about like whether people are

993
01:01:32,120 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: angry about substack or fucking Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Like,

994
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:39,920
Speaker 1: if you're using social media, you're not doing yourself any favors.

995
01:01:40,200 --> 01:01:43,680
Speaker 1: And they're all pretty supportive of bad things and bad people,

996
01:01:44,200 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: and we use them anyway because that's the world. Like

997
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:49,680
Speaker 1: we spend dollars anyway, and let me tell you, dollars

998
01:01:49,720 --> 01:01:52,520
Speaker 1: support some bad things. We pay taxes, and boy howdy,

999
01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:54,320
Speaker 1: I don't like where a lot of those taxes go.

1000
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:58,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, but don't pretend.

1001
01:01:58,200 --> 01:02:00,680
Speaker 1: That because you pick the right social media app that

1002
01:02:00,720 --> 01:02:03,640
Speaker 1: you're not fucking your brain up and introducing yourself to

1003
01:02:03,640 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: a bunch of things that aren't true. We all do

1004
01:02:05,360 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 1: it like that's the problem.

1005
01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 6: Yes, they're not good for humans, yea broadly. Uh, do

1006
01:02:13,000 --> 01:02:14,840
Speaker 6: you want to talk about something else it's not good

1007
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:15,560
Speaker 6: for humans?

1008
01:02:15,960 --> 01:02:18,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's not talk about fucking X the every goddamn

1009
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 1: thing app anymore.

1010
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 6: No, Unfortunately, I have I have something rubbic which does

1011
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 6: relate to X great everything app. So let's talk about Axios.

1012
01:02:28,080 --> 01:02:31,320
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, are you guys familiar with axios. It's the

1013
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 6: new satelet for people who hate paragraphs.

1014
01:02:33,200 --> 01:02:34,200
Speaker 5: People who love cocaine.

1015
01:02:34,240 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, for people reading the news while they're

1016
01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:40,960
Speaker 6: having a dump. That is what axios is for. They

1017
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:43,080
Speaker 6: shit out news for you to read where you're having a.

1018
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:45,840
Speaker 1: Ship again, which makes cocaine even a bigger part of

1019
01:02:45,880 --> 01:02:46,600
Speaker 1: the picture here.

1020
01:02:48,600 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 5: No, it's it's like it's like the ADHD is like

1021
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:52,360
Speaker 5: ideal news source.

1022
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,440
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, you do a line, you have to

1023
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:57,520
Speaker 1: go take a ship, you catch up on your news.

1024
01:02:59,200 --> 01:03:03,040
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's that's what they call productivity. That's the Robert

1025
01:03:03,040 --> 01:03:06,120
Speaker 6: Evans grind set, the morning routine that everyone's been off.

1026
01:03:06,400 --> 01:03:09,840
Speaker 1: It's really it's really genius of fucking Axios to hit

1027
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 1: that demographic exactly because those people also have a lot

1028
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:14,560
Speaker 1: of money because they're all day traders.

1029
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:19,160
Speaker 5: True true, yeah, yeah, smash, I have I have polymarket

1030
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 5: one to the Califi on the other axios always pulled up.

1031
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:26,440
Speaker 6: That's split screening.

1032
01:03:26,480 --> 01:03:29,360
Speaker 1: You have one of those Apple like flat grass glass

1033
01:03:29,400 --> 01:03:32,040
Speaker 1: touch screen panels. But it's just for doing coke off

1034
01:03:32,040 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: of you've just.

1035
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:37,040
Speaker 6: Got lines kind off on. Yeah, it's because the metaglass

1036
01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:45,240
Speaker 6: is a contact right looping axio screen at Yeah, Axios

1037
01:03:45,240 --> 01:03:47,400
Speaker 6: and use that left for people who are taking cocaine.

1038
01:03:48,080 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 6: Has seemingly been duped into running a Russian wish list

1039
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:56,640
Speaker 6: as a proposed peace plant in Ukraine. Yeah great, This

1040
01:03:56,720 --> 01:03:59,720
Speaker 6: is what happens when you do journalism the speed of paranoia.

1041
01:03:59,760 --> 01:04:02,280
Speaker 6: But this has come at the same time as Trump

1042
01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:06,120
Speaker 6: has proclaimed via truth via the medium of a truth

1043
01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:10,960
Speaker 6: on Truth social that Ukraine was not showing fuscient gratitude

1044
01:04:11,120 --> 01:04:13,360
Speaker 6: for what we had like eleven month of him failing

1045
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 6: to end the war.

1046
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:15,080
Speaker 10: Yeah.

1047
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 6: So this twenty eight point plan was first published by Axios,

1048
01:04:21,960 --> 01:04:24,400
Speaker 6: and it was pretty much immediately rejected by a number

1049
01:04:24,440 --> 01:04:27,760
Speaker 6: of Senators, led by Senator Angus King, who were at

1050
01:04:28,720 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 6: a security conference in Halifax, Halifax, Canada. Not og Halifax,

1051
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:38,960
Speaker 6: shout out yeah, Halifax Junior. The senators pretty much immediately

1052
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:41,240
Speaker 6: said that the US was not the author of the document.

1053
01:04:41,880 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 6: Rubio quote made it very clear to us that we

1054
01:04:44,640 --> 01:04:46,960
Speaker 6: are recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one

1055
01:04:47,000 --> 01:04:51,160
Speaker 6: of our representatives, said Senator Mike Grounds. So what they

1056
01:04:51,200 --> 01:04:53,240
Speaker 6: are saying is that the US didn't write to document

1057
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 6: and it was delivered to them, one can safely assume

1058
01:04:56,640 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 6: by Russia, right Rubio using X the everything app then

1059
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:07,600
Speaker 6: attempted to deny this. So what it appears has happened

1060
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:12,640
Speaker 6: is that this plan was drafted by Russian Special Envoy Dmitriev.

1061
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:14,600
Speaker 6: Probably was Steve Witkoff.

1062
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:15,640
Speaker 1: Sure that sounds right.

1063
01:05:15,760 --> 01:05:18,200
Speaker 6: So Wickkoff is Trump's what leads I think he's a

1064
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 6: special envoy to Russia at this point.

1065
01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:23,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe he's an onvoid of Russia. Yeah, Warren

1066
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:25,480
Speaker 1: Zevonn wrote a song about guys like him.

1067
01:05:25,840 --> 01:05:29,840
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, he has. He has not covered himself in

1068
01:05:29,880 --> 01:05:31,760
Speaker 6: glory in his time doing this. He's kind of a

1069
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 6: useful fool. He's formerly like a real estate guy.

1070
01:05:35,200 --> 01:05:39,680
Speaker 1: That'll prepare you to deal with Vladimir Putin, having sold

1071
01:05:39,720 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 1: houses during the subprime mortgage crisis.

1072
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:45,840
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty much what he's doing here, right, Like,

1073
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:49,680
Speaker 6: he's consistently been duped and pretty much has become an

1074
01:05:49,720 --> 01:05:51,640
Speaker 6: advocate for the Russian point of view a lot of

1075
01:05:51,640 --> 01:05:55,880
Speaker 6: the times. In this case, it seems that it was

1076
01:05:55,960 --> 01:06:02,320
Speaker 6: then strategically leaked to Axios. Right when Barack Ravid, who

1077
01:06:02,360 --> 01:06:06,919
Speaker 6: authored the Axios article, posted it on X the Everything website,

1078
01:06:07,200 --> 01:06:11,240
Speaker 6: Steve Witcoff responded saying, quote he must have got this

1079
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:14,520
Speaker 6: from k This is very funny because we have Steve

1080
01:06:14,560 --> 01:06:18,680
Speaker 6: Wikoff right negotiating a peace process which affects millions of people,

1081
01:06:19,120 --> 01:06:21,560
Speaker 6: and he also doesn't know how to use the DM

1082
01:06:21,640 --> 01:06:23,880
Speaker 6: button on X the Everything website.

1083
01:06:23,960 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 5: To be fair, X the Everything, I've just changed their

1084
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:30,640
Speaker 5: dms and the whole the whole user interface for the

1085
01:06:30,720 --> 01:06:32,800
Speaker 5: DMS is completely different. Now you have to put in

1086
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:34,560
Speaker 5: like a pass co and they claim to be encrypted,

1087
01:06:34,600 --> 01:06:36,520
Speaker 5: and it's much uglier to look at.

1088
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:42,720
Speaker 6: So in defense in defense of Steve, instead you can

1089
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:46,400
Speaker 6: instead leaks.

1090
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:47,600
Speaker 5: Safe for more secure. Option might just be to do

1091
01:06:47,640 --> 01:06:48,560
Speaker 5: it all in public, and.

1092
01:06:48,760 --> 01:06:51,560
Speaker 6: To do it in public. Yeah, So so Steve of

1093
01:06:51,600 --> 01:06:56,120
Speaker 6: course using a code name there K will never know. Yeah,

1094
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,640
Speaker 6: because we can possibly tell the careal Dimitria of my

1095
01:06:59,640 --> 01:07:02,760
Speaker 6: my might be using K as a code name, also

1096
01:07:02,800 --> 01:07:06,040
Speaker 6: the first letter of his first name. So it seems

1097
01:07:06,120 --> 01:07:08,720
Speaker 6: very likely that either Dimitrie of someone else in Russia

1098
01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:11,920
Speaker 6: decided to leak this plan to Barakavid or Dave Lawler,

1099
01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:15,360
Speaker 6: knowing it would be raised at a press conference of

1100
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 6: belling that Trump, who, according to Wards the Post, seems

1101
01:07:18,280 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 6: to have very little detailed knowledges and negotiations, would probably

1102
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:23,640
Speaker 6: see this as a quote unquote deal that then he

1103
01:07:23,680 --> 01:07:27,480
Speaker 6: could claim for himself. Right, and it worked. I want

1104
01:07:27,480 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 6: to talk about how Axios's model makes that possible. Right.

1105
01:07:31,600 --> 01:07:34,400
Speaker 6: I'm very well aware that Barack Gravid was a member

1106
01:07:34,440 --> 01:07:36,760
Speaker 6: of the eighty two hundred unit in Israel. If people

1107
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:42,240
Speaker 6: aren't familiar. That's like a SIGINT Israeli intelligent unit. This

1108
01:07:42,280 --> 01:07:45,360
Speaker 6: is widely known. I've seen this being discussed in sort

1109
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:49,520
Speaker 6: of relation to this. The thing is, he doesn't need

1110
01:07:49,560 --> 01:07:53,000
Speaker 6: to be nefarious for this to happen, And I think

1111
01:07:53,080 --> 01:07:57,320
Speaker 6: the most likely option here is that the Axios model

1112
01:07:57,440 --> 01:08:00,960
Speaker 6: is to do insider journalism and then rush to be

1113
01:08:01,040 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 6: the first to post it on social media and then

1114
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:08,920
Speaker 6: get a bazillion clicks for your seventy eight word article. Right,

1115
01:08:08,960 --> 01:08:12,240
Speaker 6: that is how That is their entire business model.

1116
01:08:12,680 --> 01:08:14,320
Speaker 5: It is the name of their whole game.

1117
01:08:14,440 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's why they don't use paragraphs. It's news for

1118
01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:19,640
Speaker 6: people who are like waiting for their coffee at Starbucks

1119
01:08:19,680 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 6: or whatever the problem is in this case, states are

1120
01:08:22,720 --> 01:08:25,880
Speaker 6: or nonstate actors, right, can effectively place a leak and

1121
01:08:25,920 --> 01:08:29,519
Speaker 6: they know that Axios will rush it to press, probably

1122
01:08:29,520 --> 01:08:32,960
Speaker 6: in minutes if not ours. And with the way that

1123
01:08:33,080 --> 01:08:36,200
Speaker 6: the United States executive branches right now, it seems very

1124
01:08:36,240 --> 01:08:38,120
Speaker 6: clear that that they can get it in front of Trump,

1125
01:08:38,200 --> 01:08:41,200
Speaker 6: then they're going to get a reaction one way or another.

1126
01:08:41,520 --> 01:08:46,519
Speaker 6: So it seems that Rubio was effectively cut out. The

1127
01:08:46,920 --> 01:08:49,280
Speaker 6: United States Secretary of State was effectively cut out of

1128
01:08:49,320 --> 01:08:52,800
Speaker 6: this whole process. And there's a lot of reporting about

1129
01:08:52,880 --> 01:08:54,880
Speaker 6: like I don't want to do kremlinology for the Trump

1130
01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:59,479
Speaker 6: White House particularly, but it shows how these news outlets

1131
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:01,800
Speaker 6: that lets to sort of don't fact check the Russia

1132
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 6: price to do everything for social media can effectively be

1133
01:09:04,479 --> 01:09:07,800
Speaker 6: used right in a way that the benefits in this

1134
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:10,760
Speaker 6: case Russia, but any number of organizations could do the

1135
01:09:10,800 --> 01:09:11,160
Speaker 6: same thing.

1136
01:09:12,040 --> 01:09:16,960
Speaker 5: Robert mentioned some kind of like Wartimes warn some kind

1137
01:09:17,000 --> 01:09:20,640
Speaker 5: of Wartimes song, and I was wondering, where is the

1138
01:09:20,680 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 5: country of Zevon? You said, there's like a song about

1139
01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:23,840
Speaker 5: Warren Zevon.

1140
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:29,240
Speaker 6: Jesus Garrison, Garrison, get out of here about discrimination in

1141
01:09:29,280 --> 01:09:32,919
Speaker 6: the workplace. Ah, I'm going to do a Woody Guthrie

1142
01:09:33,120 --> 01:09:35,320
Speaker 6: thing in my next series. And Gary, it's just going

1143
01:09:35,360 --> 01:09:39,240
Speaker 6: to sail straight past Garrison. You listen to Johnny Cash Garrison,

1144
01:09:39,840 --> 01:09:40,120
Speaker 6: I liked.

1145
01:09:40,479 --> 01:09:41,360
Speaker 5: I like Johnning Cash.

1146
01:09:41,439 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 6: Okay, James Cash, that's what they call me.

1147
01:09:45,800 --> 01:09:47,439
Speaker 5: Here's some ads.

1148
01:09:57,920 --> 01:09:59,280
Speaker 1: And we're.

1149
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:06,320
Speaker 5: New Doge News for the first time in who knows

1150
01:10:06,360 --> 01:10:10,200
Speaker 5: how long the news being. There's no more Doge. According

1151
01:10:10,240 --> 01:10:14,400
Speaker 5: to a report in Reuter's, Doge has dispended eight months

1152
01:10:14,439 --> 01:10:19,240
Speaker 5: before its scheduled expiration in July of twenty twenty seven.

1153
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:22,880
Speaker 5: When asked about the status of DOJE earlier this month,

1154
01:10:23,000 --> 01:10:26,880
Speaker 5: Office of Personal Management director Scott Poor told Reuters quote

1155
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:30,960
Speaker 5: that doesn't exist, adding that DOGE is no longer a

1156
01:10:31,040 --> 01:10:33,559
Speaker 5: quote unquote centralized entity.

1157
01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:34,719
Speaker 6: Yeah.

1158
01:10:35,439 --> 01:10:40,080
Speaker 5: Boro has also said that the DOGE mandated hiring freeze

1159
01:10:40,120 --> 01:10:45,600
Speaker 5: is over and that there's quote no target around reductions unquote,

1160
01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:49,000
Speaker 5: meaning that the DOGE era rule of having to fire

1161
01:10:49,040 --> 01:10:50,920
Speaker 5: a certain number of people in order to be allowed

1162
01:10:50,920 --> 01:10:54,880
Speaker 5: to hire people is no longer in use as well.

1163
01:10:55,320 --> 01:10:58,479
Speaker 5: And this isn't really surprising. You have not really heard

1164
01:10:58,520 --> 01:11:00,920
Speaker 5: about many DOGE related stuff in a while.

1165
01:11:01,240 --> 01:11:03,800
Speaker 1: They haven't been doing anything in a while. Musk has

1166
01:11:03,840 --> 01:11:07,120
Speaker 1: basically been out of the center loop of things. But

1167
01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:09,720
Speaker 1: also they did the things that they were needed to do, right.

1168
01:11:09,800 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 1: They like did massacred large portions of government employees. Yeah,

1169
01:11:14,640 --> 01:11:18,320
Speaker 1: did permanent damage to the administrative state and cost several

1170
01:11:18,360 --> 01:11:20,799
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people around the world their lives through cuts

1171
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:21,920
Speaker 1: in USA.

1172
01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:23,719
Speaker 6: Yeah Yeah.

1173
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 5: And like two former DOAGE employees, including big Balls, now

1174
01:11:27,520 --> 01:11:31,120
Speaker 5: just work on web design for US government websites, and

1175
01:11:31,240 --> 01:11:34,960
Speaker 5: other DOG officials have moved to agencies which they administered

1176
01:11:35,000 --> 01:11:38,479
Speaker 5: cuts to a former DOGE team member, Zachary Terrell is

1177
01:11:38,479 --> 01:11:40,559
Speaker 5: now the chief technology officer at the Department of Health

1178
01:11:40,560 --> 01:11:44,200
Speaker 5: and Human Services, and Jeremy Lewin, who assisted these slashing

1179
01:11:44,240 --> 01:11:46,519
Speaker 5: of you say it now overseas foreign assistants at the

1180
01:11:46,560 --> 01:11:52,040
Speaker 5: State Department. Yeah, so those guys got jobs out of this.

1181
01:11:53,720 --> 01:11:56,400
Speaker 5: All of the people who got fired or got natively

1182
01:11:56,400 --> 01:11:59,320
Speaker 5: impacted by the government shutdown are probably not going to

1183
01:11:59,360 --> 01:12:01,639
Speaker 5: be coming out as will was mister big balls here.

1184
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:04,160
Speaker 1: Well, and there's some evidence that a number of folks

1185
01:12:04,160 --> 01:12:06,760
Speaker 1: who worked with DOGE are now feeling left in the

1186
01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:09,960
Speaker 1: wind and potentially in danger because there are a lot

1187
01:12:09,960 --> 01:12:12,360
Speaker 1: of people who want these folks to be prosecuted for

1188
01:12:12,439 --> 01:12:15,599
Speaker 1: what they did. Yeah, there's definitely talk about that. If

1189
01:12:15,640 --> 01:12:19,280
Speaker 1: there's another Democratic administration, we'll see if they would ever

1190
01:12:19,320 --> 01:12:21,880
Speaker 1: have the big balls to do it. But there was

1191
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:24,080
Speaker 1: an article in Politico recently, and I'm going to read

1192
01:12:24,120 --> 01:12:26,680
Speaker 1: a quote from that Musk had not just been their

1193
01:12:26,760 --> 01:12:29,000
Speaker 1: visionary leader for them, he was their protector, the man

1194
01:12:29,000 --> 01:12:30,800
Speaker 1: who had an elect direct line to Trump, who they

1195
01:12:30,800 --> 01:12:32,839
Speaker 1: believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential

1196
01:12:32,840 --> 01:12:35,559
Speaker 1: pardon if the worst came without his presence in Washington,

1197
01:12:35,600 --> 01:12:38,799
Speaker 1: they were suddenly exposed. A senior Doze figure named Donald

1198
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:41,040
Speaker 1: Park tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still

1199
01:12:41,120 --> 01:12:43,720
Speaker 1: brothers in arms and that Musk would continue to protect them.

1200
01:12:43,880 --> 01:12:47,280
Speaker 1: That led to another protesting and advising guys, seriously, get

1201
01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:49,160
Speaker 1: your own lawyer. If you needed he lunch, great, but

1202
01:12:49,200 --> 01:12:52,120
Speaker 1: you need to watch your own back. Watch your backs, guys.

1203
01:12:52,680 --> 01:12:56,200
Speaker 6: Yeah, these guys would be some of the more like

1204
01:12:56,479 --> 01:13:01,360
Speaker 6: presumably very easy to prosecute and like obvious, Yes, another

1205
01:13:01,400 --> 01:13:04,640
Speaker 6: democratic administration's.

1206
01:13:03,360 --> 01:13:07,400
Speaker 1: Some really obvious crimes in terms of like protection of information,

1207
01:13:07,880 --> 01:13:11,519
Speaker 1: you know, like some some pretty obvious rule breaking that

1208
01:13:11,600 --> 01:13:13,960
Speaker 1: went on that's not being prosecuted now, but yeah, they're right,

1209
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:15,400
Speaker 1: it could be prosecuted in the future.

1210
01:13:15,520 --> 01:13:18,559
Speaker 5: Those like first three four months of the Trump admin

1211
01:13:19,080 --> 01:13:21,240
Speaker 5: What it really was just full steam ahead on the

1212
01:13:21,240 --> 01:13:24,000
Speaker 5: Silicon Valley version of things, right, like the move fast

1213
01:13:24,000 --> 01:13:26,400
Speaker 5: and brave things. Yeah, that's such a wild time to

1214
01:13:26,439 --> 01:13:28,200
Speaker 5: look back on, not only just in terms of how

1215
01:13:28,240 --> 01:13:30,519
Speaker 5: much damage they did, but the idea that if they

1216
01:13:30,520 --> 01:13:32,639
Speaker 5: were going to continue at that pace for the rest

1217
01:13:32,680 --> 01:13:35,400
Speaker 5: of the term, the government already is fundamentally different in

1218
01:13:35,439 --> 01:13:39,439
Speaker 5: some ways, but like how much worse that would have been? Yeah,

1219
01:13:39,640 --> 01:13:42,720
Speaker 5: and if Musk's ego is in part, what's sabotaged that

1220
01:13:42,800 --> 01:13:45,760
Speaker 5: from being complete and really kind of doing that more

1221
01:13:45,840 --> 01:13:51,760
Speaker 5: like Jarvin inspired project Hubris Uh kills kills a man

1222
01:13:51,840 --> 01:13:54,679
Speaker 5: once again. But there is aspects of like the doge

1223
01:13:54,680 --> 01:13:57,840
Speaker 5: idea and this government efficiency thing which aren't fully going

1224
01:13:57,840 --> 01:14:00,519
Speaker 5: away like this, this still is and aspect of the

1225
01:14:00,520 --> 01:14:03,080
Speaker 5: Trump administration there still is like some of those guys

1226
01:14:03,080 --> 01:14:06,960
Speaker 5: at the Auspice of Budget Management and the Heritage twenty

1227
01:14:07,000 --> 01:14:09,479
Speaker 5: twenty five guys who have a lot of this government

1228
01:14:09,479 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 5: efficiency quote unquote government efficiency type stuff that they're still

1229
01:14:13,320 --> 01:14:17,320
Speaker 5: working on, including at the Education Department, which last week

1230
01:14:17,479 --> 01:14:21,519
Speaker 5: the Trump administration took another step towards closing the Department

1231
01:14:21,520 --> 01:14:24,320
Speaker 5: of Education by shifting some of its duties to other

1232
01:14:24,439 --> 01:14:29,799
Speaker 5: federal agencies, which the admin claims will quote streamline federal

1233
01:14:29,920 --> 01:14:34,320
Speaker 5: education activities on the legally required programs, and reduce administrative

1234
01:14:34,320 --> 01:14:39,439
Speaker 5: burden unquote. That is going to be done by these

1235
01:14:39,479 --> 01:14:43,360
Speaker 5: six new interagency agreements which have been signed with the

1236
01:14:43,520 --> 01:14:47,479
Speaker 5: Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.

1237
01:14:48,680 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 5: The Education Department riting in an announcement that this will

1238
01:14:51,200 --> 01:14:56,040
Speaker 5: quote break up the federal bureaucracy, ensure efficient delivery of

1239
01:14:56,120 --> 01:14:59,679
Speaker 5: funded programs, activities, and move closer to fulfilling the President's

1240
01:14:59,680 --> 01:15:04,679
Speaker 5: promise to return education to the States. So by splitting

1241
01:15:04,760 --> 01:15:08,240
Speaker 5: up Education Department duties among four different agencies in three

1242
01:15:08,360 --> 01:15:12,840
Speaker 5: different interagency agreements, this is supposed to cut red tape

1243
01:15:12,880 --> 01:15:14,720
Speaker 5: and lighten central bureaucracy.

1244
01:15:15,200 --> 01:15:19,719
Speaker 6: You have seven entities now what one entity did before.

1245
01:15:20,200 --> 01:15:23,000
Speaker 5: The elementary, high school, and post secondary programs will now

1246
01:15:23,040 --> 01:15:25,439
Speaker 5: be administered by the Department of Labor.

1247
01:15:25,880 --> 01:15:26,479
Speaker 6: That's great.

1248
01:15:26,600 --> 01:15:31,280
Speaker 5: We'll nowveresee over thirty billion dollars in education grants aimed

1249
01:15:31,320 --> 01:15:34,920
Speaker 5: at trying to boost the number of Americans in the workforce.

1250
01:15:35,760 --> 01:15:37,840
Speaker 5: The Department of the Interior will be taking over the

1251
01:15:37,920 --> 01:15:41,439
Speaker 5: education departments to Indian education programs and integrating them into

1252
01:15:41,439 --> 01:15:44,400
Speaker 5: existing programs administered by the Department of the Interior, with

1253
01:15:44,520 --> 01:15:50,760
Speaker 5: quote unquote proper oversight by the Education Department. College childcare programs,

1254
01:15:50,800 --> 01:15:53,599
Speaker 5: and foreign medical school accreditation will be administered and overseen

1255
01:15:53,680 --> 01:15:57,080
Speaker 5: by the Health and Human Services, and the State Department

1256
01:15:57,160 --> 01:16:03,080
Speaker 5: will now oversee all foreign education programs, handle international education grants,

1257
01:16:03,280 --> 01:16:07,680
Speaker 5: and fully administer the full Bright program. Justification for this

1258
01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:12,400
Speaker 5: State Department takeover of these funds specifically cited five instances

1259
01:16:12,600 --> 01:16:15,840
Speaker 5: of grants that were used to fund academic and medical

1260
01:16:15,880 --> 01:16:19,560
Speaker 5: research on trans people, writing that these programs have deviated

1261
01:16:19,640 --> 01:16:23,679
Speaker 5: from the core mission. Quote. The announcement from the Education

1262
01:16:23,760 --> 01:16:27,400
Speaker 5: departments reads that the State Department is quote best positioned

1263
01:16:27,439 --> 01:16:30,680
Speaker 5: to tailor foreign education programs with the national security and

1264
01:16:30,840 --> 01:16:34,799
Speaker 5: foreign policy priorities of the United States. This partnership provides

1265
01:16:34,840 --> 01:16:39,000
Speaker 5: an opportunity to streamline international education program funding and data

1266
01:16:39,040 --> 01:16:45,080
Speaker 5: collection measures, consolidate program management, and advance national security interests.

1267
01:16:46,560 --> 01:16:47,240
Speaker 6: That's not good.

1268
01:16:47,680 --> 01:16:49,439
Speaker 5: Yeah, that doesn't seem great.

1269
01:16:49,560 --> 01:16:52,920
Speaker 6: Huh Yeah, this last part is particularly concerning that the

1270
01:16:53,040 --> 01:16:56,639
Speaker 6: US previously has done a lot of funding of education

1271
01:16:56,840 --> 01:17:01,040
Speaker 6: programs around the world, and to see that pretty much,

1272
01:17:01,080 --> 01:17:03,920
Speaker 6: I like, with this current vasion of the State Department,

1273
01:17:03,960 --> 01:17:07,320
Speaker 6: I to disappear or become even more straight up propaganda.

1274
01:17:07,479 --> 01:17:11,519
Speaker 6: Like it's really worrying. This kind of builds on that

1275
01:17:11,640 --> 01:17:13,880
Speaker 6: dose stuff that you were talking about, Like this is

1276
01:17:14,680 --> 01:17:17,200
Speaker 6: the end of the State Department doing anything other than

1277
01:17:17,240 --> 01:17:21,000
Speaker 6: the propaganda And I guess warmaking well.

1278
01:17:20,880 --> 01:17:24,519
Speaker 5: And specifically, like Rubio's focus on education has been to

1279
01:17:25,120 --> 01:17:30,080
Speaker 5: crack down on academics, Palaestatian academics, academics who have who

1280
01:17:30,160 --> 01:17:35,559
Speaker 5: have protested in support of Palestine. That's specifically what Rubio

1281
01:17:35,680 --> 01:17:39,800
Speaker 5: has has talked about in terms of, you know, universities. Yeah,

1282
01:17:39,920 --> 01:17:42,920
Speaker 5: so with all the stuff in that statement about you know,

1283
01:17:43,120 --> 01:17:47,599
Speaker 5: national security and foreign policy priorities, it's not hard to

1284
01:17:47,600 --> 01:17:52,280
Speaker 5: see what they could be gesturing towards. Yeah, as the

1285
01:17:52,320 --> 01:17:56,280
Speaker 5: announcements are currently written, a lot of the programs itself,

1286
01:17:56,320 --> 01:17:59,280
Speaker 5: at least in the trench transitionary period, remain kind of

1287
01:17:59,320 --> 01:18:02,760
Speaker 5: the same. They're shifting who is like quote unquote administering them,

1288
01:18:02,760 --> 01:18:05,680
Speaker 5: that's the word they use a lot. But they're not

1289
01:18:06,080 --> 01:18:08,960
Speaker 5: cutting funds to these programs at the moment, and they

1290
01:18:08,960 --> 01:18:12,600
Speaker 5: do talk about them as like legally required programs. But

1291
01:18:12,760 --> 01:18:16,240
Speaker 5: I mean, Carolyn Levitt and Linda McMahon have said this

1292
01:18:16,000 --> 01:18:20,280
Speaker 5: is just one step towards well fully sending education back

1293
01:18:20,320 --> 01:18:21,320
Speaker 5: to the states.

1294
01:18:21,640 --> 01:18:22,680
Speaker 1: Woh.

1295
01:18:22,840 --> 01:18:28,639
Speaker 6: This also was sort like in massive disparities in educational

1296
01:18:28,720 --> 01:18:32,200
Speaker 6: outcomes state by state in the United States, right, Like,

1297
01:18:32,240 --> 01:18:34,880
Speaker 6: we already have that to some extent, but that's only

1298
01:18:34,920 --> 01:18:38,160
Speaker 6: going to be exacerbated by this, right, talking about things

1299
01:18:38,200 --> 01:18:44,040
Speaker 6: happening between the States. Let's talk about Gregory Buffino, person

1300
01:18:44,080 --> 01:18:47,559
Speaker 6: who supposedly patrols the borders of the United States, but

1301
01:18:47,640 --> 01:18:51,360
Speaker 6: has more recently been doing internal enforcement for the Border Patrol.

1302
01:18:51,680 --> 01:18:53,720
Speaker 6: He gave an interview to AP recently that I was

1303
01:18:53,760 --> 01:18:57,000
Speaker 6: just reading. They did confirm, interestingly that like a few

1304
01:18:57,080 --> 01:18:59,559
Speaker 6: weeks ago, maybe months ago, we've been talking about Baveno

1305
01:18:59,640 --> 01:19:02,800
Speaker 6: and like to work out if he was still chief

1306
01:19:02,840 --> 01:19:05,000
Speaker 6: patrol agent in El Centro. It appears that he is,

1307
01:19:05,080 --> 01:19:08,040
Speaker 6: but he's also a commander of this operation at large,

1308
01:19:08,080 --> 01:19:11,280
Speaker 6: which is their sort of the thing that has moved

1309
01:19:11,280 --> 01:19:14,760
Speaker 6: from Los Angeles to Chicago, which is now in Charlotte. Right,

1310
01:19:15,240 --> 01:19:18,719
Speaker 6: this sort of internal enforcement operation. He calls his team

1311
01:19:18,920 --> 01:19:23,320
Speaker 6: now quote unquote sanctuary busters, and he said that quote

1312
01:19:23,360 --> 01:19:26,760
Speaker 6: there will be no more sanctuaries, which kind of does

1313
01:19:27,360 --> 01:19:29,439
Speaker 6: build on what I spoke about in our last ed

1314
01:19:29,640 --> 01:19:32,320
Speaker 6: right when we spoke about the idea that the reason

1315
01:19:32,320 --> 01:19:34,519
Speaker 6: they had targeted Charlotte was because it appeared on that

1316
01:19:34,600 --> 01:19:39,120
Speaker 6: CIS map quote unquote sanctuary city or sanctuary jurisdiction, despite

1317
01:19:39,479 --> 01:19:43,000
Speaker 6: the passage of legislation in the state which would have

1318
01:19:43,000 --> 01:19:46,360
Speaker 6: prevented it doing the things that sanctuaries do. I don't

1319
01:19:46,360 --> 01:19:50,120
Speaker 6: want to talk about this ABC investigation into CBP's use

1320
01:19:50,160 --> 01:19:53,120
Speaker 6: of licensed plate readers. CBPS has had these for like

1321
01:19:53,200 --> 01:19:57,040
Speaker 6: eight or nine years now. I found the twenty seventeen

1322
01:19:57,560 --> 01:20:00,639
Speaker 6: piece where they wrote out their justification for use them. Right,

1323
01:20:01,280 --> 01:20:05,120
Speaker 6: their use has grown immensely right in it. Yeah, and

1324
01:20:05,160 --> 01:20:09,080
Speaker 6: it has grown under both administrations we've I suppose Trump

1325
01:20:09,120 --> 01:20:12,280
Speaker 6: administration from twenty to twenty twenty, by the administration twenty twenty,

1326
01:20:12,320 --> 01:20:16,720
Speaker 6: twenty eighty four. We spoke actually in an episode that

1327
01:20:17,160 --> 01:20:18,360
Speaker 6: I think it was just Robert and I in that

1328
01:20:18,360 --> 01:20:21,080
Speaker 6: episode when we spoke about Gavin Newsom. People love that

1329
01:20:21,160 --> 01:20:25,080
Speaker 6: episode and they send me great feedback, because, guys, it's

1330
01:20:25,080 --> 01:20:27,320
Speaker 6: important that we all know that the only person standing

1331
01:20:27,360 --> 01:20:30,840
Speaker 6: up against Trump right now is Gavin Newsom. Everything else

1332
01:20:30,880 --> 01:20:33,880
Speaker 6: is pointless. But in that episode, we spoke about how

1333
01:20:34,200 --> 01:20:40,480
Speaker 6: many California jurisdictions share license plate reader information with federal

1334
01:20:40,600 --> 01:20:44,519
Speaker 6: immigration authorities, even when California law prohibits them from doing so. Right.

1335
01:20:44,600 --> 01:20:46,920
Speaker 6: This is kind of one of those these things they grow.

1336
01:20:46,960 --> 01:20:47,839
Speaker 6: It's a ratchet.

1337
01:20:47,960 --> 01:20:48,080
Speaker 7: Right.

1338
01:20:48,160 --> 01:20:51,959
Speaker 6: Once you give that power to the state, it belongs

1339
01:20:52,000 --> 01:20:53,920
Speaker 6: to all of the state, and you can never take

1340
01:20:53,960 --> 01:20:57,000
Speaker 6: it back. Automated license to plate readers have been a

1341
01:20:57,040 --> 01:21:00,519
Speaker 6: big thing in this kind of the post only twenty

1342
01:21:00,560 --> 01:21:05,439
Speaker 6: tendency of democratic mayors in big cities to massively increase

1343
01:21:05,479 --> 01:21:09,200
Speaker 6: spending on the police and massively increase police surveillance. We

1344
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:13,400
Speaker 6: have automated cameras on our lampposts here in San Diego

1345
01:21:13,439 --> 01:21:18,920
Speaker 6: now right. California has prosecuted one jurisdiction that I'm aware of,

1346
01:21:18,960 --> 01:21:23,040
Speaker 6: which is Alcoholone. People will be familiar with alcoholne from Alcoholone.

1347
01:21:23,040 --> 01:21:26,479
Speaker 6: Mayor Bill Well's attempt to make a country music song

1348
01:21:26,600 --> 01:21:33,000
Speaker 6: about how schools are turning kids trans that is un

1349
01:21:33,000 --> 01:21:37,800
Speaker 6: ironically probably the most national use it that ALCOHOLA has

1350
01:21:37,840 --> 01:21:43,280
Speaker 6: made for a while. But bundahursued Alcoholone for showing that data.

1351
01:21:43,400 --> 01:21:46,280
Speaker 6: My guess is that that is because it's alcoholone, right,

1352
01:21:46,360 --> 01:21:48,600
Speaker 6: Because Alcohol is a city where the mayor makes a

1353
01:21:48,600 --> 01:21:51,519
Speaker 6: country music song about how schools are turning children trans like,

1354
01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:54,760
Speaker 6: it's very obviously like a partisan prosecution. There are many

1355
01:21:54,800 --> 01:21:59,240
Speaker 6: other jurisdictions doing this. What Border Patrol does with these

1356
01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:04,000
Speaker 6: cameras is it targets quote unquote suspicious activities and then

1357
01:22:04,040 --> 01:22:06,920
Speaker 6: it requests stops. Sometimes the stops are not made by

1358
01:22:06,920 --> 01:22:09,320
Speaker 6: Border Patrol, but are made by local police. Right on

1359
01:22:09,400 --> 01:22:12,439
Speaker 6: the pretext of something like speeding or failing to signal

1360
01:22:12,479 --> 01:22:16,559
Speaker 6: before you change lanes, having a break light out could

1361
01:22:16,560 --> 01:22:21,360
Speaker 6: be many, many things, right. The ABC piece quoted Deputy

1362
01:22:21,479 --> 01:22:24,560
Speaker 6: Joel bab of saying, quote, the beautiful thing about the

1363
01:22:24,600 --> 01:22:27,120
Speaker 6: Texas traffic code is there thousands of things you can

1364
01:22:27,240 --> 01:22:31,320
Speaker 6: stop a vehicle for. The idea here is not to

1365
01:22:31,479 --> 01:22:34,680
Speaker 6: explicitly talk about the license plate readers, right, And the

1366
01:22:34,720 --> 01:22:38,960
Speaker 6: fact that they are using these to do predictive surveillance

1367
01:22:39,000 --> 01:22:39,600
Speaker 6: is what they call it.

1368
01:22:39,680 --> 01:22:39,760
Speaker 8: Right.

1369
01:22:40,320 --> 01:22:44,599
Speaker 6: They're trying to highlight like suspicious patterns of vehicle motion

1370
01:22:44,720 --> 01:22:49,800
Speaker 6: and stop people. The piece has some they obtained through

1371
01:22:49,840 --> 01:22:52,760
Speaker 6: public records requests from a court case, a WhatsApp group

1372
01:22:52,840 --> 01:22:55,559
Speaker 6: chat between Border Patrol and Texas officers which the officer

1373
01:22:55,600 --> 01:22:58,479
Speaker 6: has shared movement, social media profiles, car rentals, and home

1374
01:22:58,520 --> 01:23:02,960
Speaker 6: addresses of people who they were interested in surveilling. Right,

1375
01:23:03,040 --> 01:23:08,160
Speaker 6: And it reveals a massive level of surveillance. If you know,

1376
01:23:08,160 --> 01:23:10,360
Speaker 6: if you if you're thinking of border patrol and you're

1377
01:23:10,479 --> 01:23:12,720
Speaker 6: still under the impression that in America the border can't

1378
01:23:12,720 --> 01:23:14,920
Speaker 6: come to you wherever you are, this is another example

1379
01:23:14,920 --> 01:23:17,800
Speaker 6: of why that's not true. Right, DHS uses these all

1380
01:23:17,840 --> 01:23:20,559
Speaker 6: over the country to include outside of one hundred mile

1381
01:23:20,680 --> 01:23:25,160
Speaker 6: border enforcement zone. Right. This piece seems to believe that

1382
01:23:25,200 --> 01:23:27,760
Speaker 6: the board one hundred miles zone is it's like a

1383
01:23:27,840 --> 01:23:31,240
Speaker 6: legal hard line. It's not. It's an interpretation of a

1384
01:23:31,320 --> 01:23:35,639
Speaker 6: quote unquote reasonable distance. There is no hard line stopping

1385
01:23:35,760 --> 01:23:38,040
Speaker 6: BP for operating further from the border than that. That

1386
01:23:38,160 --> 01:23:41,840
Speaker 6: is just generally where the interpretation of a reasonable distance

1387
01:23:41,880 --> 01:23:45,760
Speaker 6: from the border is perceived to fall. Border patrol has

1388
01:23:45,800 --> 01:23:48,560
Speaker 6: these cameras at fixed points, so like that would be

1389
01:23:48,600 --> 01:23:50,960
Speaker 6: border patrol crossings, you know when you enter or enter

1390
01:23:51,040 --> 01:23:52,600
Speaker 6: the enter or leave the country at a port of

1391
01:23:52,720 --> 01:23:56,559
Speaker 6: entry and then at checkpoints. Right, people will be familiar

1392
01:23:56,560 --> 01:23:58,680
Speaker 6: with checkpoints that live in a border area. And then

1393
01:23:58,720 --> 01:24:02,080
Speaker 6: they also have these in mo bile and cover capacities, right,

1394
01:24:02,080 --> 01:24:03,960
Speaker 6: And they're using them to find people who might be

1395
01:24:04,040 --> 01:24:07,080
Speaker 6: driving near the border or staying and then leaving at

1396
01:24:07,080 --> 01:24:09,600
Speaker 6: a strange time, and then they're building a profile of

1397
01:24:09,640 --> 01:24:13,719
Speaker 6: those people's movements and using that request stops. Right. It's

1398
01:24:13,760 --> 01:24:16,200
Speaker 6: a level of surveillance that I think should be worrying

1399
01:24:16,560 --> 01:24:17,360
Speaker 6: to many people.

1400
01:24:17,600 --> 01:24:21,759
Speaker 5: And they have access to these like larger integrated camera networks,

1401
01:24:21,800 --> 01:24:24,799
Speaker 5: like by Flock Safety, which I've talked about before, including

1402
01:24:24,920 --> 01:24:28,240
Speaker 5: I think yesterday's episode. As Flock is like an Atlanta

1403
01:24:28,280 --> 01:24:32,080
Speaker 5: based company that rose to prominence through their surveillance around

1404
01:24:32,160 --> 01:24:35,599
Speaker 5: the forest where cops that was being constructed. Now Flock

1405
01:24:35,720 --> 01:24:38,919
Speaker 5: is all over the country, and Border Patrol has access

1406
01:24:38,960 --> 01:24:41,519
Speaker 5: to the Flock system. Yeah, and it's used for a

1407
01:24:41,520 --> 01:24:44,839
Speaker 5: whole bunch of other really dubious stuff, including in Texas.

1408
01:24:44,960 --> 01:24:47,720
Speaker 5: I think four h four Media did a report not

1409
01:24:47,840 --> 01:24:51,599
Speaker 5: too long ago about Texas sheriffs tracking a pregnant woman

1410
01:24:51,840 --> 01:24:54,720
Speaker 5: getting an abortion, not in Texas.

1411
01:24:54,400 --> 01:24:57,400
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, yeah, I can see. Yeah, Texas law makes

1412
01:24:57,439 --> 01:24:59,240
Speaker 6: it a crime to leave the state in order to

1413
01:24:59,280 --> 01:25:02,519
Speaker 6: get should or something, right, and so that would be

1414
01:25:02,520 --> 01:25:06,240
Speaker 6: their I guess their excuse here. But like I think

1415
01:25:06,240 --> 01:25:09,240
Speaker 6: we can all see that that's a pretty pretty disgusting

1416
01:25:09,320 --> 01:25:12,120
Speaker 6: use of the svealan state. But yeah, these things grew

1417
01:25:12,200 --> 01:25:14,840
Speaker 6: massively in the time period between twenty twenty and today,

1418
01:25:15,760 --> 01:25:18,760
Speaker 6: and it was not just in Republican jurisdictions. Right, There's

1419
01:25:18,800 --> 01:25:22,160
Speaker 6: this like unabated support for state surveillance that we saw

1420
01:25:23,760 --> 01:25:27,160
Speaker 6: all over the United States is now being turned against

1421
01:25:28,360 --> 01:25:31,599
Speaker 6: migrants and anybody who is suspected of helping them, which

1422
01:25:31,640 --> 01:25:35,519
Speaker 6: is not great. Talking of not great, we have an

1423
01:25:35,560 --> 01:25:39,559
Speaker 6: obligation to pivot to add I'm happy. I think that's great.

1424
01:25:40,439 --> 01:25:43,600
Speaker 6: I love I love having a job. I enjoyed to

1425
01:25:43,600 --> 01:25:45,320
Speaker 6: consume products and services.

1426
01:25:45,120 --> 01:26:00,599
Speaker 1: That's right, and we're back. How's everybody doing good?

1427
01:26:01,000 --> 01:26:03,799
Speaker 5: Yeah? Banging, pretty good, pretty good. I just just finished

1428
01:26:03,800 --> 01:26:09,360
Speaker 5: my Asahi smoothie from the Heritage Social twenty twenty four cup,

1429
01:26:09,520 --> 01:26:10,519
Speaker 5: So I feel great.

1430
01:26:10,680 --> 01:26:12,800
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, that's good for you.

1431
01:26:12,840 --> 01:26:16,040
Speaker 5: Garrison really coming together, you know, politics from different sides

1432
01:26:16,080 --> 01:26:19,719
Speaker 5: coming together to enjoy a smoothie. Not unlike the meeting

1433
01:26:19,800 --> 01:26:21,840
Speaker 5: between Zora mum Donnie and Donald Trump.

1434
01:26:21,880 --> 01:26:24,440
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh.

1435
01:26:23,600 --> 01:26:25,320
Speaker 6: How long did you plan that for?

1436
01:26:25,520 --> 01:26:25,880
Speaker 11: Garrison?

1437
01:26:26,000 --> 01:26:28,479
Speaker 5: Like literally five seconds? It just it just came out.

1438
01:26:28,880 --> 01:26:31,200
Speaker 6: We don't do smooth transitions here like that.

1439
01:26:31,400 --> 01:26:34,599
Speaker 5: Well, you know sometimes do you know who was smooth?

1440
01:26:34,720 --> 01:26:35,559
Speaker 11: It was Zora moum.

1441
01:26:35,479 --> 01:26:39,439
Speaker 6: Donnie during that meeting, which like a duck's back, like

1442
01:26:39,479 --> 01:26:41,880
Speaker 6: a like a seal, that kind of smoothness.

1443
01:26:42,040 --> 01:26:47,320
Speaker 5: Trump seemed pretty pretty enamored. Mister mum donnie mayor elect

1444
01:26:47,360 --> 01:26:50,320
Speaker 5: mam donnie. Quote, we have one thing in common. We

1445
01:26:50,360 --> 01:26:53,800
Speaker 5: want this city of ours to do very well unquote.

1446
01:26:54,280 --> 01:26:57,800
Speaker 5: So this was on Friday, Trump and Mum Donnie had

1447
01:26:57,840 --> 01:27:02,280
Speaker 5: a private meeting in the White House. Afterwards a thirty

1448
01:27:02,280 --> 01:27:05,000
Speaker 5: minute press conference in the Oval Office where Trump was

1449
01:27:05,000 --> 01:27:07,519
Speaker 5: sitting down, And so I was kind of looming over

1450
01:27:07,600 --> 01:27:11,720
Speaker 5: the side of Trump the whole time, never fully smiling,

1451
01:27:11,840 --> 01:27:14,960
Speaker 5: always having a little bit of like a a tiny

1452
01:27:15,080 --> 01:27:19,479
Speaker 5: like both sided smirk, but not doing his traditional happy smile.

1453
01:27:19,560 --> 01:27:22,559
Speaker 5: He had a very different look in the White House.

1454
01:27:23,120 --> 01:27:25,200
Speaker 5: But as soon as the press conference started, it was

1455
01:27:25,240 --> 01:27:29,559
Speaker 5: clear that the meeting went very well for Momdannie. Trump

1456
01:27:29,720 --> 01:27:32,080
Speaker 5: was exuberant about the man.

1457
01:27:32,280 --> 01:27:35,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, he seemed really excited. Yeah, it's a little weird,

1458
01:27:36,000 --> 01:27:37,080
Speaker 1: but he seemed really excited.

1459
01:27:37,120 --> 01:27:40,360
Speaker 5: He stated that they have common ground on getting housing built,

1460
01:27:40,360 --> 01:27:43,599
Speaker 5: on affordability, on food and prices coming down, saying, quote,

1461
01:27:43,640 --> 01:27:45,600
Speaker 5: there's no difference in party, and we're going to be

1462
01:27:45,720 --> 01:27:49,800
Speaker 5: helping him to make everybody's dream come true unquote.

1463
01:27:49,920 --> 01:27:53,560
Speaker 6: Everybody's streamftory amazing.

1464
01:27:54,360 --> 01:27:55,160
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1465
01:27:55,320 --> 01:27:57,920
Speaker 5: First, I want to play Zoran's initial statement as the

1466
01:27:57,960 --> 01:28:01,439
Speaker 5: press conference started on what they spoke about during this meeting.

1467
01:28:02,080 --> 01:28:05,200
Speaker 10: I appreciated the meeting with the President, and as he said,

1468
01:28:05,200 --> 01:28:07,880
Speaker 10: It was a productive meeting focused on a place of

1469
01:28:08,280 --> 01:28:10,920
Speaker 10: shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and

1470
01:28:10,960 --> 01:28:14,160
Speaker 10: the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight

1471
01:28:14,200 --> 01:28:16,840
Speaker 10: and a half million people who call our city their home,

1472
01:28:16,840 --> 01:28:19,679
Speaker 10: who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive

1473
01:28:19,680 --> 01:28:22,000
Speaker 10: city in the United States of America. We spoke about

1474
01:28:22,560 --> 01:28:25,080
Speaker 10: we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities, we spoke

1475
01:28:25,120 --> 01:28:27,479
Speaker 10: about the different ways in which people are being pushed out.

1476
01:28:27,520 --> 01:28:29,879
Speaker 10: And I appreciated the time with the President. I appreciated

1477
01:28:29,880 --> 01:28:33,000
Speaker 10: the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver

1478
01:28:33,160 --> 01:28:34,439
Speaker 10: that affordability for the owners.

1479
01:28:35,160 --> 01:28:38,000
Speaker 6: It's one of the posture people with the green line.

1480
01:28:38,120 --> 01:28:38,679
Speaker 6: The green line.

1481
01:28:38,760 --> 01:28:40,920
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I've seen, yeah, that's going on a couple

1482
01:28:40,920 --> 01:28:41,280
Speaker 1: of times.

1483
01:28:41,400 --> 01:28:43,720
Speaker 6: They've already they've had that way with it, They've been

1484
01:28:43,760 --> 01:28:46,320
Speaker 6: on it. Yeah, yeah, Okay, it does seem tense.

1485
01:28:46,640 --> 01:28:49,120
Speaker 1: The vibes in that room must have been very, very weird.

1486
01:28:49,400 --> 01:28:53,960
Speaker 5: N Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, Zorn's very tense. Trump's

1487
01:28:54,000 --> 01:28:55,960
Speaker 5: trying to relax, like bad late.

1488
01:28:56,680 --> 01:28:59,720
Speaker 1: Face that you've posted on gas he is, I can

1489
01:28:59,800 --> 01:29:03,320
Speaker 1: only it's like a shit eating grin on Trump's face. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1490
01:29:03,360 --> 01:29:08,240
Speaker 1: like he does seem genuinely happy, thrilled. Yeah, it's weird.

1491
01:29:08,439 --> 01:29:10,400
Speaker 6: He likes to be associated with winners.

1492
01:29:10,720 --> 01:29:12,639
Speaker 5: This is one of the big things, right A lot

1493
01:29:12,640 --> 01:29:15,200
Speaker 5: of I mean, we'll talk about this more. That takes

1494
01:29:15,479 --> 01:29:17,559
Speaker 5: okay at this, but but yeah, I think it's very

1495
01:29:17,560 --> 01:29:20,880
Speaker 5: clear why Trump's actually having a good time here. Zoron's

1496
01:29:20,920 --> 01:29:23,599
Speaker 5: like the most popular politician in the country right now,

1497
01:29:23,960 --> 01:29:28,280
Speaker 5: and Trump likes winners. And if anything, Zoron has proven

1498
01:29:28,320 --> 01:29:31,799
Speaker 5: to be an underdog that has an enormous capacity for winning,

1499
01:29:32,280 --> 01:29:34,519
Speaker 5: and I think Trump does like that, and that, coupled

1500
01:29:34,560 --> 01:29:36,800
Speaker 5: with a genuine love for New York, I think Zoron

1501
01:29:36,880 --> 01:29:40,360
Speaker 5: was able to navigate around Trump pretty successfully. When asked

1502
01:29:40,360 --> 01:29:43,599
Speaker 5: about Zoron being a communist, Trump said, quote, I feel

1503
01:29:43,680 --> 01:29:45,680
Speaker 5: very confident he can do a good job. I think

1504
01:29:45,720 --> 01:29:49,200
Speaker 5: it's going to surprise some conservative people actually unquote.

1505
01:29:49,000 --> 01:29:51,840
Speaker 1: And you should add what he said about liberal people,

1506
01:29:51,840 --> 01:29:53,920
Speaker 1: because I thought that was his funniest line.

1507
01:29:54,040 --> 01:29:56,559
Speaker 5: Oh then also liberal people, but they already like him

1508
01:29:56,920 --> 01:29:57,559
Speaker 5: too or something.

1509
01:29:57,680 --> 01:30:00,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think they'll be surprised, they'll just be half.

1510
01:30:00,120 --> 01:30:02,760
Speaker 5: Yes, they like him because they already like him.

1511
01:30:03,560 --> 01:30:05,599
Speaker 1: It was very funny it was very funny.

1512
01:30:05,960 --> 01:30:09,880
Speaker 5: Trump also talked about how a lot of Trump voters

1513
01:30:09,920 --> 01:30:13,679
Speaker 5: actually voted for Zorn as well, saying quote unquote, I'm

1514
01:30:13,720 --> 01:30:17,439
Speaker 5: okay with that, and so I mentioned that yes, one

1515
01:30:17,520 --> 01:30:20,599
Speaker 5: in ten Trump voters in New York voted for Zoron

1516
01:30:21,120 --> 01:30:24,040
Speaker 5: and Zorn mentioned the end to forever wars and the

1517
01:30:24,040 --> 01:30:27,639
Speaker 5: cost living crisis as the driving motivators that voters spoke

1518
01:30:27,640 --> 01:30:31,760
Speaker 5: about as he was campaigning. Throughout this press conference, and

1519
01:30:31,800 --> 01:30:34,160
Speaker 5: we can assume some degree of the meeting, Zoran was

1520
01:30:34,320 --> 01:30:37,960
Speaker 5: very laser focused on New York specifically, and you've even

1521
01:30:38,040 --> 01:30:40,439
Speaker 5: seen this in interviews that he's given to like NBC

1522
01:30:40,640 --> 01:30:43,000
Speaker 5: and other outlets the past few days, where people are

1523
01:30:43,040 --> 01:30:45,400
Speaker 5: asking him about, you know, the Democratic Party as a

1524
01:30:45,400 --> 01:30:48,120
Speaker 5: whole and national level, and Zorn repeatedly just goes back

1525
01:30:48,160 --> 01:30:50,080
Speaker 5: to affordability in New York. This is like the one

1526
01:30:50,120 --> 01:30:51,800
Speaker 5: thing that he's going to keep talking about. He doesn't

1527
01:30:51,800 --> 01:30:54,599
Speaker 5: want to talk about any anything else really, And this

1528
01:30:54,760 --> 01:30:57,000
Speaker 5: was evident throughout this meeting the way that Zorn would

1529
01:30:57,040 --> 01:31:01,439
Speaker 5: would reiterate every question to being about New York. But

1530
01:31:01,520 --> 01:31:04,760
Speaker 5: they didn't shy away from talking about the things they

1531
01:31:05,080 --> 01:31:08,439
Speaker 5: disagreed on on, like an ideological sense, ICE being one

1532
01:31:08,439 --> 01:31:11,240
Speaker 5: of them. Here's one of their exchanges about ICE.

1533
01:31:11,760 --> 01:31:14,960
Speaker 12: Resident you've threatened to send federal troops to New York City.

1534
01:31:15,240 --> 01:31:18,080
Speaker 12: You both have differences when it comes to ICE agents

1535
01:31:18,360 --> 01:31:21,200
Speaker 12: in New York City. On mister Mundonnie, you called ICE

1536
01:31:21,360 --> 01:31:24,880
Speaker 12: a rogue government entity. I wonder how you reconcile your

1537
01:31:24,920 --> 01:31:26,840
Speaker 12: differences on both of those issues.

1538
01:31:26,960 --> 01:31:27,559
Speaker 5: I think we're going to.

1539
01:31:27,600 --> 01:31:30,559
Speaker 3: Work them out. And I think that if we have

1540
01:31:31,520 --> 01:31:35,439
Speaker 3: known murderers and known drug dealers and some very bad people,

1541
01:31:36,040 --> 01:31:37,680
Speaker 3: you know, we want to get them out. And the

1542
01:31:37,720 --> 01:31:41,200
Speaker 3: mayor ones have we discussed as a great length actually

1543
01:31:41,200 --> 01:31:43,880
Speaker 3: maybe more than anything else. He wants to have a

1544
01:31:43,920 --> 01:31:46,720
Speaker 3: safe New York. Ultimately, a safe New York is going

1545
01:31:46,800 --> 01:31:48,439
Speaker 3: to be a great New York. If it's not safe,

1546
01:31:48,479 --> 01:31:50,680
Speaker 3: no matter how well we do with pricing and with

1547
01:31:51,800 --> 01:31:54,280
Speaker 3: anything else, we can talk about anything you want, if

1548
01:31:54,320 --> 01:31:56,800
Speaker 3: you don't have safe streets, it's not going to be

1549
01:31:56,840 --> 01:31:59,080
Speaker 3: a success. So we're going to work together. We're going

1550
01:31:59,120 --> 01:32:01,760
Speaker 3: to make sure that if they they're horrible people there,

1551
01:32:01,800 --> 01:32:03,160
Speaker 3: we want to get him out. I think he wants

1552
01:32:03,160 --> 01:32:05,320
Speaker 3: to get him out, maybe more than I do, So

1553
01:32:05,640 --> 01:32:06,320
Speaker 3: we'll work together.

1554
01:32:07,000 --> 01:32:10,040
Speaker 5: They talked about I is at one later point in

1555
01:32:10,080 --> 01:32:12,320
Speaker 5: the meeting where you get kind of a peek at

1556
01:32:12,360 --> 01:32:15,400
Speaker 5: what some of this conversation may have been like behind

1557
01:32:15,439 --> 01:32:20,800
Speaker 5: the scenes, about trying to target any ICE enforcement against

1558
01:32:21,040 --> 01:32:25,160
Speaker 5: people who have criminal records rather than these roving raids

1559
01:32:25,200 --> 01:32:28,280
Speaker 5: that round up but just swaths of undocumented people like

1560
01:32:28,320 --> 01:32:32,040
Speaker 5: the Canall Street raid a few weeks ago. It's still

1561
01:32:33,120 --> 01:32:35,840
Speaker 5: not super clear what they are talking about, but there's

1562
01:32:35,920 --> 01:32:40,560
Speaker 5: not compromise in this point, like Trump's obviously going to

1563
01:32:40,600 --> 01:32:42,439
Speaker 5: try to frame this in a way that strengthens Trump's

1564
01:32:42,439 --> 01:32:44,360
Speaker 5: own positions on this, and I think Zoron will do

1565
01:32:44,400 --> 01:32:46,719
Speaker 5: the same. Before we discuss I don't want to play

1566
01:32:46,720 --> 01:32:50,080
Speaker 5: this the second bit of their discussion because you get

1567
01:32:50,120 --> 01:32:52,320
Speaker 5: more of Zoron's angle.

1568
01:32:54,240 --> 01:32:57,439
Speaker 10: We discussed ICE and New York City, and I spoke

1569
01:32:57,479 --> 01:32:58,920
Speaker 10: about how the laws that we have in New York

1570
01:32:59,000 --> 01:33:02,000
Speaker 10: City allow for New York City government to speak to

1571
01:33:02,040 --> 01:33:05,040
Speaker 10: the federal administration for about one hundred and seventy serious crimes.

1572
01:33:05,320 --> 01:33:07,720
Speaker 10: The concerns that many New Yorkers have are around the

1573
01:33:07,800 --> 01:33:12,559
Speaker 10: enforcement of immigration laws on New Yorkers across the Five Boroughs,

1574
01:33:12,560 --> 01:33:14,800
Speaker 10: and most recently we're talking about a mother and her

1575
01:33:14,840 --> 01:33:17,479
Speaker 10: two children. How this has very little to do with

1576
01:33:17,520 --> 01:33:19,800
Speaker 10: what that is.

1577
01:33:19,880 --> 01:33:24,000
Speaker 3: We discuss crime more than ice per se. We discuss crime,

1578
01:33:24,080 --> 01:33:26,240
Speaker 3: and he doesn't want to see crime, and I don't

1579
01:33:26,240 --> 01:33:29,800
Speaker 3: want to see crime, and I have very little doubt

1580
01:33:29,840 --> 01:33:31,639
Speaker 3: that we're not going to get along on that issue.

1581
01:33:31,720 --> 01:33:34,040
Speaker 3: He wants to and he said some things that were

1582
01:33:34,120 --> 01:33:38,040
Speaker 3: very interesting, very interesting as to housing construction, and he

1583
01:33:38,120 --> 01:33:40,320
Speaker 3: wants to see houses go up. He wants to see

1584
01:33:40,320 --> 01:33:43,400
Speaker 3: a lot of houses created, a lot of apartments built, etc.

1585
01:33:43,720 --> 01:33:48,439
Speaker 3: And you know, we actually people would be shocked, but

1586
01:33:48,560 --> 01:33:49,760
Speaker 3: I want to see the same thing.

1587
01:33:50,280 --> 01:33:50,600
Speaker 5: See that.

1588
01:33:50,720 --> 01:33:52,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, that worries me a little bit.

1589
01:33:52,280 --> 01:33:53,240
Speaker 5: What about that worries you?

1590
01:33:53,720 --> 01:33:55,640
Speaker 1: I can tell what Trump's trying to do, which is

1591
01:33:55,680 --> 01:33:59,040
Speaker 1: that he really would like to get Mom Donnie on

1592
01:33:59,080 --> 01:34:01,920
Speaker 1: his side. And interestingly for Trump, I think he is

1593
01:34:01,960 --> 01:34:05,320
Speaker 1: willing to move on some things if he can fundamentally

1594
01:34:05,360 --> 01:34:09,840
Speaker 1: get Mom Donnie to agree that ice has a use. Yeah, right,

1595
01:34:09,960 --> 01:34:11,720
Speaker 1: Like that's what he's clearly trying to do, and he's

1596
01:34:11,800 --> 01:34:15,280
Speaker 1: clearly trying to portray it as we've already agreed on that.

1597
01:34:15,439 --> 01:34:19,360
Speaker 1: And I think that within the context of this meeting,

1598
01:34:19,680 --> 01:34:21,960
Speaker 1: because of how the questions were being asked. I don't

1599
01:34:21,960 --> 01:34:24,960
Speaker 1: think Zorn got enough of a chance to fully address

1600
01:34:25,040 --> 01:34:28,800
Speaker 1: that question. So I'll leave it open to see how

1601
01:34:28,840 --> 01:34:31,879
Speaker 1: that is, like how he deals with that in the future.

1602
01:34:32,280 --> 01:34:34,200
Speaker 1: But I don't think he got enough of an opportunity

1603
01:34:34,200 --> 01:34:36,160
Speaker 1: to push back enough on some of the things Trump

1604
01:34:36,200 --> 01:34:38,880
Speaker 1: was claiming here. That does concern me a little bit,

1605
01:34:38,920 --> 01:34:42,120
Speaker 1: Like I think it's more a factor of how an

1606
01:34:42,120 --> 01:34:46,439
Speaker 1: oval office press conference is structured. But I do think

1607
01:34:46,439 --> 01:34:48,880
Speaker 1: that it's like I can see what Trump's trying to

1608
01:34:48,920 --> 01:34:49,439
Speaker 1: do well.

1609
01:34:49,479 --> 01:34:52,240
Speaker 5: I think what mom Donnie is trying to navigate for

1610
01:34:52,400 --> 01:34:56,240
Speaker 5: is if he can put an end to roving ice

1611
01:34:56,320 --> 01:35:00,320
Speaker 5: rates that just like that just round up people at

1612
01:35:00,360 --> 01:35:02,800
Speaker 5: whether they're at restaurants or from depots, and if there's

1613
01:35:03,080 --> 01:35:06,600
Speaker 5: people who are who have been incarcerated, who are incarcerated,

1614
01:35:07,400 --> 01:35:12,559
Speaker 5: and if removal operations are specifically against except like what

1615
01:35:12,560 --> 01:35:16,160
Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy like serious crimes, and if that

1616
01:35:16,320 --> 01:35:19,200
Speaker 5: is a sort of compromise, I guess I don't know.

1617
01:35:19,720 --> 01:35:21,880
Speaker 5: He's not an office. Yes, it's it's unclear the way

1618
01:35:21,920 --> 01:35:24,960
Speaker 5: that this would this would be enacted. Yeah, but if

1619
01:35:24,960 --> 01:35:28,800
Speaker 5: it's an harm reduction measure of stopping ice raids from

1620
01:35:28,880 --> 01:35:32,439
Speaker 5: happening or limiting the amount that ICE is able to

1621
01:35:32,520 --> 01:35:36,599
Speaker 5: operate as as basically a rodenty within the city. And

1622
01:35:36,640 --> 01:35:39,679
Speaker 5: I don't think we know enough to like actually see

1623
01:35:39,840 --> 01:35:42,439
Speaker 5: what that will look like yet, because he's not taking

1624
01:35:42,439 --> 01:35:44,560
Speaker 5: office for another what like forty five days.

1625
01:35:44,880 --> 01:35:48,920
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, what he's talking about. When Trump goes about crime,

1626
01:35:49,320 --> 01:35:52,160
Speaker 6: crime is what they have always talked about, right, right,

1627
01:35:52,200 --> 01:35:55,840
Speaker 6: when they talk about the ICE enforcement, the crimes that

1628
01:35:55,920 --> 01:35:59,519
Speaker 6: they are speaking about, very right, they will always give

1629
01:35:59,600 --> 01:36:01,680
Speaker 6: the exact ample of the person who's been convicted of

1630
01:36:01,840 --> 01:36:05,240
Speaker 6: child abuse, of murder, of domestic violence. Right, But then

1631
01:36:05,280 --> 01:36:08,120
Speaker 6: they will also go ahead and say the crossing between

1632
01:36:08,160 --> 01:36:11,240
Speaker 6: ports of entry can be prosecuted as a crime, and

1633
01:36:11,280 --> 01:36:14,280
Speaker 6: then they will use that as a justification for taking

1634
01:36:14,320 --> 01:36:16,600
Speaker 6: anyone right and specifically people who have entered within the

1635
01:36:16,720 --> 01:36:19,120
Speaker 6: last two years, many of whom were shipped to New

1636
01:36:19,200 --> 01:36:22,320
Speaker 6: York from other states, and saying, well, these people entered

1637
01:36:22,320 --> 01:36:24,479
Speaker 6: between ports of entry, which they did after the end

1638
01:36:24,520 --> 01:36:26,919
Speaker 6: of Title forty two, right when we return to processing

1639
01:36:26,920 --> 01:36:29,080
Speaker 6: people under Title eight, and they will place him in

1640
01:36:29,080 --> 01:36:32,280
Speaker 6: actibility to remove all proceedings like that. That is what

1641
01:36:32,320 --> 01:36:36,080
Speaker 6: they have been doing for a while. When he talks

1642
01:36:36,320 --> 01:36:42,240
Speaker 6: about the sanctuary policies. New York right now doesn't honor

1643
01:36:42,320 --> 01:36:46,840
Speaker 6: detainer requests. Right in theory, sanctuary laws prevent and Y see,

1644
01:36:46,840 --> 01:36:48,920
Speaker 6: from what I understand, from honoring detainer requests, which would

1645
01:36:48,880 --> 01:36:51,960
Speaker 6: be an extra forty eight hour detainer. We haven't, like,

1646
01:36:52,000 --> 01:36:54,240
Speaker 6: as Robert said, we haven't really seen enough to see

1647
01:36:54,240 --> 01:36:56,559
Speaker 6: you see what he's talking about there, But like, I

1648
01:36:56,640 --> 01:36:58,519
Speaker 6: don't know if he's talking about a change to those

1649
01:36:58,560 --> 01:37:02,479
Speaker 6: sanctuary policies or not. But yeah, that would be disappointing

1650
01:37:02,520 --> 01:37:02,800
Speaker 6: if you did.

1651
01:37:02,840 --> 01:37:04,519
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't see there's any indication that he's

1652
01:37:04,560 --> 01:37:06,640
Speaker 5: talking about a change to sanctuary policies.

1653
01:37:07,000 --> 01:37:08,960
Speaker 6: Well, when he's talking about we can cull them on

1654
01:37:08,960 --> 01:37:13,519
Speaker 6: one hundred and seventy serious crimes, right, what does he mean?

1655
01:37:14,160 --> 01:37:16,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this gets back to the fact

1656
01:37:16,120 --> 01:37:18,479
Speaker 1: that a press conference in the Oval Office is not

1657
01:37:18,520 --> 01:37:21,640
Speaker 1: going to give you a chance to adequately address an

1658
01:37:21,680 --> 01:37:24,599
Speaker 1: issue like this, and I see Trump trying to paper

1659
01:37:24,680 --> 01:37:27,480
Speaker 1: over it and move past as quickly as possible. Yeah,

1660
01:37:27,520 --> 01:37:31,080
Speaker 1: And I understand why you'd show up for this meeting,

1661
01:37:31,800 --> 01:37:33,680
Speaker 1: and I think it was probably, on the balance, the

1662
01:37:33,800 --> 01:37:36,960
Speaker 1: right thing to do. But like I am interested to

1663
01:37:37,000 --> 01:37:39,400
Speaker 1: see what he does next, because I think Trump is

1664
01:37:39,439 --> 01:37:43,000
Speaker 1: going to continue trying to push for accommodations. And it

1665
01:37:43,120 --> 01:37:45,880
Speaker 1: is kind of it is wild and unique to see

1666
01:37:45,920 --> 01:37:48,360
Speaker 1: that he seems to be willing to move on some stuff,

1667
01:37:48,800 --> 01:37:50,720
Speaker 1: but he's willing to move on some stuff because he

1668
01:37:50,720 --> 01:37:53,400
Speaker 1: thinks he can get Mom Donnie to soften some of

1669
01:37:53,400 --> 01:37:54,520
Speaker 1: his stances.

1670
01:37:54,160 --> 01:37:56,320
Speaker 5: I mean stances on what I mean. I mean, I

1671
01:37:56,360 --> 01:37:57,280
Speaker 5: don't on ice.

1672
01:37:57,479 --> 01:38:00,479
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what he's trying to do here. He's

1673
01:38:00,520 --> 01:38:02,280
Speaker 1: trying to build a case for that.

1674
01:38:03,000 --> 01:38:04,800
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess I don't know the degree to

1675
01:38:04,840 --> 01:38:06,400
Speaker 5: which we're using.

1676
01:38:06,200 --> 01:38:08,360
Speaker 1: The saying that this is a rogue government agency to

1677
01:38:08,439 --> 01:38:11,599
Speaker 1: saying that this is a government agent. That's what Trump

1678
01:38:11,640 --> 01:38:14,000
Speaker 1: is trying to push for. Yeah, I'm not saying Mom

1679
01:38:14,040 --> 01:38:17,080
Speaker 1: Donnie agreed with that. I think that the nature of

1680
01:38:17,120 --> 01:38:19,000
Speaker 1: this meeting did not give him enough time to push

1681
01:38:19,040 --> 01:38:19,439
Speaker 1: back on that.

1682
01:38:20,439 --> 01:38:23,960
Speaker 5: Sure, sure you have Mum Donnie pointing there towards like

1683
01:38:24,000 --> 01:38:25,840
Speaker 5: an instance of like you know, a mother and like

1684
01:38:25,840 --> 01:38:30,559
Speaker 5: a child getting affected by this, and like and using

1685
01:38:30,560 --> 01:38:32,879
Speaker 5: it as an example of like what they are trying

1686
01:38:32,960 --> 01:38:38,320
Speaker 5: to prevent and like focusing on like the stopping ice

1687
01:38:38,400 --> 01:38:41,479
Speaker 5: rates from happening, as as like the thing that Mam

1688
01:38:41,479 --> 01:38:44,800
Speaker 5: Donnie is pushing for there and Mam Donnie as a

1689
01:38:44,800 --> 01:38:47,519
Speaker 5: New York City mayor cannot abolish the entity of Ice,

1690
01:38:48,160 --> 01:38:50,280
Speaker 5: and so like the degree in which we're framed that

1691
01:38:50,360 --> 01:38:53,439
Speaker 5: a is like Mom Donny's like softening, I think still.

1692
01:38:53,479 --> 01:38:55,599
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, like, as you've said, there's not enough

1693
01:38:55,640 --> 01:38:57,440
Speaker 5: here to make a full determination.

1694
01:38:57,880 --> 01:38:58,400
Speaker 6: Yeah.

1695
01:38:58,479 --> 01:39:00,880
Speaker 1: I just think that's that's what Trump wants to get

1696
01:39:00,880 --> 01:39:01,320
Speaker 1: out of this.

1697
01:39:01,439 --> 01:39:04,000
Speaker 6: I think Trump just wants to be associated with this

1698
01:39:04,040 --> 01:39:07,000
Speaker 6: guy who is currently, as Garrison said, very popular.

1699
01:39:06,960 --> 01:39:09,479
Speaker 1: And it is really wild to see him be so

1700
01:39:09,600 --> 01:39:10,879
Speaker 1: deferential to somebody.

1701
01:39:11,080 --> 01:39:13,880
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean including in this this this

1702
01:39:14,000 --> 01:39:17,559
Speaker 5: question about Trump being a fascist, which he handled in

1703
01:39:17,600 --> 01:39:21,799
Speaker 5: a very uh, very fascinating way that this is nuts.

1704
01:39:22,160 --> 01:39:25,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, are you affirming that you think President Trump is

1705
01:39:25,680 --> 01:39:26,240
Speaker 3: a fascist?

1706
01:39:26,520 --> 01:39:27,680
Speaker 10: I've spoken about.

1707
01:39:27,520 --> 01:39:33,520
Speaker 3: That's okay, Okay, it's easier. It's easier than explaining.

1708
01:39:33,120 --> 01:39:39,680
Speaker 5: At Zorn did say yes during that exchange he did

1709
01:39:40,200 --> 01:39:42,040
Speaker 5: that he did not he in fact did.

1710
01:39:42,320 --> 01:39:45,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, he absolutely did. It's one of the most remarkable

1711
01:39:45,479 --> 01:39:47,280
Speaker 1: moments in American political history.

1712
01:39:47,439 --> 01:39:47,599
Speaker 10: Yeah.

1713
01:39:47,600 --> 01:39:50,040
Speaker 1: If I had any stretch of the imagination.

1714
01:39:50,080 --> 01:39:53,599
Speaker 5: As Trump pats on the side. And I mean it's

1715
01:39:53,680 --> 01:39:56,400
Speaker 5: it's wild for Trump. This word doesn't mean anything right

1716
01:39:56,439 --> 01:39:59,719
Speaker 5: for Trump, like him saying it's easier than explaining. That's

1717
01:39:59,800 --> 01:40:01,800
Speaker 5: just indicating to zort On that you don't have to

1718
01:40:01,800 --> 01:40:04,320
Speaker 5: do this like little like political game for this reporter

1719
01:40:04,400 --> 01:40:06,320
Speaker 5: and be like, you know, we have we have just

1720
01:40:06,479 --> 01:40:09,559
Speaker 5: we've disagreed on policies, which blah blah blah. Like Trump's like, no,

1721
01:40:09,760 --> 01:40:11,599
Speaker 5: you don't have to do that, it's easy and explaining

1722
01:40:11,680 --> 01:40:14,439
Speaker 5: just say it yeah, yeah, which is a sort of

1723
01:40:14,479 --> 01:40:17,400
Speaker 5: like a point like against like the media. That's from

1724
01:40:17,439 --> 01:40:19,720
Speaker 5: Trump's point of view. It's like you you don't have

1725
01:40:19,720 --> 01:40:21,760
Speaker 5: to do you don't have to do like the little

1726
01:40:21,760 --> 01:40:23,639
Speaker 5: the little dance for like this like New York Post

1727
01:40:23,680 --> 01:40:25,719
Speaker 5: reporter or whatever. Just say that I'm a fascist.

1728
01:40:25,760 --> 01:40:28,479
Speaker 6: It's fine. Yeah. And because politics is for him a

1729
01:40:28,560 --> 01:40:32,200
Speaker 6: sort of behind closed doors boys club and they yes,

1730
01:40:32,360 --> 01:40:33,960
Speaker 6: they both have to go out and then deal with

1731
01:40:34,040 --> 01:40:36,519
Speaker 6: the media. But like you can sort of see that

1732
01:40:36,560 --> 01:40:39,720
Speaker 6: in this sort of highly viviality that Trump goes for there.

1733
01:40:40,000 --> 01:40:42,240
Speaker 6: I'm not saying that Ma'm Damie is less necessarily in

1734
01:40:42,320 --> 01:40:44,120
Speaker 6: his boys club. I'm just saying that that is how

1735
01:40:44,160 --> 01:40:45,360
Speaker 6: Trump perceives politics.

1736
01:40:45,720 --> 01:40:48,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean he made other references like when when

1737
01:40:48,240 --> 01:40:51,759
Speaker 5: Trump was asked if he considers or on a g hottist,

1738
01:40:52,000 --> 01:40:55,640
Speaker 5: like someone else in the Republican Party called him, and

1739
01:40:55,680 --> 01:40:57,160
Speaker 5: Trump's like, no, I mean, the man sitting in front

1740
01:40:57,160 --> 01:40:58,439
Speaker 5: of me is not a too hottest People have to

1741
01:40:58,479 --> 01:41:01,280
Speaker 5: say certain things during camp pains, but the man I

1742
01:41:01,280 --> 01:41:03,439
Speaker 5: met was today, it's a very rational man. And like

1743
01:41:03,760 --> 01:41:06,719
Speaker 5: little lines like that, like people, Yeah, when you're a campaign,

1744
01:41:06,800 --> 01:41:08,479
Speaker 5: you have to say things that I think that he's

1745
01:41:08,520 --> 01:41:10,479
Speaker 5: getting at a similar point there, But there was multip

1746
01:41:10,479 --> 01:41:13,759
Speaker 5: points for this press conference where Trump defended Mamdani against

1747
01:41:14,000 --> 01:41:18,720
Speaker 5: like other aggressive questions about his focus on international law

1748
01:41:18,800 --> 01:41:22,519
Speaker 5: versus the Constitution, or why Zoron flew to DC instead

1749
01:41:22,520 --> 01:41:26,559
Speaker 5: of taking a greener train. Yeah, silly, silly stuff. And

1750
01:41:26,600 --> 01:41:29,439
Speaker 5: Trump was like Trump like dismissed these questions if like

1751
01:41:29,479 --> 01:41:31,680
Speaker 5: for Zar essentially, I mean like all stand up for you.

1752
01:41:31,880 --> 01:41:33,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's something else.

1753
01:41:34,840 --> 01:41:38,280
Speaker 6: There are more salient criticisms that there were reasonable criticisms

1754
01:41:38,360 --> 01:41:41,360
Speaker 6: you can make of some stuff he's done. Those are them.

1755
01:41:42,000 --> 01:41:45,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just gotcha media stuff right, like which which

1756
01:41:45,840 --> 01:41:49,040
Speaker 1: it's interesting how well Trump is able to call sort

1757
01:41:49,080 --> 01:41:52,600
Speaker 1: of their bullshit. Yeah, always fascinating.

1758
01:41:53,200 --> 01:41:56,719
Speaker 5: One of the more hilarious attempts at I gotcha question

1759
01:41:56,880 --> 01:42:00,639
Speaker 5: is from Jack Pasovic, who was in the room, who

1760
01:42:00,720 --> 01:42:01,280
Speaker 5: asked this.

1761
01:42:01,640 --> 01:42:05,519
Speaker 6: God, he must have been having an absolute melt down.

1762
01:42:05,760 --> 01:42:08,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, he can't be happy about this, Okay.

1763
01:42:09,640 --> 01:42:10,120
Speaker 10: I want to know.

1764
01:42:10,280 --> 01:42:14,320
Speaker 13: One of the policies as well that Mayor, like Mandomie,

1765
01:42:14,360 --> 01:42:16,439
Speaker 13: talked to a number of times about on the campaign,

1766
01:42:16,840 --> 01:42:20,400
Speaker 13: was shifting the tax burden for property taxes from what

1767
01:42:20,479 --> 01:42:25,200
Speaker 13: he called minority communities to white based communities and putting

1768
01:42:25,200 --> 01:42:27,880
Speaker 13: more taxes on white people. I also noticed that in

1769
01:42:27,920 --> 01:42:32,080
Speaker 13: your acceptance speech you didn't mention didn't mention anything.

1770
01:42:31,680 --> 01:42:34,600
Speaker 5: About America or Christians or white people.

1771
01:42:34,320 --> 01:42:36,320
Speaker 13: In general, and so I didn't know if that was

1772
01:42:36,560 --> 01:42:38,559
Speaker 13: one of the policies that you guys had spoken about.

1773
01:42:39,760 --> 01:42:44,920
Speaker 5: Incredible, Yeah, And Trump's like smiling like a proud of

1774
01:42:44,960 --> 01:42:50,200
Speaker 5: father this whole time. As weird question, it's such an

1775
01:42:50,280 --> 01:42:52,280
Speaker 5: odds like schizophrenic moment.

1776
01:42:52,720 --> 01:42:54,320
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's weird.

1777
01:42:54,400 --> 01:42:56,559
Speaker 1: How much more he seems to like Zoran than like

1778
01:42:56,800 --> 01:42:57,680
Speaker 1: his supporters.

1779
01:42:58,240 --> 01:43:00,799
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean a lot of his supports the losers,

1780
01:43:00,840 --> 01:43:03,720
Speaker 5: and Zorn's a winner, I mean from his cabinet members. Yeah,

1781
01:43:03,720 --> 01:43:06,000
Speaker 5: because they're losers, like like Pete hagg saith Elon Musk,

1782
01:43:06,000 --> 01:43:06,400
Speaker 5: they're losing.

1783
01:43:06,520 --> 01:43:08,680
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're all weeds, I mean JD. Van's right.

1784
01:43:08,760 --> 01:43:12,360
Speaker 5: Yeah, Zorn's has proved himself to be like an incredibly

1785
01:43:12,439 --> 01:43:16,360
Speaker 5: capable figure. There's a little moment as Jack's first asking

1786
01:43:16,400 --> 01:43:19,839
Speaker 5: the question where Trump indicates to Zora, like, Okay, you

1787
01:43:19,840 --> 01:43:22,080
Speaker 5: you handle this guy, you could you can have fun

1788
01:43:22,120 --> 01:43:24,800
Speaker 5: with this. Yeah, and it's it's it's very odd and

1789
01:43:25,000 --> 01:43:28,120
Speaker 5: not odd and it's unexplainable. I understand what's happening here.

1790
01:43:28,160 --> 01:43:30,200
Speaker 5: Actually I think this is actually very easy to understand,

1791
01:43:30,479 --> 01:43:32,559
Speaker 5: but it's just still it feels odd.

1792
01:43:33,000 --> 01:43:36,439
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and just give him the adversarial politics was

1793
01:43:36,479 --> 01:43:37,040
Speaker 6: so used to.

1794
01:43:37,520 --> 01:43:39,360
Speaker 5: Like there's a lot of moments like this, like when

1795
01:43:39,400 --> 01:43:41,800
Speaker 5: when Trump's asked if he's gonna cut off federal funding

1796
01:43:41,800 --> 01:43:44,040
Speaker 5: to New York, he says, quote, I don't think that's

1797
01:43:44,080 --> 01:43:46,760
Speaker 5: going to happen. I think we're gonna help. And this

1798
01:43:46,800 --> 01:43:48,840
Speaker 5: is like an indication of like what Zora was trying

1799
01:43:48,840 --> 01:43:50,759
Speaker 5: to do in terms of harm reduction in this meeting,

1800
01:43:51,240 --> 01:43:55,519
Speaker 5: specifically around raids on National Guard deployment. And on, like

1801
01:43:55,600 --> 01:43:58,479
Speaker 5: cutting off federal funds to the city. One of the

1802
01:43:58,560 --> 01:44:01,799
Speaker 5: methods I think that Zoron used to help get Trump

1803
01:44:01,840 --> 01:44:05,559
Speaker 5: on his side is appeal to like the real estate

1804
01:44:05,680 --> 01:44:09,800
Speaker 5: brain that Trump has with mom Donnie's like left wing

1805
01:44:10,200 --> 01:44:13,360
Speaker 5: yimby style of policies, talking about rent coming down by

1806
01:44:13,360 --> 01:44:16,439
Speaker 5: building housing. And how much that surprised Trump because Trump

1807
01:44:16,479 --> 01:44:18,960
Speaker 5: has this conception of people, like of people usually on

1808
01:44:19,040 --> 01:44:22,840
Speaker 5: these like left wing positions are very very nimby in

1809
01:44:22,840 --> 01:44:25,000
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, and Trump was like surprised by this.

1810
01:44:25,040 --> 01:44:26,960
Speaker 5: I guess he hasn't really encountered like a left wing

1811
01:44:27,000 --> 01:44:30,720
Speaker 5: yimby before, and this like this like caught him off guard. Yeah,

1812
01:44:30,960 --> 01:44:35,400
Speaker 5: there's a good point here where Trump expresses this.

1813
01:44:36,160 --> 01:44:38,519
Speaker 3: Now we may disagree how we get there. The rent

1814
01:44:38,520 --> 01:44:41,800
Speaker 3: coming down, I think one of the things that really

1815
01:44:41,840 --> 01:44:45,960
Speaker 3: gleaned very very much today. He'd like to see him

1816
01:44:46,000 --> 01:44:48,920
Speaker 3: come down, ideally by building a lot of additional housing here.

1817
01:44:49,200 --> 01:44:51,360
Speaker 3: That's the ultimate way. He agrees with that, and so

1818
01:44:51,479 --> 01:44:55,080
Speaker 3: do I. But if I read the newspapers in the stories,

1819
01:44:55,120 --> 01:44:57,760
Speaker 3: I don't hear I don't hear that, but I hear

1820
01:44:57,840 --> 01:44:59,479
Speaker 3: I heard him say it today, and I think that's

1821
01:44:59,520 --> 01:45:02,880
Speaker 3: a very positive step. No, I don't expect. I expect

1822
01:45:02,920 --> 01:45:05,519
Speaker 3: to be helping him, not hurting him. A big help

1823
01:45:05,960 --> 01:45:09,240
Speaker 3: because I want New York City to be great. Look,

1824
01:45:09,360 --> 01:45:11,320
Speaker 3: I love New York City. It's where I come from.

1825
01:45:11,400 --> 01:45:12,599
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of years there.

1826
01:45:12,720 --> 01:45:17,000
Speaker 6: Now I'm right here, am Ray okay.

1827
01:45:17,080 --> 01:45:19,840
Speaker 5: And later Trump clarified that he would feel comfortable living

1828
01:45:20,120 --> 01:45:23,120
Speaker 5: in New York under Mam Donnie and compared Mam Donnie's

1829
01:45:23,120 --> 01:45:26,120
Speaker 5: popularity to that of Bernie Sanders, as well as how

1830
01:45:26,640 --> 01:45:29,879
Speaker 5: supporters of Bernie moved over to Trump and then vice versa,

1831
01:45:30,200 --> 01:45:32,439
Speaker 5: and through Trump talking about this, you can start to

1832
01:45:32,560 --> 01:45:35,639
Speaker 5: kind of peak behind the current of like how Zorn

1833
01:45:35,760 --> 01:45:39,080
Speaker 5: was framing his version of populism, which was able to

1834
01:45:39,640 --> 01:45:43,160
Speaker 5: get Trump to be like friendly towards like the economic

1835
01:45:43,439 --> 01:45:48,800
Speaker 5: affordability sides of his policy proposals. In talking about like

1836
01:45:48,800 --> 01:45:51,280
Speaker 5: the crossover of support between Bernie and Trump and twenty

1837
01:45:51,280 --> 01:45:55,120
Speaker 5: sixteen and the crossover support between Trump twenty four and

1838
01:45:55,280 --> 01:45:57,760
Speaker 5: Ma'm donnie in twenty twenty five. At one point, Mom

1839
01:45:57,760 --> 01:46:00,320
Speaker 5: Donnie did also address the genocide in Gaza.

1840
01:46:00,400 --> 01:46:03,920
Speaker 14: As mister Mumdney, you've accused the US government of committing

1841
01:46:04,000 --> 01:46:06,920
Speaker 14: genocide and Gaza white. President Trump was working on peace.

1842
01:46:07,479 --> 01:46:11,479
Speaker 10: Why that I've spoken about the Israeli government committing genocide

1843
01:46:11,479 --> 01:46:14,439
Speaker 10: and I've spoken about our government funding it. And I

1844
01:46:14,439 --> 01:46:17,000
Speaker 10: shared with the President in our meeting about the concern

1845
01:46:17,080 --> 01:46:19,280
Speaker 10: that many New Yorkers have of wanting their tax dollars

1846
01:46:19,520 --> 01:46:22,000
Speaker 10: to go towards the benefit of New Yorkers and their

1847
01:46:22,040 --> 01:46:24,960
Speaker 10: ability to afford basic dignity. And what we see right

1848
01:46:25,040 --> 01:46:27,479
Speaker 10: now is we're in the ninth consecutive year of more

1849
01:46:27,520 --> 01:46:30,240
Speaker 10: than one hundred thousand school children being homeless in our city,

1850
01:46:30,400 --> 01:46:32,759
Speaker 10: and there's a desperate need not only for the following

1851
01:46:32,760 --> 01:46:35,880
Speaker 10: of human rights, but also the following through on the

1852
01:46:35,880 --> 01:46:38,040
Speaker 10: promises we've made New Yorkers. And I appreciated the meeting

1853
01:46:38,080 --> 01:46:39,960
Speaker 10: we had and the work that we can do.

1854
01:46:40,200 --> 01:46:42,720
Speaker 5: Agree that President Trump didn't do a piece and work

1855
01:46:42,800 --> 01:46:45,040
Speaker 5: hard to make the peace because we were hard to

1856
01:46:45,040 --> 01:46:46,880
Speaker 5: do with the peace in the Midate East and everywhere.

1857
01:46:47,040 --> 01:46:48,559
Speaker 8: What do you agree with that?

1858
01:46:48,720 --> 01:46:51,200
Speaker 10: I appreciate all efforts towards peace. And I shared with

1859
01:46:51,240 --> 01:46:53,439
Speaker 10: President Trump that when I spoke to Trump voters on

1860
01:46:53,479 --> 01:46:56,240
Speaker 10: Hillside Avenue, including one of whom was a pharmacist, that

1861
01:46:56,360 --> 01:46:58,720
Speaker 10: spoke about how President Trump's father actually went to that

1862
01:46:58,720 --> 01:47:01,559
Speaker 10: pharmacy not too far from Jamaine states that people were

1863
01:47:01,600 --> 01:47:04,200
Speaker 10: tired of seeing our tax dollars fund endless wars. And

1864
01:47:04,200 --> 01:47:07,000
Speaker 10: I also believe that we have to follow through on

1865
01:47:07,520 --> 01:47:10,240
Speaker 10: the international human rights and I know that still today

1866
01:47:10,320 --> 01:47:12,439
Speaker 10: those are being violated and that continues to be work

1867
01:47:12,439 --> 01:47:14,160
Speaker 10: that has to be done no matter where we're speaking of.

1868
01:47:15,360 --> 01:47:19,120
Speaker 1: Man, that's I I that's so complicated, so conflicting.

1869
01:47:19,600 --> 01:47:21,040
Speaker 6: That's a lot going on.

1870
01:47:21,040 --> 01:47:24,479
Speaker 1: On one hand, it's really good that somebody on record

1871
01:47:24,680 --> 01:47:28,000
Speaker 1: said in the White House that the US is enabling

1872
01:47:28,040 --> 01:47:30,679
Speaker 1: Israel and continuing a genocide. I'm glad that that happened.

1873
01:47:30,960 --> 01:47:31,400
Speaker 6: Yeah.

1874
01:47:31,439 --> 01:47:33,599
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the fact that it's off roaded

1875
01:47:33,640 --> 01:47:36,640
Speaker 1: so quickly to now let's talk about like what we

1876
01:47:36,680 --> 01:47:41,400
Speaker 1: want to do for New Yorkers, and it is like, yeah,

1877
01:47:41,920 --> 01:47:45,000
Speaker 1: it's not I don't know, it's it's the only way

1878
01:47:45,000 --> 01:47:46,040
Speaker 1: this was going to happen at all.

1879
01:47:46,080 --> 01:47:49,680
Speaker 5: I suppose it's he's the main It's very no.

1880
01:47:49,720 --> 01:47:55,120
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, but it's totally awkward, like it's yeah,

1881
01:47:55,200 --> 01:47:57,559
Speaker 1: it's it's totally a little lot, especially when the topic

1882
01:47:57,680 --> 01:48:01,200
Speaker 1: is genocide, right, Like the vote from genocide to housing

1883
01:48:01,200 --> 01:48:03,519
Speaker 1: affordability and understand that both the serious issues.

1884
01:48:03,560 --> 01:48:05,839
Speaker 6: It's still a tonal shift that is jarring.

1885
01:48:06,600 --> 01:48:09,320
Speaker 1: And like, yes, it's absolutely fair to say he's the

1886
01:48:09,320 --> 01:48:11,959
Speaker 1: mayor of New York. He has no ability to influence

1887
01:48:12,120 --> 01:48:14,880
Speaker 1: US policy in terms of selling arms to Israel, and

1888
01:48:14,920 --> 01:48:17,360
Speaker 1: the fact that he brought it up at all is positive.

1889
01:48:17,360 --> 01:48:20,400
Speaker 1: But boy, is that is that a wild nit or

1890
01:48:20,439 --> 01:48:22,479
Speaker 1: so of talking.

1891
01:48:23,280 --> 01:48:24,720
Speaker 5: I think the reason why he brought it up is

1892
01:48:24,760 --> 01:48:29,439
Speaker 5: to talk about specifically, like funds that we are sending

1893
01:48:29,479 --> 01:48:31,920
Speaker 5: to Israel should not be sent to Israel now, those

1894
01:48:32,000 --> 01:48:35,639
Speaker 5: funds that should be being used in the United States

1895
01:48:35,680 --> 01:48:38,360
Speaker 5: to do things to help people here. And that is

1896
01:48:38,680 --> 01:48:41,439
Speaker 5: like why he brought that up as a seg well.

1897
01:48:41,240 --> 01:48:45,759
Speaker 1: And reiterating that Trump supporters often agree with the idea

1898
01:48:45,760 --> 01:48:47,880
Speaker 1: that we should not be spending this much money on

1899
01:48:47,960 --> 01:48:51,560
Speaker 1: this sending weapons over the world to fund wars overseas.

1900
01:48:52,080 --> 01:48:56,200
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see if shit continues with Venezuela,

1901
01:48:56,960 --> 01:49:00,120
Speaker 1: how that all moves. But I think it's valuable to

1902
01:49:00,200 --> 01:49:03,400
Speaker 1: like really slam that home in the White House that like, hey,

1903
01:49:03,439 --> 01:49:06,720
Speaker 1: you ran on getting the US out of these kind

1904
01:49:06,760 --> 01:49:11,479
Speaker 1: of violent entanglements overseas. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad someone said it.

1905
01:49:11,520 --> 01:49:14,160
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, it's just weird. This is all a

1906
01:49:14,240 --> 01:49:15,040
Speaker 1: very weird meeting.

1907
01:49:15,479 --> 01:49:17,599
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, the whole thing was jarring.

1908
01:49:17,600 --> 01:49:19,400
Speaker 5: I guess. There was another point there where he was

1909
01:49:19,439 --> 01:49:22,439
Speaker 5: talking about like like local local New York businesses and

1910
01:49:22,520 --> 01:49:24,519
Speaker 5: Trump's father like went to this pharmacy, and I think

1911
01:49:24,640 --> 01:49:28,000
Speaker 5: stuff like that is the tactics that he used to

1912
01:49:28,080 --> 01:49:30,800
Speaker 5: get Trump to be friendly with him as well as

1913
01:49:30,960 --> 01:49:34,280
Speaker 5: Trump later spoke about how in one of the rooms

1914
01:49:34,280 --> 01:49:36,240
Speaker 5: that they were meeting and there was a portrait of

1915
01:49:36,360 --> 01:49:38,720
Speaker 5: FDR which Trump had personally like picked out of the

1916
01:49:38,720 --> 01:49:42,080
Speaker 5: storage faults to hang, and Zorn asked him about the

1917
01:49:42,120 --> 01:49:44,599
Speaker 5: portrait and asked if you could get a picture with it,

1918
01:49:44,800 --> 01:49:46,120
Speaker 5: and this seemed to please Trump a lot.

1919
01:49:46,240 --> 01:49:46,439
Speaker 6: Trum.

1920
01:49:46,439 --> 01:49:48,080
Speaker 5: Trump wasn't able to talk about how he picked up

1921
01:49:48,080 --> 01:49:50,599
Speaker 5: the picture, and then Trump said a few really interesting things.

1922
01:49:51,240 --> 01:49:54,760
Speaker 5: He's like, I guess or it's a big fan of

1923
01:49:55,040 --> 01:49:59,320
Speaker 5: FDR and the New Deal, which is phenomenal maneuvering from

1924
01:49:59,400 --> 01:50:05,240
Speaker 5: Zor a classic technique to get like democratic socialist politics

1925
01:50:05,240 --> 01:50:08,080
Speaker 5: across to someone. Again, there's moments like that stuff with

1926
01:50:08,240 --> 01:50:11,000
Speaker 5: stuff of how we talked about like Bernie some some

1927
01:50:11,080 --> 01:50:14,559
Speaker 5: you know, the you know, regular populist rhetoric, talking about

1928
01:50:14,560 --> 01:50:17,760
Speaker 5: the crossover between you know, voters from between Trump and Mamdannie,

1929
01:50:17,920 --> 01:50:20,680
Speaker 5: just his general love of New York and FDR New Deal.

1930
01:50:20,720 --> 01:50:22,680
Speaker 5: You can see all these things that were used to

1931
01:50:22,800 --> 01:50:25,479
Speaker 5: like navigate through this meeting to get to get Trump

1932
01:50:25,520 --> 01:50:28,880
Speaker 5: to actually seed ground on a lot of stuff with

1933
01:50:29,000 --> 01:50:31,599
Speaker 5: I think very very minimal concessions, if any, if any

1934
01:50:31,640 --> 01:50:34,160
Speaker 5: real concessions even from zor like at all. Like I

1935
01:50:34,160 --> 01:50:37,320
Speaker 5: think in general, Trump was the one that moved rhetorically

1936
01:50:37,320 --> 01:50:40,679
Speaker 5: throughout this meeting and moved on like actual like actual

1937
01:50:40,840 --> 01:50:44,920
Speaker 5: like promises to withhold funds to invade the city with

1938
01:50:45,040 --> 01:50:47,120
Speaker 5: National Guard troops. I think Trump was the one who

1939
01:50:47,120 --> 01:50:49,920
Speaker 5: actually seeded territory in this meeting. I do not see

1940
01:50:50,240 --> 01:50:53,160
Speaker 5: much evidence of things that m Donnie had could have

1941
01:50:53,160 --> 01:50:56,400
Speaker 5: personal impact on actually like losing losing ground on those

1942
01:50:56,400 --> 01:50:57,400
Speaker 5: things throughout this meeting.

1943
01:50:58,120 --> 01:50:59,840
Speaker 6: It is almost important to remember that he has a

1944
01:51:00,520 --> 01:51:02,720
Speaker 6: man ARMBI two, has a rhetorical role to play, right,

1945
01:51:02,760 --> 01:51:04,160
Speaker 6: and yes, he is Mayor of New York. He is

1946
01:51:04,160 --> 01:51:07,040
Speaker 6: also an extremely popular politician at the moment, and like

1947
01:51:07,160 --> 01:51:12,360
Speaker 6: when he talks about things like the genocide in Gaza,

1948
01:51:12,920 --> 01:51:15,160
Speaker 6: that that has rhetorical value. I'm not saying he can

1949
01:51:15,200 --> 01:51:16,920
Speaker 6: go to New York City Council and stop it, but

1950
01:51:17,040 --> 01:51:20,000
Speaker 6: like him saying that it is a genocide at the

1951
01:51:20,000 --> 01:51:23,479
Speaker 6: White House is important, and like it is important that,

1952
01:51:23,560 --> 01:51:26,080
Speaker 6: like when he has this this podium in front of

1953
01:51:26,080 --> 01:51:27,680
Speaker 6: the whole world at the White House, so he used

1954
01:51:27,680 --> 01:51:30,880
Speaker 6: it to talk about the genocide and he did, But like,

1955
01:51:31,120 --> 01:51:33,360
Speaker 6: I don't think we should only think about this in

1956
01:51:33,439 --> 01:51:35,840
Speaker 6: terms of New York. Like, it is sure important that

1957
01:51:35,920 --> 01:51:37,760
Speaker 6: someone said that, and I hope he keeps using that

1958
01:51:37,840 --> 01:51:40,200
Speaker 6: platform he has right now to say that as someone

1959
01:51:40,200 --> 01:51:43,519
Speaker 6: who like is definitely looked up to nationally in like

1960
01:51:43,600 --> 01:51:44,680
Speaker 6: DSA circles.

1961
01:51:45,439 --> 01:51:47,320
Speaker 5: I mean, I think, and this this goes into some

1962
01:51:47,360 --> 01:51:49,800
Speaker 5: of the the I guess kind of I mean, some

1963
01:51:49,800 --> 01:51:51,519
Speaker 5: of them are critiques, some of them aren't even really

1964
01:51:51,520 --> 01:51:53,120
Speaker 5: critiques of this meeting. I think a lot of them

1965
01:51:53,120 --> 01:51:56,799
Speaker 5: are people jumping on the opportunity to to just attacks

1966
01:51:56,960 --> 01:51:59,680
Speaker 5: or on with no real construction critique there. But then

1967
01:51:59,720 --> 01:52:02,280
Speaker 5: there's this kind of relates to these two different forms

1968
01:52:02,280 --> 01:52:04,439
Speaker 5: of politics that people use on the left, like politics

1969
01:52:04,479 --> 01:52:06,680
Speaker 5: as a form of personal expression, as a form of

1970
01:52:06,680 --> 01:52:10,640
Speaker 5: like posturing as a as a form of like maintaining

1971
01:52:10,800 --> 01:52:13,840
Speaker 5: of moral purity versus politics as an actual practical method

1972
01:52:13,880 --> 01:52:17,920
Speaker 5: of achieving cyst like systematic change, and people engage in

1973
01:52:18,040 --> 01:52:20,960
Speaker 5: these two different modes, and there're thing there's a role

1974
01:52:21,080 --> 01:52:23,160
Speaker 5: for both of these modes of politics. Actually, I think

1975
01:52:23,200 --> 01:52:25,880
Speaker 5: both of these have have a degree of necessity. And

1976
01:52:26,000 --> 01:52:30,080
Speaker 5: Zoron has has taken one specific path, and there's the

1977
01:52:30,120 --> 01:52:32,439
Speaker 5: others who are who are very clear in having taken

1978
01:52:32,479 --> 01:52:35,200
Speaker 5: the other path. And there's there's a bunch of a

1979
01:52:35,200 --> 01:52:38,160
Speaker 5: bunch of a bunch of critiques from this meeting quote

1980
01:52:38,200 --> 01:52:41,680
Speaker 5: unquote critiques, including from a formal Seattle City councilman who

1981
01:52:41,760 --> 01:52:46,080
Speaker 5: is now running for Congress as a socialist, Kashauma sawant quote.

1982
01:52:46,160 --> 01:52:48,960
Speaker 5: If I were in Mamdani's position, instead of asking Trump

1983
01:52:49,040 --> 01:52:51,759
Speaker 5: to meet me, I would have announced a mass rally

1984
01:52:51,800 --> 01:52:53,960
Speaker 5: of tens of thousands of people in New York City

1985
01:52:54,040 --> 01:52:56,200
Speaker 5: to protest against ice rates, to declare that New York

1986
01:52:56,240 --> 01:52:58,960
Speaker 5: City will not tolerate ice and will fight Trump every

1987
01:52:58,960 --> 01:53:00,920
Speaker 5: inch of the way. I will lunch mass campaign for

1988
01:53:00,960 --> 01:53:04,599
Speaker 5: free transit and free childcare, and build a militant movement

1989
01:53:04,640 --> 01:53:08,640
Speaker 5: to win unquote. These are things Zoran's are already participated in.

1990
01:53:09,200 --> 01:53:11,840
Speaker 5: These are things that have happened. Just one more, like

1991
01:53:11,880 --> 01:53:14,320
Speaker 5: one more protest that's going to be more effective than

1992
01:53:14,360 --> 01:53:18,960
Speaker 5: actually having Trump seed some ground on the scale of enforcement.

1993
01:53:19,560 --> 01:53:21,480
Speaker 5: This is part of why I have this like hesitation

1994
01:53:22,080 --> 01:53:25,280
Speaker 5: around discussion of Zoran, because I think he's actually doing

1995
01:53:25,680 --> 01:53:29,920
Speaker 5: kind of strategic moves to actually limit the amount of

1996
01:53:30,040 --> 01:53:32,360
Speaker 5: damage that Trump's able to do in the city. And

1997
01:53:32,400 --> 01:53:35,680
Speaker 5: he's doing it through like rhetorical maneuvers, and some of

1998
01:53:35,720 --> 01:53:38,960
Speaker 5: that may feel awkward to watch in a like a

1999
01:53:39,160 --> 01:53:42,160
Speaker 5: live press conference, but I think the actual end results

2000
01:53:42,200 --> 01:53:44,760
Speaker 5: of that have a lot more potential than say, you know,

2001
01:53:44,800 --> 01:53:48,400
Speaker 5: a rally of ten thousand people which effectively does nothing.

2002
01:53:48,800 --> 01:53:50,240
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean we've had a bunch of those that

2003
01:53:50,360 --> 01:53:54,400
Speaker 6: that is politics is performance right lately like that. Yeah,

2004
01:53:54,520 --> 01:53:57,040
Speaker 6: people are very attached to that mode of political engagement

2005
01:53:57,040 --> 01:54:00,400
Speaker 6: in the United States, like that that lie you know,

2006
01:54:00,439 --> 01:54:04,920
Speaker 6: walking around with signs of shouting, demonstration and political intent.

2007
01:54:05,400 --> 01:54:08,639
Speaker 6: It has not been successful in stopping ice grabbing random

2008
01:54:08,640 --> 01:54:09,960
Speaker 6: people of the street, I'll just say that.

2009
01:54:10,200 --> 01:54:12,880
Speaker 5: And people have been criticizing Zoran just simply for even

2010
01:54:12,880 --> 01:54:15,960
Speaker 5: taking this meeting because it's somehow quote unquote like humanizes

2011
01:54:16,120 --> 01:54:19,080
Speaker 5: Trump in some way, like Trump doesn't need to be humanized, right,

2012
01:54:19,080 --> 01:54:22,000
Speaker 5: Like it's like Zoron's platform by Donald Trump. He is

2013
01:54:22,040 --> 01:54:26,160
Speaker 5: the president of the United States. He doesn't he he wins,

2014
01:54:26,200 --> 01:54:29,439
Speaker 5: he has that position, he has bought the legitimacy like

2015
01:54:29,479 --> 01:54:33,400
Speaker 5: this this, I don't think Zoron being there actually rehabilitates

2016
01:54:33,440 --> 01:54:36,360
Speaker 5: Trump's image in a meaningful way. I think what he's

2017
01:54:36,360 --> 01:54:39,040
Speaker 5: doing is trying to actually make New York a safer

2018
01:54:39,440 --> 01:54:42,160
Speaker 5: and more affordable place to live by doing a kind

2019
01:54:42,160 --> 01:54:45,240
Speaker 5: of complicated political maneuver, which I'm sure it's kind of

2020
01:54:45,320 --> 01:54:47,640
Speaker 5: upsetting to kind of go through, but he's doing it.

2021
01:54:47,920 --> 01:54:50,840
Speaker 5: And the wave of criticism that it's kind of based

2022
01:54:50,920 --> 01:54:53,960
Speaker 5: on based on that sort of you know, humanizing argument

2023
01:54:54,040 --> 01:54:56,520
Speaker 5: or this stuff on, like why doesn't Zorn just protest

2024
01:54:56,560 --> 01:54:59,520
Speaker 5: instead of actually trying to like cut deals or like

2025
01:54:59,760 --> 01:55:02,320
Speaker 5: not and cut deals because that sounds so like slimy,

2026
01:55:02,320 --> 01:55:05,240
Speaker 5: but like actually like negotiate with the president. And like

2027
01:55:05,440 --> 01:55:10,040
Speaker 5: this criticism comes on the tail end like a week's

2028
01:55:10,080 --> 01:55:13,360
Speaker 5: worth of very reflexive criticism of Zoran for his retention

2029
01:55:13,560 --> 01:55:17,520
Speaker 5: of New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tish, as well

2030
01:55:17,560 --> 01:55:20,600
Speaker 5: as advocating against the New York City DSA's endorsement of

2031
01:55:20,600 --> 01:55:24,360
Speaker 5: city councilmen and new DSA member she offses primary campaign

2032
01:55:24,400 --> 01:55:28,360
Speaker 5: against Congressman Jokim Jeffries. Some of these criticisms, I get

2033
01:55:28,360 --> 01:55:29,880
Speaker 5: the jeffersone a little bit more, But some of these

2034
01:55:29,880 --> 01:55:32,720
Speaker 5: criticisms I find to be a little odd, mostly considering

2035
01:55:32,760 --> 01:55:34,920
Speaker 5: the fact that Zoran has been open about his plan

2036
01:55:34,960 --> 01:55:38,960
Speaker 5: to retain Tish for literal months, for literal months, and

2037
01:55:39,160 --> 01:55:41,680
Speaker 5: just this week people acted like it was this massive

2038
01:55:41,760 --> 01:55:45,959
Speaker 5: betrayal in his like ideological purity or his stated promises,

2039
01:55:45,960 --> 01:55:48,080
Speaker 5: which just isn't true. He's been open about this like

2040
01:55:48,120 --> 01:55:51,360
Speaker 5: since like last summer, and on the on the Jeffrey

2041
01:55:51,440 --> 01:55:53,320
Speaker 5: side of things, I think Zorn's point of view here

2042
01:55:53,360 --> 01:55:56,280
Speaker 5: is at a difficult primary campaign and one that's probably

2043
01:55:56,280 --> 01:55:59,840
Speaker 5: going to be unsuccessful. Based on the Zoron twenty twenty

2044
01:56:00,280 --> 01:56:04,320
Speaker 5: five general vote map, it shows that that'd be very,

2045
01:56:04,480 --> 01:56:07,480
Speaker 5: very challenging. But this, this this difficult primary against referees

2046
01:56:07,680 --> 01:56:11,400
Speaker 5: would also inhibit Zoron's ability to implement the affordability agenda

2047
01:56:11,480 --> 01:56:14,280
Speaker 5: in the city. The New York Times quoted a leaked

2048
01:56:14,320 --> 01:56:18,480
Speaker 5: portion of the DSA's endorsement meeting with Zoran saying, quote,

2049
01:56:18,520 --> 01:56:20,520
Speaker 5: the choice before us is not whether to vote for

2050
01:56:20,680 --> 01:56:23,480
Speaker 5: Chai or Hageeme at the ballot box. The choice is

2051
01:56:23,520 --> 01:56:25,800
Speaker 5: how to spend the next year. Do we want to

2052
01:56:25,840 --> 01:56:28,800
Speaker 5: spend it defending caricatures of our movement or do we

2053
01:56:28,840 --> 01:56:31,760
Speaker 5: want to spend it fulfilling the agenda at the heart

2054
01:56:31,880 --> 01:56:34,920
Speaker 5: of that very same movement. Unquote, Zora has a very

2055
01:56:34,920 --> 01:56:37,520
Speaker 5: specific focus right now on the New York City government

2056
01:56:37,560 --> 01:56:41,680
Speaker 5: and implementing the agenda for New York City and the

2057
01:56:41,720 --> 01:56:46,800
Speaker 5: congressional campaign would, in his view, only put more roadblocks

2058
01:56:46,800 --> 01:56:49,080
Speaker 5: to that at this point in time, versus, you know,

2059
01:56:49,160 --> 01:56:52,400
Speaker 5: keeping a left wing ally in the New York City Council.

2060
01:56:52,880 --> 01:56:54,680
Speaker 6: I guess I don't see why they can't do both.

2061
01:56:54,840 --> 01:56:57,880
Speaker 6: Like they will be defending caricatures of their movement for

2062
01:56:57,960 --> 01:57:01,320
Speaker 6: sure the next forever, right until the Internet and and

2063
01:57:01,600 --> 01:57:04,800
Speaker 6: stupid politics the stopping part of a politics which isn't

2064
01:57:04,800 --> 01:57:07,880
Speaker 6: coming anytime soon. Like, I think it'd be perfectly possible

2065
01:57:07,880 --> 01:57:09,880
Speaker 6: to give that endorsement and still say my job as

2066
01:57:09,920 --> 01:57:11,600
Speaker 6: mayor is to do the shit that I promised to do.

2067
01:57:12,120 --> 01:57:14,080
Speaker 6: I also endorse this person because I think they're a

2068
01:57:14,080 --> 01:57:18,760
Speaker 6: better person than the Keem Jeffries, who has been very poor. Okay,

2069
01:57:18,920 --> 01:57:21,480
Speaker 6: I don't I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive.

2070
01:57:22,600 --> 01:57:25,640
Speaker 6: We need to talk about MTG, if only very briefly.

2071
01:57:26,040 --> 01:57:27,320
Speaker 1: What is there to say.

2072
01:57:27,560 --> 01:57:33,480
Speaker 6: That Magic the Gathering has finally reclaimed the acronym? Oh good, Yeah,

2073
01:57:33,560 --> 01:57:36,360
Speaker 6: Marjorie Tayler Green leaving politics?

2074
01:57:36,720 --> 01:57:40,520
Speaker 5: Well maybe, well she's leaving the house. Is at the end,

2075
01:57:40,600 --> 01:57:42,560
Speaker 5: at the end of the year, is leaving the House.

2076
01:57:42,560 --> 01:57:43,560
Speaker 5: See what she's announced?

2077
01:57:43,880 --> 01:57:45,360
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2078
01:57:45,400 --> 01:57:47,720
Speaker 5: It is unclear how she will continue her career.

2079
01:57:48,440 --> 01:57:52,000
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe Zoran will be taking her seat. Maybe the

2080
01:57:52,080 --> 01:57:52,920
Speaker 6: Trump's new friends.

2081
01:57:52,960 --> 01:57:54,960
Speaker 5: I mean, I really don't think he's much interest in

2082
01:57:55,320 --> 01:57:57,640
Speaker 5: being in the House of Representatives, especially in Georgia.

2083
01:57:57,760 --> 01:57:58,800
Speaker 1: Oh would jesus.

2084
01:57:59,120 --> 01:58:01,760
Speaker 6: He has a much more important role now. I guess

2085
01:58:01,760 --> 01:58:03,440
Speaker 6: like he's able to do a lot more as executive

2086
01:58:03,520 --> 01:58:04,800
Speaker 6: New York than he ever would be as like a

2087
01:58:04,840 --> 01:58:09,280
Speaker 6: single rep in Yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah, no more MTG.

2088
01:58:10,280 --> 01:58:11,800
Speaker 1: Okay, well great.

2089
01:58:12,600 --> 01:58:15,560
Speaker 6: If you want to contact us, do you can reach

2090
01:58:15,600 --> 01:58:20,800
Speaker 6: out to us at cool Zone, tips at proton dot me.

2091
01:58:21,640 --> 01:58:45,320
Speaker 15: We reported the news, We reported the news.

2092
01:58:38,120 --> 01:58:42,960
Speaker 5: Grinder. I hardly this is it could happen here where

2093
01:58:43,000 --> 01:58:46,840
Speaker 5: today the it is gay flirting and or harassment, and

2094
01:58:47,000 --> 01:58:50,480
Speaker 5: the here is Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the twenty twenty four

2095
01:58:50,840 --> 01:58:55,480
Speaker 5: Republican National Convention. I'm gay also known by my undercover

2096
01:58:55,560 --> 01:59:00,480
Speaker 5: alias Garrison Davis, and I was lucky enough to be

2097
01:59:00,720 --> 01:59:04,440
Speaker 5: one of our on the ground RNZ correspondence. A few

2098
01:59:04,440 --> 01:59:07,600
Speaker 5: weeks ago. We provided daily coverage of the GOP Coronation

2099
01:59:07,680 --> 01:59:11,600
Speaker 5: festival based on our conversations with delegates, lobbyists, and think

2100
01:59:11,680 --> 01:59:15,240
Speaker 5: tank ghoules, and reported on the general trends in rhetoric

2101
01:59:15,480 --> 01:59:18,680
Speaker 5: used by popular speakers at the event. We'll have some

2102
01:59:18,720 --> 01:59:21,080
Speaker 5: more in depth episodes about those topics in the weeks

2103
01:59:21,080 --> 01:59:23,839
Speaker 5: to come, using more of our recorded interviews we collected

2104
01:59:23,880 --> 01:59:27,240
Speaker 5: at the convention. But on top of our regular coverage,

2105
01:59:27,440 --> 01:59:30,360
Speaker 5: I also had a special assignment that I'm more or

2106
01:59:30,440 --> 01:59:34,360
Speaker 5: less assigned to myself. On this show, we often talk

2107
01:59:34,400 --> 01:59:38,200
Speaker 5: about right wing extremism and issues facing gay and trans people,

2108
01:59:38,320 --> 01:59:41,560
Speaker 5: including the various ways conservatives and Christian nationalists are trying

2109
01:59:41,600 --> 01:59:44,240
Speaker 5: to make life harder for queer people, whether through legislation,

2110
01:59:44,600 --> 01:59:48,960
Speaker 5: online harassment, and physical violence. As these are two of

2111
01:59:49,000 --> 01:59:52,520
Speaker 5: our most frequently covered topics being at the Republican National

2112
01:59:52,520 --> 01:59:56,680
Speaker 5: Convention provided me with the perfect opportunity to investigate the

2113
01:59:56,680 --> 02:00:02,680
Speaker 5: intersection between conservatism and homosection U. For years, I've heard

2114
02:00:02,800 --> 02:00:06,960
Speaker 5: rumors and urban legends about a massive influx of Republicans

2115
02:00:07,320 --> 02:00:10,720
Speaker 5: flocking to the gay hookup app Grinder to get laid

2116
02:00:10,840 --> 02:00:14,760
Speaker 5: during the RNC. Whether they be twenty year old Republican

2117
02:00:14,800 --> 02:00:18,240
Speaker 5: twinks from Miami or fifty three year old self hating,

2118
02:00:18,280 --> 02:00:23,160
Speaker 5: closeted gay men from Idaho trapped in loveless marriages, curiosity

2119
02:00:23,320 --> 02:00:26,560
Speaker 5: has often gotten the better of me, and I needed

2120
02:00:26,600 --> 02:00:31,240
Speaker 5: to know how many homosexual Republicans were actually logging onto Grinder.

2121
02:00:32,200 --> 02:00:35,400
Speaker 5: In case you're unfamiliar, Grinder is technically a dating app

2122
02:00:35,480 --> 02:00:39,680
Speaker 5: that serves the LGBTQ community, but in actuality, it is

2123
02:00:39,760 --> 02:00:42,240
Speaker 5: a mediocre hookup app that mostly serves as a way

2124
02:00:42,280 --> 02:00:45,600
Speaker 5: for strangers in their forties to completely unprompted send you

2125
02:00:45,760 --> 02:00:49,520
Speaker 5: unflattering pictures of their penis. Grinder was launched in two

2126
02:00:49,520 --> 02:00:52,520
Speaker 5: thousand and nine and is arguably the largest and most

2127
02:00:52,520 --> 02:00:56,280
Speaker 5: popular gay dating app, especially among men. Grinder has only

2128
02:00:56,280 --> 02:00:59,960
Speaker 5: been around for two in person RNCs prior to this point,

2129
02:01:00,240 --> 02:01:04,160
Speaker 5: twelve and twenty sixteen. Since all convention activities moved online

2130
02:01:04,240 --> 02:01:07,720
Speaker 5: during twenty twenty for the pandemic. So this July, for

2131
02:01:07,800 --> 02:01:11,560
Speaker 5: the first time in eight years, Republicans from all around

2132
02:01:11,560 --> 02:01:14,240
Speaker 5: the country could gather in one city and once their

2133
02:01:14,280 --> 02:01:18,360
Speaker 5: wives fell asleep, log onto Grinder and this episode, I'm

2134
02:01:18,360 --> 02:01:24,200
Speaker 5: going to tell you about my RNC Grinder experience. Before

2135
02:01:24,240 --> 02:01:26,280
Speaker 5: traveling to the city that was about to be invaded

2136
02:01:26,320 --> 02:01:28,880
Speaker 5: by all of the weirdest Republicans in the country, I

2137
02:01:28,960 --> 02:01:32,040
Speaker 5: needed to do some prep to help ensure safety and

2138
02:01:32,080 --> 02:01:35,960
Speaker 5: success in my investigative endeavor. I hope you queers liked

2139
02:01:35,960 --> 02:01:40,200
Speaker 5: that terrible pun. Based on the massive increase in violent

2140
02:01:40,400 --> 02:01:43,480
Speaker 5: anti trans rhetoric coming from the GOP, I already knew

2141
02:01:43,520 --> 02:01:45,400
Speaker 5: that I would be dusting off my old boy motor

2142
02:01:45,400 --> 02:01:49,600
Speaker 5: skills and going undercover as a cisgender male. Although my

2143
02:01:49,640 --> 02:01:52,640
Speaker 5: ability to pass as a straight mail is debatable, I

2144
02:01:52,640 --> 02:01:57,200
Speaker 5: can at least easily pass as a not quite straight mail.

2145
02:01:57,880 --> 02:02:01,080
Speaker 5: My transfeminine fashion taste has been skewed more mask lesbian

2146
02:02:01,080 --> 02:02:03,840
Speaker 5: in recent years, so clothing wasn't really an issue. I

2147
02:02:03,960 --> 02:02:07,400
Speaker 5: packed up basically all my button up collar shirts, three ties,

2148
02:02:07,560 --> 02:02:11,520
Speaker 5: two black suits, and a beige London fog trench coat. Basically,

2149
02:02:11,600 --> 02:02:14,280
Speaker 5: the vibe I was going for was half young Republican,

2150
02:02:14,720 --> 02:02:18,640
Speaker 5: half Roman towel boy dressed as a nineteen fifties FBI agent.

2151
02:02:19,080 --> 02:02:22,560
Speaker 5: I refer to this as Dale Cooper moting. I was

2152
02:02:22,640 --> 02:02:24,840
Speaker 5: unwilling to cut my hair to match most of the

2153
02:02:25,040 --> 02:02:28,680
Speaker 5: young Republican frat boys, so I settled on styling my

2154
02:02:28,800 --> 02:02:33,600
Speaker 5: wavy blonde locks like Baron Trump meets Total Swinton in Constantine.

2155
02:02:33,680 --> 02:02:36,440
Speaker 5: I was kind of Gabriel maxing for most of the convention,

2156
02:02:37,160 --> 02:02:40,000
Speaker 5: and though most attendees were unable to pick up on

2157
02:02:40,080 --> 02:02:43,800
Speaker 5: my dikish undertones, the one day I wasn't wearing a tie,

2158
02:02:43,880 --> 02:02:46,240
Speaker 5: I did get she heard by the Secret Service when

2159
02:02:46,360 --> 02:02:49,960
Speaker 5: entering the convention through a security checkpoint. They're going woke.

2160
02:02:51,000 --> 02:02:53,880
Speaker 5: So that was my general look for the convention. I

2161
02:02:53,920 --> 02:02:57,760
Speaker 5: also completely remade my grinder profile for the RNZ for

2162
02:02:57,840 --> 02:03:00,720
Speaker 5: simplicity's sake, I got to emphasize my twinking past and

2163
02:03:00,760 --> 02:03:05,160
Speaker 5: removed the explicitly non binary transgender aspects of my profile,

2164
02:03:05,760 --> 02:03:09,600
Speaker 5: replacing some of my more trans coded photos with pictures

2165
02:03:09,680 --> 02:03:14,000
Speaker 5: of my light Yagami and Dale Cooper cosplay. Perhaps next

2166
02:03:14,120 --> 02:03:17,200
Speaker 5: RNC I can experiment with discovering how many of the

2167
02:03:17,280 --> 02:03:20,320
Speaker 5: RNC attendees are chasers. But for safety's at sake, I

2168
02:03:20,400 --> 02:03:23,480
Speaker 5: went to more stealth, both online and in person at

2169
02:03:23,760 --> 02:03:27,800
Speaker 5: RNC related events. For my main profile picture, I chose

2170
02:03:27,840 --> 02:03:30,880
Speaker 5: a pretty basic photo of me with disheveled hair, wearing

2171
02:03:30,920 --> 02:03:33,640
Speaker 5: a light gray shirt and thin black tie, looking just

2172
02:03:33,800 --> 02:03:39,000
Speaker 5: frankly exhausted. I chose the simple yet elegant user name Twink,

2173
02:03:39,560 --> 02:03:43,600
Speaker 5: and for my bio wrote gen z in town for Convention,

2174
02:03:44,360 --> 02:03:47,080
Speaker 5: which I thought was pretty funny and signals to people

2175
02:03:47,160 --> 02:03:48,880
Speaker 5: that yes, I am here for the R and C,

2176
02:03:49,520 --> 02:03:53,840
Speaker 5: but leaves the exact reason why still a bit mysterious.

2177
02:03:54,280 --> 02:03:57,720
Speaker 5: So this was my bait. On my way to the airport,

2178
02:03:57,840 --> 02:04:00,000
Speaker 5: I was already dressed for the part, as I says

2179
02:04:00,000 --> 02:04:03,200
Speaker 5: expected the flight from Atlanta to Milwaukee would be part

2180
02:04:03,240 --> 02:04:07,000
Speaker 5: of the whole RNC experience. I arrived at the gate

2181
02:04:07,120 --> 02:04:11,240
Speaker 5: and the vibe shift was immediate. Older white men with

2182
02:04:11,320 --> 02:04:14,800
Speaker 5: even whiter hair wearing a mix of poorly tailored suits

2183
02:04:15,040 --> 02:04:18,840
Speaker 5: and country club polo shirts fit for the driving range.

2184
02:04:18,880 --> 02:04:23,320
Speaker 5: They all kind of looked like my Republican grandfather. The women, meanwhile,

2185
02:04:23,400 --> 02:04:26,800
Speaker 5: regardless of age, were all cause playing their favorite female

2186
02:04:26,840 --> 02:04:30,640
Speaker 5: Fox News anchor with bleached blonde hair. There were a

2187
02:04:30,680 --> 02:04:34,280
Speaker 5: handful of delegates as well as Republican super fans wearing

2188
02:04:34,320 --> 02:04:37,640
Speaker 5: Trump buttons and mega hats, just really excited to be

2189
02:04:37,680 --> 02:04:40,040
Speaker 5: going to the convention, the way a NERD would be

2190
02:04:40,040 --> 02:04:43,160
Speaker 5: excited to go to San Diego Comic con. Others at

2191
02:04:43,160 --> 02:04:45,879
Speaker 5: the gate were more subdued, perhaps not wanting to attract

2192
02:04:45,920 --> 02:04:49,440
Speaker 5: too much attention in the Atlanta airport, but I could

2193
02:04:49,440 --> 02:04:52,560
Speaker 5: still overhear them getting into quiet small talk about their

2194
02:04:52,680 --> 02:04:56,880
Speaker 5: RNC expectations and in hushed tones, asking others at the

2195
02:04:56,920 --> 02:05:01,200
Speaker 5: gate if they were going to the convention. And that's

2196
02:05:01,200 --> 02:05:04,000
Speaker 5: what everyone called it, not the Republican Convention, not the

2197
02:05:04,080 --> 02:05:09,200
Speaker 5: GOP convention or the RNC the convention. As I was

2198
02:05:09,200 --> 02:05:12,520
Speaker 5: bording the plane, an older woman with straw like blonde hair,

2199
02:05:12,760 --> 02:05:15,320
Speaker 5: sitting a few rows in front of me waved me

2200
02:05:15,520 --> 02:05:19,320
Speaker 5: and asked, young man, are you going to the convention.

2201
02:05:20,240 --> 02:05:23,240
Speaker 5: I gave my best yes, ma'am, took my seat, and

2202
02:05:23,280 --> 02:05:26,160
Speaker 5: then heard her remark to her friend about how happy

2203
02:05:26,200 --> 02:05:29,160
Speaker 5: she was that more young people are attending the convention,

2204
02:05:29,680 --> 02:05:32,360
Speaker 5: and I would suspect she would be quite disappointed to

2205
02:05:32,440 --> 02:05:35,240
Speaker 5: learn why I was attending the convention and what I

2206
02:05:35,320 --> 02:05:38,480
Speaker 5: was doing there, mainly trying to collect as much information

2207
02:05:38,840 --> 02:05:43,400
Speaker 5: about these weird RNC Grinder Republicans as I can. And

2208
02:05:43,440 --> 02:05:46,840
Speaker 5: you will hear more about those weird Grinder RNC Republicans

2209
02:05:47,160 --> 02:05:49,840
Speaker 5: after the break. This episode is brought to you in

2210
02:05:49,880 --> 02:05:53,320
Speaker 5: part by the top Gun soundtrack, which I was listening

2211
02:05:53,400 --> 02:05:55,960
Speaker 5: to as I was coming down from adderall while writing

2212
02:05:56,000 --> 02:05:59,160
Speaker 5: the second half of this episode, as well as these

2213
02:05:59,280 --> 02:06:14,280
Speaker 5: products and sponsors. Okay, back to the Grind. Most convention

2214
02:06:14,400 --> 02:06:18,120
Speaker 5: activities took place in the Piser Forum, which it took

2215
02:06:18,160 --> 02:06:21,560
Speaker 5: about four days to learn how to pronounce. This venue

2216
02:06:21,600 --> 02:06:24,880
Speaker 5: is usually home to the NBA team, the Milwaukee Bucks,

2217
02:06:25,480 --> 02:06:27,080
Speaker 5: and this is where I would do most of my

2218
02:06:27,160 --> 02:06:30,240
Speaker 5: Grinder cruising so I could see other profiles within the

2219
02:06:30,320 --> 02:06:33,800
Speaker 5: radius of the convention area. Every time I walked into

2220
02:06:33,800 --> 02:06:36,160
Speaker 5: the Pfiser Forum, which was multiple times a day for

2221
02:06:36,200 --> 02:06:38,520
Speaker 5: four days in a row, I would find a little

2222
02:06:38,560 --> 02:06:40,800
Speaker 5: corner or a place to sit and discreetly boot up

2223
02:06:40,800 --> 02:06:43,400
Speaker 5: Grinder and refresh my feed to see what profiles were

2224
02:06:43,400 --> 02:06:47,480
Speaker 5: in my proximity. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Grinder, one

2225
02:06:47,480 --> 02:06:53,200
Speaker 5: of its more terrifying features is the proximity detector telling

2226
02:06:53,240 --> 02:06:56,240
Speaker 5: you what users are near you, whether that be five

2227
02:06:56,320 --> 02:06:59,880
Speaker 5: miles away or five feet away. Every night, when I

2228
02:06:59,920 --> 02:07:03,200
Speaker 5: got back to the hotel after recording with Robert and Sophie,

2229
02:07:03,400 --> 02:07:05,560
Speaker 5: I would once again check a Grinder to see if

2230
02:07:05,600 --> 02:07:08,400
Speaker 5: any unlucky delegates were put up in the hotels by

2231
02:07:08,400 --> 02:07:11,360
Speaker 5: the airport. The hotel we were staying at was also

2232
02:07:11,440 --> 02:07:15,160
Speaker 5: home to the Idaho and North Dakota delegates, and though

2233
02:07:15,200 --> 02:07:17,960
Speaker 5: I don't believe anyone from our hotel was on Grinder,

2234
02:07:18,200 --> 02:07:22,000
Speaker 5: save for maybe an anonymous profile or two, there definitely

2235
02:07:22,040 --> 02:07:25,480
Speaker 5: were RNC attendees at some of the nearby hotels roughly

2236
02:07:25,560 --> 02:07:29,520
Speaker 5: fifteen hundred feet away from my bed. The Grinder proximity

2237
02:07:29,560 --> 02:07:32,680
Speaker 5: detector was quite useful to me and locating profiles active

2238
02:07:32,720 --> 02:07:35,080
Speaker 5: around the footprint of the R and C, as well

2239
02:07:35,120 --> 02:07:38,000
Speaker 5: as when sorting through all my messages back home to

2240
02:07:38,080 --> 02:07:40,760
Speaker 5: confirm who attended the rn C from out of state.

2241
02:07:41,280 --> 02:07:44,400
Speaker 5: Because Milwaukee is about six hundred and fifty miles away

2242
02:07:44,400 --> 02:07:48,280
Speaker 5: from Atlanta, if someone's distance marker was substantially different from that,

2243
02:07:48,360 --> 02:07:50,360
Speaker 5: I could assume that they were in Milwaukee for the

2244
02:07:50,480 --> 02:07:52,280
Speaker 5: R and C from out of state. Even if I

2245
02:07:52,320 --> 02:07:56,040
Speaker 5: wasn't able to confirm through any brief text exchange. I've

2246
02:07:56,080 --> 02:07:58,400
Speaker 5: also done my best to follow up with certain profiles

2247
02:07:58,520 --> 02:08:02,320
Speaker 5: to rule out possibilities of secondary traveling or other random

2248
02:08:02,320 --> 02:08:05,440
Speaker 5: reasons for why the distance markers might not line up exactly.

2249
02:08:05,720 --> 02:08:09,240
Speaker 5: And I think I have it narrowed down pretty well. Okay,

2250
02:08:09,320 --> 02:08:11,640
Speaker 5: you've been very patient, and now I think it's time

2251
02:08:11,880 --> 02:08:15,680
Speaker 5: to read through the highlights from my grinder in box.

2252
02:08:16,120 --> 02:08:18,320
Speaker 5: And I gotta say I think I started off pretty strong.

2253
02:08:18,680 --> 02:08:21,960
Speaker 5: While attending the RNC kickoff party the night before the

2254
02:08:21,960 --> 02:08:24,760
Speaker 5: convention officially started, I got one of the very first

2255
02:08:24,800 --> 02:08:28,160
Speaker 5: messages I received from a twenty one year old Republican

2256
02:08:28,240 --> 02:08:30,839
Speaker 5: with the profile picture that's just a close up picture

2257
02:08:31,360 --> 02:08:34,600
Speaker 5: of a dark suit with a dark blue shirt and

2258
02:08:34,720 --> 02:08:38,600
Speaker 5: magenta tie, already horrendous vibes. He asked me if I

2259
02:08:38,640 --> 02:08:42,600
Speaker 5: was quote unquote with the GOP and I said I

2260
02:08:42,640 --> 02:08:45,440
Speaker 5: was attending with friends, and then I got no further response.

2261
02:08:45,960 --> 02:08:48,640
Speaker 5: I saw this guy online throughout the convention, and then

2262
02:08:48,880 --> 02:08:51,800
Speaker 5: after the convention was over, he moved like three hundred

2263
02:08:51,840 --> 02:08:54,200
Speaker 5: miles away, so I'm pretty sure he was there for

2264
02:08:54,320 --> 02:08:57,919
Speaker 5: the RNC. I got a message from someone who identified

2265
02:08:57,960 --> 02:09:01,600
Speaker 5: himself as a local conservative of quote but not a

2266
02:09:01,640 --> 02:09:05,600
Speaker 5: hardcore Republican unquote, and he was excited the convention was

2267
02:09:05,680 --> 02:09:09,000
Speaker 5: in town, hopeful that he would quote meet my future

2268
02:09:09,160 --> 02:09:14,440
Speaker 5: husband unquote. The first chaser I encountered with the bio

2269
02:09:14,840 --> 02:09:17,880
Speaker 5: looking for some lady dick to feel in my ass,

2270
02:09:18,600 --> 02:09:22,280
Speaker 5: saw through my CIS gender disguise and messaged me cock

2271
02:09:22,680 --> 02:09:26,080
Speaker 5: question mark. I got one other message from a chaser

2272
02:09:26,320 --> 02:09:28,760
Speaker 5: who was pretending to be Tea for Tea, who asked

2273
02:09:28,800 --> 02:09:31,920
Speaker 5: me if I was in town for Kitsu Khan, an

2274
02:09:31,960 --> 02:09:35,240
Speaker 5: anime convention in Green Bay. A nice local messaged me,

2275
02:09:35,360 --> 02:09:39,280
Speaker 5: quote hope you're finding what you're looking for, smiley face,

2276
02:09:39,440 --> 02:09:41,960
Speaker 5: which was very nice and just kind of amusing if

2277
02:09:42,000 --> 02:09:44,320
Speaker 5: you consider that he thought I was just a gay

2278
02:09:44,360 --> 02:09:48,840
Speaker 5: Republican looking for some other gay Republican. Another local with

2279
02:09:48,920 --> 02:09:53,480
Speaker 5: the name Older for Young sent me the message quote boomer,

2280
02:09:53,480 --> 02:09:56,600
Speaker 5: who will talk politics with you or we can just fuck.

2281
02:09:57,920 --> 02:10:01,680
Speaker 5: I asked him if the quote unquot talk politics pickup

2282
02:10:01,720 --> 02:10:05,879
Speaker 5: line works very often, and he replied quote less often

2283
02:10:05,960 --> 02:10:10,480
Speaker 5: than I would hope for on here zero unquote. He

2284
02:10:10,600 --> 02:10:13,920
Speaker 5: mentioned that he had noticed some convention attendees on the app,

2285
02:10:14,000 --> 02:10:17,960
Speaker 5: telling me that they have infiltrated grinder. He then asked

2286
02:10:17,960 --> 02:10:19,800
Speaker 5: me what exact hotel I was staying at, So that

2287
02:10:19,880 --> 02:10:22,880
Speaker 5: was the end of that conversation. A minority of the

2288
02:10:22,920 --> 02:10:27,360
Speaker 5: Milwaukee locals who messaged me identified themselves as conservatives and

2289
02:10:27,440 --> 02:10:30,960
Speaker 5: were largely excited that the RNC was in town. They

2290
02:10:31,080 --> 02:10:34,120
Speaker 5: vicariously questioned me about how the convention was going, as

2291
02:10:34,160 --> 02:10:38,320
Speaker 5: most were disappointed that they themselves cannot attend. One such fellow,

2292
02:10:38,360 --> 02:10:43,160
Speaker 5: who described Trump's first RNC entrance as electric and a

2293
02:10:43,280 --> 02:10:47,000
Speaker 5: very emotional moment for him and the entire crowd unquote,

2294
02:10:47,640 --> 02:10:50,120
Speaker 5: would have liked to attend, but he was busy working

2295
02:10:50,120 --> 02:10:54,200
Speaker 5: at the hospital because they needed quote extra staffing just

2296
02:10:54,400 --> 02:10:59,560
Speaker 5: in case unquote. Now, the worst profile picture I found

2297
02:11:00,200 --> 02:11:02,720
Speaker 5: was an older guy wearing a baseball camp and one

2298
02:11:02,760 --> 02:11:06,120
Speaker 5: of those half faced skull masks like Adam Offfen used

2299
02:11:06,120 --> 02:11:08,920
Speaker 5: to wear. He said he was from Florida and claimed

2300
02:11:08,920 --> 02:11:11,600
Speaker 5: to be in town not for the RNC but to

2301
02:11:11,720 --> 02:11:15,920
Speaker 5: visit family, and mentioned that Vance had completely sold out

2302
02:11:15,960 --> 02:11:20,120
Speaker 5: his morals for the VP spot. This guy's politics were impenetrable.

2303
02:11:20,240 --> 02:11:24,240
Speaker 5: Maybe this was just like your average Florida independent, very

2304
02:11:24,280 --> 02:11:28,640
Speaker 5: baffling fella. A younger guy messaged me asking you're a

2305
02:11:28,720 --> 02:11:31,960
Speaker 5: Republican and I said not really, putting it lightly, and

2306
02:11:32,000 --> 02:11:34,160
Speaker 5: he never got back to me. I did find a

2307
02:11:34,360 --> 02:11:36,760
Speaker 5: thirty one year old chaser named Greg who I do

2308
02:11:36,800 --> 02:11:40,040
Speaker 5: believe was attending the convention and his bio read quote

2309
02:11:40,320 --> 02:11:46,600
Speaker 5: anon come drain Me trans CD as crossdresser sissy fem

2310
02:11:46,960 --> 02:11:50,080
Speaker 5: to the front of the line. I asked, you like

2311
02:11:50,200 --> 02:11:54,560
Speaker 5: trans and he responded yes. We had no further conversation.

2312
02:11:55,520 --> 02:11:57,280
Speaker 5: I did talk with two other people who happened to

2313
02:11:57,320 --> 02:11:59,840
Speaker 5: be covering the convention, including one guy who thought I

2314
02:11:59,880 --> 02:12:03,000
Speaker 5: was with CNN because the Grinder proximity sensor put me

2315
02:12:03,080 --> 02:12:06,280
Speaker 5: near the CNN area when I was actually using Grinder

2316
02:12:06,320 --> 02:12:10,800
Speaker 5: at the Heritage Foundation party. And lastly, really the only

2317
02:12:10,920 --> 02:12:14,520
Speaker 5: guy I saw who openly claims to be attending the

2318
02:12:14,680 --> 02:12:17,960
Speaker 5: RNC in his public bio was a thirty two year

2319
02:12:17,960 --> 02:12:22,040
Speaker 5: old from Shreveport, Louisiana with the user name suck me

2320
02:12:22,120 --> 02:12:27,440
Speaker 5: Off one Word. He described the convention as exhausting but

2321
02:12:27,600 --> 02:12:31,120
Speaker 5: awesome and told me he was quote proud to support

2322
02:12:31,160 --> 02:12:35,360
Speaker 5: President Trump unquote and called Trump's speech on the final

2323
02:12:35,440 --> 02:12:39,880
Speaker 5: day amazing. A lot of the RNC speakers, including Trump,

2324
02:12:39,960 --> 02:12:42,680
Speaker 5: talked about Corey Competour, the man who was killed at

2325
02:12:42,680 --> 02:12:47,320
Speaker 5: the Trump rally during the attempted assassination. So after mister

2326
02:12:47,480 --> 02:12:50,680
Speaker 5: sucked me off talked about how awesome Trump's speech was,

2327
02:12:51,160 --> 02:12:55,520
Speaker 5: I just replied to him, poor Corey, and he messaged

2328
02:12:55,560 --> 02:12:59,080
Speaker 5: me back Corey Who, and that he told me what

2329
02:12:59,120 --> 02:13:02,760
Speaker 5: exact hotel he was today. Now, part of the danger

2330
02:13:02,960 --> 02:13:05,720
Speaker 5: of trying to use Grinder directly in the middle of

2331
02:13:05,760 --> 02:13:09,800
Speaker 5: the RNC, even discreetly, is that even if I'm hunched

2332
02:13:09,840 --> 02:13:12,680
Speaker 5: over on my phone, there is a non zero chance

2333
02:13:12,680 --> 02:13:15,280
Speaker 5: that some passer by or persons sitting right above me

2334
02:13:15,800 --> 02:13:18,960
Speaker 5: might catch a glimpse of an unsolicited dickpic that fills

2335
02:13:19,000 --> 02:13:21,200
Speaker 5: my phone screen as I try to check my messages.

2336
02:13:21,960 --> 02:13:24,240
Speaker 5: And this is simply a non negotiable part of the

2337
02:13:24,280 --> 02:13:30,000
Speaker 5: Grinder experience. Whatever you do, grainy, unflattering, bizarrely angled photos

2338
02:13:30,080 --> 02:13:33,120
Speaker 5: of some balding, forty three year old married man will

2339
02:13:33,160 --> 02:13:37,080
Speaker 5: appear in your inbox. Ordinarily, I would check the profile

2340
02:13:37,120 --> 02:13:39,520
Speaker 5: first to see who might be sending me a photo

2341
02:13:39,920 --> 02:13:43,240
Speaker 5: to weed out the undesirable prospects before even considering to

2342
02:13:43,280 --> 02:13:47,280
Speaker 5: open up a DM. Unfortunately, multiple factors prevented me from

2343
02:13:47,280 --> 02:13:49,640
Speaker 5: doing this. For one, this was research, so I needed

2344
02:13:49,640 --> 02:13:53,000
Speaker 5: to collect the most amount of data possible. But moreover,

2345
02:13:53,360 --> 02:13:56,480
Speaker 5: even if I still wanted to vet for applicable profiles

2346
02:13:56,480 --> 02:14:00,360
Speaker 5: in my dms, this was impossible without opening up to

2347
02:14:00,360 --> 02:14:03,520
Speaker 5: each DM individually and clicking through to their profile from

2348
02:14:03,560 --> 02:14:06,120
Speaker 5: the chat log. Due to one of the many glitches

2349
02:14:06,200 --> 02:14:10,680
Speaker 5: I experienced using Grinder at the RNC, about halfway through

2350
02:14:10,720 --> 02:14:13,800
Speaker 5: the week, the app started crashing pretty frequently. But the

2351
02:14:13,800 --> 02:14:15,600
Speaker 5: main glitch I had to deal with, which has since

2352
02:14:15,640 --> 02:14:19,320
Speaker 5: been fixed, is that I could not access anyone's profile

2353
02:14:19,400 --> 02:14:21,920
Speaker 5: from the DM's page. I had to click into each

2354
02:14:22,080 --> 02:14:26,040
Speaker 5: individual chat log to open up a user profile, which

2355
02:14:26,080 --> 02:14:28,800
Speaker 5: meant I had to look at a lot more unsolicited

2356
02:14:28,840 --> 02:14:32,480
Speaker 5: Dick pics before even being able to check anyone's profile.

2357
02:14:33,000 --> 02:14:36,240
Speaker 5: So there I was watching Ted Cruise's speech, sitting underneath

2358
02:14:36,280 --> 02:14:39,640
Speaker 5: about fifty Republicans and right next to both of my bosses,

2359
02:14:40,000 --> 02:14:43,160
Speaker 5: scrolling through an endless stream of dick pics to see

2360
02:14:43,200 --> 02:14:45,080
Speaker 5: who was local and who was here for the rn C,

2361
02:14:45,800 --> 02:14:50,240
Speaker 5: hoping that whatever Republican voter from Alabama wasn't looking over

2362
02:14:50,320 --> 02:14:54,920
Speaker 5: my shoulder at the plethora of dimly lit hog But

2363
02:14:55,120 --> 02:14:57,600
Speaker 5: I was far from the only one reporting issues with

2364
02:14:57,640 --> 02:15:01,200
Speaker 5: the app during the rn C around mis day. On Tuesday,

2365
02:15:01,280 --> 02:15:03,920
Speaker 5: the second day of the convention, over one thousand users

2366
02:15:03,960 --> 02:15:07,000
Speaker 5: reported a Grinder outage in the Milwaukee area on the

2367
02:15:07,040 --> 02:15:10,920
Speaker 5: website down Detector. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote on the

2368
02:15:10,960 --> 02:15:13,800
Speaker 5: final day of the r and C that quote reports

2369
02:15:13,800 --> 02:15:16,480
Speaker 5: that the Grinder app crashing increased by more than ninety

2370
02:15:16,520 --> 02:15:20,480
Speaker 5: percent in the past forty eight hours across the country unquote.

2371
02:15:20,520 --> 02:15:23,720
Speaker 5: The down detector heat map showed Grinder outages in Chicago,

2372
02:15:23,840 --> 02:15:26,680
Speaker 5: Los Angeles, and New York, as well as a hot

2373
02:15:26,680 --> 02:15:29,919
Speaker 5: spot of outages in Milwaukee near the end of the convention,

2374
02:15:30,720 --> 02:15:35,000
Speaker 5: indicating users were experiencing issues with the app, possibly due

2375
02:15:35,040 --> 02:15:38,800
Speaker 5: to an increase in activity, and you will hear more

2376
02:15:38,840 --> 02:15:42,760
Speaker 5: about that activity after this ad break. This episode of

2377
02:15:42,800 --> 02:15:44,680
Speaker 5: It Could Happen Here is brought to you in part

2378
02:15:44,760 --> 02:15:49,840
Speaker 5: by the Challenger's soundtrack remix by Boys Noise, which I

2379
02:15:49,880 --> 02:15:52,879
Speaker 5: was listening to as I wrote most of this episode

2380
02:15:53,000 --> 02:15:56,200
Speaker 5: while on the plane back to Atlanta. This episode is

2381
02:15:56,200 --> 02:16:09,080
Speaker 5: also brought to you by these products and services. We

2382
02:16:09,200 --> 02:16:12,640
Speaker 5: once again returned to the grind. We got to keep

2383
02:16:12,680 --> 02:16:15,160
Speaker 5: on grinding. We're almost done, but we got to grind

2384
02:16:15,160 --> 02:16:17,520
Speaker 5: a little more. Just one more grind bro I swear

2385
02:16:17,560 --> 02:16:21,120
Speaker 5: about addictors. One more grind broachs one more grind. During

2386
02:16:21,160 --> 02:16:24,560
Speaker 5: the influx of reports about the Grinder app breaking during

2387
02:16:24,600 --> 02:16:27,440
Speaker 5: the RNC, a post from the Twitter account for the

2388
02:16:27,520 --> 02:16:32,080
Speaker 5: Halfway Post went extremely viral, bolstering claims of a massive

2389
02:16:32,200 --> 02:16:36,120
Speaker 5: increase in activity. Quote breaking, an executive of the gay

2390
02:16:36,160 --> 02:16:40,760
Speaker 5: dating app Grinder says, the Republican National Convention is quote

2391
02:16:41,120 --> 02:16:45,640
Speaker 5: basically Grinder's super Bowl unquote. This quote from a Grinder

2392
02:16:45,680 --> 02:16:49,080
Speaker 5: executive went super viral, prompting discussions all over the Internet

2393
02:16:49,280 --> 02:16:53,039
Speaker 5: about five different articles and even disgraced former New York

2394
02:16:53,040 --> 02:16:58,520
Speaker 5: Congressman George Santos commented on the phenomenon content warning, gay Republican.

2395
02:16:58,760 --> 02:17:08,520
Speaker 14: So executives are calling the RNC convention the Grinder super Bowl. Folks. Look,

2396
02:17:08,959 --> 02:17:14,720
Speaker 14: I'm openly gay, no qualms about it. Proud conservative Republican.

2397
02:17:15,040 --> 02:17:17,960
Speaker 14: I met my husband on Grinder and we've been together

2398
02:17:18,160 --> 02:17:21,000
Speaker 14: for six years going on seven, married.

2399
02:17:20,720 --> 02:17:23,240
Speaker 6: For almost three. Let me tell you something.

2400
02:17:24,040 --> 02:17:27,959
Speaker 14: Just come out the closet, boys, come on, it's fun.

2401
02:17:28,160 --> 02:17:28,760
Speaker 1: You can be.

2402
02:17:28,879 --> 02:17:33,360
Speaker 14: Gay and conservative, but look, Grinder's already out of you anyway.

2403
02:17:33,400 --> 02:17:35,640
Speaker 14: Based on the hits and guess who's in town. It's

2404
02:17:35,680 --> 02:17:36,959
Speaker 14: all you conservatives.

2405
02:17:37,080 --> 02:17:37,360
Speaker 11: Bye.

2406
02:17:39,120 --> 02:17:41,960
Speaker 5: Now, I certainly did observe a lot of blank or

2407
02:17:42,000 --> 02:17:45,320
Speaker 5: anonymous profiles, at least more than I'm used to. I

2408
02:17:45,360 --> 02:17:49,200
Speaker 5: also received messages containing variations of hay sexy from at

2409
02:17:49,280 --> 02:17:52,840
Speaker 5: least five accounts that have since been deactivated. And this

2410
02:17:52,959 --> 02:17:55,480
Speaker 5: does line up with a report from a Milwaukee area

2411
02:17:55,520 --> 02:17:58,560
Speaker 5: Grinder user who spoke with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying

2412
02:17:58,600 --> 02:18:02,080
Speaker 5: that he noticed a major bump in anonymous users. Quote.

2413
02:18:02,360 --> 02:18:04,280
Speaker 5: On any given day, you'll go on there and see

2414
02:18:04,320 --> 02:18:07,240
Speaker 5: a headless torso or a blank profile, said the source,

2415
02:18:07,240 --> 02:18:09,800
Speaker 5: who did not want to be named. The Grinder user said,

2416
02:18:09,800 --> 02:18:12,520
Speaker 5: on a normal day, you'll encounter maybe ten users with

2417
02:18:12,600 --> 02:18:15,600
Speaker 5: no public profile. But Thursday, when he checked the app,

2418
02:18:15,879 --> 02:18:21,039
Speaker 5: he said he stopped counting at fifty blank profile photos unquote. Now,

2419
02:18:21,080 --> 02:18:23,959
Speaker 5: we don't have any official data yet on Grinder usage

2420
02:18:24,120 --> 02:18:26,600
Speaker 5: near the twenty twenty four rn C, only the down

2421
02:18:26,640 --> 02:18:30,360
Speaker 5: detector reports which our users submitted. But we do at

2422
02:18:30,440 --> 02:18:35,039
Speaker 5: least have data from the last in person convention in Cleveland, Ohio,

2423
02:18:35,120 --> 02:18:38,320
Speaker 5: all the way back in twenty sixteen. A Vice article

2424
02:18:38,360 --> 02:18:41,720
Speaker 5: by Candice Brian spoke with sources from Grinder and wrote

2425
02:18:41,760 --> 02:18:44,760
Speaker 5: that quote, Grinder usage near the Quick and Loans Arena

2426
02:18:45,000 --> 02:18:47,600
Speaker 5: showed a sixty six percent increase during the r and C.

2427
02:18:48,200 --> 02:18:52,400
Speaker 5: Other active destinations including Times Square, Capitol Hill, Disneyland, South Beach,

2428
02:18:52,440 --> 02:18:58,000
Speaker 5: and Trump Tower showed no comparable increase in active users. Unquote.

2429
02:18:58,160 --> 02:19:01,600
Speaker 5: Many of the local twinks and trains certainly were concerned

2430
02:19:01,640 --> 02:19:05,880
Speaker 5: about possible RNC freaks hiding on the app. People would

2431
02:19:05,920 --> 02:19:08,480
Speaker 5: often first ask me if I was a Republican or

2432
02:19:08,560 --> 02:19:10,720
Speaker 5: why I was in town before trying to hit on me.

2433
02:19:11,360 --> 02:19:14,440
Speaker 5: One such twink told me, quote, I would be surprised

2434
02:19:14,440 --> 02:19:16,600
Speaker 5: if you were a delegate or something, but I had

2435
02:19:16,600 --> 02:19:20,800
Speaker 5: to check. As the week progressed, more locals told me

2436
02:19:20,840 --> 02:19:23,040
Speaker 5: that they had found a handful of out and proud

2437
02:19:23,040 --> 02:19:27,840
Speaker 5: patriots online, but really not many. In fact, multiple Milwaukee

2438
02:19:27,920 --> 02:19:30,920
Speaker 5: locals I chatted with on Grinder did claim to notice

2439
02:19:30,920 --> 02:19:35,240
Speaker 5: an uptick in users, but mostly recognizable local users who

2440
02:19:35,280 --> 02:19:38,080
Speaker 5: were online for the same reason I was, to see

2441
02:19:38,080 --> 02:19:42,080
Speaker 5: if there was an influx of closet Republicans. Someone told me, quote,

2442
02:19:42,400 --> 02:19:45,520
Speaker 5: for the record, it's like three times busier here than normal.

2443
02:19:46,000 --> 02:19:48,360
Speaker 5: Everyone is out to see what the Republicans are up

2444
02:19:48,400 --> 02:19:51,600
Speaker 5: to and the chasers have come out of the woodwork unquote.

2445
02:19:52,320 --> 02:19:55,480
Speaker 5: Far from being the app's super Bowl. According to WECE,

2446
02:19:55,720 --> 02:19:59,440
Speaker 5: the twenty sixteen rnc's sixty six percent bump in activity

2447
02:19:59,800 --> 02:20:02,959
Speaker 5: is less than one half of the increase in Grinder

2448
02:20:03,000 --> 02:20:06,879
Speaker 5: activity that was seen at the last in person DNC,

2449
02:20:07,520 --> 02:20:11,160
Speaker 5: an event which was also a whole day shorter i'llreage

2450
02:20:11,160 --> 02:20:14,720
Speaker 5: from wece. Quote. However, from Sunday to Monday, the week

2451
02:20:14,760 --> 02:20:17,840
Speaker 5: of the Democratic National Convention, there was an even higher

2452
02:20:18,160 --> 02:20:21,959
Speaker 5: one hundred and forty eight percent increase in activity around

2453
02:20:22,000 --> 02:20:26,600
Speaker 5: the Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia unquote. It's also worth

2454
02:20:26,640 --> 02:20:29,879
Speaker 5: noting that of that sixty six percent increase in activity

2455
02:20:29,920 --> 02:20:32,879
Speaker 5: around the twenty sixteen r and C, only about forty

2456
02:20:32,920 --> 02:20:37,600
Speaker 5: percent of those users were visiting Cleveland, most were locals. Meanwhile,

2457
02:20:37,680 --> 02:20:40,680
Speaker 5: sixty percent of Grinder users active near the DNC in

2458
02:20:40,720 --> 02:20:44,920
Speaker 5: Philadelphia were visiting the city. Oh, and that quote from

2459
02:20:44,920 --> 02:20:49,240
Speaker 5: a Grinder executive calling the RNC Grinder's super Bowl, as

2460
02:20:49,280 --> 02:20:52,199
Speaker 5: well as George Sandos's other claim about Grinder purposely outing

2461
02:20:52,200 --> 02:20:57,640
Speaker 5: gay conservatives. Both of those claims originate from Twitter satire accounts.

2462
02:20:58,080 --> 02:20:59,800
Speaker 6: It is totally made up, pure fiction.

2463
02:21:00,440 --> 02:21:00,960
Speaker 11: It's fiction.

2464
02:21:01,480 --> 02:21:02,000
Speaker 6: It's fiction.

2465
02:21:02,480 --> 02:21:03,160
Speaker 9: We made it up.

2466
02:21:03,360 --> 02:21:04,240
Speaker 1: We made this one up.

2467
02:21:04,320 --> 02:21:07,080
Speaker 6: It's a made up tail, it's a total fabrication. It

2468
02:21:07,240 --> 02:21:07,840
Speaker 6: never happened.

2469
02:21:08,760 --> 02:21:12,200
Speaker 5: It's an urban legend that never happened. So no, the

2470
02:21:12,320 --> 02:21:16,200
Speaker 5: RNC is not grinders a super Bowl. I got messages

2471
02:21:16,240 --> 02:21:19,400
Speaker 5: from over one hundred and fifty different people. Over ninety

2472
02:21:19,440 --> 02:21:23,560
Speaker 5: percent of the messages I received and profiles visible online

2473
02:21:23,640 --> 02:21:27,560
Speaker 5: even while inside the Pfizer forum were from locals completely

2474
02:21:27,680 --> 02:21:31,480
Speaker 5: unaffiliated with the RNC, and any boost activity that can

2475
02:21:31,520 --> 02:21:34,280
Speaker 5: be attributed to people visiting for the RNC is a

2476
02:21:34,400 --> 02:21:37,959
Speaker 5: minuscule drop in the bucket compared to the proverbial orgy

2477
02:21:38,040 --> 02:21:41,600
Speaker 5: festival of out of town gay Democrats who travel to

2478
02:21:41,640 --> 02:21:45,439
Speaker 5: the DNC, And like, if you think about this logically,

2479
02:21:46,120 --> 02:21:49,240
Speaker 5: this shouldn't at all be surprising. The Republican Party has

2480
02:21:49,240 --> 02:21:52,000
Speaker 5: spent the past two years screaming about how all drag

2481
02:21:52,080 --> 02:21:55,119
Speaker 5: queens are child groomers, and though this was the first

2482
02:21:55,200 --> 02:21:58,200
Speaker 5: year the GOP has removed opposition to gay marriage from

2483
02:21:58,240 --> 02:22:02,039
Speaker 5: their party platform, they have massively increased their opposition to

2484
02:22:02,200 --> 02:22:05,400
Speaker 5: and attacks against trans people and really any display of

2485
02:22:05,440 --> 02:22:08,840
Speaker 5: a visible queerness like come on this is the Republican party.

2486
02:22:09,440 --> 02:22:13,680
Speaker 5: There's this kind of fucked up cultural conception that homophobic

2487
02:22:13,720 --> 02:22:17,960
Speaker 5: politicians must be so because they are secretly gay. And

2488
02:22:18,040 --> 02:22:21,720
Speaker 5: while there is the occasional like Lindsey Graham or repressed

2489
02:22:21,879 --> 02:22:26,480
Speaker 5: homosexual preacher, this is not the norm and all Republicans

2490
02:22:26,520 --> 02:22:31,160
Speaker 5: being secretly gay is not the driving force of legislative homophobia.

2491
02:22:31,600 --> 02:22:35,200
Speaker 5: It is an ideological drive, largely in furtherance of hegemonic

2492
02:22:35,280 --> 02:22:38,760
Speaker 5: Christian nationalism, and now for people like Elon Musk and more,

2493
02:22:38,800 --> 02:22:43,280
Speaker 5: young Republicans of fascistic notion of reproductive futurism built on

2494
02:22:43,320 --> 02:22:48,360
Speaker 5: fears that young people white people aren't having enough white babies,

2495
02:22:48,720 --> 02:22:51,800
Speaker 5: which they partially attribute to society becoming more accepting of

2496
02:22:51,840 --> 02:22:55,720
Speaker 5: gay and trans people, resulting in people having less reproductive

2497
02:22:56,040 --> 02:22:59,280
Speaker 5: or heterosexual sex. Never mind the fact that queer and

2498
02:22:59,280 --> 02:23:02,200
Speaker 5: trans people are often times can and do have children,

2499
02:23:02,600 --> 02:23:05,480
Speaker 5: which still doesn't seem to please these conservatives, as it

2500
02:23:05,480 --> 02:23:08,600
Speaker 5: doesn't align with their traditionalist view of the family unit.

2501
02:23:09,320 --> 02:23:12,720
Speaker 5: So No Grinder wasn't flooded with closeted Republicans because there

2502
02:23:12,760 --> 02:23:15,360
Speaker 5: simply isn't that many closeted Republicans that are going to

2503
02:23:15,400 --> 02:23:18,440
Speaker 5: be attending the RNC, and while there may not be

2504
02:23:18,879 --> 02:23:22,520
Speaker 5: as many Republicans as I thought there might be, I

2505
02:23:22,560 --> 02:23:25,440
Speaker 5: do believe that I have the bump in activity, albeit

2506
02:23:25,520 --> 02:23:29,840
Speaker 5: a smaller bump than rumored. Basically figured out based on

2507
02:23:29,920 --> 02:23:32,680
Speaker 5: my anecdotal experience and the reports of a handful of

2508
02:23:32,720 --> 02:23:35,680
Speaker 5: local Grinder users and journalists I talked with who were

2509
02:23:35,720 --> 02:23:38,960
Speaker 5: online during the twenty twenty four rn C, and considering

2510
02:23:38,959 --> 02:23:42,520
Speaker 5: the twenty sixteen Grinder data, I can report that merely

2511
02:23:42,560 --> 02:23:47,480
Speaker 5: a small minority of activity was due to ordinary RNZ attendees.

2512
02:23:48,120 --> 02:23:51,880
Speaker 5: The majority of activity was from locals who either regularly

2513
02:23:51,959 --> 02:23:55,520
Speaker 5: used Grinder or were specifically curious about who might be

2514
02:23:55,640 --> 02:24:00,320
Speaker 5: online during the RNC. I observed two more groups that

2515
02:24:00,360 --> 02:24:04,760
Speaker 5: would contribute to any noticeable increase in activity. Not everyone

2516
02:24:04,760 --> 02:24:08,039
Speaker 5: who attends the RNC are guests or delegates. A lot

2517
02:24:08,040 --> 02:24:10,800
Speaker 5: of people work at the convention center or work tech,

2518
02:24:11,440 --> 02:24:15,359
Speaker 5: and a sizeable chunk of people are like myself researchers, posters,

2519
02:24:15,400 --> 02:24:19,119
Speaker 5: or journalists who attend conventions like this for work. And lastly,

2520
02:24:19,600 --> 02:24:23,280
Speaker 5: the final group that fills out the bump in Grinder activity,

2521
02:24:23,800 --> 02:24:26,280
Speaker 5: one that for some reason didn't really expect to see

2522
02:24:26,320 --> 02:24:31,240
Speaker 5: upon arrival, but in retrospect makes total sense. Are cops

2523
02:24:31,879 --> 02:24:34,880
Speaker 5: so many cops? There were so many cops online at

2524
02:24:34,879 --> 02:24:38,360
Speaker 5: the RNC, just like delegates or reporters. They are coming

2525
02:24:38,440 --> 02:24:41,360
Speaker 5: to town from all around the country. There was cops

2526
02:24:41,480 --> 02:24:46,920
Speaker 5: or state troopers from Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, California, Indiana,

2527
02:24:47,000 --> 02:24:50,160
Speaker 5: and many more states, as well as US Capitol Police,

2528
02:24:50,240 --> 02:24:54,400
Speaker 5: Secret Service, TSA, DHS, and FBI. They were all in

2529
02:24:54,480 --> 02:24:57,440
Speaker 5: town as a part of the security detail. A few

2530
02:24:57,440 --> 02:25:00,000
Speaker 5: of the guys that messaged me I can absolutely confirm

2531
02:25:00,000 --> 02:25:02,920
Speaker 5: are one hundred percent police or some kind of military police.

2532
02:25:03,560 --> 02:25:06,520
Speaker 5: A thirty three year old cop or military guy quote

2533
02:25:06,760 --> 02:25:11,480
Speaker 5: looking for sexy bottoms with the tag's jock, military discreete

2534
02:25:11,520 --> 02:25:14,320
Speaker 5: and weightlifting, as well as many pictures of him in

2535
02:25:14,360 --> 02:25:16,840
Speaker 5: the gym. Said it in his bio that he was

2536
02:25:16,920 --> 02:25:21,879
Speaker 5: quote really into slim, skinny toned, and muscular people. He

2537
02:25:21,920 --> 02:25:26,560
Speaker 5: messaged me saying, Hey, now, I got a lot of

2538
02:25:27,040 --> 02:25:31,040
Speaker 5: haze in my inbox, which is not unusual for Grinder.

2539
02:25:31,560 --> 02:25:34,280
Speaker 5: You will probably mostly get hay as a message as

2540
02:25:34,320 --> 02:25:36,160
Speaker 5: well as just like, you know, a picture of someone's penis,

2541
02:25:36,360 --> 02:25:38,760
Speaker 5: but between a penis and hey, those are probably the

2542
02:25:38,760 --> 02:25:42,119
Speaker 5: two most received messages you will get on Grinder. There

2543
02:25:42,160 --> 02:25:46,039
Speaker 5: was another guy with a username DL military who said

2544
02:25:46,040 --> 02:25:48,520
Speaker 5: in his bio he was working security for the week

2545
02:25:48,800 --> 02:25:52,000
Speaker 5: and that Grinder messages had completely broke for him and

2546
02:25:52,040 --> 02:25:56,280
Speaker 5: to instead message him on Snapchat. The DL in DL

2547
02:25:56,320 --> 02:25:59,680
Speaker 5: military stands for down low. It's a tag that only

2548
02:25:59,760 --> 02:26:03,560
Speaker 5: the worst people on Grinder will use, mainly like self

2549
02:26:03,680 --> 02:26:07,400
Speaker 5: hating gay men who are closeted, and it's download because

2550
02:26:07,400 --> 02:26:09,800
Speaker 5: they don't want to be like publicly seen being gay.

2551
02:26:09,959 --> 02:26:13,199
Speaker 5: Just absolutely the worst. We do not fuck with DL,

2552
02:26:13,400 --> 02:26:16,960
Speaker 5: both literally and figuratively. There were a bunch of other

2553
02:26:17,200 --> 02:26:21,400
Speaker 5: non locals who I would describe as cop types. I

2554
02:26:21,440 --> 02:26:24,440
Speaker 5: can't one hundred percent say for sure that they are cops,

2555
02:26:24,840 --> 02:26:28,240
Speaker 5: but they have like the look, you know, like the look,

2556
02:26:28,320 --> 02:26:30,720
Speaker 5: the cop look. I don't know. They could also be

2557
02:26:30,760 --> 02:26:33,960
Speaker 5: like a bodyguard or work in private security. But one

2558
02:26:34,000 --> 02:26:38,080
Speaker 5: of these cop looking guys message to me asking if

2559
02:26:38,080 --> 02:26:40,280
Speaker 5: I was a trans guy, which I always love to see.

2560
02:26:40,280 --> 02:26:43,000
Speaker 5: It means I'm doing gender very well. And a few

2561
02:26:43,000 --> 02:26:47,400
Speaker 5: other cop types sent relatively boring messages. So yeah, a

2562
02:26:47,400 --> 02:26:50,200
Speaker 5: lot of cops, which is not completely surprising considering the

2563
02:26:50,240 --> 02:26:52,960
Speaker 5: fact that basically half the cops in the country were

2564
02:26:53,120 --> 02:26:56,800
Speaker 5: at the Republican National Convention in some form or another.

2565
02:26:57,800 --> 02:27:00,840
Speaker 5: A few final notes, Now, this really make up a

2566
02:27:00,879 --> 02:27:05,120
Speaker 5: sizable chunk of the Grinder population. But after saying I

2567
02:27:05,200 --> 02:27:08,199
Speaker 5: was just covering the RNC, a couple people on Grinder,

2568
02:27:08,360 --> 02:27:11,760
Speaker 5: just completely unprompted, told me that they were attending the

2569
02:27:11,800 --> 02:27:14,879
Speaker 5: protests against the RNC. Please do not do this. That's

2570
02:27:14,920 --> 02:27:18,440
Speaker 5: a horrible idea for multiple reasons. You gotta stop talking

2571
02:27:18,440 --> 02:27:22,000
Speaker 5: about your political activities on dating apps, especially Grinder, especially

2572
02:27:22,040 --> 02:27:28,119
Speaker 5: at the RNC. Horrible idea. Do not do this. And

2573
02:27:28,160 --> 02:27:33,039
Speaker 5: despite my lazy attempt at a young Republican disguised online profile,

2574
02:27:33,520 --> 02:27:35,680
Speaker 5: a few too many people did recognize me from Twitter

2575
02:27:35,760 --> 02:27:37,640
Speaker 5: or the pod, but they were very nice. They gave

2576
02:27:37,680 --> 02:27:39,880
Speaker 5: me some recommendations for what gay bars to check out

2577
02:27:39,920 --> 02:27:43,040
Speaker 5: after conventioned hours, and one person told me this interesting

2578
02:27:43,080 --> 02:27:46,119
Speaker 5: anecdote that I'd like to share. Quote, I don't think

2579
02:27:46,160 --> 02:27:48,760
Speaker 5: Trump is going to win. I can missed for Hillary

2580
02:27:48,760 --> 02:27:52,080
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen, and at least here it doesn't feel

2581
02:27:52,120 --> 02:27:55,320
Speaker 5: the same unquote. I thought that was a little interesting

2582
02:27:55,320 --> 02:27:58,520
Speaker 5: tibit that I received at probably round three am on Grinder,

2583
02:27:58,920 --> 02:28:02,080
Speaker 5: So there you go. Well, anyway, that was my RNC

2584
02:28:02,360 --> 02:28:05,880
Speaker 5: grinder experience. I'm sorry to report it is not the

2585
02:28:05,920 --> 02:28:09,240
Speaker 5: hotbed of closeted Republicans that we mean it to be.

2586
02:28:09,720 --> 02:28:13,400
Speaker 5: It's mostly local gaze, a few reporters and a few

2587
02:28:13,440 --> 02:28:16,800
Speaker 5: more cops. I do not think I'll be reporting on

2588
02:28:17,000 --> 02:28:20,959
Speaker 5: the DNC grinder, but I am curious to see if

2589
02:28:21,000 --> 02:28:25,280
Speaker 5: there is a sizable increase in activity as compared to

2590
02:28:25,720 --> 02:28:28,760
Speaker 5: the RNC Grinder, So I guess I will maybe posted

2591
02:28:28,800 --> 02:28:31,000
Speaker 5: by that on Twitter at Hungry bow Tie if you

2592
02:28:31,000 --> 02:28:34,160
Speaker 5: want updates on that. Anyway, stay safe out there. Be

2593
02:28:34,200 --> 02:28:37,400
Speaker 5: careful if you're ever on grinder. Please especially don't tell

2594
02:28:37,720 --> 02:28:41,320
Speaker 5: someone covering the RNC that you're attending any protests. But

2595
02:28:41,400 --> 02:28:43,480
Speaker 5: in general, be careful on these types of dating apps

2596
02:28:43,720 --> 02:28:48,960
Speaker 5: and I will see you on the other side. Message

2597
02:28:49,000 --> 02:28:54,800
Speaker 5: from Quickie Grinder said you were super close yesterday, wasn't stocking?

2598
02:28:54,840 --> 02:28:59,880
Speaker 5: I promise? Message from birthday present emoji I almost thought

2599
02:28:59,920 --> 02:29:04,440
Speaker 5: you were Josh Thomas. Message from anonymous wait are you

2600
02:29:04,600 --> 02:29:08,000
Speaker 5: pro or anti Republican? I'm not gonna lie. I mainly

2601
02:29:08,000 --> 02:29:09,959
Speaker 5: asked your politics because I thought you were cute, but

2602
02:29:10,000 --> 02:29:13,119
Speaker 5: I didn't want to hit on a Trumper message from

2603
02:29:13,160 --> 02:29:18,279
Speaker 5: older for young aren't all the delegates propositioning you? You're cute?

2604
02:29:19,000 --> 02:29:24,160
Speaker 5: Message from anonymous? Why establish a detlitarian state if I

2605
02:29:24,240 --> 02:29:28,240
Speaker 5: can't breed It's a dictator message from suck me off?

2606
02:29:29,200 --> 02:29:30,360
Speaker 5: I'm down for anything.

2607
02:29:31,080 --> 02:29:31,520
Speaker 11: Lol.

2608
02:29:31,680 --> 02:29:33,640
Speaker 5: Are you supporting Trump? Ha? Ha?

2609
02:29:51,520 --> 02:29:54,720
Speaker 6: Cool media.

2610
02:29:54,920 --> 02:29:57,000
Speaker 2: Welcome to you can Happen Hear a podcast trying to

2611
02:29:57,000 --> 02:29:59,240
Speaker 2: figure out why some of the most powerful people in

2612
02:29:59,240 --> 02:30:01,800
Speaker 2: the world to everyone to think that they're gamers. It

2613
02:30:01,879 --> 02:30:03,800
Speaker 2: is it is your host me along with me as

2614
02:30:03,840 --> 02:30:04,600
Speaker 2: Garrison Davis.

2615
02:30:05,000 --> 02:30:08,240
Speaker 5: I I've I've played a video game before. I'm not

2616
02:30:08,360 --> 02:30:10,119
Speaker 5: very powerful, but I I.

2617
02:30:10,160 --> 02:30:12,760
Speaker 2: Too, have played many several video games.

2618
02:30:13,040 --> 02:30:15,720
Speaker 5: See I wouldn't. I wouldn't say several. I've I've played

2619
02:30:15,760 --> 02:30:19,600
Speaker 5: like a few many. I have played too many, simply

2620
02:30:19,640 --> 02:30:24,720
Speaker 5: too many video games. So okay, this is this.

2621
02:30:24,600 --> 02:30:26,800
Speaker 2: Is in some ways kind of a lighter episode, because

2622
02:30:26,879 --> 02:30:28,840
Speaker 2: Jesus fucking Christ, everything's really depressing.

2623
02:30:29,120 --> 02:30:30,279
Speaker 5: Is something going on out there.

2624
02:30:30,600 --> 02:30:32,240
Speaker 2: It's all really bad, and one of the people who's

2625
02:30:32,280 --> 02:30:35,520
Speaker 2: been making everything really really bad is Elon Musk, who

2626
02:30:36,200 --> 02:30:39,280
Speaker 2: has somehow managed to like piss off the gamers, the

2627
02:30:39,320 --> 02:30:43,080
Speaker 2: PayPal guy, the PayPal guy, the owner of x.

2628
02:30:43,600 --> 02:30:46,520
Speaker 5: I've I've been I've been locked in my uh in

2629
02:30:46,600 --> 02:30:49,200
Speaker 5: my gamer cave for the past like five months. I've

2630
02:30:49,240 --> 02:30:52,400
Speaker 5: not left. I'm just hearing about this now. Yeah you might.

2631
02:30:52,440 --> 02:30:52,760
Speaker 5: You might.

2632
02:30:52,800 --> 02:30:54,560
Speaker 2: You might know of him as the guy who paid

2633
02:30:54,600 --> 02:30:56,680
Speaker 2: another guy to play Path of Exile two for him.

2634
02:30:56,720 --> 02:30:58,720
Speaker 5: We will get to that. See, I don't play those games.

2635
02:30:58,720 --> 02:31:04,080
Speaker 5: Those games are gay. I only play Nintendo Mecca games

2636
02:31:04,160 --> 02:31:10,120
Speaker 5: and hell Divers too, like a loser's that's reasonable, that's reasonable.

2637
02:31:10,160 --> 02:31:12,560
Speaker 5: Those are those are? Those are fine games. Oh and Sonic?

2638
02:31:12,680 --> 02:31:21,039
Speaker 2: Oh god, okay, pushing aside the subject to Sonic. So okay,

2639
02:31:21,160 --> 02:31:23,120
Speaker 2: I want to take a look a bit about why

2640
02:31:23,160 --> 02:31:26,560
Speaker 2: this sort of matters and why all of these fucking

2641
02:31:26,600 --> 02:31:29,760
Speaker 2: really rich assholes are sort of trying to pretend to

2642
02:31:29,800 --> 02:31:30,360
Speaker 2: be gamers.

2643
02:31:31,240 --> 02:31:33,440
Speaker 5: And I think the place to start here is with

2644
02:31:33,800 --> 02:31:34,679
Speaker 5: the fact.

2645
02:31:34,480 --> 02:31:37,360
Speaker 2: That gaming is in one hundred and eighty four point

2646
02:31:37,440 --> 02:31:41,039
Speaker 2: three billion dollar industry. Todd Harris, who is an extremely

2647
02:31:41,080 --> 02:31:43,879
Speaker 2: annoying guy but is also right, points out that this

2648
02:31:43,959 --> 02:31:47,280
Speaker 2: is more money than TV, movies and music combined. So

2649
02:31:47,400 --> 02:31:50,560
Speaker 2: this is the largest entertainment market in the world by

2650
02:31:51,480 --> 02:31:53,560
Speaker 2: such an astounding margin in terms of.

2651
02:31:53,560 --> 02:31:54,640
Speaker 5: Just dollar value.

2652
02:31:54,720 --> 02:31:58,800
Speaker 2: Right, something like three billion people play video games. It's

2653
02:31:59,040 --> 02:32:01,520
Speaker 2: mostly mobile game which makes the story I'm about to

2654
02:32:01,560 --> 02:32:04,959
Speaker 2: tell very weird because the actual people who play these

2655
02:32:05,000 --> 02:32:08,160
Speaker 2: games again, it's it's a lot of mobile games, and

2656
02:32:08,800 --> 02:32:11,720
Speaker 2: it's also mostly people who are women and non white.

2657
02:32:12,320 --> 02:32:14,840
Speaker 2: And yet, however, Comma, when people think about like the

2658
02:32:14,959 --> 02:32:18,680
Speaker 2: gamer TM, you are not thinking about.

2659
02:32:18,480 --> 02:32:20,720
Speaker 5: That, yeah, like as a political class.

2660
02:32:21,480 --> 02:32:24,520
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, you know, like when people say the word gamer, yeah,

2661
02:32:24,560 --> 02:32:27,800
Speaker 2: you're thinking of a bunch of weird in cell right

2662
02:32:27,840 --> 02:32:34,440
Speaker 2: wing dipshits who are white and suckass. And this is

2663
02:32:34,600 --> 02:32:36,760
Speaker 2: in large part because gamer Gate was sort of the first,

2664
02:32:36,800 --> 02:32:40,120
Speaker 2: like truly effective political mobilization of like the gamer as

2665
02:32:40,160 --> 02:32:42,160
Speaker 2: a political identity. And obviously this is you know, this

2666
02:32:42,240 --> 02:32:43,120
Speaker 2: is a fascist movement.

2667
02:32:44,040 --> 02:32:44,240
Speaker 10: Now.

2668
02:32:44,320 --> 02:32:45,880
Speaker 2: Part of the reason this works, and we're gonna be

2669
02:32:45,879 --> 02:32:48,440
Speaker 2: getting more into why this sort of works later, but

2670
02:32:48,520 --> 02:32:50,040
Speaker 2: part of the reason this works is that this is

2671
02:32:50,080 --> 02:32:53,240
Speaker 2: an extremely large group of people because it's new, no

2672
02:32:53,280 --> 02:32:55,520
Speaker 2: one has sort of defined it as a political identity before,

2673
02:32:55,560 --> 02:32:58,600
Speaker 2: and it's also filled with people who are extremely insecure

2674
02:32:59,320 --> 02:33:01,080
Speaker 2: about their ident He is a gamer because this is

2675
02:33:01,120 --> 02:33:04,879
Speaker 2: a relatively new medium, which is why everyone fucking either

2676
02:33:04,920 --> 02:33:08,520
Speaker 2: wants their games to be like treated like movies or

2677
02:33:08,560 --> 02:33:12,360
Speaker 2: some shit, or they want it to be sports because

2678
02:33:12,360 --> 02:33:15,200
Speaker 2: those are sort of cultural things with enormous amounts of money,

2679
02:33:15,200 --> 02:33:17,320
Speaker 2: and then that are taken like quote unquote more seriously.

2680
02:33:17,760 --> 02:33:18,320
Speaker 6: Yeah.

2681
02:33:18,480 --> 02:33:21,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the effect of this is that the

2682
02:33:21,800 --> 02:33:24,959
Speaker 2: cultural affect of being a gamer is extremely important to

2683
02:33:25,000 --> 02:33:28,480
Speaker 2: these people. And this is true actually really both on

2684
02:33:28,520 --> 02:33:30,400
Speaker 2: the left as much as it is on their right.

2685
02:33:30,440 --> 02:33:32,920
Speaker 2: There are a lot of like sort of political figures.

2686
02:33:33,400 --> 02:33:36,400
Speaker 2: I don't know, you're sort of like online people who

2687
02:33:36,800 --> 02:33:39,840
Speaker 2: come out of gaming, like like h Bomber guy, I

2688
02:33:39,879 --> 02:33:43,160
Speaker 2: guess an example, like Hassan. To some extent, there's just

2689
02:33:43,200 --> 02:33:46,080
Speaker 2: like a lot of people who are like gamers and

2690
02:33:46,080 --> 02:33:49,040
Speaker 2: then by sort of like become political. But on the

2691
02:33:49,080 --> 02:33:51,920
Speaker 2: other hand, gaming has always been like a not always

2692
02:33:52,000 --> 02:33:57,040
Speaker 2: but has traditionally been an extremely right wing space. Oh god, Garrison,

2693
02:33:57,280 --> 02:33:59,280
Speaker 2: I feel like you will actually appreciate how fucking shit

2694
02:33:59,360 --> 02:34:01,080
Speaker 2: this is. Have I told you the story about Kabob

2695
02:34:01,120 --> 02:34:04,560
Speaker 2: the German No, oh boy? Okay, So back in the

2696
02:34:04,600 --> 02:34:07,119
Speaker 2: dawn of Time, I played a lot of Hearthstone as

2697
02:34:07,160 --> 02:34:09,959
Speaker 2: a kid, and I was like, I wasn't like good.

2698
02:34:09,959 --> 02:34:12,320
Speaker 5: Is that like a resource management type game for like

2699
02:34:12,360 --> 02:34:13,199
Speaker 5: gay autistic people.

2700
02:34:13,600 --> 02:34:16,480
Speaker 2: No, this is this is the World of Warcraft card game.

2701
02:34:16,879 --> 02:34:21,119
Speaker 5: Okay, that's that's even more embarrassing. Yeah, really bad, really bad.

2702
02:34:21,160 --> 02:34:23,680
Speaker 2: I think I think I peaked at like two K

2703
02:34:23,920 --> 02:34:27,840
Speaker 2: Legend North America, which like technically speaking is like top

2704
02:34:27,959 --> 02:34:31,040
Speaker 2: like half a percent of players in the world's digital

2705
02:34:31,160 --> 02:34:35,520
Speaker 2: collectible card video game. Come on, oh yeah, yeah, but

2706
02:34:35,600 --> 02:34:38,520
Speaker 2: two k legend DNA is like fucking shitter ranks.

2707
02:34:38,560 --> 02:34:39,000
Speaker 5: It's bad.

2708
02:34:39,080 --> 02:34:41,480
Speaker 2: I was never like good, good at it. I was

2709
02:34:41,560 --> 02:34:45,959
Speaker 2: just like, okay, kind of but you know, this is

2710
02:34:46,040 --> 02:34:47,560
Speaker 2: like a thing that I did growing up, and something

2711
02:34:47,640 --> 02:34:49,840
Speaker 2: I remember is like all of the fucking Heartstone streamers

2712
02:34:49,879 --> 02:34:52,600
Speaker 2: and these are like really big streamers would play music

2713
02:34:52,640 --> 02:34:55,680
Speaker 2: from this guy they called Kobob the German and it

2714
02:34:55,760 --> 02:34:59,760
Speaker 2: turns out that his actual name was removed Kobob because

2715
02:34:59,760 --> 02:35:01,920
Speaker 2: he was a fucking German neo Nazi.

2716
02:35:02,600 --> 02:35:05,959
Speaker 5: Well many such cases, yeah.

2717
02:35:05,560 --> 02:35:07,680
Speaker 2: For people who like are not aware of of like

2718
02:35:08,680 --> 02:35:11,760
Speaker 2: mid twenty tens German fascism. Remove Kabob is like a

2719
02:35:12,040 --> 02:35:14,240
Speaker 2: slogan calling for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of.

2720
02:35:14,200 --> 02:35:15,359
Speaker 5: Turkish people in Germany.

2721
02:35:16,240 --> 02:35:18,760
Speaker 2: So great stuff, great stuff, this is just was just

2722
02:35:18,760 --> 02:35:20,640
Speaker 2: sort of like the water you were swimming in if

2723
02:35:20,680 --> 02:35:24,960
Speaker 2: you were a gamer in like the twenty tens. Now,

2724
02:35:26,040 --> 02:35:29,480
Speaker 2: this goes some way to explaining something that I noticed

2725
02:35:30,200 --> 02:35:35,600
Speaker 2: kind of recently, which is the absolutely bizarre obsession these

2726
02:35:35,640 --> 02:35:38,400
Speaker 2: tech CEOs like who want to be thought of as gamers.

2727
02:35:38,879 --> 02:35:40,440
Speaker 2: And so the two examples we're gonna look at are

2728
02:35:40,480 --> 02:35:42,480
Speaker 2: Sam bank and Freed's and this is this is really

2729
02:35:42,480 --> 02:35:44,400
Speaker 2: technically on both sides of the political spectrum. Right, We're

2730
02:35:44,400 --> 02:35:46,240
Speaker 2: gonna look at Sam Banker Freed, and we're gonna look

2731
02:35:46,320 --> 02:35:50,320
Speaker 2: at Elon musk are new Overlord.

2732
02:35:50,440 --> 02:35:50,960
Speaker 5: I guess.

2733
02:35:52,120 --> 02:35:54,640
Speaker 2: So we're gonna start with Sam Bankon Freed, and you know,

2734
02:35:54,879 --> 02:35:57,760
Speaker 2: as we go through what's happening here, we're gonna sort

2735
02:35:57,760 --> 02:36:00,520
Speaker 2: of unravel why it's so important to them to be

2736
02:36:00,560 --> 02:36:03,280
Speaker 2: seen as gamers. And I guess it is important to

2737
02:36:03,280 --> 02:36:06,240
Speaker 2: note like Sam Bankman Fried like is I guess like

2738
02:36:06,320 --> 02:36:08,160
Speaker 2: he is a gamer in the sense that like he's

2739
02:36:08,160 --> 02:36:10,800
Speaker 2: like addicted to video games effectively and just plays them

2740
02:36:10,920 --> 02:36:12,400
Speaker 2: fucking literally constantly.

2741
02:36:12,680 --> 02:36:14,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, he looks the part too. No offense.

2742
02:36:15,000 --> 02:36:16,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, before before he was put in prison for

2743
02:36:16,879 --> 02:36:18,760
Speaker 2: twenty five years for fraud.

2744
02:36:18,920 --> 02:36:22,080
Speaker 5: Well, probably not anymore. He's probably gonna get part of God.

2745
02:36:22,440 --> 02:36:25,200
Speaker 5: Maybe we'll see, we'll see. I don't know. Crypto vote,

2746
02:36:25,200 --> 02:36:28,800
Speaker 5: it's the most valuable voting block. Now all young Americans

2747
02:36:28,840 --> 02:36:31,119
Speaker 5: are too poor to open bank accounts, so they put

2748
02:36:31,120 --> 02:36:33,480
Speaker 5: all their money in crypto. So now they're gonna vote

2749
02:36:33,480 --> 02:36:35,400
Speaker 5: for whoever makes line go up.

2750
02:36:35,600 --> 02:36:40,120
Speaker 2: I'm gonna become the joker. So okay, then think about

2751
02:36:40,160 --> 02:36:43,320
Speaker 2: Sam Megan Frieda. For people who have forgotten who SBF is.

2752
02:36:43,480 --> 02:36:46,160
Speaker 2: He is the guy who was the founder of FTX,

2753
02:36:46,200 --> 02:36:48,439
Speaker 2: which was like a crypto change that was actually effectively

2754
02:36:48,440 --> 02:36:50,520
Speaker 2: a giant scam where he took everyone's money and betted

2755
02:36:50,560 --> 02:36:53,200
Speaker 2: on the stock market and lost it. And you know,

2756
02:36:54,160 --> 02:36:56,480
Speaker 2: Robert did a behind the bassardes on him. And one

2757
02:36:56,520 --> 02:36:58,520
Speaker 2: of the things that happens constantly is he's just like

2758
02:36:58,560 --> 02:37:01,480
Speaker 2: always fucking playing video games. He's playing this really dogshit

2759
02:37:01,520 --> 02:37:04,119
Speaker 2: game called Story Big Bralgy Meetings. He is a League

2760
02:37:04,120 --> 02:37:07,600
Speaker 2: of Legends addict, which is like as as as any

2761
02:37:07,600 --> 02:37:10,080
Speaker 2: gamer will know, a person who plays League of Legends

2762
02:37:10,080 --> 02:37:11,960
Speaker 2: all the time, like one of the worst categories people

2763
02:37:11,959 --> 02:37:15,240
Speaker 2: who's ever existed. And one of the things that that

2764
02:37:15,480 --> 02:37:18,480
Speaker 2: SBF did as as a sort of pr thing right,

2765
02:37:18,680 --> 02:37:22,720
Speaker 2: was let the author Michael Lewis of the Big shorts,

2766
02:37:23,040 --> 02:37:29,359
Speaker 2: We're Gonna get the moneyball in a second, blindside other books.

2767
02:37:29,600 --> 02:37:32,400
Speaker 5: Reparatable financial advice books, is what I'm hearing.

2768
02:37:33,879 --> 02:37:36,720
Speaker 2: But you know, like a very very powerful, influential and

2769
02:37:37,000 --> 02:37:39,440
Speaker 2: wealthy American journalists just let him sort of tag along

2770
02:37:39,600 --> 02:37:44,000
Speaker 2: and and Michael Lewis's sort of angle on understanding him.

2771
02:37:44,000 --> 02:37:47,040
Speaker 2: But this is something that like ICBF was like, you know,

2772
02:37:47,600 --> 02:37:49,560
Speaker 2: was like projecting right in order for this to be

2773
02:37:49,560 --> 02:37:51,520
Speaker 2: the image of him was him as like the gamer.

2774
02:37:52,080 --> 02:37:54,560
Speaker 2: And this sort of just like baffles Michael Lewis right,

2775
02:37:54,600 --> 02:37:58,959
Speaker 2: because he just like doesn't understand someone who just has

2776
02:37:59,000 --> 02:38:01,280
Speaker 2: ADHD and plays vide games all the time and doesn't

2777
02:38:01,320 --> 02:38:03,160
Speaker 2: give a shit. So you play video games stream meetings

2778
02:38:03,160 --> 02:38:05,120
Speaker 2: like no one has ever been like this. I have

2779
02:38:05,200 --> 02:38:08,160
Speaker 2: no idea what you mean. I actually don't play video

2780
02:38:08,120 --> 02:38:09,880
Speaker 2: games stream meetings because it is too obvious.

2781
02:38:11,760 --> 02:38:14,600
Speaker 5: But I play I play video games a once a week.

2782
02:38:15,040 --> 02:38:16,760
Speaker 5: That's that's that's kind of my Oh.

2783
02:38:16,640 --> 02:38:18,600
Speaker 2: God, this is the one part about Sam bankmon Free

2784
02:38:18,600 --> 02:38:20,480
Speaker 2: that's relatable to me. I play so many video games.

2785
02:38:20,560 --> 02:38:23,320
Speaker 2: It is my like antidepression strategy basically, like when I

2786
02:38:23,360 --> 02:38:25,960
Speaker 2: need to not think for a while, there's just MEO

2787
02:38:26,040 --> 02:38:28,120
Speaker 2: playing actually pat the faxtyle too. One of the games

2788
02:38:28,120 --> 02:38:30,119
Speaker 2: that we're gonna be fucking talking about today, something.

2789
02:38:29,879 --> 02:38:30,640
Speaker 5: That I play a lot of.

2790
02:38:30,720 --> 02:38:34,080
Speaker 2: I've done so much fucking gaming, Like God, I used

2791
02:38:34,120 --> 02:38:36,120
Speaker 2: to play this game called Smite, which is like a

2792
02:38:36,240 --> 02:38:38,000
Speaker 2: it's like a mob but like League of Legends but

2793
02:38:38,040 --> 02:38:40,040
Speaker 2: like third person. And I played so much Smite that

2794
02:38:40,040 --> 02:38:42,840
Speaker 2: they were pro showing my casual games. When when the

2795
02:38:42,920 --> 02:38:45,200
Speaker 2: Zoomer Revolution comes and they execute the gamers and they

2796
02:38:45,200 --> 02:38:47,640
Speaker 2: execute b I'm gonna be like, yeah, you know that's reasonable.

2797
02:38:47,879 --> 02:38:49,360
Speaker 2: Like I can't argue with that.

2798
02:38:49,440 --> 02:38:53,640
Speaker 5: I'll inform the council. I can't our next folks council meeting,

2799
02:38:53,879 --> 02:38:56,080
Speaker 5: I'll bring it to the table.

2800
02:38:56,800 --> 02:38:59,080
Speaker 2: But you know, so, so what what What what happens

2801
02:38:59,120 --> 02:39:01,040
Speaker 2: with this sort of thing is that is that Michael

2802
02:39:01,080 --> 02:39:04,760
Speaker 2: Lewis's image of SBF becomes as this gamer who's doing

2803
02:39:04,760 --> 02:39:09,160
Speaker 2: these completely incomprehensible things. He's mind must be so unbelievably brilliant. Yeah, totally,

2804
02:39:09,200 --> 02:39:12,080
Speaker 2: because he's just like playing fucking video games all the time.

2805
02:39:12,680 --> 02:39:14,720
Speaker 2: And and this gets to one of the aspects of

2806
02:39:14,760 --> 02:39:18,359
Speaker 2: why these people do this this sort of like pretending

2807
02:39:18,360 --> 02:39:19,840
Speaker 2: to be a gamer thing and and like and like

2808
02:39:19,920 --> 02:39:22,760
Speaker 2: SBF like is a gamer, right, but like why why

2809
02:39:22,760 --> 02:39:24,320
Speaker 2: they make us part of their cultural image, which is

2810
02:39:24,360 --> 02:39:26,680
Speaker 2: that a lot of the traditional media people, even though

2811
02:39:26,720 --> 02:39:31,960
Speaker 2: gaming is an enormous industry, it's it's extremely profitable and

2812
02:39:32,160 --> 02:39:37,160
Speaker 2: is enormously culturally powerful, it doesn't have the same kind

2813
02:39:37,200 --> 02:39:39,600
Speaker 2: of critical culture around. It doesn't exist that you would

2814
02:39:39,640 --> 02:39:41,160
Speaker 2: see or something like movies or.

2815
02:39:41,160 --> 02:39:45,680
Speaker 5: Like respectability in some way, except in like the reversed

2816
02:39:46,160 --> 02:39:50,160
Speaker 5: Sam Bankman freedway, where like the schlubbiness is part of

2817
02:39:50,200 --> 02:39:52,880
Speaker 5: what makes him like an extent your genius, right, like

2818
02:39:52,879 --> 02:39:55,640
Speaker 5: like like that era of like Silicon Valley guy. Yeah,

2819
02:39:55,680 --> 02:39:58,800
Speaker 5: that's like he's he's so different, right, Like he's he's

2820
02:39:58,840 --> 02:40:01,080
Speaker 5: he's not like put together, and this like shows how

2821
02:40:01,120 --> 02:40:03,720
Speaker 5: he's like a new and innovative thinker. So it's like

2822
02:40:03,720 --> 02:40:05,600
Speaker 5: it's kind of like a double edged sword in like

2823
02:40:06,040 --> 02:40:07,160
Speaker 5: that specific way.

2824
02:40:07,360 --> 02:40:09,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, this is all a feedback loop, right, because

2825
02:40:09,640 --> 02:40:12,320
Speaker 2: like part of it not being respectable is that someone

2826
02:40:12,360 --> 02:40:14,760
Speaker 2: like Michael Lewis, right, who was like as establishment of

2827
02:40:14,800 --> 02:40:17,240
Speaker 2: a journalist as there's ever been these people don't play

2828
02:40:17,280 --> 02:40:19,440
Speaker 2: video games. They're one of the figures people who just

2829
02:40:19,440 --> 02:40:22,480
Speaker 2: like don't game. Are these like traditional mainstream sort of

2830
02:40:22,520 --> 02:40:25,280
Speaker 2: access journalists, right, And so they run into this shit

2831
02:40:25,320 --> 02:40:27,360
Speaker 2: and they have no fucking idea what the hell is

2832
02:40:27,400 --> 02:40:30,600
Speaker 2: going on, And it's just really really easily just sort

2833
02:40:30,600 --> 02:40:33,560
Speaker 2: of like bamboozle them by just doing something that any gamer, like,

2834
02:40:33,959 --> 02:40:35,840
Speaker 2: you know, you like, you show a gamer like a

2835
02:40:35,920 --> 02:40:38,240
Speaker 2: League of Legends addict, and they will instantly be able

2836
02:40:38,240 --> 02:40:40,440
Speaker 2: to just like read this person like a fucking book. Also,

2837
02:40:40,440 --> 02:40:42,920
Speaker 2: by the way, gaming addiction like is like kind of

2838
02:40:42,920 --> 02:40:44,959
Speaker 2: a fake thing. I'm like mostly joking here, but also

2839
02:40:45,080 --> 02:40:48,800
Speaker 2: like League of Legends makes you a worse person. It

2840
02:40:48,920 --> 02:40:51,280
Speaker 2: simply does. You just get mad all the time. I've

2841
02:40:51,280 --> 02:40:53,440
Speaker 2: known too many League Legisp players of my goddamn life.

2842
02:40:53,680 --> 02:40:54,920
Speaker 2: Holy shit, terrible game.

2843
02:40:55,240 --> 02:41:00,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, but arcane though, right, All right, oh god.

2844
02:41:00,400 --> 02:41:02,080
Speaker 2: Okay, We're gonna take an ad break, and then when

2845
02:41:02,080 --> 02:41:04,360
Speaker 2: I come back, I'm gonna explain part of why this worked,

2846
02:41:04,360 --> 02:41:07,080
Speaker 2: which is the unique incompetence of Michael lewis Well.

2847
02:41:07,200 --> 02:41:10,039
Speaker 5: I look forward to that. I love hearing about unique incompetence.

2848
02:41:20,280 --> 02:41:22,760
Speaker 2: So we are back now, Okay, Obviously. Part of the

2849
02:41:22,760 --> 02:41:24,560
Speaker 2: reason this works too is you know, as I've been

2850
02:41:24,560 --> 02:41:27,240
Speaker 2: talking about, right, like these these really out of touch

2851
02:41:27,560 --> 02:41:30,400
Speaker 2: sort of like mainstream journalists who just don't understand an

2852
02:41:30,640 --> 02:41:31,560
Speaker 2: enormous market.

2853
02:41:31,840 --> 02:41:32,000
Speaker 6: Right.

2854
02:41:33,000 --> 02:41:35,600
Speaker 2: But Lewis is in some sense kind of a special

2855
02:41:35,600 --> 02:41:41,279
Speaker 2: case because he is really truly an unbelievably glible dumbass.

2856
02:41:42,160 --> 02:41:43,879
Speaker 2: And to get an understanding of this, I'm gonna go

2857
02:41:43,920 --> 02:41:46,280
Speaker 2: into something that Lewis in theory understands a lot better,

2858
02:41:46,280 --> 02:41:47,000
Speaker 2: which is sports.

2859
02:41:47,160 --> 02:41:49,000
Speaker 5: So Lewis has.

2860
02:41:48,800 --> 02:41:51,320
Speaker 2: Written two of the most famous books ever written about sports,

2861
02:41:51,360 --> 02:41:54,280
Speaker 2: right He wrote Moneyball, which is the book that we're

2862
02:41:54,280 --> 02:41:56,039
Speaker 2: gonna be talking about, which I'll get to in a second.

2863
02:41:56,040 --> 02:41:57,760
Speaker 2: And he wrote The Blindside, which is another book that

2864
02:41:58,120 --> 02:42:00,680
Speaker 2: they talk about on Behind the Bass Riaging listen to that,

2865
02:42:01,240 --> 02:42:03,880
Speaker 2: But I want to go in on Moneybomb. Moneyball is

2866
02:42:03,879 --> 02:42:07,720
Speaker 2: supposed to be this book about how this underdog athletics

2867
02:42:07,800 --> 02:42:11,320
Speaker 2: team invented like baseball metrics, and they use sabermetrics to

2868
02:42:11,440 --> 02:42:13,960
Speaker 2: like like build this roster out of nothing that like

2869
02:42:14,080 --> 02:42:16,960
Speaker 2: went to the playoffs and did really well, and and

2870
02:42:17,080 --> 02:42:19,000
Speaker 2: like I'm not going to get into the extent to

2871
02:42:19,040 --> 02:42:21,680
Speaker 2: which this was kind of a mirage about that Oakland

2872
02:42:21,680 --> 02:42:24,160
Speaker 2: A's team, Like whatever. I'm not gonna argue about baseball statistics.

2873
02:42:24,640 --> 02:42:27,000
Speaker 2: What I will argue about is that one of the

2874
02:42:27,080 --> 02:42:29,879
Speaker 2: characters in this fucking book, right, who's one of the

2875
02:42:29,920 --> 02:42:32,440
Speaker 2: sort of like underdog geniuses and like Michael Lewis loves

2876
02:42:32,480 --> 02:42:36,560
Speaker 2: to find, right, is this guy named Paul Pedesta. He

2877
02:42:36,680 --> 02:42:38,480
Speaker 2: is he is like one of the main figures in

2878
02:42:38,520 --> 02:42:41,119
Speaker 2: this book. He's like, he's kind of like an assistant coach. Basically,

2879
02:42:41,240 --> 02:42:42,200
Speaker 2: what baseball team is this?

2880
02:42:42,240 --> 02:42:42,560
Speaker 11: Oh?

2881
02:42:42,560 --> 02:42:45,680
Speaker 2: This is the Oakland Athletics. Are now the last Vegas

2882
02:42:45,720 --> 02:42:47,400
Speaker 2: Athletics or some shit. I don't know that they moved

2883
02:42:47,440 --> 02:42:50,000
Speaker 2: to Vegas. I don't know what they're called the athletics now. No, no,

2884
02:42:50,040 --> 02:42:51,520
Speaker 2: they are originally called the athletic I don't know what

2885
02:42:51,520 --> 02:42:53,400
Speaker 2: they're called now. They've always been the well except what

2886
02:42:53,400 --> 02:42:56,000
Speaker 2: just calls them the Oakland A's. They've been the A's forever.

2887
02:42:56,080 --> 02:42:59,320
Speaker 2: But yeah, they've they've they've also been stolen. Las Vegas

2888
02:42:59,360 --> 02:43:01,680
Speaker 2: has now stolen both the football team and the baseball

2889
02:43:01,720 --> 02:43:02,840
Speaker 2: team of Oakland.

2890
02:43:03,000 --> 02:43:05,360
Speaker 5: Oh see, I was thinking of the football team. Yeah,

2891
02:43:05,560 --> 02:43:07,720
Speaker 5: because I was like, wait a minute, didn't didn't Las

2892
02:43:07,800 --> 02:43:09,400
Speaker 5: Vegas Thetors go there too.

2893
02:43:09,680 --> 02:43:11,680
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, they stole both of them.

2894
02:43:11,720 --> 02:43:14,080
Speaker 5: That's what I was thinking. And I am more of

2895
02:43:14,080 --> 02:43:15,959
Speaker 5: a baseball head than a football head.

2896
02:43:16,040 --> 02:43:18,000
Speaker 2: But yeah, so okay, unfortunately we're gonna be talking about

2897
02:43:18,000 --> 02:43:21,200
Speaker 2: football here. So this guy, right, Paul Padesta's like one

2898
02:43:21,200 --> 02:43:24,480
Speaker 2: of these sort of geniuses she later goes on to be.

2899
02:43:25,840 --> 02:43:27,720
Speaker 2: It's kind of unclear exactly what he was doing in

2900
02:43:27,720 --> 02:43:31,519
Speaker 2: the organization, but he is hired by the just absolutely

2901
02:43:31,680 --> 02:43:35,760
Speaker 2: wretched the football franchise, the Cleveland Browns. Now to get

2902
02:43:35,760 --> 02:43:38,480
Speaker 2: an understanding of how wretched the Cleveland Browns are. My

2903
02:43:38,600 --> 02:43:40,680
Speaker 2: opening savment for him on the Browns is it is

2904
02:43:40,760 --> 02:43:45,200
Speaker 2: genuinely unclear how responsible Paul Podesta is for the Browns

2905
02:43:45,280 --> 02:43:47,920
Speaker 2: over the course of two seasons, going one in thirty one,

2906
02:43:48,640 --> 02:43:52,000
Speaker 2: which is a feat of like just absolutely sucking shit

2907
02:43:52,240 --> 02:43:55,080
Speaker 2: that is unrivaled in any other major American sports. I

2908
02:43:55,080 --> 02:43:58,400
Speaker 2: think until the fucking moon crashes into the earth, no

2909
02:43:58,440 --> 02:44:01,240
Speaker 2: one is going to fucking go one in thirty one

2910
02:44:01,480 --> 02:44:03,520
Speaker 2: in two clus two seasons of football. Again, so again,

2911
02:44:03,560 --> 02:44:06,080
Speaker 2: that is a one in fifteen season followed by an

2912
02:44:06,120 --> 02:44:09,160
Speaker 2: owen sixteen season. The second oh to sixteen season ever

2913
02:44:09,800 --> 02:44:12,160
Speaker 2: unclear how responsible for this he is. But what he

2914
02:44:12,240 --> 02:44:16,320
Speaker 2: is responsible for is the Shaun Watson trade. Okay, it's

2915
02:44:16,320 --> 02:44:17,840
Speaker 2: like mea, why the fuck you're talking about this? Part

2916
02:44:17,920 --> 02:44:19,840
Speaker 2: of this is also like these people are just evil.

2917
02:44:20,520 --> 02:44:24,080
Speaker 2: Deshaun Watson is a serial sexual predator. I couldn't get

2918
02:44:24,080 --> 02:44:27,480
Speaker 2: an accurate estimate of how many women, specifically massage therapists

2919
02:44:27,480 --> 02:44:29,840
Speaker 2: mostly have accused him of sexual assault. He is like

2920
02:44:29,920 --> 02:44:32,360
Speaker 2: one of the worst people in the entire NFL, which

2921
02:44:32,400 --> 02:44:35,039
Speaker 2: is a league of a lot of people who absolutely

2922
02:44:35,040 --> 02:44:37,680
Speaker 2: fucking suck shit. So so that that's the first thing

2923
02:44:37,720 --> 02:44:40,000
Speaker 2: you have to understand about Watson's that he is just

2924
02:44:40,600 --> 02:44:44,200
Speaker 2: really fucking like morally reprehensible, right. He is like a

2925
02:44:44,240 --> 02:44:47,240
Speaker 2: bad enough sexual predator that the NFL actually fucking suspended

2926
02:44:47,280 --> 02:44:51,280
Speaker 2: him for a season. And Paul Podesta, who again is

2927
02:44:51,320 --> 02:44:54,039
Speaker 2: the guy whom Michael Lewis is supposed to be like touting,

2928
02:44:54,120 --> 02:44:57,400
Speaker 2: is like this genius analytics guy, decides that he is

2929
02:44:57,480 --> 02:44:59,280
Speaker 2: going to set up this deal for his team to

2930
02:44:59,320 --> 02:45:01,600
Speaker 2: trade for DeShawn Watson, who've been on the Texans, and again,

2931
02:45:01,680 --> 02:45:04,879
Speaker 2: like Garrison, like, imagine how evil you have to be

2932
02:45:04,959 --> 02:45:10,240
Speaker 2: for the Houston Texans to trade you on fucking moral grounds, Nia.

2933
02:45:10,360 --> 02:45:13,400
Speaker 5: Do you expect me to know anything about the Houston Texans.

2934
02:45:13,400 --> 02:45:16,240
Speaker 2: It is a team from Houston, Texas.

2935
02:45:16,040 --> 02:45:18,480
Speaker 5: That's all you need to know about this. And they

2936
02:45:18,640 --> 02:45:21,720
Speaker 5: traded this guy. Hey, at least it's not Austin. No

2937
02:45:21,760 --> 02:45:23,600
Speaker 5: offense to our Austin listeners.

2938
02:45:23,800 --> 02:45:27,879
Speaker 2: They fucking traded this guy, right, and popadest to orchestrates

2939
02:45:27,920 --> 02:45:30,520
Speaker 2: this trade that is three is it is the worst

2940
02:45:30,520 --> 02:45:31,920
Speaker 2: trade in the history of football.

2941
02:45:31,959 --> 02:45:33,160
Speaker 5: It is three first.

2942
02:45:32,959 --> 02:45:35,120
Speaker 2: Round picks, two thirds, two third round picks, and a

2943
02:45:35,120 --> 02:45:37,440
Speaker 2: fourth round pick. And they hand this guy, who, again

2944
02:45:37,440 --> 02:45:40,880
Speaker 2: I kind of emphasize this enough, is a serial sexual predator, right,

2945
02:45:41,200 --> 02:45:45,279
Speaker 2: they hand him two hundred and thirty million guaranteed dollars,

2946
02:45:45,640 --> 02:45:49,080
Speaker 2: the largest guaranteed salary the history of the NFL. So okay, So,

2947
02:45:49,240 --> 02:45:51,440
Speaker 2: how does Deshaun Watson, like again, this guy who's being

2948
02:45:51,480 --> 02:45:54,200
Speaker 2: held up by the guy who is now laundering being

2949
02:45:54,200 --> 02:45:56,280
Speaker 2: a gamer as like the great symbol of sort of

2950
02:45:56,320 --> 02:45:58,720
Speaker 2: like cultural like being a rogue outsider.

2951
02:45:58,800 --> 02:45:59,760
Speaker 5: Right, how does.

2952
02:45:59,680 --> 02:46:03,760
Speaker 2: Deshaun Watson his greatest fucking project due on the field.

2953
02:46:04,000 --> 02:46:06,199
Speaker 2: So in his first season, he basically got injured immediately.

2954
02:46:06,840 --> 02:46:10,320
Speaker 2: It is second season, in weeks one through five out

2955
02:46:10,320 --> 02:46:14,040
Speaker 2: of out of seven hundred and fifty nine quarterbacks. Since

2956
02:46:14,040 --> 02:46:16,680
Speaker 2: the year two thousand, to start weeks one through five

2957
02:46:16,720 --> 02:46:20,000
Speaker 2: out of again seven hundred and fifty nine quarterbacks, he

2958
02:46:20,160 --> 02:46:23,560
Speaker 2: ranks seven hundred and fifty three out of seven hundred

2959
02:46:23,600 --> 02:46:28,000
Speaker 2: and fifty nine EPA for dropback seven hundred and fifty

2960
02:46:28,040 --> 02:46:30,440
Speaker 2: three out of seven hundred and fifty nine. They traded

2961
02:46:30,480 --> 02:46:33,480
Speaker 2: three first round picks for this guy. He has a

2962
02:46:33,640 --> 02:46:37,240
Speaker 2: mind boggling an EPA of negative point three, which means

2963
02:46:37,240 --> 02:46:39,680
Speaker 2: every time the serial sexual predator drops back to make

2964
02:46:39,720 --> 02:46:43,080
Speaker 2: a pass, they are expected to get point three less

2965
02:46:43,160 --> 02:46:45,279
Speaker 2: points than an average team would.

2966
02:46:45,879 --> 02:46:49,320
Speaker 5: How did you trick me into being on a sports episode?

2967
02:46:49,760 --> 02:46:51,520
Speaker 5: I only agreed to this because I thought it was

2968
02:46:51,680 --> 02:46:53,200
Speaker 5: video game. Don't worry.

2969
02:46:53,200 --> 02:46:55,240
Speaker 2: We're we're we're we're almost We're almost done with the

2970
02:46:55,280 --> 02:46:57,440
Speaker 2: sports part of it. But there, I promise there is

2971
02:46:57,520 --> 02:47:00,400
Speaker 2: actually a reason why I'm doing this, which is which

2972
02:47:00,400 --> 02:47:02,680
Speaker 2: is the argument that's that that sports and the sports

2973
02:47:02,680 --> 02:47:05,240
Speaker 2: and gaming actually serve very very similar cultural roles for

2974
02:47:05,280 --> 02:47:05,600
Speaker 2: the right.

2975
02:47:06,000 --> 02:47:09,480
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, yes, I understand that. I can I

2976
02:47:09,720 --> 02:47:10,440
Speaker 5: can see that.

2977
02:47:10,680 --> 02:47:12,560
Speaker 2: Yes, also, I've always wanted to fuck you can played

2978
02:47:12,560 --> 02:47:13,880
Speaker 2: about this on area, and this is this is the

2979
02:47:13,879 --> 02:47:15,440
Speaker 2: best fucky chance I've ever gonna get.

2980
02:47:15,640 --> 02:47:18,119
Speaker 5: So Jesus fucking because it's like what I talk about

2981
02:47:18,160 --> 02:47:20,959
Speaker 5: like movies or something. Is this, yes, yes, this is

2982
02:47:20,959 --> 02:47:22,840
Speaker 5: what it feels like. Is this what I sound like?

2983
02:47:23,760 --> 02:47:24,400
Speaker 5: Yes it is.

2984
02:47:24,440 --> 02:47:26,400
Speaker 2: It is absolutely what you sound like. So this guy

2985
02:47:26,560 --> 02:47:29,720
Speaker 2: is like a generationally awful quarterback. They sign away basically

2986
02:47:29,760 --> 02:47:32,080
Speaker 2: the entire future of this team hand this guy who

2987
02:47:32,120 --> 02:47:34,720
Speaker 2: is a serial sexual predator two hundred and thirty million dollars.

2988
02:47:34,720 --> 02:47:37,640
Speaker 2: And this is the guy that fucking Michael Lewis expects

2989
02:47:37,640 --> 02:47:40,480
Speaker 2: you to think is like a fucking analytics genius. And

2990
02:47:40,720 --> 02:47:43,440
Speaker 2: this all comes back to again, like you know, the

2991
02:47:43,640 --> 02:47:46,480
Speaker 2: sort of mythology, the basic mythology of the nerd is

2992
02:47:46,480 --> 02:47:49,800
Speaker 2: that they're like picked on, like by the jock or whatever. Right,

2993
02:47:49,800 --> 02:47:51,440
Speaker 2: That's that's like that's like the fundamental base of their

2994
02:47:51,480 --> 02:47:52,959
Speaker 2: mythology that there's are like oppressed by this.

2995
02:47:53,040 --> 02:47:54,720
Speaker 5: But like it's just like.

2996
02:47:54,959 --> 02:47:58,240
Speaker 2: The same masculinity bullshit all the way down, And you

2997
02:47:58,280 --> 02:48:01,520
Speaker 2: can watch, like, just like the worst people in fucking history,

2998
02:48:02,240 --> 02:48:05,760
Speaker 2: this trick literally exactly the same people into thinking that

2999
02:48:05,760 --> 02:48:09,160
Speaker 2: they're fucking geniuses by using both of these fucking affects.

3000
02:48:09,680 --> 02:48:12,320
Speaker 2: So I want to read something, you know in looking

3001
02:48:12,400 --> 02:48:15,040
Speaker 2: at the way that this stuff functions, the way that

3002
02:48:15,200 --> 02:48:19,400
Speaker 2: gaming functions, like specifically in the culture, and you know

3003
02:48:19,640 --> 02:48:23,320
Speaker 2: why these people choose to use gaming as like you

3004
02:48:23,320 --> 02:48:25,640
Speaker 2: knows as the sort of affect they're trying to project

3005
02:48:25,680 --> 02:48:27,760
Speaker 2: into the world. I want to read something by a

3006
02:48:27,760 --> 02:48:29,960
Speaker 2: friend of the show, Vicky Osterwel and a piece called

3007
02:48:29,959 --> 02:48:33,840
Speaker 2: game Boys. Video games also emerge at a time when

3008
02:48:33,879 --> 02:48:39,160
Speaker 2: technology facilitates an increasingly administered life in which alienation and

3009
02:48:39,240 --> 02:48:43,680
Speaker 2: isolation feel like a prerequisite to social engagement. Consumer choice

3010
02:48:43,720 --> 02:48:47,520
Speaker 2: is a form of control. An unbounded economic competition produces

3011
02:48:47,520 --> 02:48:52,080
Speaker 2: widespread anxiety to structure as pleasurable the repetition, learning, and

3012
02:48:52,160 --> 02:48:56,039
Speaker 2: boredom that one was mastered to live under current economic conditions.

3013
02:48:56,640 --> 02:48:59,960
Speaker 2: Games rely on affects, moods, and ideas that are capable

3014
02:48:59,959 --> 02:49:03,040
Speaker 2: of producing not only forms of violence directed towards non

3015
02:49:03,040 --> 02:49:07,480
Speaker 2: normative groups, but also forms of intimacy, fantasy, and play

3016
02:49:07,520 --> 02:49:11,840
Speaker 2: that point towards the horizon outside of capital's clutches. Games

3017
02:49:11,920 --> 02:49:15,200
Speaker 2: provide different compensations for people who are differently situated in

3018
02:49:15,240 --> 02:49:19,439
Speaker 2: the social hierarchy. They give white men aggrandizing power inventions

3019
02:49:19,440 --> 02:49:23,120
Speaker 2: fantasies that modulate their sense of self importance under conditions

3020
02:49:23,120 --> 02:49:26,080
Speaker 2: that disempower them, but they are also capable of giving

3021
02:49:26,160 --> 02:49:29,240
Speaker 2: everyone else the fantasy of an alternative to white supremacist

3022
02:49:29,320 --> 02:49:34,240
Speaker 2: patriarchal capitalism. This has been particularly clear in how queer creators, writers,

3023
02:49:34,240 --> 02:49:37,080
Speaker 2: and fans have found space in and around games, despite

3024
02:49:37,080 --> 02:49:41,600
Speaker 2: the organized harassment campaigns, intensely misogynist industry advertising campaigns, and

3025
02:49:41,640 --> 02:49:44,920
Speaker 2: widespread critical and cultural degradation of games that aren't played

3026
02:49:44,920 --> 02:49:48,240
Speaker 2: by CIS men. So, I think the important thing here,

3027
02:49:48,240 --> 02:49:50,800
Speaker 2: and this is something important to remember both for Sambap

3028
02:49:50,840 --> 02:49:53,840
Speaker 2: been freed and also for the construction of right wing

3029
02:49:53,879 --> 02:49:56,400
Speaker 2: gaming movements in general, and for what we're going to

3030
02:49:56,400 --> 02:49:59,920
Speaker 2: talk about with Elon Musk, is that gaming is content

3031
02:50:00,040 --> 02:50:02,920
Speaker 2: tested ground right. As much as we think of gamers

3032
02:50:03,000 --> 02:50:06,200
Speaker 2: as like right wingers right, there are a lot of

3033
02:50:06,440 --> 02:50:08,160
Speaker 2: what you would call to like traditionally sort of left

3034
02:50:08,160 --> 02:50:10,960
Speaker 2: looming demographics that play video games and have made spaces

3035
02:50:11,040 --> 02:50:14,240
Speaker 2: here because as much as they are in some ways

3036
02:50:14,280 --> 02:50:16,440
Speaker 2: like this force of discipline that like is something that

3037
02:50:16,640 --> 02:50:20,280
Speaker 2: you learn, the kinds of like, ability to tolerate boredom

3038
02:50:20,280 --> 02:50:23,200
Speaker 2: and repetition and things like that that you know you

3039
02:50:23,320 --> 02:50:26,959
Speaker 2: use for fucking work, they're also a thing that people

3040
02:50:27,120 --> 02:50:31,800
Speaker 2: use to like escape the fucking hell world totally. And like,

3041
02:50:31,840 --> 02:50:34,480
Speaker 2: I mean I know this, right, Like I am fucking

3042
02:50:34,720 --> 02:50:37,000
Speaker 2: like I'm a Chinese, chances remen better, he's better at

3043
02:50:37,040 --> 02:50:38,760
Speaker 2: video games, and both the people have been to be

3044
02:50:38,760 --> 02:50:40,440
Speaker 2: fucking talking about in the story, right.

3045
02:50:40,360 --> 02:50:42,400
Speaker 5: Like, well, I heard, I heard his Path of Exile

3046
02:50:42,480 --> 02:50:43,959
Speaker 5: character was actually quite advanced.

3047
02:50:44,040 --> 02:50:45,760
Speaker 2: But oh, we're gonna we're gonna talk about the Path

3048
02:50:45,800 --> 02:50:48,320
Speaker 2: of Exile character fucking next, you know. But but I mean

3049
02:50:48,360 --> 02:50:50,800
Speaker 2: it's it's worth mentioning like speed running, right, which is

3050
02:50:50,840 --> 02:50:53,599
Speaker 2: a very very trans genre.

3051
02:50:53,440 --> 02:50:57,240
Speaker 5: Competitive gaming in general, competitive fighting games. Uh yeah, it depends.

3052
02:50:57,360 --> 02:50:59,000
Speaker 2: It depends a lot on the genre. But yeah, like

3053
02:50:59,040 --> 02:51:02,800
Speaker 2: competitive fighting game like yeah, Melee, I'm gonna briefly mention

3054
02:51:02,879 --> 02:51:05,560
Speaker 2: Sonic Fox, who is a black, non binary furry who's

3055
02:51:05,600 --> 02:51:07,520
Speaker 2: like one of the greatest fighting game players of all time,

3056
02:51:08,200 --> 02:51:12,360
Speaker 2: incredibly beloved, the only person in history ever to beat

3057
02:51:12,360 --> 02:51:16,040
Speaker 2: someone thirteen to zero in a first to eleven absolute legends, right,

3058
02:51:16,080 --> 02:51:18,480
Speaker 2: But you know, these are the people that these sort

3059
02:51:18,520 --> 02:51:21,520
Speaker 2: of like fascist adjacent people are trying to drive out

3060
02:51:21,600 --> 02:51:23,480
Speaker 2: so they can use gaming as like as a sort

3061
02:51:23,480 --> 02:51:27,080
Speaker 2: of cultural force. And this functions both in gaming and

3062
02:51:27,240 --> 02:51:29,879
Speaker 2: also fuck it in real life. Right now, these people

3063
02:51:29,920 --> 02:51:32,080
Speaker 2: are in power, and you know who else is in power.

3064
02:51:32,120 --> 02:51:34,119
Speaker 2: It's a product and services to support this podcast.

3065
02:51:34,360 --> 02:51:47,560
Speaker 11: All Hail, we are back now.

3066
02:51:47,640 --> 02:51:50,080
Speaker 2: Obviously, the other part of this, you know, we've talked

3067
02:51:50,120 --> 02:51:52,160
Speaker 2: of it. We've talked mostly sort of about racial politics,

3068
02:51:52,160 --> 02:51:54,960
Speaker 2: but there's there's an incredible sort of gender politics in gaming.

3069
02:51:55,560 --> 02:51:57,520
Speaker 2: And you know the thing about gaming, right is that

3070
02:51:57,640 --> 02:52:01,840
Speaker 2: it is to some extent a tool that people use

3071
02:52:01,920 --> 02:52:04,480
Speaker 2: to cope with, like, you know, the realization of the

3072
02:52:04,520 --> 02:52:06,680
Speaker 2: violence of the gender system. And like I am also

3073
02:52:06,760 --> 02:52:10,440
Speaker 2: doing this as much as the fucking weird white guy

3074
02:52:10,560 --> 02:52:12,200
Speaker 2: nazi like gamer dipshit.

3075
02:52:12,360 --> 02:52:15,400
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, that's why I hooed up f F seven

3076
02:52:15,840 --> 02:52:18,360
Speaker 5: remake Hysteric Cloud Strife for hours on end when I'm

3077
02:52:18,360 --> 02:52:19,000
Speaker 5: feeling sad.

3078
02:52:20,640 --> 02:52:23,280
Speaker 2: But you know what the problem with what's happening here

3079
02:52:23,360 --> 02:52:25,959
Speaker 2: right is that like the right, like that we're experiencing

3080
02:52:26,000 --> 02:52:29,640
Speaker 2: violence and different ways, but it's like the systemic violence

3081
02:52:29,680 --> 02:52:32,240
Speaker 2: from the gender system that it is the same system.

3082
02:52:32,280 --> 02:52:34,920
Speaker 2: But these people's solution to is to blame it on women, right,

3083
02:52:35,760 --> 02:52:37,040
Speaker 2: and this is you know, I had a conversation with

3084
02:52:37,160 --> 02:52:38,480
Speaker 2: Vicky about this where a lot of this stuff is

3085
02:52:38,520 --> 02:52:41,240
Speaker 2: sort of drawn from and like I would compare it

3086
02:52:41,280 --> 02:52:43,760
Speaker 2: to like, you know, lots and lots of people deal

3087
02:52:43,800 --> 02:52:46,920
Speaker 2: with social isolation, right and and deal with this violence,

3088
02:52:46,959 --> 02:52:48,760
Speaker 2: but like you know, on the other hands, most of

3089
02:52:48,879 --> 02:52:50,560
Speaker 2: us don't become mass shooters.

3090
02:52:50,360 --> 02:52:53,160
Speaker 5: Most most Yeah, I would say, that's that's true.

3091
02:52:53,280 --> 02:52:55,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and so and so we can look at

3092
02:52:55,520 --> 02:52:57,360
Speaker 2: the structural forces that produces people and also just go

3093
02:52:57,440 --> 02:53:00,240
Speaker 2: like fuck them, like eat shit, like I'm sorry, you've

3094
02:53:00,240 --> 02:53:01,960
Speaker 2: you've become Nazis, like fuck off.

3095
02:53:02,080 --> 02:53:06,000
Speaker 5: Skill issue in some ways among other environmental factors.

3096
02:53:06,080 --> 02:53:07,960
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, but but also a lot of times

3097
02:53:07,959 --> 02:53:11,240
Speaker 2: these people aren't fucking like they're not dealing with shit

3098
02:53:11,320 --> 02:53:13,480
Speaker 2: at all, mostly, right, I mean, like yeah, like okay,

3099
02:53:13,520 --> 02:53:16,440
Speaker 2: like Elon Musks weird insecurity is to some extent because

3100
02:53:16,440 --> 02:53:18,160
Speaker 2: of the gender system, right, but like also he is

3101
02:53:18,200 --> 02:53:20,280
Speaker 2: the richest man in the world, He's the most powerful

3102
02:53:20,280 --> 02:53:22,440
Speaker 2: man live, He's one of the most powerful people who.

3103
02:53:22,320 --> 02:53:23,120
Speaker 11: Has ever lived.

3104
02:53:24,400 --> 02:53:27,560
Speaker 2: And he still has the same sense of like aggrievement

3105
02:53:28,520 --> 02:53:30,480
Speaker 2: that powers all these people. And this is like one

3106
02:53:30,480 --> 02:53:32,800
Speaker 2: of the key things of like the gamer mythos, right,

3107
02:53:32,879 --> 02:53:35,960
Speaker 2: is that these people constantly believe that they're being oppressed

3108
02:53:35,959 --> 02:53:37,199
Speaker 2: by like jocks or whatever.

3109
02:53:37,280 --> 02:53:39,880
Speaker 5: And now it's it's been shifted to this not anymore.

3110
02:53:39,920 --> 02:53:42,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, now now they believe that they're that they're being

3111
02:53:42,080 --> 02:53:45,560
Speaker 2: oppressed by like fucking women in minorities, right.

3112
02:53:45,560 --> 02:53:47,840
Speaker 5: And and it's actually the people who are actually doing the

3113
02:53:47,840 --> 02:53:51,440
Speaker 5: oppression is now all of the doge nerds at the

3114
02:53:51,480 --> 02:53:53,480
Speaker 5: top of the system. Now it's it's been we have

3115
02:53:53,520 --> 02:53:56,279
Speaker 5: we've had we've had a we've had a full Uno reverso.

3116
02:53:56,520 --> 02:53:57,920
Speaker 2: But the thing is, these people have always been at

3117
02:53:57,920 --> 02:53:59,520
Speaker 2: the top of the fucking system, right and like, but

3118
02:53:59,600 --> 02:54:02,879
Speaker 2: but it's an it's this feeling they have of their

3119
02:54:02,959 --> 02:54:04,800
Speaker 2: of them being the ones who are oppressed, that like

3120
02:54:05,280 --> 02:54:07,080
Speaker 2: you know, made them into the shock troopers that we

3121
02:54:07,080 --> 02:54:09,440
Speaker 2: saw with Gamergate. If you're gonna read one vikiosc wral thing,

3122
02:54:09,440 --> 02:54:10,840
Speaker 2: and I'm signing her a lot because I think she's

3123
02:54:10,879 --> 02:54:13,920
Speaker 2: done a lot of the best critical reporting on video games,

3124
02:54:13,920 --> 02:54:16,360
Speaker 2: which is a field that I feel like we just

3125
02:54:16,440 --> 02:54:18,800
Speaker 2: haven't done much critical shit with. Like, I mean, there's

3126
02:54:18,800 --> 02:54:20,959
Speaker 2: been lots of stuff about working conditions in the games, industry,

3127
02:54:20,959 --> 02:54:23,000
Speaker 2: which are fucking terrible and it's good, but like as

3128
02:54:23,000 --> 02:54:26,119
Speaker 2: a medium, there hasn't been anywhere near as much critical

3129
02:54:26,120 --> 02:54:28,720
Speaker 2: engagement with it as there's been with like film or music.

3130
02:54:29,600 --> 02:54:31,560
Speaker 2: But if you're gonna read one thing from her, read

3131
02:54:31,600 --> 02:54:33,800
Speaker 2: a piece called goon Squad, which is about the sort

3132
02:54:33,800 --> 02:54:37,240
Speaker 2: of like fascist reaction to the really broken state of

3133
02:54:37,800 --> 02:54:41,000
Speaker 2: Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven when it came out. And one

3134
02:54:41,040 --> 02:54:43,080
Speaker 2: of the arguments that she makes is that these gamers

3135
02:54:43,080 --> 02:54:45,160
Speaker 2: are being i mean literally being used as like scabs

3136
02:54:45,160 --> 02:54:48,039
Speaker 2: and pinkertons against people who make video games, and you know,

3137
02:54:48,080 --> 02:54:50,600
Speaker 2: and this expands out to like workers more broadly, they're

3138
02:54:50,640 --> 02:54:52,879
Speaker 2: literally being used to silence anyone who st talks about

3139
02:54:52,879 --> 02:54:55,400
Speaker 2: the problems with like this game that like when Cyberpint

3140
02:54:55,440 --> 02:54:57,720
Speaker 2: twenty seventy seven came out, it was literally giving people

3141
02:54:57,760 --> 02:55:00,680
Speaker 2: seizures because it was it had just like fucking strobing

3142
02:55:00,760 --> 02:55:03,200
Speaker 2: flashes and bullshit in ante they didn't warn anyone about because it.

3143
02:55:03,120 --> 02:55:04,840
Speaker 5: Was a broken, shitty game.

3144
02:55:05,560 --> 02:55:07,680
Speaker 2: And you know, they're also used for just like anti

3145
02:55:07,760 --> 02:55:10,520
Speaker 2: queer and like anti feminist rasping campaigns, and that's that's

3146
02:55:10,560 --> 02:55:13,920
Speaker 2: how they're sort of mobilized in real life too, And

3147
02:55:14,040 --> 02:55:16,600
Speaker 2: and that gives you an insight into why these people

3148
02:55:16,640 --> 02:55:18,960
Speaker 2: sort of like do this signaling, right, is that they're

3149
02:55:18,959 --> 02:55:21,920
Speaker 2: also like signaling to their base that like I am

3150
02:55:21,959 --> 02:55:23,640
Speaker 2: one of you, et cetera, et cetera, like you should

3151
02:55:23,680 --> 02:55:27,280
Speaker 2: fucking support me for this shit now. Pivoting a little bit,

3152
02:55:27,320 --> 02:55:29,480
Speaker 2: so when I was first talking about this episode, I

3153
02:55:29,560 --> 02:55:31,680
Speaker 2: kept on accidentally saying Sam Altman as at of Sam

3154
02:55:31,680 --> 02:55:32,959
Speaker 2: Bankman freed, because like.

3155
02:55:32,959 --> 02:55:34,440
Speaker 5: Man, they said, yeah, many such cases.

3156
02:55:34,560 --> 02:55:37,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the last, the last fucking white boy scammer

3157
02:55:38,080 --> 02:55:42,200
Speaker 2: named Sam has been replaced by an additional subsequent white

3158
02:55:42,200 --> 02:55:44,959
Speaker 2: boy scammer named Sam. And it turns out though I

3159
02:55:44,959 --> 02:55:47,199
Speaker 2: looked up Sam Altman and he has also been doing

3160
02:55:47,240 --> 02:55:51,000
Speaker 2: this like gamers stick thing, like specifically in interviews with

3161
02:55:51,040 --> 02:55:51,680
Speaker 2: Elon Musk.

3162
02:55:51,840 --> 02:55:52,120
Speaker 5: Yeah.

3163
02:55:52,200 --> 02:55:55,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating. They're both fucking doing it now. And

3164
02:55:55,640 --> 02:55:59,720
Speaker 2: this brings us to the man who has spent the

3165
02:55:59,720 --> 02:56:03,120
Speaker 2: most time publicly lying about fucking video games recently, which

3166
02:56:03,160 --> 02:56:03,879
Speaker 2: is Elon Musk.

3167
02:56:03,879 --> 02:56:07,600
Speaker 5: And Elon Musk is like not really a gamer, I

3168
02:56:07,640 --> 02:56:11,560
Speaker 5: would say, like he sort of plays video games. He's

3169
02:56:11,600 --> 02:56:15,720
Speaker 5: a Kenemine user, he's a Twitter power user. He is

3170
02:56:15,840 --> 02:56:16,920
Speaker 5: the shadow President.

3171
02:56:17,800 --> 02:56:20,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, theis man of the world, bridges man who's ever lived.

3172
02:56:20,440 --> 02:56:20,640
Speaker 5: Yeah.

3173
02:56:20,760 --> 02:56:23,800
Speaker 2: Also, he is really obsessed with everyone thinking that he

3174
02:56:23,920 --> 02:56:25,959
Speaker 2: is like in a he's an elite video game player

3175
02:56:26,000 --> 02:56:28,120
Speaker 2: in like multiple games. He's obsessed with this.

3176
02:56:28,200 --> 02:56:30,879
Speaker 5: He's also I believe the term is a meme. Lord

3177
02:56:31,400 --> 02:56:32,840
Speaker 5: h if I'm reading this right.

3178
02:56:32,959 --> 02:56:35,240
Speaker 2: Oh god, what one of his path of xtyle two

3179
02:56:35,320 --> 02:56:37,160
Speaker 2: characters I didn't put in this script because it's actually

3180
02:56:37,200 --> 02:56:38,480
Speaker 2: not the one we're going to talk about, but one

3181
02:56:38,480 --> 02:56:41,120
Speaker 2: of his characters in that game was named Kekius Maximus.

3182
02:56:41,560 --> 02:56:43,560
Speaker 5: So like, this is the level of mind that uh,

3183
02:56:43,760 --> 02:56:46,240
Speaker 5: that is one of his favorite names. In his White

3184
02:56:46,240 --> 02:56:49,439
Speaker 5: House office, he has a he has a Kechius Maximus

3185
02:56:49,480 --> 02:56:53,560
Speaker 5: portrait hanging behind his desk. There's an AI generated image

3186
02:56:53,640 --> 02:56:56,360
Speaker 5: of like pet bite the Frog and like and like Roman,

3187
02:56:56,520 --> 02:56:57,840
Speaker 5: like like Caesar.

3188
02:56:57,600 --> 02:56:59,280
Speaker 2: At higher I hate everything.

3189
02:56:59,640 --> 02:57:01,560
Speaker 5: So yeah, this is the guy who does the country now.

3190
02:57:01,800 --> 02:57:02,160
Speaker 11: Yeah.

3191
02:57:02,440 --> 02:57:02,840
Speaker 5: Oops.

3192
02:57:03,400 --> 02:57:05,320
Speaker 2: So Elon Musk has been lying about being good at

3193
02:57:05,360 --> 02:57:08,360
Speaker 2: video games, and the preface to everything we're going to

3194
02:57:08,360 --> 02:57:11,000
Speaker 2: get to you is that he has actually he's like

3195
02:57:11,080 --> 02:57:13,600
Speaker 2: for a long time been doing a like I'm a

3196
02:57:13,640 --> 02:57:16,840
Speaker 2: gamer thing. So his kind of problems, and I think

3197
02:57:16,879 --> 02:57:19,800
Speaker 2: really the origin of the weird paying people to make

3198
02:57:19,879 --> 02:57:21,760
Speaker 2: him look like he's good at video games thing that

3199
02:57:21,800 --> 02:57:23,959
Speaker 2: we're gonna get you in a second. This is something

3200
02:57:23,959 --> 02:57:26,000
Speaker 2: that that Blue Sky user gay Dog reminded me of

3201
02:57:26,000 --> 02:57:28,320
Speaker 2: because I'd forgot he has so many gaming scandals I'd

3202
02:57:28,320 --> 02:57:32,200
Speaker 2: forgotten about this one, which is that he at one

3203
02:57:32,240 --> 02:57:34,960
Speaker 2: point posted his build for the hit game Elden Ring,

3204
02:57:35,120 --> 02:57:38,680
Speaker 2: which is very difficult game, and he had two different

3205
02:57:38,720 --> 02:57:43,760
Speaker 2: shields equipped, which makes literally no sense. It's like over encumbered,

3206
02:57:44,240 --> 02:57:48,600
Speaker 2: Like it's okay, like the best expianation I've tried to

3207
02:57:48,840 --> 02:57:51,160
Speaker 2: I figured out for Like how bad at this game

3208
02:57:51,200 --> 02:57:54,120
Speaker 2: he is? Is that posting this build on Twitter is

3209
02:57:54,160 --> 02:57:56,800
Speaker 2: the video game equivalent of going like, hey, look at

3210
02:57:56,800 --> 02:57:59,080
Speaker 2: my fucking sports car. It's stepping into like the shittiest

3211
02:57:59,120 --> 02:58:02,160
Speaker 2: call you've ever seen, and then like slamming the accelerator

3212
02:58:02,200 --> 02:58:03,240
Speaker 2: with the parking break on.

3213
02:58:03,720 --> 02:58:07,560
Speaker 5: Hey, I love the masdamiata Like that's that's like the

3214
02:58:07,600 --> 02:58:08,360
Speaker 5: game of Criminals.

3215
02:58:08,360 --> 02:58:10,520
Speaker 2: And everyone who looked at it immediately was like, this

3216
02:58:10,560 --> 02:58:12,920
Speaker 2: is the dumbest man who has ever lived. This man

3217
02:58:13,000 --> 02:58:15,440
Speaker 2: has no idea what the fuck he's doing. He is

3218
02:58:15,840 --> 02:58:19,720
Speaker 2: just like like unable to understand basic fundamental systems about

3219
02:58:19,720 --> 02:58:25,959
Speaker 2: this game, like just baffling incomprehensible bullshit. And this was

3220
02:58:26,000 --> 02:58:27,720
Speaker 2: like kind of a scandal for him. It wasn't like

3221
02:58:27,760 --> 02:58:29,800
Speaker 2: a huge one, but like especially like this is one

3222
02:58:29,840 --> 02:58:31,680
Speaker 2: that sort of broke on to the left a lot,

3223
02:58:31,760 --> 02:58:34,480
Speaker 2: and people were giving him shit about it. So the

3224
02:58:34,520 --> 02:58:36,960
Speaker 2: next time he wanted to brag about having been good

3225
02:58:37,000 --> 02:58:40,360
Speaker 2: at video games, he very clearly like paid someone else

3226
02:58:40,520 --> 02:58:43,400
Speaker 2: to like accomplish some stuff in this game called Diabo four.

3227
02:58:43,920 --> 02:58:45,760
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna talk about Diebow stuff much because I'm

3228
02:58:45,760 --> 02:58:47,760
Speaker 2: a Path of Exile player, not diable player, the diable

3229
02:58:47,800 --> 02:58:49,720
Speaker 2: and Path vax Ale like Fairy much the same kind

3230
02:58:49,760 --> 02:58:52,760
Speaker 2: of game basically, like you click somewhere and your character

3231
02:58:52,800 --> 02:58:55,400
Speaker 2: goes there and you click other things that it does attacks.

3232
02:58:56,320 --> 02:59:00,280
Speaker 2: But famously, like this year, he pretended to be one

3233
02:59:00,320 --> 02:59:03,200
Speaker 2: of like the best Path of Exile two players in

3234
02:59:03,240 --> 02:59:06,000
Speaker 2: the world, and he was doing this on his alt account,

3235
02:59:06,080 --> 02:59:10,240
Speaker 2: which is has to handle. It's Cybergamer for twenty but

3236
02:59:10,360 --> 02:59:14,680
Speaker 2: the all the e's are threes, So with CYB three

3237
02:59:15,000 --> 02:59:18,879
Speaker 2: r G A M three R four twenty Wait wait.

3238
02:59:18,840 --> 02:59:21,160
Speaker 5: Wait, wait, say say that again.

3239
02:59:21,600 --> 02:59:28,480
Speaker 2: It's at CYB three r GA M three R four twenty.

3240
02:59:28,840 --> 02:59:32,000
Speaker 5: So I think I found something. I think the four

3241
02:59:32,000 --> 02:59:36,840
Speaker 5: to twenty at the end is actually a reference to

3242
02:59:36,920 --> 02:59:40,960
Speaker 5: Hitler's birthday April twenty damn it.

3243
02:59:43,120 --> 02:59:46,520
Speaker 2: So okay, he like claims to have one of the

3244
02:59:46,600 --> 02:59:49,280
Speaker 2: like the best characters in hardcore, which is in mode

3245
02:59:49,280 --> 02:59:50,880
Speaker 2: of Path of Exile, where if he died once you

3246
02:59:50,920 --> 02:59:53,760
Speaker 2: get kicked out of it. So it's very hard to

3247
02:59:53,879 --> 02:59:57,400
Speaker 2: like prove that he actually did this. He like does

3248
02:59:57,440 --> 02:59:59,879
Speaker 2: a live stream where he tries to play Path of Exile,

3249
03:00:00,560 --> 03:00:04,039
Speaker 2: like on a Twitter live stream, and it is immediately

3250
03:00:04,120 --> 03:00:06,120
Speaker 2: obvious that, like he has no idea what he's doing.

3251
03:00:06,560 --> 03:00:08,520
Speaker 2: Like it's not just obviously people who play the game.

3252
03:00:08,680 --> 03:00:10,520
Speaker 2: I hadn't played Path of xel To at this point, right,

3253
03:00:10,520 --> 03:00:13,039
Speaker 2: I had only played the original one like a decade ago,

3254
03:00:13,480 --> 03:00:15,520
Speaker 2: like a little bit of it, And I took one

3255
03:00:15,600 --> 03:00:17,320
Speaker 2: look at what he was doing and immediately was like,

3256
03:00:17,320 --> 03:00:19,520
Speaker 2: this guy has never played this game before, like has

3257
03:00:19,520 --> 03:00:21,920
Speaker 2: no idea what he's fucking doing. Like it was so

3258
03:00:22,000 --> 03:00:24,320
Speaker 2: unbelievably obvious, Like he like walked past one of those

3259
03:00:24,400 --> 03:00:26,760
Speaker 2: valuable currencies in the game, just like walked past it.

3260
03:00:26,800 --> 03:00:30,200
Speaker 2: Didn't notice it. It's like staggeringly obvious anyone who plays

3261
03:00:30,240 --> 03:00:32,280
Speaker 2: video games. This guy has no idea what the fuck

3262
03:00:32,320 --> 03:00:36,320
Speaker 2: he's doing. And this actually explodes on him, and eventually

3263
03:00:36,320 --> 03:00:39,560
Speaker 2: he's forced to reveal that he paid someone to level

3264
03:00:39,640 --> 03:00:41,400
Speaker 2: his Path of exel to account and then he claims

3265
03:00:41,440 --> 03:00:42,679
Speaker 2: that he never claims.

3266
03:00:42,320 --> 03:00:43,959
Speaker 5: That it was his path of xl too account.

3267
03:00:44,879 --> 03:00:49,160
Speaker 2: And this Jenny Weinley has been a real problem for

3268
03:00:49,280 --> 03:00:53,440
Speaker 2: him because it pissed off like the entire gaming scene.

3269
03:00:54,480 --> 03:00:56,480
Speaker 2: So you have videos with like millions of views. Some

3270
03:00:56,600 --> 03:00:58,720
Speaker 2: guys like Asthmagold, who was like a he's a very

3271
03:00:58,760 --> 03:01:01,440
Speaker 2: famous right wing streamer who like sucks ass like is

3272
03:01:01,520 --> 03:01:07,279
Speaker 2: like a turbo right winger, like spends his time screaming

3273
03:01:07,400 --> 03:01:11,279
Speaker 2: about how like black people in video games is dei

3274
03:01:11,320 --> 03:01:13,879
Speaker 2: and woke and how it's destroying the video game industry

3275
03:01:15,080 --> 03:01:17,720
Speaker 2: and fucking asthma Goold is watching this video and being

3276
03:01:17,760 --> 03:01:19,320
Speaker 2: like this guy is a lying piece of shit, what

3277
03:01:19,360 --> 03:01:23,920
Speaker 2: the fuck? And like everyone fucking reacts like this. It's

3278
03:01:24,080 --> 03:01:29,560
Speaker 2: genuinely wild. I've never actually seen people like react to this,

3279
03:01:29,840 --> 03:01:31,959
Speaker 2: to like to elon like this and like like again,

3280
03:01:32,000 --> 03:01:34,280
Speaker 2: like this is his allies on the right taking one

3281
03:01:34,360 --> 03:01:37,080
Speaker 2: look at this and being like, wait, this guy's just

3282
03:01:37,120 --> 03:01:37,760
Speaker 2: like lying.

3283
03:01:39,080 --> 03:01:39,280
Speaker 5: Now.

3284
03:01:39,640 --> 03:01:43,320
Speaker 2: What's interesting about about this to some extent is that, like, again,

3285
03:01:43,520 --> 03:01:45,680
Speaker 2: his whole thing here is he's trying to like pretend

3286
03:01:45,680 --> 03:01:47,520
Speaker 2: that he's like a pro gamer or whatever, but his

3287
03:01:47,520 --> 03:01:50,640
Speaker 2: affect is still largely targeted towards non gamers in the

3288
03:01:50,680 --> 03:01:53,760
Speaker 2: sense that like, there's no way, I mean, okay, I

3289
03:01:53,760 --> 03:01:56,680
Speaker 2: guess it is possible that he genuinely is so ignorant

3290
03:01:56,680 --> 03:01:58,480
Speaker 2: that he believed that he could just pretend to be

3291
03:01:58,480 --> 03:02:00,280
Speaker 2: a top of Little Pets of Path of Exile on

3292
03:02:00,320 --> 03:02:03,480
Speaker 2: a stream using someone else's account, but like, there's no

3293
03:02:03,480 --> 03:02:05,480
Speaker 2: way anyone who plays video games could fall for that,

3294
03:02:05,840 --> 03:02:07,360
Speaker 2: And a lot of people he talks to you about

3295
03:02:07,400 --> 03:02:09,560
Speaker 2: the stuff, for people like Joe Rogan who aren't like

3296
03:02:09,840 --> 03:02:13,920
Speaker 2: gamer TM people, right, it's like a lot of it's

3297
03:02:13,920 --> 03:02:15,320
Speaker 2: a lot of people who aren't gamers, and he's like

3298
03:02:15,320 --> 03:02:17,360
Speaker 2: sort of hyping up his reputation with and so he's

3299
03:02:17,400 --> 03:02:19,200
Speaker 2: really on the one hand, yeah, he is signaling to

3300
03:02:19,240 --> 03:02:21,560
Speaker 2: his sort of fascist bass, but on the other hand,

3301
03:02:21,720 --> 03:02:24,440
Speaker 2: he's trying to use the sort of like cultural cachet

3302
03:02:24,720 --> 03:02:26,840
Speaker 2: of of gaming as like this sort of renegade right

3303
03:02:26,879 --> 03:02:30,920
Speaker 2: wing phenomena to like launder his reputation. Except he fucked

3304
03:02:31,000 --> 03:02:34,160
Speaker 2: up because he, you know, spent all of this time

3305
03:02:34,240 --> 03:02:37,360
Speaker 2: trying to like pretend to be a gamer. But the

3306
03:02:37,600 --> 03:02:40,039
Speaker 2: thing about gamers is that, like there is literally an

3307
03:02:40,200 --> 03:02:43,320
Speaker 2: entire genre of video like on YouTube that is very

3308
03:02:43,400 --> 03:02:46,160
Speaker 2: very popular. That is just like people exposing people who

3309
03:02:46,280 --> 03:02:49,560
Speaker 2: cheated video games, cheated record to video games. And Elon

3310
03:02:49,640 --> 03:02:53,039
Speaker 2: has walked just like directly into this bear trap, right.

3311
03:02:53,520 --> 03:02:57,560
Speaker 5: And that means we got him, folks, mission accomplished. Wrap

3312
03:02:57,600 --> 03:03:01,320
Speaker 5: it up, We beat Elon, got him. It's over. He's

3313
03:03:01,360 --> 03:03:04,760
Speaker 5: he's been cast out of civil society for the high

3314
03:03:04,840 --> 03:03:09,240
Speaker 5: crime of pretending to play a video game. He has

3315
03:03:09,320 --> 03:03:13,480
Speaker 5: lost all respect among among the farthest reaches of the right.

3316
03:03:14,480 --> 03:03:17,800
Speaker 5: So what's next? We have what he has? He has

3317
03:03:17,840 --> 03:03:19,560
Speaker 5: one more scandal that we actually have to talk about.

3318
03:03:19,680 --> 03:03:21,720
Speaker 5: Is this about the one video game he hasn't played?

3319
03:03:22,440 --> 03:03:25,960
Speaker 5: Which is the funniest Elon Musk gamer story in my opinion?

3320
03:03:26,320 --> 03:03:28,160
Speaker 5: Which which are you which? What are you talking about?

3321
03:03:28,240 --> 03:03:30,640
Speaker 5: That's the one that that that he he had to

3322
03:03:30,680 --> 03:03:35,640
Speaker 5: publicly announce that he he does not play GTA five. Oh,

3323
03:03:35,720 --> 03:03:38,080
Speaker 5: that was funny. I forgot about that because he doesn't

3324
03:03:38,200 --> 03:03:42,080
Speaker 5: like quote unquote doing crime and g t A five

3325
03:03:42,440 --> 03:03:46,640
Speaker 5: quote required shooting police officers in the opening scene just

3326
03:03:46,959 --> 03:03:49,920
Speaker 5: couldn't do it unquote. Oh, I really forgot about that.

3327
03:03:50,360 --> 03:03:54,039
Speaker 5: So that that proofs that at least he has some integrity. God. Now,

3328
03:03:54,120 --> 03:03:58,320
Speaker 5: some some gamers might be sick individuals acting out you know,

3329
03:03:58,959 --> 03:04:03,000
Speaker 5: violence power fans, but at least Musk has some integrity

3330
03:04:03,600 --> 03:04:07,879
Speaker 5: to not harm police officers in GDA five. That really

3331
03:04:07,920 --> 03:04:10,320
Speaker 5: shows that there's like a moral compass behind all of this,

3332
03:04:10,879 --> 03:04:13,920
Speaker 5: you know, at times strange behavior.

3333
03:04:15,000 --> 03:04:17,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's also like that's also him signaling to like

3334
03:04:18,000 --> 03:04:20,400
Speaker 2: a different like the weird Christian part of the bass.

3335
03:04:20,680 --> 03:04:23,600
Speaker 2: That's like, oh, violence and video games is bad, which

3336
03:04:23,800 --> 03:04:26,040
Speaker 2: because he's trying to single to all of his groups simultaneously,

3337
03:04:26,480 --> 03:04:28,760
Speaker 2: and all of them are like, this guy is a

3338
03:04:28,800 --> 03:04:33,039
Speaker 2: fucking loser who sucks ass and we hate him.

3339
03:04:33,280 --> 03:04:36,119
Speaker 5: It is pretty embarrassing. That doesn't bring me much joy

3340
03:04:36,200 --> 03:04:39,119
Speaker 5: because again he is the most powerful man in the world. No,

3341
03:04:39,200 --> 03:04:41,240
Speaker 5: but it is mildly amusing.

3342
03:04:41,360 --> 03:04:43,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, But so that there is a sort of serious

3343
03:04:43,400 --> 03:04:45,959
Speaker 2: note to this, which is that like the pushback he

3344
03:04:46,120 --> 03:04:48,640
Speaker 2: is getting here is like I think actually kind of

3345
03:04:48,720 --> 03:04:51,200
Speaker 2: is significant. So the last thing I want to talk

3346
03:04:51,200 --> 03:04:52,959
Speaker 2: about it is is him pretending to have been like

3347
03:04:52,959 --> 03:04:56,320
Speaker 2: a quake pro which the thing that he did, and

3348
03:04:56,600 --> 03:04:58,959
Speaker 2: there's a very interesting video about this by the YouTuber

3349
03:04:59,000 --> 03:05:01,840
Speaker 2: Carl Jops was like his thing is like people who

3350
03:05:01,920 --> 03:05:05,040
Speaker 2: fake who like fake things in video games basically, and

3351
03:05:05,080 --> 03:05:07,960
Speaker 2: he is like not a leftist. He's like like a

3352
03:05:07,959 --> 03:05:10,760
Speaker 2: center right guy basically. I mean, there's arguments about exactly

3353
03:05:10,800 --> 03:05:13,039
Speaker 2: how far right he is. But he did a video

3354
03:05:13,240 --> 03:05:16,520
Speaker 2: about about Elon claiming to be a quack player and

3355
03:05:16,680 --> 03:05:19,840
Speaker 2: what he found so is Elon like apparently did actually

3356
03:05:19,879 --> 03:05:21,680
Speaker 2: play in an early quake tournament, but none of the

3357
03:05:21,720 --> 03:05:23,840
Speaker 2: good players were there, and he he came his team

3358
03:05:23,879 --> 03:05:25,480
Speaker 2: came in second, but they came in second because they

3359
03:05:25,520 --> 03:05:27,960
Speaker 2: had better WiFi than everyone else and so they had

3360
03:05:28,000 --> 03:05:30,960
Speaker 2: less latency, which made them invincible until they ran into

3361
03:05:30,959 --> 03:05:32,840
Speaker 2: a team that also had good WiFi and then he

3362
03:05:32,879 --> 03:05:35,560
Speaker 2: got destroyed, which I just I just think it's funny, right,

3363
03:05:35,560 --> 03:05:38,400
Speaker 2: That's like a classic Elon Musk story, which is he

3364
03:05:37,840 --> 03:05:40,240
Speaker 2: he he has this thing claiming that he's like a

3365
03:05:40,280 --> 03:05:43,000
Speaker 2: fucking gamer legend, but it's actually because he had more

3366
03:05:43,040 --> 03:05:44,680
Speaker 2: money than everyone else until he ran some much who

3367
03:05:44,680 --> 03:05:45,960
Speaker 2: had the same amount of money that he did and

3368
03:05:46,040 --> 03:05:49,240
Speaker 2: just got destroyed. But the reason I bring this up

3369
03:05:49,320 --> 03:05:52,439
Speaker 2: is that like at the end of this video, jobstays

3370
03:05:52,640 --> 03:05:55,480
Speaker 2: like goes on this whole thing about how and this

3371
03:05:55,560 --> 03:05:58,400
Speaker 2: is this is like a stronger statement against Elon mustin

3372
03:05:58,440 --> 03:06:00,840
Speaker 2: I have seen from anything in the mainstream press where

3373
03:06:00,879 --> 03:06:02,560
Speaker 2: he literally goes on a thing where he says, yeah,

3374
03:06:02,560 --> 03:06:04,440
Speaker 2: every single thing that Elon Musk has been saying here

3375
03:06:04,480 --> 03:06:08,040
Speaker 2: is a lie, and because he is just obviously lying

3376
03:06:08,040 --> 03:06:10,039
Speaker 2: out of his ass, but literally everything in a field

3377
03:06:10,040 --> 03:06:11,879
Speaker 2: that I know, this means that I literally can't trust

3378
03:06:11,959 --> 03:06:14,760
Speaker 2: him when he says anything about any other fucking field

3379
03:06:14,760 --> 03:06:18,520
Speaker 2: that I don't know. And this is a real shift, right.

3380
03:06:18,560 --> 03:06:21,800
Speaker 2: I have never seen a mainstream journalist write down Elon

3381
03:06:21,879 --> 03:06:24,400
Speaker 2: Musk is just clearly a liar about this, and so

3382
03:06:24,480 --> 03:06:26,959
Speaker 2: you should not be able to trust anything else he

3383
03:06:27,000 --> 03:06:29,520
Speaker 2: fucking says. This is a larger degree of pushback than

3384
03:06:29,520 --> 03:06:34,160
Speaker 2: anything else ever fucking seen outside of like the left about.

3385
03:06:33,760 --> 03:06:34,920
Speaker 5: What Elon Musk is doing.

3386
03:06:34,959 --> 03:06:36,440
Speaker 2: And like just the willingness to just be like this

3387
03:06:36,480 --> 03:06:39,240
Speaker 2: guy is a fucking just just a serial liar, like

3388
03:06:39,320 --> 03:06:41,360
Speaker 2: everything says is a lie. He literally calls him a

3389
03:06:41,440 --> 03:06:43,280
Speaker 2: con like, says that his activity is like a con man.

3390
03:06:43,800 --> 03:06:45,400
Speaker 2: He says the things that he's saying are like either

3391
03:06:45,440 --> 03:06:48,199
Speaker 2: liars or delusional. There is a kind of like shift

3392
03:06:48,200 --> 03:06:51,240
Speaker 2: happening right now where people like really are turning on him.

3393
03:06:51,560 --> 03:06:54,600
Speaker 2: There's day that happened literally today where Ubisoft. You know,

3394
03:06:54,720 --> 03:06:58,000
Speaker 2: ubi Soft is a famously like not a leftist company,

3395
03:06:58,520 --> 03:07:01,400
Speaker 2: right like thea've done a lot of horrible, fucked up

3396
03:07:01,400 --> 03:07:05,879
Speaker 2: sexual assault stuff. So Elon's mad at Ubisoft because one

3397
03:07:05,879 --> 03:07:07,800
Speaker 2: of their games has a black guy as like a

3398
03:07:07,879 --> 03:07:11,680
Speaker 2: character in it, and literally the official Assassin's Create accounts

3399
03:07:11,840 --> 03:07:15,200
Speaker 2: replied to one of his tweets saying, is that what

3400
03:07:15,240 --> 03:07:17,720
Speaker 2: the guy playing your Path of Axile two account told you?

3401
03:07:18,240 --> 03:07:20,560
Speaker 2: And like replied and replied to a thing about Hassan

3402
03:07:21,440 --> 03:07:24,720
Speaker 2: like we we are genuinely seeing a shift in this space,

3403
03:07:25,280 --> 03:07:28,120
Speaker 2: right This thing that had been like a really really

3404
03:07:28,160 --> 03:07:31,920
Speaker 2: consistent base of support with people like Elon is kind

3405
03:07:31,920 --> 03:07:34,320
Speaker 2: of fracturing against him and is sort of being polarized

3406
03:07:34,320 --> 03:07:37,320
Speaker 2: against him by just like the fact that he's just

3407
03:07:37,560 --> 03:07:41,160
Speaker 2: is so obviously cynically pandering to them, and how unbelievably

3408
03:07:41,160 --> 03:07:44,200
Speaker 2: transparent it is. And like obviously, like I don't think

3409
03:07:44,240 --> 03:07:46,120
Speaker 2: like the gamers are going to like fucking rise up

3410
03:07:46,200 --> 03:07:49,440
Speaker 2: or whatever. But the actual serious point to all of this,

3411
03:07:49,560 --> 03:07:51,840
Speaker 2: other than like looking at the ways of fascism, like

3412
03:07:51,920 --> 03:07:53,520
Speaker 2: why these people do this and like gamers is like

3413
03:07:53,520 --> 03:07:55,480
Speaker 2: a demographic that's important to these people, is that, like

3414
03:07:56,440 --> 03:07:59,040
Speaker 2: the way that you destroy a coalition by this isn't

3415
03:07:59,080 --> 03:08:03,920
Speaker 2: necessarily bypping everyone over to your side, right, that.

3416
03:08:03,840 --> 03:08:05,280
Speaker 5: Doesn't happen that often.

3417
03:08:05,720 --> 03:08:07,280
Speaker 2: But one of the ways you can do this, and

3418
03:08:07,320 --> 03:08:09,240
Speaker 2: this is this is, you know, to take a really

3419
03:08:09,240 --> 03:08:11,920
Speaker 2: really dramatic example, this is how the Bolsheviks won the

3420
03:08:11,959 --> 03:08:15,960
Speaker 2: October Revolution. They got their opponents to allies to stay

3421
03:08:15,959 --> 03:08:19,400
Speaker 2: home and that was enough enough. People just staying on

3422
03:08:19,440 --> 03:08:22,720
Speaker 2: the fucking sidelines when the Bolsheviks like came for Currency's

3423
03:08:22,760 --> 03:08:26,200
Speaker 2: government was enough for them to take power. And I

3424
03:08:26,240 --> 03:08:28,920
Speaker 2: think like the actual, like the actual serious points of

3425
03:08:28,920 --> 03:08:31,160
Speaker 2: this is that the only way that we get out

3426
03:08:31,160 --> 03:08:34,000
Speaker 2: of this mess is by just systematically tearing away these

3427
03:08:34,000 --> 03:08:36,880
Speaker 2: people's coalitions so that when the confrontation with these people comes,

3428
03:08:37,600 --> 03:08:40,080
Speaker 2: there are enough people who would be their supporters who

3429
03:08:40,200 --> 03:08:44,039
Speaker 2: just fucking stay home that they can, they can be stopped.

3430
03:08:44,320 --> 03:08:48,520
Speaker 5: So this is at Mia Wong publicly calling for the

3431
03:08:48,560 --> 03:08:50,000
Speaker 5: start of gamer Gate two.

3432
03:08:50,280 --> 03:08:51,959
Speaker 2: Gamer Gate two is already happening, damn it.

3433
03:08:52,000 --> 03:08:54,520
Speaker 5: This is gamer Gate three. This is an open call

3434
03:08:55,240 --> 03:08:59,920
Speaker 5: to begin gamer Gate two point five right now on.

3435
03:09:00,160 --> 03:09:03,360
Speaker 5: Behalf of me along, becaure you at me a oh no,

3436
03:09:05,120 --> 03:09:09,520
Speaker 5: and then hopefully and I'll finally usher in the American

3437
03:09:09,560 --> 03:09:15,199
Speaker 5: Bolshevik revolution after we get enough gamers just to stay

3438
03:09:15,280 --> 03:09:18,600
Speaker 5: home or even better rise up right. We can we

3439
03:09:18,640 --> 03:09:20,520
Speaker 5: can make some kind of graphic with like a fist

3440
03:09:20,560 --> 03:09:24,920
Speaker 5: holding a controller or a keyboard. If you're a nerd

3441
03:09:24,959 --> 03:09:25,400
Speaker 5: about it.

3442
03:09:25,640 --> 03:09:28,080
Speaker 2: Gamers are the cosacks. We've got to get them to

3443
03:09:28,120 --> 03:09:30,800
Speaker 2: knock back the regime. That's actually the Fembry revolution where

3444
03:09:30,800 --> 03:09:31,320
Speaker 2: they stood down.

3445
03:09:31,360 --> 03:09:33,480
Speaker 5: But you know, same point, same point. Come on me

3446
03:09:33,560 --> 03:09:36,280
Speaker 5: a geez fuck, I am one of.

3447
03:09:36,200 --> 03:09:38,600
Speaker 2: The biggest things of Like people need to remember that

3448
03:09:38,600 --> 03:09:41,279
Speaker 2: that Lenin did not overthrow the czar. He overthrew Kerensky,

3449
03:09:41,400 --> 03:09:43,800
Speaker 2: who was kind of a socialist guy who was run

3450
03:09:43,840 --> 03:09:46,039
Speaker 2: the provisional government in between the first Okay, we're done,

3451
03:09:46,040 --> 03:09:48,720
Speaker 2: we're done here, We're done here, we're sucking out, we're leaving.

3452
03:09:49,200 --> 03:09:51,360
Speaker 5: What games are you playing? What games are I playing?

3453
03:09:51,560 --> 03:09:52,480
Speaker 5: Pathovaxyle too.

3454
03:09:53,120 --> 03:09:56,080
Speaker 2: Don't play Rotato it will consume your life. Okay, play

3455
03:09:56,120 --> 03:09:58,800
Speaker 2: rebo Quest. Robo Quest is great. Rob Request dares to

3456
03:09:58,840 --> 03:10:01,600
Speaker 2: ask the question, what if like the art style of

3457
03:10:02,000 --> 03:10:06,240
Speaker 2: Borderlands was used for a game about rehabilitative justice. But

3458
03:10:06,280 --> 03:10:10,000
Speaker 2: also you're doing a roguelike with like Doom's combat.

3459
03:10:10,120 --> 03:10:13,000
Speaker 5: That sounds very gay, so I probably can't do that.

3460
03:10:13,120 --> 03:10:17,279
Speaker 5: Then I do Hell Divers too. Nearly every Monday. Armored

3461
03:10:17,320 --> 03:10:20,320
Speaker 5: Corps six Course six rules. Love that game. Love that game.

3462
03:10:21,000 --> 03:10:26,119
Speaker 5: Sonic X Shadow Generations, Final Fantasy, Sevin, and I'm waiting

3463
03:10:26,640 --> 03:10:29,000
Speaker 5: for Mecca Break to come out for like their their

3464
03:10:29,040 --> 03:10:32,959
Speaker 5: official release now that the beta's closed. Unfortunately, the character

3465
03:10:33,000 --> 03:10:34,760
Speaker 5: selection is very gooner coded.

3466
03:10:34,920 --> 03:10:36,680
Speaker 2: Many many such cases, so I made.

3467
03:10:36,560 --> 03:10:40,439
Speaker 5: Sure to make the smallest the smallest chest size available

3468
03:10:40,760 --> 03:10:44,600
Speaker 5: on my on my model. But the gameplay is fun.

3469
03:10:46,640 --> 03:10:47,879
Speaker 5: This has been it could happen here.

3470
03:10:48,280 --> 03:10:52,160
Speaker 2: I good lord, they pay me for this.

3471
03:10:53,040 --> 03:10:54,920
Speaker 5: I had to. I had to watch so.

3472
03:10:54,879 --> 03:10:59,000
Speaker 2: Many videos about Deshaun Watson and fucking clips of of

3473
03:10:59,000 --> 03:11:02,080
Speaker 2: of Elon. Must thank playing video games for this.

3474
03:11:03,400 --> 03:11:09,360
Speaker 1: Oh hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes. Every

3475
03:11:09,360 --> 03:11:11,600
Speaker 1: week from now until the heat death of the universe.

3476
03:11:12,360 --> 03:11:14,840
Speaker 2: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

3477
03:11:15,040 --> 03:11:18,080
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

3478
03:11:18,160 --> 03:11:21,760
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

3479
03:11:21,840 --> 03:11:23,879
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

3480
03:11:23,520 --> 03:11:24,880
Speaker 5: You listen to podcasts.

3481
03:11:25,160 --> 03:11:27,080
Speaker 1: You can now find sources for it could Happen Here

3482
03:11:27,120 --> 03:11:29,039
Speaker 1: listed directly in episode descriptions.

3483
03:11:29,280 --> 03:11:30,080
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.