Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Welcome to take it up. And here a podcast where
Speaker 3: the it is the authoritarian takeover of the city of Chicago.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today is an episode
Speaker 3: that was significantly delayed by the fact that our guest
Speaker 3: got shot in the face by riot munitions while attempting
Speaker 3: to cover an anti ice protest and an ice facility,
Speaker 3: and then her coworker was fucking grabbed by the Feds
Speaker 3: the next day, which she was also still out at
Speaker 3: for reasons that are semi incomprehensible to me, because again,
Speaker 3: she was just shot in the face. Since this is Raven,
Speaker 3: a journalist with the independent outlet Unraveled, which really truly
Speaker 3: is doing a lot of incredible work on the incredible
Speaker 3: proliferation of ice raids around Chicago. Raven, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, oh.
Speaker 1: Boys, is right? Thanks for that intro. Yeah, we're in
Speaker 1: the ship right now, We're in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I would to immediately start this with
Speaker 3: you are mostly you're basically okay from my understanding, from
Speaker 3: getting shot in the face of the right munition like
Speaker 3: a week ago.
Speaker 1: I am. I am basically okay. I have like some
Speaker 1: swelling still in my jaw. I'm going to the doctor.
Speaker 1: We'll see like if there's any soft tissue like lingering
Speaker 1: effects later on down the line. But nothing's broken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which, thank god, holy shit, thank god that I
Speaker 3: can really fuck you up permanently.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I mean it's spent several weeks now of
Speaker 1: the FEDS just pummeling people with these stupid little pepper
Speaker 1: ball rounds. Yep, And like the core of it is
Speaker 1: like metal, you know, it's like this little bullet thing
Speaker 1: with like the pepper powder on the outside. So if
Speaker 1: you shoot someone in the face with those, I mean,
Speaker 1: like we've seen horrific injuries these last few weeks protesters
Speaker 1: and also like people getting concussions from like you know,
Speaker 1: sear gas canisters exploding right by their heads and other things,
Speaker 1: broken bones from these really violent arrests, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just been awful. Not gonna lie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: Shot at, like literally, I was like taking a photo
Speaker 1: of a fed like an oppressed gaggle. We were all
Speaker 1: hiding behind this van while we're just like being shot at.
Speaker 1: And this guy, I mean, he stared right at me
Speaker 1: and like right down the barrel of my lens like
Speaker 1: he knew what he was doing. She's christ Yeah, another
Speaker 1: reporter it was like a similar situation where these guys
Speaker 1: like fucking ambushed them. Like it was just two reporters
Speaker 1: like hiding behind a van and these guys came up
Speaker 1: along the side of the fence and just started like
Speaker 1: shooting them in the face with these rounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, and this has been at the protests at
Speaker 3: the ice facility in Broadview. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Broadby is like just a tiny little suburb, like just
Speaker 1: outside of Chicago. It's still in Cook County, majority black suburb,
Speaker 1: actually black working class, the mayors of Black Woman And
Speaker 1: now this ice facility has been there for a while, obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people were protesting there weekly for like over a decade,
Speaker 1: but nothing like what we've seen these last few weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, let's go back in time a little bit,
Speaker 3: because in between the last time we spoke to you
Speaker 3: and now there has been so much unbelievably horrible stuff
Speaker 3: in Chicago. I guess. Yes, let's go back a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks and talk about the guy they murdered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, shortly after this latest ICE surge began, they
Speaker 1: sailed a man at a traffic stop. Two ICE agents
Speaker 1: who were seemingly operating completely alone, didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: any backup with them. It was just these two guys
Speaker 1: in this car who jumped down on the sky. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels it feels like forever ago, but of course
Speaker 1: it was only a few weeks ago. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's an example of just like a police killing
Speaker 1: that we may never learn more about because you know,
Speaker 1: it involves the FEDS, right, you know, there's no timeline
Speaker 1: under which they have to release any information or like
Speaker 1: tell us anything about their their own investigation into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is of course really horrifying and horrifying to
Speaker 1: know there's kind of these these missing a few seconds
Speaker 1: of video right where we don't see the actual shot
Speaker 1: fired yep, or shots excuse me, we can sort of
Speaker 1: piece together what happened, but you know, this happened in
Speaker 1: a working class Latino suburb, heavily Latino suburb, not not
Speaker 1: very far down the road from the actual ice facility.
Speaker 3: Like as you were saying, the part of what's really
Speaker 3: frustrating about this is we can't tell you why they
Speaker 3: stopped this person, right, because they won't tell us. Right,
Speaker 3: we know very little about this other than they stopped
Speaker 3: the guy, he tried to drive away and they shot him.
Speaker 3: That's like that's all we know effectively, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, they claim he had some traffic violations, which
Speaker 1: is true, but I mean, like who doesn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I don't know. If we're shooting people for
Speaker 3: traffic violation, this country is going to have like ten
Speaker 3: people in it by the end of it.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, he wasn't suspected of any like crime. No,
Speaker 1: I believe that it was just opportunistic Yeah, that they
Speaker 1: were just looking for an easy target. And these guys
Speaker 1: are acting like cowboys, I mean, like just doing this
Speaker 1: jump out by themselves. And also to be clear, I
Speaker 1: mean like when they say he drove away from them,
Speaker 1: I mean some of the video that we do have
Speaker 1: it shows him slowly reversing backwards away from them. It's
Speaker 1: not like he just drove over the agents.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, yeah, which is.
Speaker 1: Was of course their initial narrative that he like hit
Speaker 1: one of them with his car and all this stuff
Speaker 1: that of course turned out to be false.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's also frustrating too, because you know, in
Speaker 3: the app well, I would say, in the absence of
Speaker 3: better information, but it's the media, they will just straight
Speaker 3: up print, you know, no matter just how unbelievably absurd
Speaker 3: the lies are, they will just straight up print Department
Speaker 3: of Homeland Security press releases as if they have anything
Speaker 3: to do with reality whatsoever. Even as it becomes increasingly clear,
Speaker 3: even more of a it's ever been that you simply
Speaker 3: cannot rely on on police press reports to understand what
Speaker 3: happened in the situation. People will just keep printing that.
Speaker 3: And so that's the first that's the version of the
Speaker 3: story that goes out first, which is what everyone sees, yep,
Speaker 3: And they don't see the video where it's very clearly
Speaker 3: not what happened.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: It is a maddening situation. So yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: that happened, and then almost immediately and like concurrently, of course,
Speaker 1: all of this other ICE activity started ramping up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then around a week and a half ago, Bovino
Speaker 1: showed up, and Border patrol showed up, And now it's
Speaker 1: amped up even further because they are even worse than
Speaker 1: our regular ICE guys.
Speaker 3: Bovino and the Border patrol people, those are the people
Speaker 3: who seem to have been pulled out of Los Angeles
Speaker 3: and deployed the Chicago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bovino moved this sort of larger border patrol operation
Speaker 1: here to Chicago. So there are Border patrol units here
Speaker 1: from you know, Arizona, from California, different places, and they've
Speaker 1: been doing sort of a combination of like just strictly
Speaker 1: cornyasque propaganda ops, you know, like driving around on their
Speaker 1: boats for photos, combined with like actual terrors, like a
Speaker 1: few nights ago, hundreds of FEDS rating an entire apartment
Speaker 1: building of people in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think we'll get to that rate in
Speaker 3: a second, because it was unbelievable, sort of gruesome and horrible.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I wanted to talk to you just about
Speaker 3: sort of what the general sort of ICE operations and
Speaker 3: then the Border patrol operations have looked like in the
Speaker 3: city and what it's been like being in a place
Speaker 3: where there's just guys in masks gragging people off the street.
Speaker 1: It kind of feels like streaming underwater and no one
Speaker 1: can hear you. Yeah, just sort of witnessing this every day.
Speaker 1: And it is still highly dispersed, right like Chicago and
Speaker 1: the metro area and the suburban counties where this is happening.
Speaker 1: It's a huge, huge area. So like we talked about
Speaker 1: last time, it's a real challenge to focus people's attention
Speaker 1: on because it can appear like the waters are calm
Speaker 1: like where you live, you know, like they're doing it
Speaker 1: in these very fast strike teams in this very dispersed way,
Speaker 1: so by the time you even hear about it, they're
Speaker 1: already gone. So many cars abandoned on the side of
Speaker 1: the road. It's like windows smashed out, je it's christ
Speaker 1: like landscapers, work bands and stuff. You know, Like people
Speaker 1: are just rapid responders are just getting to sites where
Speaker 1: someone's reported something happening and all they find is like
Speaker 1: a busted out card and then they have to piece
Speaker 1: together like potentially what happened. And additionally, the broad view,
Speaker 1: so like this ice facility where people are protesting regularly.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not set up to be a permanent
Speaker 1: attention center. It's just supposed to be like a temporary
Speaker 1: stopping point because Illinois doesn't have overnight immigration detention. So additionally,
Speaker 1: there are like so many extra people crammed into this
Speaker 1: facility that wasn't designed to hold them. Yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course the conditions are horrible, you know, like they don't
Speaker 1: have privacy, they don't have enough bathrooms, they're not getting fed,
Speaker 1: they're not getting medication, you know, like after the kidnappings,
Speaker 1: after the disappearances, then there's this pipeline of detention horrors
Speaker 1: that people are enduring. So this is this is why
Speaker 1: people are protesting, you know. I mean, this is why
Speaker 1: people are out there yelling at the fence. Because the
Speaker 1: people who are who are brave enough to go out
Speaker 1: there and yell at the fence or to take the
Speaker 1: pepper balls or what have you, they they are in agony.
Speaker 1: They're aware of what's happening. They're witnessing all of this
Speaker 1: and feeling like this needs to stop. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people hiding in their homes. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like like it it's true, like I don't always want
Speaker 1: to make like Holocaust comparisons because I feel like that
Speaker 1: that's what we always go to. But I mean, like
Speaker 1: that's the most apt comparison that becomes to most people's mind.
Speaker 1: You know. They think of like and framekiding in your attic,
Speaker 1: like those kinds of things, And it's like that is
Speaker 1: literally where we are at right now. People are literally
Speaker 1: infiding because they are worried that if they go to
Speaker 1: Sam's Club they will be kidnapped by secret police.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the behavior that they've been exhibiting against the
Speaker 3: protesters too, has been very, very similar to what they've
Speaker 3: been doing to the people that they're grabbing off the street.
Speaker 3: I want to talk to you a bit about like
Speaker 3: what it's been like dealing with the way that the
Speaker 3: Feds have been attacking the protesters constantly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, these guys are fucking monsters.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to thread this needle for people of like
Speaker 1: all policing is bad, right, Like a police is violent,
Speaker 1: All cops are violent, But there is something different happening
Speaker 1: here as a result of the fact that there is
Speaker 1: literally zero accountability. And I'm not suggesting that like police
Speaker 1: accountability isn't a sham, because in general it kind of is.
Speaker 1: But I think, like, you know, when you take away
Speaker 1: every single guardrail, these guys don't have to identify themselves
Speaker 1: and they don't have to answer to anyone. Yeah, their
Speaker 1: bosses aren't going to write them up. You know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like with any other job, right, you know,
Speaker 1: take a city cop here in Chicago. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: rare that any of them ever actually get fired for
Speaker 1: the horrible shit they do. But you know, there's this
Speaker 1: sort of bise level of knowing, like, well, I got
Speaker 1: to show up to work every day with my name
Speaker 1: on my vest, and I also have like all these
Speaker 1: other bosses and all these other people who are going
Speaker 1: to like you know, maybe make my day harder if
Speaker 1: I like really fuck something up, right, And so when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the FEDS, there's just nothing. There's just
Speaker 1: nothing there. They can literally do whatever they want. On
Speaker 1: top of like just not having the same level of
Speaker 1: like quote law enforcement training. I mean, we've been watching
Speaker 1: these guys for weeks like fucking hurt themselves with their
Speaker 1: pepper ball guns. Like they literally are like dropping shit
Speaker 1: as they're like on the process, like like watching people
Speaker 1: have made like call of duty comparisons, like Proud Boy comparisons,
Speaker 1: and like it.
Speaker 3: Is kind of like that.
Speaker 1: It's like if you just gave a bunch of chuds,
Speaker 1: a bunch of like military and police here, and we're like,
Speaker 1: all right, go out and like pretend to be a cop.
Speaker 1: And that's like literally what it feels like. And so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to thread this deal for people of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all cops suck, but like what's going on with this
Speaker 1: is like so much worse. Like they're just out there
Speaker 1: like shooting at people randomly, like and you know, for
Speaker 1: no reason. Like it is just one of the craziest
Speaker 1: things I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I also I want to put this into perspective,
Speaker 3: like you have also covered a lot of protests in
Speaker 3: the city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've covered a lot of pop violence. I've been
Speaker 1: to a lot of protests, I mean hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds at this point, right, Yeah, And there's just
Speaker 1: certain like things that you're used to seeing and certain
Speaker 1: there's a certain predictability sometimes to like a lot of
Speaker 1: their movement.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting too, is like in some ways they
Speaker 1: are actually more militarized just in terms of like their
Speaker 1: riot formations and like how tightly coordinated their units are
Speaker 1: because they practice and they train for like crowd control
Speaker 1: stuff all the time. And then you have these just
Speaker 1: like ice chuds running around with like way more gear
Speaker 1: and they look way scarier, but they're like way less
Speaker 1: organized and way more chaotic. Yeah, and there's not enough
Speaker 1: of them right, so like they're not even like doing
Speaker 1: a good job of like backing each other up, you know,
Speaker 1: like in the field. Like I'm just watching them like
Speaker 1: leave their own back unwatched and you know, doing things
Speaker 1: that are like dangerous for them, Like they want to
Speaker 1: act like a military unit, but they're like definitely not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean people have made the comparison of like
Speaker 1: Proud Boys, which I think I don't know, it kind
Speaker 1: of works in a sense like street fighters because what
Speaker 1: they're acting like, you know, Yeah, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: been super violent, super awful. Chicago does not have really
Speaker 1: any experience with like these just FEDS in general, like
Speaker 1: to this level. I know that out in Portland for
Speaker 1: years now, like there have been various protests outside of
Speaker 1: the Ice or something like there's just there's been like
Speaker 1: a lot more a lot more fed presence out in Portland, Seattle.
Speaker 1: Throughout the past few years of protests, I've seen you know,
Speaker 1: people interact with them, and we just we've had nothing
Speaker 1: like that here. So this is also like very unprecedented,
Speaker 1: like for this region.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because usually CPD is like brutal enough that they
Speaker 3: don't you don't end up with like yeah, federal deployments.
Speaker 3: And now it's like oh.
Speaker 1: Boy, yeah, well, and also keep in mind, this is
Speaker 1: all happening in broad View, so like they don't even
Speaker 1: have I mean there's been there's been tensions and arguments
Speaker 1: and discussions around what's happening with their local police department,
Speaker 1: and just sort of the interface here too, because it's
Speaker 1: like this tiny little police department is now having to
Speaker 1: sort of manage what's going on with this ICE facility,
Speaker 1: and they're not directly like assisting ice with froud control,
Speaker 1: but they are like basically setting up a perimeter around
Speaker 1: the area, right, and so then like their guys are
Speaker 1: getting to your gas and like complaining about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, was it broad to you? The police chief who
Speaker 3: like finally was like, oh, holy shit, I've never been
Speaker 3: treated this racistly by a police officer. Before I was like,
Speaker 3: Oh my fucking god, like, yeah, you're just now realizing
Speaker 3: that you're the baddie, like when it finally like happens
Speaker 3: to you, like come on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he went on on like ABC or whatever and
Speaker 1: was just did this whole interview about like, well, ICE
Speaker 1: is disrespecting me as the police chief, and it's just like, like,
Speaker 1: what did you expect?
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, you signed up for the racism organization and
Speaker 3: you were like, ah, I'm in charge of my local
Speaker 3: by local chapter of the Racist Association, so it'll never
Speaker 3: happen to be And it is like, oh shit, you
Speaker 3: mean there's other people who are higher up in the
Speaker 3: racism police Like god, yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's been That's just been like a weird side
Speaker 1: story to this of kind of like the mayor and
Speaker 1: the police chief and the fire chief are not thrilled
Speaker 1: about what's going on, and they're like looking into the
Speaker 1: legality quote of the fence that ICE has put up
Speaker 1: just like across this street that goes past their facility,
Speaker 1: which is in this kind of like tucked away sort
Speaker 1: of industrial park thing, but there are homes like right
Speaker 1: on the other side, and you know, they've just blocked
Speaker 1: off this entire street and there was like a business
Speaker 1: on the other side. You know, it's like obviously a
Speaker 1: huge fire hazard to just like block a whole road
Speaker 1: like that. They didn't ask permission to like put this up, ye,
Speaker 1: not to mention a hazard for the people in the
Speaker 1: detention center, which is now boarded up and has this
Speaker 1: huge fence across the street. It's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: if there's a fire or like an emergency and they
Speaker 1: needed to evacuate the people inside, yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: obviously people would die.
Speaker 3: It's this incredible mix of both blatant disregard for the
Speaker 3: safety of anyone involved and also just wanting to hurt people.
Speaker 3: And it's this incredible fusion of they are both incompetent
Speaker 3: and malicious, which is yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, which is not a great combination.
Speaker 3: No, let's talk about this raid and self or Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we don't have a we don't have
Speaker 1: a ton of details on the true extent of this
Speaker 1: because it happened at one in the morning. So two
Speaker 1: nights ago, hundreds and hundreds of federal agents showed up
Speaker 1: to an apartment building in the South Shore neighborhood, which
Speaker 1: is a predominantly black neighborhood where a number of newly
Speaker 1: arrived migrants settled because there's cheap housing there.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So when Governor Abbott started busting people here a few
Speaker 1: years ago, that is one place where you know a
Speaker 1: number of people found housing. And unfortunately also too, there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of slum boards down that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cheap housing being shit in Chicago, Yeah, of course. Okay,
Speaker 3: I see tents organizing that. I have seen shit that. Like,
Speaker 3: I have seen people sewage like running out of their bathtubs.
Speaker 3: I have seen I have seen places with no electric
Speaker 3: like literally no electricity, no lights, no running water, like
Speaker 3: actually literally like frozen solid in the winter, and no
Speaker 3: one can contact the landlord. And those were in parts
Speaker 3: of the city that were like not even that badly off.
Speaker 3: The apartment that I had, they're almost fucking killed me
Speaker 3: from dust inhalation, and like that's like that's like a
Speaker 3: like a normal cheap apartment. It gets so much fucking worse.
Speaker 3: The pictures from like inside of the apartment, not even
Speaker 3: just the parts, were like, yeah, the doors are blown off.
Speaker 3: It's like these apartments fucking sucked because they're run by
Speaker 3: They're run by fucking slanlords and yeah, like the housing
Speaker 3: situation in Chicago, so much of it is so shit
Speaker 3: is never gonna get repaired because these getting landlords don't
Speaker 3: give a shit because they can just keep astracting money
Speaker 3: from it because no one can go anywhere else. And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean these people were living in really bad conditions.
Speaker 1: I've heard that, like a lot of people were like strippled,
Speaker 1: quadrupled up in units. You know, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what it looked like before it was rated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like virtually empty now. I mean like there
Speaker 1: there were some and to be clear, like what happened
Speaker 1: to back up a little bit, you know, they hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of FEDS showed up at this building in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and reportedly detained everyone in
Speaker 1: the building. So there were like, yeah, you know people
Speaker 1: in the building who aren't immigrants, like black people who
Speaker 1: live in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: There was one woman being interviewed on broadcasts who's like
Speaker 1: an older black woman, you know, who was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like dechanged by the FBI, you know, like
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, like asking me if
Speaker 1: I'm a citizen, you know, like, it's just absolutely fucking
Speaker 1: wild that this happened. Also as of today, granted this
Speaker 1: might change by the time your podcast is.
Speaker 3: Out, importantly, So we were recording this the night of Wednesday,
Speaker 3: October first. Who fucking knows what we'll have learned about
Speaker 3: this or what will happen in between this and when
Speaker 3: it comes out probably Monday, Probably there will be new horrors.
Speaker 3: If you've heard about like the horrors in Chicago and
Speaker 3: it's not in this episode, is probably because it happened
Speaker 3: after we recorded. Things are happening at a terrible rate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So as of today, Wednesday, October first, I could
Speaker 1: not find a story on the Suntimes or the Tribute
Speaker 1: website about this raid, and I think, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: a lot of people want to indict mainstream media for
Speaker 1: not covering things, which like is fair sometimes, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, They've been trying. Things are happening so fast
Speaker 1: now and there are so many horrible things happening every
Speaker 1: day that like no newsroom can keep up.
Speaker 3: Wait alert, red alert. They did finally get a story
Speaker 3: up five minutes ago, so I checked the book. They
Speaker 3: got one up, They got one up the Tribute, The
Speaker 3: Suntimes sometimes sometimes.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, well it only took them two days. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: I haven't read it yet. Maybe maybe it's a good story.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe they went really in depth.
Speaker 3: It's not terrible. It doesn't actually seem I mean, it's
Speaker 3: pretty long. I mean, I'm going I'm going to read
Speaker 3: one quote from it to get people at understand. This is, like,
Speaker 3: I actually think is pretty representative of like the independent
Speaker 3: media covers that I've read of. It aren't federal agents
Speaker 3: and military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women,
Speaker 3: and children from their apartments some naked residents. Witnesses said,
Speaker 3: that is the thing I've seen in everything report about this,
Speaker 3: is that a bunch of people just literally didn't have
Speaker 3: clothes on because they were drag out of their bed.
Speaker 3: They were like fucking naked children, like naked like people
Speaker 3: holding naked babies being pulled out of their fucking apartments.
Speaker 3: Like Jesus fucking Christ God, And this.
Speaker 1: Was like such a huge number of beds that like
Speaker 1: the buses were re routed around the scene. I mean,
Speaker 1: like there's questions, there's questions right now over like the
Speaker 1: level of CPD involvement in like protecting the scene. And
Speaker 1: this was not just Ice. There were a ton of
Speaker 1: FBI and a ton of atf.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, which you know, it's like, Okay, what is
Speaker 3: the FBI doing right now? They are fucking dragging naked
Speaker 3: children and out of their fucking homes, like out of
Speaker 3: their fucking apartment at one in the fucking morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were they were in in fucking moving
Speaker 1: vans like Patriot Front.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, fucking horrible. I mean, like I got I
Speaker 3: ever seeing a statement where it was like they were
Speaker 3: denying that they had loaded any immigrants into moving vans, yeah, which.
Speaker 1: Like maybe that's I don't know, maybe only the FBI. Yeah,
Speaker 1: beautiful halls, Like I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm also just like haunted by like what O
Speaker 3: the reports that I saw where they were talking about
Speaker 3: like they separated all of the black people into like
Speaker 3: one van and all of the non black people to
Speaker 3: another one, and it was just like, oh God, like
Speaker 3: these people. There's another thing. I think this is in
Speaker 3: the story that you that you wrote about this or
Speaker 3: they literally like fed literally said fuck them kids.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I don't I definitely didn't write that,
Speaker 1: but I believe that someone said it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I believe it. I'm I'm I mean, I'm glad to
Speaker 1: hear that. Five minutes ago the sunset I covered it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they finally got around to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good for them to be clear, Like they probably
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot more people than we had capacity to.
Speaker 1: You know, it's been obviously a huge challenge to even
Speaker 1: cover all this stuff, like as this tiny, random weirdo
Speaker 1: ass news outlet, like yeah, and we're still figuring out
Speaker 1: as we go, but yeah, I mean this this I
Speaker 1: am still it has been two days and I am
Speaker 1: like still trying to wrap my head around this raid,
Speaker 1: this specific raid, because it's just, yeah, so horrific that
Speaker 1: this happened. And of course, like the timing, like they
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing by timing it in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night.
Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah, I'm gonna fucking read the STIPs article
Speaker 3: because I've just been reading it while you're doing it,
Speaker 3: like Watson is. Somebody lists across the street said she
Speaker 3: saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building
Speaker 3: without any clothes and into hu hole vans. Kids were
Speaker 3: separated from their mothers. It was heartbreaking to watch sid Watson,
Speaker 3: even if you're not a mother, seeing kids come out
Speaker 3: buck naked and taking from their mothers, it was horrible.
Speaker 3: They're literally ripping kids from their fucking mothers at one
Speaker 3: in the morning and throwing it apparently allegedly throwing them
Speaker 3: at U haulvans.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I mean, this is like psycho shit. The
Speaker 1: last three weeks four weeks has just spent a gradual
Speaker 1: progression of like the most evil shit you've ever seen
Speaker 1: in your life. I don't even know what to say
Speaker 1: about anymore, honestly, because it feels like it feels like
Speaker 1: our only way of grappling with things like this is
Speaker 1: by making comparisons to other things. And I don't know
Speaker 1: that that is really helping anybody right now. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's ethnic cleansing, it's genocide. It's like literally, I was
Speaker 1: just saying earlier today when like when you drill down
Speaker 1: to it, like they're disappearing like vast majority Latino men.
Speaker 1: There are some women, it's not only men, but like
Speaker 1: they are definitely targeting like mostly men, and like these
Speaker 1: are people who are migrating here from Central America who
Speaker 1: are like if you look at their lineage, mostly like
Speaker 1: indigenous to this fucking continent on like white people. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just an extension of like the American project, like
Speaker 1: of the white nationalist like extermination of the people indigenous
Speaker 1: to the Americas. Like that is literally what's happening like
Speaker 1: right now. So yeah, it does not feel like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like like enough people get it to the
Speaker 1: level that they should.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and that's I think. Like one other thing
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk to you about was like the
Speaker 3: way the press bubble has worked around this, where again,
Speaker 3: the fact that federal agents dragged naked children from their
Speaker 3: homes at one in the morning in the third largest
Speaker 3: city in the United States, That is a story that
Speaker 3: is hitting the mainstream Chicago press today two days later,
Speaker 3: and I think the only national coverage of it that
Speaker 3: I've seen are from people who are basically like repeating
Speaker 3: the scoop that was given to this, like unhinged UFO outlet.
Speaker 3: Who were the people that got the exclusive? Oh have
Speaker 3: yeah read into this yet? Oh God, no idea? What
Speaker 3: hold on? Hold on, let me let me God fuck Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm very excited to tell you about this is so unhinged.
Speaker 1: I saw like the propaganda video that they made about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the group that got like the exclusive like
Speaker 3: press release thing from the Feds, which is basically being
Speaker 3: like reprinted by Newsweek, who are just a joke at
Speaker 3: this point. Like their description of it is like a
Speaker 3: federal agent's repelled from black cop helicopters and the rooftop
Speaker 3: Chicago residential buildings targeting trend to AGAUA gang members according
Speaker 3: to NewsNation, And I was like, what the fuck is
Speaker 3: news Nation? Like, I've I have a pretty good grasp
Speaker 3: on like all of the weird right wing news outwits,
Speaker 3: I'd never heard of this one. I looked them up
Speaker 3: and the first like big thing that I saw about
Speaker 3: them was that, well, any they are the people. They
Speaker 3: were the person that Chris Cuomo went to after he
Speaker 3: was like publicly disgraced as a journalist. And the second
Speaker 3: thing I saw about them was that their big thing
Speaker 3: is that they like quote unquote take UFOs seriously. These
Speaker 3: are the people who were given like the exclusive scoop
Speaker 3: on this is like the UFO outlet.
Speaker 1: That is so funny. That is when I watched the
Speaker 1: propaganda video that we were watching about it, Yeah it
Speaker 1: was News Nation. I just thought it was like I
Speaker 1: don't know, some right wing outlet like any other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I thought too that I looked at it
Speaker 3: and like the Wikipedia article was like just when there's
Speaker 3: a section titled UFOs, I was like, what the fuck?
Speaker 4: Great?
Speaker 3: Great?
Speaker 1: I didn't know about the UFO connection. I mean I
Speaker 1: saw them. I saw their reporters like actually at the protests,
Speaker 1: like interviewing, like the one guy in a maga hat
Speaker 1: who showed up to counter protests, Like of course that's
Speaker 1: whom they inter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 1: So that's good to know that they are UFO weirdos.
Speaker 3: Regime approved of regieve approved media outlet, the UFO guys.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, the the the official like like DHS
Speaker 1: line on this entire thing is that trend de Aragua
Speaker 1: was this, Like this entire apartment building was a trend
Speaker 1: de Arragua hide.
Speaker 3: Down just like No, it wasn't like.
Speaker 1: Like it's literally just the same fucking thing that Israel
Speaker 1: does about hamas right when they're like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: hospital that we're bombing, Yeah there's hamasoles underneath. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like the exact same ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the connection you made earlier to this functioning as
Speaker 3: an extension of like the genocide that founded this country.
Speaker 3: I think it might have been Hannah or Rent. Okay,
Speaker 3: I want to attribute this to herr Hannah Rent, which
Speaker 3: is I guess kind of a mess because of her.
Speaker 3: Don't do not ever look up Hannah rent stuff on segregation,
Speaker 3: or actually, maybe do if you want to see the
Speaker 3: worst argument you've ever seen in your life, where like
Speaker 3: famed intellectual Hannah or Rent says that segregation is like
Speaker 3: a defining quality of like a free society. I'm not
Speaker 3: like a.
Speaker 1: Super expert on Hannah Rent, but I definitely did not
Speaker 1: know that.
Speaker 3: So oh yeah, no that people. People don't I'll say this, wait,
Speaker 3: people do not be bringing that ship up. Everyone else
Speaker 3: is like, oh god, holy shit. You were like a
Speaker 3: major segregation like intellectual who got brought out to be
Speaker 3: like segregation is actually good. No, this is free association.
Speaker 3: But I think it might have been her. It mightn't
Speaker 3: fit someone else. I've been trying to look for who
Speaker 3: had this idea and I haven't been able to find
Speaker 3: who it was. And I vaguely remember being a Rent,
Speaker 3: but fuck her. This has all been a very long
Speaker 3: whine saying like there's there's an idea that I ran
Speaker 3: into you back when I was in my sort of
Speaker 3: like days in the academy about the way that societies
Speaker 3: reflect their founding violence. And you know, the sort of
Speaker 3: like the founding violence of the United States is the
Speaker 3: genocideviticious people and slavery, and you look at what they're
Speaker 3: doing right now. You're just watching sort of in miniature,
Speaker 3: that violence just being replicated over and over again, where
Speaker 3: like you're tearing fucking mothers from their children in the
Speaker 3: dead of night. And it's the same people, right, Like
Speaker 3: this is an apartment building where almost everyone is black,
Speaker 3: and the people who aren't black are immigrants, right and
Speaker 3: obviously like some of them are both, but like you know,
Speaker 3: but like you're just like watching the founding violence of
Speaker 3: this country just being played out over and over and
Speaker 3: over again every night. And it's this thing where like
Speaker 3: I don't think on a fundamental level that this thing
Speaker 3: that we've built, this sort of like this conception of
Speaker 3: what democracy is, like this conception of what the state is,
Speaker 3: this conception of like what this country is, is going
Speaker 3: to survive this moment. Either it's going to change completely
Speaker 3: or the part of it that was nominally a democracy
Speaker 3: is going to be consumed by the part of it
Speaker 3: that's just doing this genocide over and over again. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I quote this song a lot, Song of
Speaker 3: Choice by Peggy Seeger. That's about the rise of fascism
Speaker 3: that I think about a lot that has on one
Speaker 3: of the lines is today the soldiers took away one.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow they may take away two. One April they took
Speaker 3: away Greece, but surely they will never take you. And yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just fucking taking people away in the night. Right now,
Speaker 3: that's the stage of this where we're at. And either
Speaker 3: something fundamentally changes or right, you know, like that the
Speaker 3: end of that song is either like they take you
Speaker 3: or at the end they don't take you because they
Speaker 3: know you didn't care, right, And.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I've been I've been covering civil conflict
Speaker 1: and violence, you know, like more or less for the
Speaker 1: last five years. Right, I was at January sixth, like
Speaker 1: literally in the middle of the mob. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of shit.
Speaker 3: Reporting on it. This very clear reporting on it. Clarify
Speaker 3: I was there.
Speaker 1: I was not, although my fashi uh stalkers might insist
Speaker 1: I was part of like an Antifa conspiracy to.
Speaker 5: Right, But.
Speaker 1: But you know, I've seen a lot of shit the
Speaker 1: last five years, obviously, and I think this particular moment
Speaker 1: feels like, yeah, like we're kind of you know, like
Speaker 1: we're a marble at the top of like a spiral,
Speaker 1: and it's like either we're going to keep rolling down
Speaker 1: or or somebody like jams it or takes the marble off,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's just this is this is a spiral,
Speaker 1: Like there are so many factors that are going to
Speaker 1: contribute to this getting worse if we do not significantly
Speaker 1: alter course. And I think, you know, this feeling that
Speaker 1: we have locally of like we're screaming underwater and nobody
Speaker 1: can hear us. I'm sure is share a sentiment that
Speaker 1: is shared in LA, that is shared in DC, that
Speaker 1: is shared in all of these cities all over where
Speaker 1: Ice is doing similar shit. It can make us really angry.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been really angry at times in the
Speaker 1: last month about the lack of like attention whatever. But
Speaker 1: then I think about how everyone is overwhelmed because there's
Speaker 1: so much horrible shit happening every day on so many places,
Speaker 1: Like we just can't keep up anymore, Like none of
Speaker 1: us can keep up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I mean, like, I'm in Portland right now,
Speaker 3: and like it's my job to keep track of this,
Speaker 3: and I can't tell you at this exact second weather
Speaker 3: a federal deplay I'm to Portland is honor off. I
Speaker 3: think it's currently off. But also by the time you're
Speaker 3: listening to this, who the fuck knows? And like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like right, I don't know. There's an aerid line about
Speaker 3: how it's easier to hide a thousand atrocities than it
Speaker 3: is to hide one because you can just keep ramping
Speaker 3: the tempo up exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not a historian. I'm just a journalist,
Speaker 1: so maybe you would know better than me. But but
Speaker 1: I feel like we are literally already in a civil war.
Speaker 1: We just don't know it yet, or like we're waiting
Speaker 1: for like some specific thing to like prove it, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I think generally
Speaker 1: nobody knows until it's like already you're you're already in it.
Speaker 1: To me, it feels like we're in it, yeah, But
Speaker 1: I but I also wonder if that's just the cognitive
Speaker 1: effect of like us being here literally in it because
Speaker 1: so much is going on, and then thinking like well,
Speaker 1: if the ice surge subsides two months from now, is
Speaker 1: it going to still feel this way? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, yep, to me, it feels like we've got
Speaker 1: several more years of the Trump regime at least. Ye
Speaker 1: if we look at this in the sense of like, well,
Speaker 1: they're escalating, and then also this is going to keep
Speaker 1: going for several more years. Yeah, that's a terrifying concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where do we go from here? If it's just gonna
Speaker 1: like get even worse?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't know. I think I've been there
Speaker 3: a lot recently. I don't know. It's the thing I've
Speaker 3: been telling listeners of this show is that, like the
Speaker 3: upside of all of this is that everyone hates them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, Like their proof of ratings are so bad.
Speaker 3: Everyone fucking hates them, and all of this stuff is
Speaker 3: hideously unpopular. And the giant economic collapse that is very
Speaker 3: obviously going to happen when the giant AI bubble that
Speaker 3: is like that is like a third of US's GDP
Speaker 3: pops what it inevitably does because it doesn't make any money.
Speaker 3: They're doing all of this in a situation where the
Speaker 3: economy still appears to be functioning, and when that shit
Speaker 3: implodes on them, shit is going to be even worse
Speaker 3: for them than it is now. But also like on
Speaker 3: the other hand, unless people do things about it, then
Speaker 3: it doesn't really matter how popular or not they are
Speaker 3: if as long as no one is willing to like
Speaker 3: stop them. And I guess that's like the last thing
Speaker 3: I kind of want to close on is about, like
Speaker 3: can you talk a little bit about like what you've
Speaker 3: seen organizing wise that you can talk about that have
Speaker 3: been effective.
Speaker 1: Well, I think people here are still figuring it out
Speaker 1: these protests. Outside of the ice facility. You know, there
Speaker 1: hasn a lot of autonomous organizing. Chicago does not have
Speaker 1: the same entrenched autonomous organizing culture that you see in
Speaker 1: like Portland or Seattle for like a ton of reas
Speaker 1: which are like on the scope of this episode series
Speaker 1: the history the history of organizing in Chicago, and like
Speaker 1: how we're in this specific moment. You know, it's important
Speaker 1: to remember like this is a city where like the
Speaker 1: FBI murdered Fred Hampton, right, it is bad. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of tension between different organizing factions about how
Speaker 1: they want things done, and a lot of it is
Speaker 1: fear driven for a good reason, because people are terrified,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they're still figuring stuff out. I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better firm, last Saturday, people got
Speaker 1: their ship rocked by Border patrol. You know, they were
Speaker 1: so violent, they were so aggressive, they were just so
Speaker 1: out of hand, just like immediately too. I mean it
Speaker 1: was just like zero to sixty instantly, like there was
Speaker 1: just a Saturday. We saw them just immediately tear gas
Speaker 1: and and shoot at people over nothing, like nobody was
Speaker 1: doing anything, and they just assaulted the crowd with like
Speaker 1: the most tear gas I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: So I think folks were definitely under prepared for that,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that it's like insurmountable to resist
Speaker 1: something like that. I think there are questions surrounding the
Speaker 1: best way to protest this specific building because of the location,
Speaker 1: and it's tough because it's not in Chicago, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get to for some people.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to. I don't want to write
Speaker 1: anybody off. I mean, I think people are just still
Speaker 1: figuring things out, Like it's it's ice is adapting, Border
Speaker 1: patrols adapting, and so then organizers also have to adapt,
Speaker 1: like it's like this tennis match, right, yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so you know, we are also very much here. Our
Speaker 1: activists are not used to like a huge and our
Speaker 1: press also by extension, are not used to like a
Speaker 1: huge amount of chemical weapons.
Speaker 3: Cargo doesn't use tear gas like historically, like they just
Speaker 3: beat people, right or like shoot them with right munitions,
Speaker 3: like they don't tear gas. And I think I was
Speaker 3: really always told, like growing up in the city as
Speaker 3: an activist, was like if they start using tear guessing
Speaker 3: once they way from shooting you, right. And they finally
Speaker 3: did it in twenty twenty, which is the first time
Speaker 3: anyone had seen it in like decades, right, and the
Speaker 3: fact that like they're just doing it all the time now,
Speaker 3: like Jesus Christ, well, the.
Speaker 1: FEDS, I mean we saw this in LA at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this summer, where like Border Patrol specifically just
Speaker 1: has this enormous amount of chemical weapons that they like
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe they're going to expire soon
Speaker 1: and they have to use them all like like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know what the rationale there is
Speaker 1: other than just being evil. Yeah, but it's like literally
Speaker 1: their first voice of like they're just I mean, they're
Speaker 1: fucking enjoying it. They're fucking enjoying it. They're enjoying yeah,
Speaker 1: shooting at people, tear gassing them, playing g.
Speaker 3: I Joe, Like yeah, I mean, I will say it
Speaker 3: does also raise the question, like how much of this
Speaker 3: stuff do they actually have, because like twenty twenty, they
Speaker 3: went through decades of stockpiles right right, And like this
Speaker 3: is a thing that like, I don't know, someone who
Speaker 3: has a lot of time and as an investigative journalist
Speaker 3: should try to go track down how much of the
Speaker 3: country's tear gas supplies they've been able to replenish, because
Speaker 3: they used a lot of it on us in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: And like, I mean, this is I don't know if
Speaker 3: it is famous. I guess in bicycles, it's kind of
Speaker 3: a famous story that one of the one of the
Speaker 3: South Korean military dictatorships was taken down by a student
Speaker 3: like protest movement that calculated exactly how much tear gas
Speaker 3: the police had and did this thing where they would
Speaker 3: do these marches where they would whole bunch of people
Speaker 3: would show up and the police start characterizing them, and
Speaker 3: they would just slowly keep her treating and keep her
Speaker 3: treating until they ran the state out of tear gas.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I hope to see that level
Speaker 1: or strategy in America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, law, like you know, like nothing nothing, nothing is
Speaker 3: impossible with the power of really really pissed off students.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the I'm not familiar with the manufacturing process for these
Speaker 1: kind of like how long does it take the like
Speaker 1: replenish and where do they source it from?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is one hundred percent a Hey,
Speaker 3: I know a bunch of journalists listen to this podcast.
Speaker 3: If what if you wants to go do this, you
Speaker 3: would be doing a great service to everyone in this country.
Speaker 1: Like right, I'm like assuming that it's not made in
Speaker 1: the United States and they're like importing these things.
Speaker 3: A hug huge amount of Maybe I'm the American American
Speaker 3: tear guys ends up like all over the world because
Speaker 3: we're one of the big suppliers of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, then I was mistaken. The popper Ball gun
Speaker 1: dispenser company apparently is based in Lake Forest, so it's
Speaker 1: actually local.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Yeah, yeah, since you're kind of oh.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just like a glorified paintball gun. Basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the thing I've been getting from listening to you
Speaker 3: talk about this and from talking to other people is that, like,
Speaker 3: both part of what's making this so horrible and also
Speaker 3: maybe where they fail is that these people don't know
Speaker 3: what they're doing. They just like violence, right, And liking
Speaker 3: violence and being willing to hurt people is a very
Speaker 3: effective short term strategy for causing violence, right, But it
Speaker 3: remains to be seen whether it's an effective long term
Speaker 3: strategy for like holding power and accomplishing their goals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with that for sure. It feels
Speaker 1: like it feels like their operation is brittle, like it
Speaker 1: wouldn't take a lot to like impede it. But because
Speaker 1: they are so violent and so out of hand that
Speaker 1: just like the slightest resistance, it's still really challenging to
Speaker 1: figure out. I mean, and to your point earlier about
Speaker 1: everybody hating them, I mean, that is palpable. I have
Speaker 1: heard the anger and the rage pouring out of people
Speaker 1: at these guys, you know, like, yeah, of course it's
Speaker 1: palpable how much people hate them, how much what's going on?
Speaker 1: Of course they're struggling to hire, of course, they're all
Speaker 1: wearing masks because they're fucking terrified they're going to be docs,
Speaker 1: you know, like they know that they're hated. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's also a double edge shore because I think knowing
Speaker 1: that everybody hates you anyway, well, that's just also sometimes
Speaker 1: going to make you even more violent because you don't
Speaker 1: care anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I think the traditional social movement
Speaker 3: gambit has been like the more people can see how
Speaker 3: violent they are, the more people will go out to
Speaker 3: resist them. And I think right now we're in this
Speaker 3: scenario where because of the sort of media blackout and
Speaker 3: like the media bubble let's input around this, it just
Speaker 3: hasn't been getting out the things that they've been doing.
Speaker 3: And I think that is also a thing that you
Speaker 3: random listener can do things about in terms of like
Speaker 3: hey help people, you know that, Like, yeah, there's like
Speaker 3: aking a federal occupation of a city and they're like
Speaker 3: dragging naked children screaming from their homes, like tearing them
Speaker 3: away from their parents. Like that's a thing that you can, like,
Speaker 3: that's the thing you could directly do. That is a
Speaker 3: very very low lift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also countering this like national guard misdirection thing
Speaker 1: that is just like constantly going on where it's like
Speaker 1: every fucking two days, Trump and Pittsburgh are arguing about
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred troops coming to town who are
Speaker 1: essentially just infrastructure for ICE. They might block some roads,
Speaker 1: but like they're not the main threat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, Do you have anything else that you want
Speaker 3: to tell people? And then also, where can people find
Speaker 3: and support your work as you go hopefully not get
Speaker 3: shot again.
Speaker 1: Well, I I've resigned myself to the fact that I
Speaker 1: get shot again, but they can find us at Unraveled
Speaker 1: on all the social platforms, you know, Unraveled, press, dot com.
Speaker 1: And I think the only other thing I want to
Speaker 1: say is, you know, as bleak as this episode sounded,
Speaker 1: we do have to keep the fighting spirit alive and
Speaker 1: not just like, yeah, resign ourselves to total dumerism. We
Speaker 1: have the moral high grounds here, like we are doing
Speaker 1: the right thing and they are not. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: can win this.
Speaker 3: I want to close on the story that came to
Speaker 3: mind when you said that, which was the story of
Speaker 3: the liberation of Turin in World War Two, where Turin
Speaker 3: was like, you know, like one of the great industrial
Speaker 3: cities of Italy and it's directly under the occupation of
Speaker 3: the Nazis. By the end of the war and ahead
Speaker 3: of the Allied advance, the city plans in uprising and
Speaker 3: the SS commander who is running the city explicitly tells them,
Speaker 3: if you like, if you do this, we will turn
Speaker 3: this into another warsaw And they do it anyways, and
Speaker 3: they beat them. All of these factory workers who had
Speaker 3: guns smuggled in successfully do an uprising and defeat like
Speaker 3: an SS panzer division and just kick the shit out
Speaker 3: of them and liberate Turmin. And you know, those were
Speaker 3: people facing odds that were so much worse than the
Speaker 3: ones they were facing today. They were facing a straight
Speaker 3: up military occupation by the SS. And they beat them
Speaker 3: and they've freed themselves. And you know, history is replete
Speaker 3: with dictators who thought that their occupations would last forever
Speaker 3: until one day the Americans were withdrawing from Iraq, and
Speaker 3: the only thing that's eternal is their fear of the uprising.
Speaker 3: They will want to destroy them.
Speaker 6: Welcome to a very special episode of It Could Happen Here,
Speaker 6: reporting live from the sunny beaches of Riad, I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 6: This episode joined by Mia Wong, James Stout and presenting
Speaker 6: our special report.
Speaker 2: Robert Evans, I am so happy to talk about our
Speaker 2: favorite time of the year, which is of course the
Speaker 2: Riod Comedy Festival, which occurs from September twenty sixth to
Speaker 2: October ninth.
Speaker 6: It's the highlight of my year each year.
Speaker 2: Happy to say all of Cool Zone will be there
Speaker 2: performing in Riod, immediately getting arrested. It's going to be
Speaker 2: really good, very much excited, like all of your comedy favorites.
Speaker 2: Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr asas En. Sorry, we will be
Speaker 2: getting paid hundreds of thousands or over a million dollars
Speaker 2: to pretend that the Saudi regime does not execute dissidence reporters,
Speaker 2: civil rights activists, whoever, and doesn't run a torture prison. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that that's what's happening this week. There's been a
Speaker 2: big backlash against a bunch of very prominent comedians.
Speaker 3: Louis c.
Speaker 2: K it looks like a mix of guys. Okay, not
Speaker 2: surprised David Chappelle. I'm surprised that old David Chappelle would
Speaker 2: do this, but I'm not surprised that current David Chappelle
Speaker 2: would do this.
Speaker 6: Bilbert is disappointing.
Speaker 2: Bilbert is disappointing that one hurts. Moe Ahmer, who is
Speaker 2: a Palestinian American comedian who lives in Houston, has also
Speaker 2: agreed to go to Riad and form not great.
Speaker 6: Comrade Shane Gillis declined the offer.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she and.
Speaker 2: Gillis said yes and then said no. Let's be real
Speaker 2: fucking clear on what Shane Gillis did. Okay, I believe
Speaker 2: he's the one that said yes and then said no.
Speaker 2: You get you get a variety of responses from people
Speaker 2: who were invited to this fucking thing. And I'll make
Speaker 2: it clear kind of where my moral line stands. I
Speaker 2: don't actually believe it's inherently wrong to perform inside the
Speaker 2: bounds of any country. It kind of depends on what
Speaker 2: you're doing and how you do it, and this is
Speaker 2: the wrong way to do it, because these are not
Speaker 2: just people. If someone had just shown up at a
Speaker 2: nightclub in Saudi Arabia to do a stand up set,
Speaker 2: I don't particularly care about that, even though there are
Speaker 2: lesma jest laws like I wouldn't care if someone did
Speaker 2: a stand up comedy set that couldn't make fun of
Speaker 2: the King of Thailand, right, which is a crime in Thailand. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, people perform in parts of the world that
Speaker 2: have different or bad laws. The US has bad laws.
Speaker 3: We do bad things.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's inherently evil to just perform at
Speaker 2: a random club there, which is not what the people
Speaker 2: who are performing at the Yadd Comedy Festival are doing.
Speaker 2: This whole convention is being put on by a guy
Speaker 2: named Turkey, I'll shake. Turkey is the chairman of the
Speaker 2: General Entertainment Authority, which is a Saudi government department. He
Speaker 2: grew up with Mohammad Ben Salmon playing League of Legends,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of like key to Ben Salomon's plan
Speaker 2: to like make Saudi Arabia cool, to like bring it
Speaker 2: into the global entertainment and like social network without moderning
Speaker 2: its laws or allowing people to, you know, make fun
Speaker 2: of Mohamed Ben Salmon or his friends for an idea
Speaker 2: of the kind of dude who hired Bill Burr and
Speaker 2: all of these other guys and paid them so much money.
Speaker 2: There is an entire wing of the All Higher Prison
Speaker 2: called the Tutu Wing, which references al Shak's nickname Tutu,
Speaker 2: where prisoners that he specifically pointed out. Often people who
Speaker 2: made fun of him or made jokes that he did
Speaker 2: not appreciate are put in tortured. This guy has an
Speaker 2: entire torture prison named after him. That is who's writing
Speaker 2: checks to fucking Pete Davidson, whose dad died in Night eleven.
Speaker 2: H Fuck, it's fucking shocking the fact that Pete Davidson
Speaker 2: is at this thing, and he has been He's been
Speaker 2: like questioned about it, and his answer, basically, I'll say
Speaker 2: this repeat, was basically like, yeah, but there's a lot
Speaker 2: of money, right, And I'm separating in my head to
Speaker 2: a degree. I think it's bad to take money from
Speaker 2: the Saudi government to do something like this that is
Speaker 2: being used to like whitewash their human rights record to
Speaker 2: make them look like cool part of global society, even
Speaker 2: as they this week executed another journalist. I think that's bad.
Speaker 2: I think it's worse if you're someone who stood for something.
Speaker 2: This doesn't change my opinion about THEO Vaughn, who sucks
Speaker 2: and it's like, yeah, he'll take money from Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: He's a huge asshole. I'm just I'm not surprised, right,
Speaker 2: And there's some other guys in this that I'm not
Speaker 2: necessarily like shocked about.
Speaker 8: Did you see theo Von's beef with Ice this week?
Speaker 2: Oh? Does theovon have beef with Ice this week?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 8: They use video of him without his consent in one
Speaker 8: of their marketing videos.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Great.
Speaker 2: So Jim Jeffries on August one on Theovon's podcast to
Speaker 2: talk about agreeing to do this show, and he said
Speaker 2: one reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not
Speaker 2: a fucking hill that I'm gonna die on, and argued
Speaker 2: that freedom of speech machines like himself would do good
Speaker 2: by like, you know, making jokes in Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 2: key in the men on the freedom of speech thing. Basically,
Speaker 2: it'll be in net positive for freedom if I go
Speaker 2: speak at this thing. And in the funniest possible follow up,
Speaker 2: he was removed from the festival lineup because he acknowledged
Speaker 2: that they killed a reporter and that you can't even
Speaker 2: do that on your own fucking podcast or fucking theo
Speaker 2: Vod's goddamn podcast. I want to play a video clip
Speaker 2: of Tim Dillon, because Tim Dillon is another guy who
Speaker 2: agreed to show up and perform at this this fucking
Speaker 2: nightmare event, and Dylan is why we know kind of
Speaker 2: how much money is on the table at this thing,
Speaker 2: because he has said that he was paid three hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy five thousand. He was offered three hundred seventy
Speaker 2: five thousand for one performance to be there. He said
Speaker 2: the kind of the lowest number people were being offered
Speaker 2: was about one hundred and fifty thousand, and the most
Speaker 2: like highly paid people were being offered up to one
Speaker 2: point six million dollars. So I mean it's possible see
Speaker 2: people were getting more than that, but I'm guessing that's
Speaker 2: closer to like where the Bill Burrs and the Dave
Speaker 2: Chappelle you're getting right like in the one point six million.
Speaker 2: So these guys were offered an insane amount of money.
Speaker 2: And Tim Dillon went on and like talked about this
Speaker 2: on a podcast, talked about like why he agreed to
Speaker 2: do it, and defended and it's very funny. He like
Speaker 2: brought up like slavery in Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: has slaves as a way to like to segue into
Speaker 2: a defense of why it's fine for him to do this,
Speaker 2: And this is just one of the funniest things I've
Speaker 2: ever heard, Well.
Speaker 10: They have slaves, then they kill everyone. Hey hey, hey,
Speaker 10: hey hey hey, get over it. Get over it?
Speaker 7: So what.
Speaker 3: So what they have slaves? So what my friend, I
Speaker 3: not a friend, somebody I don't even know.
Speaker 10: I bumped into them in Tribeca and he goes, I
Speaker 10: would never do that because I don't want to interact
Speaker 10: with slaves.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well why not.
Speaker 10: They'd be deferential, right, I mean, I imagine the slaves
Speaker 10: in those countries are good at what they do.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's that's the clip. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: have one of the most Yeah, and it got him
Speaker 2: fired from the show. He's good bending them, he's big,
Speaker 2: like slavery's not so bad, and he's still got fired.
Speaker 6: That's the insane. That's like, yeah, it's nuts. Oh my god,
Speaker 6: Like it's really bad. To cleanse our minds of whatever
Speaker 6: that was. Here's an ad break.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're back, Robert.
Speaker 2: The degree to which everyone involved in this has just
Speaker 2: nuked whatever credibility they had is shocking. I want to
Speaker 2: read you a quote from Bill Burr in January of twenty.
Speaker 3: Ten to make me sad.
Speaker 2: This is from a set he did at the time.
Speaker 2: This him talking about Beyonce. Uh, she's out there singing
Speaker 2: about girl power, telling you to put a ring on it,
Speaker 2: all that crap. And then what she does, She takes
Speaker 2: a million bucks to go sing at some private party
Speaker 2: for Gadafi's kid, Momar Kadaffi, you know, the guy who's
Speaker 2: been blowing stuff up and running a dictatorship forever. Like,
Speaker 2: what the hell you're gonna jet off to Saint Bart
Speaker 2: shake your ass for some terrorist dictator's family, pawking a million,
Speaker 2: and then go back to preaching about empowerment. Come on, man,
Speaker 2: that's the hypocrisy of this whole thing. These celebrities, they'll
Speaker 2: take any gig if the check's big enough. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm all about the people, until some crazy dictator weaves
Speaker 2: a stack of cash and then it's where's my private jet?
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 6: This nus, Yes, Bill, it is fucks. This sucks to
Speaker 6: be a Bill Bard defender for you. I notice truly
Speaker 6: the first, the first actual stain on Bill Bear's legacy.
Speaker 2: That's a very good comedian.
Speaker 8: That's quite a remarkable fucking stain.
Speaker 3: Gold Comedians are evil. It's just it's that easy he address.
Speaker 2: It's you know part of it is that and if all. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: I kind of think the response of some of the
Speaker 2: scumbags in comedy has been fair with its like, man,
Speaker 2: it was too much money. It's just a shitload of money.
Speaker 2: Like I'll do fucked up shit for a crazy amount
Speaker 2: of money, and it's like that's bad, but at least
Speaker 2: you're honest. Bill's response to this was like, it was
Speaker 2: great to experience that part of the world, to be
Speaker 2: part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: The royals loved the show. Everybody one was happy. The
Speaker 2: people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians
Speaker 2: that I've been talking to are saying, dude, you can
Speaker 2: feel that the audience wanted it. They wanted to see
Speaker 2: real stand up comedy. It was a mind blowing experience.
Speaker 2: Definitely top three experiences I've had. I think it's going
Speaker 2: to lead to a lot of positive things now. He
Speaker 2: did talk a little bit about like the rules that
Speaker 2: they had to bye bye and said that like when
Speaker 2: they were first handing around contracts, he pushed back and
Speaker 2: was like or people pushed back, or like comedians didn't
Speaker 2: were like, you can't have all these restrictions and that
Speaker 2: they whittled them down to just a couple of things,
Speaker 2: which Bill sums up as don't make fun of royals
Speaker 2: and religion right now, as pointed out by the fact
Speaker 2: that Tim Dillon got canceled for talking positively about slavery
Speaker 2: and the there were more restrictions than that. I do
Speaker 2: want to read from a Hollywood Reporter article talking about
Speaker 2: like Bill's response to this, because it gets even worse
Speaker 2: than what I've read already. Bill first described going to
Speaker 2: the island country of Bahrain, which is more socially liberal
Speaker 2: than Saudi Arabia, where a customs agent immediately clocked his
Speaker 2: anxiety about doing stand up in the region and gave
Speaker 2: him grief about it. When I was landing in Bahrain,
Speaker 2: like I'm fucking nervous, right, and then the agent says,
Speaker 2: you tell jokes about the Middle East, you think you're
Speaker 2: going to come over here and get beheaded. Right after
Speaker 2: a successful show in Bahrain, Burr was at a bar
Speaker 2: where he was watching interactions among locals and decided, I'm like,
Speaker 2: they're just like us. I don't speak the language, but
Speaker 2: I get it. When he flew to Saudi Arabia, Burr's
Speaker 2: nervousness crept back, but he was struck by the amount
Speaker 2: of local Western influence. You think everyone's going to be
Speaker 2: screaming death to America and they're going to have fucking
Speaker 2: machetes and want to chop my head off, right, because
Speaker 2: this is what I've been fed about that part of
Speaker 2: the world. I thought this place was going to be
Speaker 2: really tense, and I'm thinking, like, is that a Starbucks
Speaker 2: next to a Pieza Hut, next to a Burger King
Speaker 2: next to McDonald's. They've got a fucking chili and yes, man,
Speaker 2: they have stores. In the Middle East, you can.
Speaker 11: Restaurants that specific combination of kun like the Saudi is
Speaker 11: the reason the current government of ba Raid is in
Speaker 11: power is because the Saudis rolled tanks across the border
Speaker 11: to crush the uprising.
Speaker 3: There were twenty eleven like hideous.
Speaker 2: There's so much that's fucked up just being like, well
Speaker 2: to prepare for abiding by the laws of the fucking
Speaker 2: royal family of Saudi Arabia. I went to Bahrain like
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 8: They're not the same place, no, Like, yeah, I wanted
Speaker 8: to check out some brown Muslin people. Turns out that
Speaker 8: people like that seems to be the gist of what
Speaker 8: he's saying, and they like pizza too.
Speaker 3: Fuck me.
Speaker 2: You could go to again like Iraq and perform in
Speaker 2: fucking uh. Yeah, you go to an ideal and it's nice.
Speaker 2: It's nice, and you're not going to be performing at
Speaker 2: the behest of the fucked up government, right, You'll just
Speaker 2: be performing in a country with the fucked up government.
Speaker 2: And there is a difference.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not angry at the idea that some rando might
Speaker 2: like perform at a nightclub in Saudi Arabia. The problem
Speaker 2: is that you're performing at the behest of the Saudi government,
Speaker 2: at the behest of the regime.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a different thing.
Speaker 2: I do think there's an argument for like, well, people
Speaker 2: in countries with fucked up governments deserve to laugh. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you have to take the money from their
Speaker 2: fucked up government and say nice things about their fucked
Speaker 2: up government like Kevin Hart just did. Because Kevin Hart
Speaker 2: was also a part of this show, and he posted
Speaker 2: a video on TikTok talking about how fucking awesome Saudi
Speaker 2: Royal Turkey Al Shake is, and Turkey Al Shake has
Speaker 2: now been sharing that video on all of his social
Speaker 2: media accounts like you're holding water for people for a
Speaker 2: guy he was a wing in a torture prison named
Speaker 2: after him. That crosses a line for me. You know,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about entertainment, we're talking about being ad
Speaker 2: support all this stuff. There's compromises that everyone makes in
Speaker 2: this business. There's compromises in what company you fucking work with,
Speaker 2: right Like, if you're talking about, you know, make it
Speaker 2: a TV show for Amazon's TV division or Disney's you know,
Speaker 2: fucking streaming division, right, well, there's a degree of moral
Speaker 2: compromise there, and I think, depending on what you're doing
Speaker 2: and what not, can be justified by the fact that
Speaker 2: number one, like that's just the way television works. There's
Speaker 2: no working with anyone completely clean in a company that
Speaker 2: has the ability to fund, you know, a production like that,
Speaker 2: but taking money directly from the hands of the guy
Speaker 2: with the torture prison, I think that crosses a line.
Speaker 2: I think that crosses the line for a free speech activist.
Speaker 2: It should across the line for Pete Davidson, who's dad
Speaker 2: died at nine to eleven, but.
Speaker 3: She's apparently not. That is a wild one.
Speaker 2: That's the craziest one to me, that Davidson went over
Speaker 2: to Saudi Arabia. Oh man, are you gonna it's just
Speaker 2: mom sit on the scene. Oh man, she's probably getting
Speaker 2: a lot of money if she is, So it's fine.
Speaker 2: It's fine. I don't know like how much. And it
Speaker 2: is one of those things I get the people who
Speaker 2: are like, Okay, but you know, the US is fucked
Speaker 2: up to and it is. And so if somebody is
Speaker 2: getting paid directly by the Trump regime to perform at
Speaker 2: the White House, I'd say pretty fucked up. But like,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean it's immoral to perform at like a
Speaker 2: nightclub in fucking Chicago, you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And none of us are going to Guantanamo Bay
Speaker 8: to like entertain the fucking prison.
Speaker 6: Guards, right, Like, yeah, well hopefully none of us will
Speaker 6: be going to Guantanamo Bay for any reason. As long
Speaker 6: as we keep playing these ads, we're back.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about this from the Saudi perspective,
Speaker 3: because they have been doing really for the last half
Speaker 3: a decade, a fallout pr blitz. Right, We've seen this
Speaker 3: in WWE. We've seen this with a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: professional sports stuff. Like most of the esports is run
Speaker 3: out of the esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia. Now
Speaker 3: like the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund just helped Jared Kushner
Speaker 3: buy EA, right, just like one of the largest video
Speaker 3: game companies in the world. Right, they've been, you know,
Speaker 3: they've been doing this sort of whole sportsw washing strategy
Speaker 3: of using these things to sort of normalize, normalize the regime.
Speaker 3: And I think the actual genius of this right was
Speaker 3: not that you can buy legitimacy with like sports and
Speaker 3: with comedians. The genius of it was that they were
Speaker 3: able to control the backlash because they ensured the backlash
Speaker 3: to it would be done by sports journalists and entertainment
Speaker 3: journalists who don't know anything about the Saudis and thus
Speaker 3: assumed that the Saudis were attempting to whitewash their, you know,
Speaker 3: horrific domestic human rights record, and they were to some extent.
Speaker 3: But even focusing on the Saudis domestic human rights record
Speaker 3: is a victory for the Saudist because it means that
Speaker 3: nobody's talking about the stuff people were talking about last
Speaker 3: decade when they talked about the Saudis, which was things like,
Speaker 3: for example, the Sudanese child soldiers that they were deploying
Speaker 3: in their war and Yemen, and these Sudanese child soldiers
Speaker 3: were drawn from their connections bolstered by the UAE to
Speaker 3: the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, a group that is almost
Speaker 3: entirely composed of the militias who did the genocide and
Speaker 3: dart four. So these are the round troops that they're
Speaker 3: deploying in Yemen, are as Sudanese child soldiers drawn from
Speaker 3: the people who did the genocide in Darfur in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: which was not that long ago, Like I remember twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: So do you statistically if you're listening to the show
Speaker 3: they carried out an airstrike on a school bus that
Speaker 3: killed twenty six children, right, no one is talking about
Speaker 3: the air strikes on funerals that they absolutely love to do, like,
Speaker 3: for example, there was a huge one in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: where they killed one hundred and forty people in one
Speaker 3: air strike, after which the area was described by a
Speaker 3: rescue worker as a quote lake of blood. And this
Speaker 3: has been the really successful thing about about the Saudi
Speaker 3: specifically targeting sports, specifically targeting entertainment, is that the people
Speaker 3: covering this do not know anything about Saudi Arabia. Right,
Speaker 3: And this is also partially what was going on Bill
Speaker 3: Burv because they're just racists or their attempt could do
Speaker 3: a backlash, and they're trying to do a backlash with
Speaker 3: things like Okay, they killed a journalist, which is really bad, right,
Speaker 3: But like Jamal Kashogi was one guy out of thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands in thousands of people that they were killing
Speaker 3: and are continuing to kill to this day in Yemen. Right.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the reasons people have been
Speaker 3: able to get away with this, right, is that no
Speaker 3: one has been walking up to them and going, what
Speaker 3: do you think about the Sudanese child soldiers? Because nobody
Speaker 3: knows about any of that. And this is one of
Speaker 3: the thing that I want to just say at the
Speaker 3: end of this, which is I know for a fact
Speaker 3: that journalists and editors listen to this show and please,
Speaker 3: for the love of God, find someone who knows literally
Speaker 3: anything about the Saudis war and Yemen and have them
Speaker 3: write this piece on sportswashing for you, literally anyone. And
Speaker 3: this is what this is what makes me insane about
Speaker 3: all this coverage is that like, if you even a
Speaker 3: little bit paid attention to what they were doing in
Speaker 3: the twenty tens and what they're continuing to do now
Speaker 3: in Yemen. You know about so many even I'm not
Speaker 3: even I'm not even talking about the starvation genocide here.
Speaker 3: There are so many things that they did, you know.
Speaker 3: And like one of the common defenses is like, oh,
Speaker 3: like you know, like we live in the US as
Speaker 3: the fucked up country, right, Like who cares about authoritarianism?
Speaker 3: Just like, I don't know, it's harder to make that
Speaker 3: argument when it's about Sudanese child soldiers.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's just again, we're not pissed because some
Speaker 2: guy performed at a nightclub in Riyad. It's it's that
Speaker 2: you're taking money from the government to whitewash the government.
Speaker 3: No, it's because they took money for the governments. All
Speaker 3: these all of these things, all of these all of
Speaker 3: like wwe like all of these sports events, these are
Speaker 3: funded directly by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is
Speaker 3: the wealth fund of the Saudi government. The people who
Speaker 3: were dropping bombs on school buses and sending child soldiers
Speaker 3: to fight their warren Yemmen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there has been some good reporting on sportswashing. I
Speaker 8: would say like Ian Trello's done some excellent stuff.
Speaker 2: The Guardian has a good article on this where they
Speaker 2: really coalate some of like the very worst responses, written
Speaker 2: by Seth Simon. So I liked that this does seem
Speaker 2: to be blowing up. Hollywood Reporters piece was pretty good.
Speaker 8: Too, Hollywood Report to My friend was the editor of
Speaker 8: that publication for years, and they have consistently done some
Speaker 8: stuff that we wouldn't expect looking at the title of publication.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to be silly enough to be
Speaker 2: like I think this is going to cost any of
Speaker 2: these people their career because it's I don't think it is.
Speaker 2: But it does seem to be causing them some embarrassment.
Speaker 2: Uh So I don't know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean they get called out, it shamed like
Speaker 8: it's Yeah, it's a pretty shameful thing to do.
Speaker 2: It's a shameful thing to do. It's a bummer. I
Speaker 2: wish people had not made these choices because man, it's depressing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, luckily I have some news to lift our moods
Speaker 6: after this depressing episode. I am pleased to report that
Speaker 6: Cool Zone Media will be headlining at Victor Orbon's new
Speaker 6: comedy festival Hungry four laughs.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 6: Next year twenty twenty six market in your calendar. Cool
Speaker 6: Zone Media presents with Victor Orbon Hungary for laughs. That's
Speaker 6: all for us today. At it could happen here. See
Speaker 6: you next year in Hungary. Goodbye everybody. This is it
Speaker 6: could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. On the morning of Sunday,
Speaker 6: September twenty eighth, a forty year old man drove a
Speaker 6: pickup truck into a Grand Blanc, Michigan church. The man
Speaker 6: started shooting people inside and then set the church on fire,
Speaker 6: burning the building down. Four churchgoers died, eight others were
Speaker 6: injured but have survived, and police killed the shooter on
Speaker 6: the scene. The President, the Vice president, and the rest
Speaker 6: of the right were quick to call this yet quote
Speaker 6: another targeted attack on Christians in the United States, to
Speaker 6: quote Trump on truth social White House Press Secretary Carolyn
Speaker 6: Leavitt went on Fox and Friends the day after the
Speaker 6: shooting and said.
Speaker 1: This, it's unfathomable and as the President rightfully put in
Speaker 1: his true social yesterday, this appears to be yet another
Speaker 1: targeted attacked on Christians.
Speaker 6: As the church was still burning, right wing podcaster Betty Johnson,
Speaker 6: who recently rode with Ice in Chicago, posted on x
Speaker 6: the everything app quote church is on fire, Christianity is
Speaker 6: under attack. Pray unquote what Betty Johnson neglected to mention
Speaker 6: this was a Mormon church, And pretty soon it became
Speaker 6: clear the attacker was not some transgender leftist ANTIFA, but
Speaker 6: a Christian Trump supporter who thought Mormon's were quote unquote
Speaker 6: the anti christ. According to Burton City council candidate Chris Johns,
Speaker 6: who claims to have spoken with the shooter just days
Speaker 6: prior while canvassing, one of the shooter's friends told The
Speaker 6: New York Times that the shooter believed that the Mormons
Speaker 6: quote are going to take over the world unquote. This
Speaker 6: guy obsessively talked about his dislike of Mormon's stemming from
Speaker 6: a breakup with a Mormon girlfriend over a decade ago.
Speaker 6: After the background of this shooter and his apparent motive
Speaker 6: became more clear, the Trump dmen quite quickly stopped talking
Speaker 6: about this specific attack, save for vague references to attacks
Speaker 6: on Christianity. But this attack was more deadly than any
Speaker 6: recent school shooting or any instance of targeted violence which
Speaker 6: the administration has been framed as political violence happening this year.
Speaker 6: After the shooter was identified, rather than talk about his
Speaker 6: apparent motive, people online argued about his political orientation. A
Speaker 6: picture spread online of him wearing a Trump twenty twenty
Speaker 6: camo shirt that read make Liberals Cry Again. The right
Speaker 6: wing outlet The Daily Caller attacked Democrat Representative Eric Swalwell
Speaker 6: for posting a photo of that shirt, claiming that the
Speaker 6: Trump graphic was photoshopped, with The Daily Caller sharing a
Speaker 6: version of the shirt that they alleged to be the
Speaker 6: original unedited photo without the Trump graphic. Except that version
Speaker 6: without the Trump graphic is in fact the doctored photo.
Speaker 6: The Trump one is the authentic version. Right Wing users
Speaker 6: on x the Everything app spread a list of political
Speaker 6: donations to progressive organizations that they attributed to the shooter,
Speaker 6: as well as a screenshot of a Twitter account with
Speaker 6: a bio that read politically Active Democratic Socialist. Except that
Speaker 6: account and those donations were from a completely different person,
Speaker 6: just with a similar name. Now, just because it's pretty
Speaker 6: clear that this shooter supported Trump doesn't mean that we
Speaker 6: should frame this as partisan political violence. This was a
Speaker 6: classic American shooting. A marine veteran who moved to Utah
Speaker 6: after getting back from Iraq, got involved with a Mormon woman,
Speaker 6: had negative experiences with the Mormon Church, moved to Michigan,
Speaker 6: but continued to have very strong anti Mormon sentiments which
Speaker 6: he held until he acted on those sentiments' lead to
Speaker 6: his death and the deaths of four other people. And
Speaker 6: extremely tragic yet extremely American sequence of events. But the
Speaker 6: conversation and coverage surrounding this Mormon Church shooting is such
Speaker 6: an open display of this game of picking and choosing
Speaker 6: shootings to care about and then which can be weaponized
Speaker 6: against political enemies. Former Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker went
Speaker 6: on Fox News to discuss this shooting, where he laid
Speaker 6: blame on politicians rhetoric calling people Nazis.
Speaker 9: So, you know, this is a situation of you find
Speaker 9: a manufactured grievance, if you will, and that a whole
Speaker 9: lot of stimulus from from people either on the Internet
Speaker 9: or even politicians.
Speaker 1: Theyrre responsible politicians.
Speaker 2: We all know who they are.
Speaker 9: You know, they're talking about Nazis and anarchists and existential threats.
Speaker 9: You know they need to crawl back into their dark places.
Speaker 9: These people are out there. That has to be taken
Speaker 9: into account when you start firing off.
Speaker 6: Your mouth that simply has nothing to do with this
Speaker 6: specific attack. But both politicians and the media have this
Speaker 6: obsession with only talking about shooters insofar as they can
Speaker 6: try to identify a shooter's orientation towards a political party
Speaker 6: and then weaponize that suspected orientation against political opponents by
Speaker 6: trying to frame every deranged shooter as emblematic of the
Speaker 6: oppositional political project. Following Charlie Kirk's assassination and the media
Speaker 6: blitz around it, fellow far right commentator Stephen Crowder has
Speaker 6: revived his long dormant college debate series Change My Mind Now,
Speaker 6: with the prompt they left is violent propagandists collapse political
Speaker 6: violence into a simple binary, which is just a very
Speaker 6: limited way in trying to actually understand public acts of violence,
Speaker 6: the idea that things can only happen because of of ideologies,
Speaker 6: not downstream of personal experiences, material conditions, or class This year,
Speaker 6: there's been one other target attack that ties the Mormon
Speaker 6: Church shooting for the highest fatalities in attacks this year,
Speaker 6: and that was the Midtown Manhattan mass shooting in July,
Speaker 6: where the gunmen attempted to shoot up the NFL offices,
Speaker 6: motivated by getting CTE from playing football in high school.
Speaker 6: No clear ideological motivations here. Lots of shooters aren't typically
Speaker 6: ideological in like the ordinary political sense. The only recent
Speaker 6: shooter that could be accurately categorized as quote unquote leftist
Speaker 6: is the former PSL member who assassinated two Israeli embassy
Speaker 6: staffers in May of twenty twenty five. Now, under no
Speaker 6: circumstances do you have to hand it to Bill Maherr.
Speaker 6: But this exchange between him and Ben Shapiro, just two
Speaker 6: days after the char Turk assassination, demonstrates this point about
Speaker 6: how media and politicians only understand and weaponize public acts
Speaker 6: of violence through ideology, long before we have any actual
Speaker 6: clear indication on what motivated a shooter to commit an attack.
Speaker 12: There's a shooting at a synagogue, it is very likely
Speaker 12: to be either a white supremacist or a radical Muslim.
Speaker 12: If it is shooting of a Republican politician, it is
Speaker 12: very likely to be a trans Antifa marxishuan Is.
Speaker 3: We don't know. We don't know what this kid is. Wait,
Speaker 3: we do know this kid was of the left. We
Speaker 3: do know that we do know what that this kid
Speaker 3: was of the political left.
Speaker 12: That is according to contemporarious reporting from The Guardian as
Speaker 12: well as tablet magazines.
Speaker 5: Today it's two days out. We don't know shit, but
Speaker 5: here we don't know shit.
Speaker 3: They never do.
Speaker 5: The Internet is undefeated in getting it wrong to begin with.
Speaker 2: It's not about the Internet.
Speaker 3: That's about the that's about.
Speaker 12: The actual reporting by mainstream except the Guardian is not
Speaker 12: right wing.
Speaker 5: Here's what I here's what we heard. Here's what I
Speaker 5: was told so far, And I'll tell you what was wrong.
Speaker 5: First I heard he's a registered Republican not not true.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: Then he was a donor de Trump not true. His
Speaker 5: father works in the sheriff's office, not true. There was
Speaker 5: a picture I'm wearing a pro Trump shirt not true.
Speaker 5: A member of the Democratic Socialists of America not true.
Speaker 4: We don't know what he is.
Speaker 3: Well, how are you so sure he's of the left?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: I agree? When you right on a bullet.
Speaker 4: What did he write on the.
Speaker 3: Bullet catches fascist? Which is also a gamer thing? Okay?
Speaker 5: But now I'm hearing he may have been part of
Speaker 5: that group for whom Charlie Kirk was not right wing enough.
Speaker 12: Yes, I mean so that you're sure he's not that
Speaker 12: I'm not sure that he's not there you were was
Speaker 12: hold on, hold on, no, hold on, okay, because.
Speaker 6: I've Another thing that can be tricky to understand is
Speaker 6: just because the target of violence is as a political
Speaker 6: figure does not mean that it's political violence. The attempted
Speaker 6: assassination of Ronald Reagan is a key example of this,
Speaker 6: and for the Kirk assassination, available evidence points towards more
Speaker 6: of a personal motivation based on romantic attraction on a
Speaker 6: dog day afternoon over any larger partisan political motivation. It
Speaker 6: doesn't even make sense to view the first attempted Trump
Speaker 6: assassination as political violence. Thomas Crooks searched online for a
Speaker 6: variety of events to commit a shooting at. In the
Speaker 6: month prior to the shooting, he did more than sixty
Speaker 6: internet searches related to Biden, Trump and information about the
Speaker 6: upcoming DNC and RNC conventions. Donald Trump's campaign event in Butler,
Speaker 6: Pennsylvania just happened to fall into the right place at
Speaker 6: the right time. The mass killer obsessed school shooter from
Speaker 6: last August who shot two kids at a Catholic school
Speaker 6: in Minneapolis, which the right branded as a trans terrorist
Speaker 6: originally planned to do the shooting at a small LGBTQ
Speaker 6: music venue, but feared that trans girls attending the concert
Speaker 6: would be armed for self defense. As I've previously reported
Speaker 6: on this show, this shooting bared similarity to TCC or
Speaker 6: True Crime community, not as in true crime podcasts, but
Speaker 6: an online community of usually young people obsessed with school
Speaker 6: shooters or mass shooters, akin to neo columnbiners, who encourage
Speaker 6: each other online to then commit their own acts of
Speaker 6: violence inspired by or replicating those of previous school shootings
Speaker 6: or mass shootings. This pseudo mass shooter fandom demonstrates the
Speaker 6: extent to which the role of quote unquote the shooter
Speaker 6: can be its own motivating force, beyond any culture, war
Speaker 6: issues or ordinary partisan politics that might get sprinkled on
Speaker 6: top as seasoning. On Wednesday, September twenty fourth, the twenty
Speaker 6: nine year old open fire with a bolt action rifle
Speaker 6: targeting an ICE Field office in Dallas, Texas. This attack
Speaker 6: claimed the lives of three immigrants who were detained by Ice.
Speaker 6: In a copycat style following the Kirk assassination and the
Speaker 6: United Healthcare CEO assassination. This shooter allegedly wrote anti ice
Speaker 6: on unfired bullet casings. In the immediate wake of this attack,
Speaker 6: the right attributed this shooting to the radical left and
Speaker 6: blamed Democrat politicians for spreading anti ICE rhetoric. At a
Speaker 6: North Carolina event, JD. Vance said, quote, Here's what happens
Speaker 6: when Democrats like Gavin Newsom say these people are part
Speaker 6: of an authoritarian government. When the left wing media lies
Speaker 6: about what they're doing, when they lie about who they're arresting,
Speaker 6: when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement,
Speaker 6: what they are doing is encouraging crazy peaceopull to go
Speaker 6: and commit violence. Here's a brief Fox News report.
Speaker 3: We have a problem America.
Speaker 13: We are living through a scourge of left wing political
Speaker 13: violence that three weeks into this month has made it
Speaker 13: bloody September today, another attack.
Speaker 6: On ice as is not uncommon with mass shooters. This
Speaker 6: guy was a registered independent, and the shooter's brother told
Speaker 6: NBC News that he wasn't really interested in politics. I
Speaker 6: find it highly unlikely that this millennial and other gen
Speaker 6: Z shooters are regularly watching liberal news, getting their opinions
Speaker 6: from politicians and news anchors on MSNBC or CNN. Journalist
Speaker 6: Ken Klippenstein spoke with friends of this shooter, who described
Speaker 6: him as a libertarian leaning four Chan edge lord who
Speaker 6: hated both political parties and most mainstream politicians. Friends believed
Speaker 6: that the bullet inscription could have been written as a
Speaker 6: joke intended to rile people up. They told Klippenstein the
Speaker 6: shooter became more isolated in recent years as friends drifted
Speaker 6: away due to his continuous anti social edgelord behavior in
Speaker 6: regular day to day interactions. Nancy Larson, the acting of
Speaker 6: his attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said the
Speaker 6: shooter left behind a writing where he referred to ICE
Speaker 6: operations as human trafficking. Larsen says the shooter did not
Speaker 6: mention any government agency besides ICE, but left a note
Speaker 6: for police reading quote good luck with the digital footprint.
Speaker 6: This shooter killed himself after the attack. These public acts
Speaker 6: of violence usually have a suicidal component, a drive for
Speaker 6: self annihilation while simultaneously gaining some final sense of meaning
Speaker 6: or purpose by crudely emblazoning yourself in history through a
Speaker 6: violent act. What causes someone to do this can be
Speaker 6: a mix of many factors, including access to guns, individual motivations,
Speaker 6: social alienation, self annihilation in so far as there is
Speaker 6: an overtly political element, it's often the result of a
Speaker 6: political alienation. Usually, the type of person who commits a
Speaker 6: bloody act of violence lacks a recognizably coherent political philosophy
Speaker 6: that can be easily grafted onto our Democrat Republican binary,
Speaker 6: with there sometimes being a mix of political beliefs across
Speaker 6: the left right spectrum. Mass shootings which are accompanied by
Speaker 6: express political motivations usually stem from anti Muslim or great
Speaker 6: replacement rhetoric, the idea that white people in Western culture
Speaker 6: will slowly be replaced by brown immigrants. But throughout the
Speaker 6: next three years, under Trump's federal government and the right
Speaker 6: wing anti woke backlash currently flexing dominance over our culture,
Speaker 6: nihilistic self destructive acts against American society may take a
Speaker 6: form which could be characterized as quote unquote left wing violence,
Speaker 6: despite most of these shooters being far from your average
Speaker 6: DNC acolyte or bread tube watching leftist. Considering the Mormon
Speaker 6: church shooting, the Kirk assassination, the Iced Dtaee shooting, and
Speaker 6: the Minneapolis Catholic School shooting in the Year of Our
Speaker 6: Brain Rot twenty twenty five, I think it's pretty clear
Speaker 6: that the current US state apparatus does not need to
Speaker 6: stage false flags. The state just tries to take advantage
Speaker 6: of naturally emergent events, twisting them to fit narratives. In
Speaker 6: an ad hoc manipulation of consensus reality, no crude fabrication
Speaker 6: of physical reality is needed. They are more than happy
Speaker 6: to simply pick and choose, and magnify and obscure various
Speaker 6: events to fit their preferred version of reality. The night
Speaker 6: before the shooting at the Mormon Church, another Iraq war
Speaker 6: veteran did a mass shooting in North Carolina, which did
Speaker 6: not result in nearly as many national headlines. The shooter
Speaker 6: targeted a waterfront bar, killing three people injuring six others.
Speaker 6: The suspect rowed a boat up to the bar, fired
Speaker 6: with an ar mounted with a scope and silencer, before
Speaker 6: speeding off on water. Police have also deemed this a
Speaker 6: targeted attack, but without a tangential link to culture war issues,
Speaker 6: this event will be quickly forgotten. As I'm recording this episode,
Speaker 6: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he's launching undercover
Speaker 6: operations to infiltrate and uproot quote leftist terror cells in Texas.
Speaker 6: Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present ding there
Speaker 6: can be no compromise with those who want us dead unquote.
Speaker 6: This mirrors President Trump's National Security Presdential Memorandum Number seven,
Speaker 6: which targets quote unquote, domestic terrorism indicators like anti Christianity,
Speaker 6: anti capitalism, anti Americanism, extremism on race, gender, immigration, and
Speaker 6: hostility towards traditional American values. All this partisan rhetoric on
Speaker 6: targeted violence and political violence is in service of authoritarian
Speaker 6: crackdowns and enhanced surveillance against their political opposition. Meanwhile, this
Speaker 6: passed Saturday morning, the home of a South Carolina Circuit
Speaker 6: Court judge was burned down, hospitalizing her husband, a former
Speaker 6: state senator, and their son. The judge was out of
Speaker 6: the house at the time. Last month, the judge temporarily
Speaker 6: blocked a voter suppression executive order signed by President Trump.
Speaker 6: In the weeks leading up to the fire, the judge
Speaker 6: had received death threats. This has been it could happen here,
Speaker 6: see you on the other.
Speaker 3: Side, Well, can it could happen here? A podcast beset
Speaker 3: by horrors of such magnitude that sometimes you have to
Speaker 3: go back to a thing that you just talked about
Speaker 3: because there were more horrors in it. That you didn't
Speaker 3: have time to cover the first time you went through
Speaker 3: the horror, sorry, the first two times you went through
Speaker 3: the horse and with me to talk about the horrors?
Speaker 3: Is doctor cave Hoda, who is a doctor? I guess,
Speaker 3: as you probably could have guessed from the title. You know,
Speaker 3: I scripted this out very poorly. Uh oh, this is great,
Speaker 3: you're doing great, keep going, I say, scripted this out. Literally.
Speaker 3: The only part of this introduction that was in my
Speaker 3: notes was cave Hoda, doc you're at host of House
Speaker 3: of Pod and friend of the show, which was not
Speaker 3: in my notes either. But that's right, friend. The energy
Speaker 3: is chaotic today.
Speaker 14: Friend, Most importantly, it has to be that is the
Speaker 14: normal response to what is happening in this world. If
Speaker 14: we don't embrace a little chaos, then we will lose
Speaker 14: our minds.
Speaker 3: So I am. I am loving how this is going
Speaker 3: so far. I am so glad because there is so
Speaker 3: much chaos. One of the chaos things that we have
Speaker 3: been tracking, and that you spend a hideous amount of
Speaker 3: time tracking too much on your show.
Speaker 8: Too much.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's not good, it's very bad. Please stop doing
Speaker 3: this stuff so we can all go back to doing
Speaker 3: normal things. In our lives.
Speaker 14: I would love to just do more fart jokes and
Speaker 14: episodes on poop, but people in power keep saying and
Speaker 14: doing terrible things. You have crazy, terrible things that make
Speaker 14: me feel like I'm losing my mind. So I have
Speaker 14: to keep doing this from Ultaris one because someone's got
Speaker 14: to talk about it too. It's sort of therapy for me, Like,
Speaker 14: if I just internalize this, I'm gonna I'm gonna be
Speaker 14: a miserable person.
Speaker 3: So thanks, thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm excited
Speaker 3: to talk to you about well, Okay, see this Literally
Speaker 3: every single time I do an episode, it's like, I'm
Speaker 3: really excited to talk to you. And also, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 3: I wish we did not have to talk about this.
Speaker 3: That's how everyone feels. That's how my feel, that's feel
Speaker 3: when they see me. It's terrible. God, really, truly, we
Speaker 3: got to stop meeting like this. One day. We'll do
Speaker 3: a fun episode one day, and I swear to God. Okay,
Speaker 3: But the thing that I've been talking about that we've
Speaker 3: both been covering is basically the annihilation of the entire
Speaker 3: US medical establishment at the federal level. It is being
Speaker 3: systematically dismantled and One of the ways that's being sematically
Speaker 3: dismantled is that a bunch of people have been put
Speaker 3: in charge of it who are I mean two years ago,
Speaker 3: were fringe anti vaccine cranks and are now running like
Speaker 3: the most sophisticated like public health institutions that have ever existed.
Speaker 14: Yeah, as a producer extraordinaire, Sophie Liechttermann once said, you
Speaker 14: can't put a hater in charge of the thing that
Speaker 14: they hate the most. And that is what has happened,
Speaker 14: completely and fully, almost at every step of this government. Yeah,
Speaker 14: they find the person that hates it the most and
Speaker 14: they put that person in.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, one of the big sort of I
Speaker 3: don't know if turning points is the right word, but
Speaker 3: one of the major events we've been covering from this
Speaker 3: was the announcement by Rfkjunior and Trump that they had
Speaker 3: found what causes autism and also ADHD too, which I
Speaker 3: got very little coverage. I think I said this last
Speaker 3: time I talked about this. It was very baffling. But
Speaker 3: there's just there was so much in that whole thing
Speaker 3: that I think a lot of the stuff kind of
Speaker 3: fell through the cracks inside of like, well, there was
Speaker 3: a lot. There was a lot to digest. There so much.
Speaker 3: There's so much, and so I guess I want to
Speaker 3: we wanted to talk about mostly the hepatitis B thing,
Speaker 3: but also just sort of the broader anti vax stuff
Speaker 3: that was in this before we get into I don't know,
Speaker 3: like the weirder, more boutique anti vax stuff, which is
Speaker 3: like the anti hepatitis B vagazine stuff, a thing that
Speaker 3: I didn't realize people were against like children getting until
Speaker 3: like now, and like I follow these things decently closely,
Speaker 3: Let's start a little bit with like, let's let's ease
Speaker 3: the audience into this by by going back to the classics,
Speaker 3: the greatest hits. We didn't really have one hit, the
Speaker 3: one hit of the anti vaccine movement, which was Trump's
Speaker 3: stuff about separating the MMR vaccine. Yeah, soh yeah.
Speaker 14: Recently during that press conference where he really threw tylern
Speaker 14: All under the bus, he also really it was weird
Speaker 14: because there's no new evidence. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 14: There was no new evidence that they presented about vaccines.
Speaker 14: But Trump actually really harped on vaccines and his thoughts,
Speaker 14: his medical opinion, and his advice on how to manage
Speaker 14: vaccines is truly bizarre. Never seen a president say or
Speaker 14: do those sorts of things. But one of the things
Speaker 14: he mentioned was the MMR vaccine, the measles, mumps, rubella,
Speaker 14: and he said that it should be split into three
Speaker 14: separate shots. Again medically unfounded. It really, as you have
Speaker 14: alluded to, echoes, these long debunked claims, these Wakefield like claims,
Speaker 14: from starting from back in nineteen ninety eight. Again, Wakefield
Speaker 14: was the disgraced author of that vaccine study that tied
Speaker 14: it to autism, lost his men license for that. But
Speaker 14: that has persisted and carried on, and the seeds of
Speaker 14: that are still growing terrible, terrible plants in trees today.
Speaker 14: And one of them was this fruit of Trump saying
Speaker 14: we should break up the MMR vaccine. So I'll just
Speaker 14: say it up front. One, there's no reason to do that.
Speaker 14: There's no reason that shows improved safety. There's no credible
Speaker 14: evidence to suggest that at least, and more importantly, the
Speaker 14: more you split these things up, the more likely you're
Speaker 14: gonna end up missing doses.
Speaker 3: That is like a known fact.
Speaker 14: If you delay vaccines, if you split them up more
Speaker 14: than they need to be, there is a much greater
Speaker 14: chance you will miss that. In case this is not clear,
Speaker 14: measles is bad. It is one of the most contagious
Speaker 14: viruses out there, and lower vaccination rates quickly lead to outbreaks,
Speaker 14: as we're already starting to see, and when there's already
Speaker 14: some hesitancy in the community, pushing it like this is
Speaker 14: a terrible thing. So even though that was a throwaway
Speaker 14: statement from the presentident of the United States, it could
Speaker 14: have serious repercussions. And it's it's very concerning, and I've
Speaker 14: also I have committed myself every single time this comes
Speaker 14: up that the Wakefield study, which is where this this
Speaker 14: whole separate da war thing like came up as it's
Speaker 14: not even a conclusion that even even if you take
Speaker 14: his completely fake premise that he made up, it doesn't
Speaker 14: actually follow that you should split the vaccines up.
Speaker 3: It's baffling. But the second thing is the reason he
Speaker 3: wanted to split the vaccines up was that he was
Speaker 3: trying to sell his own vaccines. Correct, he was just
Speaker 3: trying to sell his own vaccin I it makes me
Speaker 3: insane every single time this has talked about, because this
Speaker 3: whole thing is sibbetically, it's literally an industrial complex it's
Speaker 3: like the y vaccine industrial complex. They're all trying to
Speaker 3: sell you something. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 14: I was watching Trump give this talk this press conference,
Speaker 14: and I said, I think I said this on another
Speaker 14: show here on this channel.
Speaker 3: I started to disassociate. I'm like, yeah, this can't be real.
Speaker 3: I am I dreaming?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 14: It felt like I was having an out of body experience.
Speaker 14: It did not feel real to me. To be fully transparent,
Speaker 14: I did not make it through that press conference. Watching
Speaker 14: it on video. About like four minutes in, I was like,
Speaker 14: fuck this, I'm going to read the transcript. So I'm
Speaker 14: just working off the transcript because I was like I can't.
Speaker 3: It was tough. I can't do this.
Speaker 14: So on my podcast, The House of Pod you should
Speaker 14: all listen to it, I played a clip from Trump
Speaker 14: talking about Tylan All and another clip of him talking
Speaker 14: about heptiz B and when you listen to it. When
Speaker 14: I listened back to it as I was editing it,
Speaker 14: it sounded like I edited his clips to make him
Speaker 14: sound crazy.
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 14: I just took straight from what he says, and it
Speaker 14: just the way he was talking. It's hard to listen to.
Speaker 14: I mean, it's hard to read too. But the way
Speaker 14: he talks, it's so disjointed, and he just goes from
Speaker 14: one thought to the next. Hey, does this weave thing
Speaker 14: that he thinks is so clever, But it's just lost.
Speaker 14: The threads are never brought together. It's just an unraveled,
Speaker 14: terrible rug of lies. And that is that is why
Speaker 14: it's so hard to like listen to him. I I
Speaker 14: totally understand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, but and this has also been you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things that most of the media has
Speaker 3: done is that you know, in order to be able
Speaker 3: to like play a listenable clip on air, right, and
Speaker 3: also in sort of innservative power, they edit the clips
Speaker 3: to make him sound like a normal human being. Right,
Speaker 3: So the version of it that people are seeing is
Speaker 3: not the version where he's just sort of completely ranting
Speaker 3: incoherently and like, you know, you just see these clips.
Speaker 3: But then also because they're because they're they're editing it
Speaker 3: down progressively more and more, like just more stuff more,
Speaker 3: just like information content gets lost every time, which is
Speaker 3: the problem because there's just like so much yea, the
Speaker 3: fire Hose of Nonsense.
Speaker 15: Yeah, title of my first album, incredible, incredible, Oh god, Okay,
Speaker 15: so you know what, right, we're going to a second
Speaker 15: fire hose of nonsense.
Speaker 3: This is slightly early to be doing this, but fuck it,
Speaker 3: it's chaos week. We're doing it. Do you know what
Speaker 3: else is a fire hose of nonsense? Oh?
Speaker 14: Well, I wouldn't say it's nonsense. I would say it's
Speaker 14: very important in these bills. So it's very very important
Speaker 14: I believe in. I don't end up just kidding. I'm
Speaker 14: assuming ads and services. Yeah, this is the froucess services
Speaker 14: to support this podcast.
Speaker 3: We are back. So it makes the torrent of you know,
Speaker 3: the the MMR stuff, which also I do want to say,
Speaker 3: very briefly, is sort of a baffling thing to be
Speaker 3: talking about in a thing where you're not blaming the
Speaker 3: vaccines for autism, you're blaming Thailand all but then you're
Speaker 3: still also mad at the vaccine. It's very weird. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had thoughts about that.
Speaker 14: You know, I felt like what Trump was doing with
Speaker 14: that by bringing up the vaccine stuff was I felt
Speaker 14: he was trying to console RFK Junior in a way.
Speaker 14: I felt like he was like, Okay, hey, we're moving
Speaker 14: away from the vaccine stuff to focus on this tile
Speaker 14: law stuff. But I know how much you love the
Speaker 14: vaccine stuff, AREFK, So let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: So I felt like he was just throwing that out
Speaker 3: there to play k RFK Junior. That was my guess.
Speaker 3: But I don't know how to read sociopaths very well,
Speaker 3: so this could also just be like what comes into
Speaker 3: his mind when he thinks about medicine, right, so you know,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, again, weird to me that this president was
Speaker 3: giving medical advice. I mean, he was making statements, do
Speaker 3: not take time. He said that multiple times. He talked
Speaker 3: about breaking up the hepatitis B vaccine and changing the
Speaker 3: heptides B vaccine, that the times of it, which I
Speaker 3: think we're going to talk about because that is very
Speaker 3: important to me, and things that doctors would have a
Speaker 3: little pause to say so strongly, and even the people
Speaker 3: whose paper he's citing would say, oh, slow down a
Speaker 3: little bit with that. You know, it's very important. I
Speaker 3: think it's super impactful, and you're right, it's slipping under
Speaker 3: the radar. So I would love to talk about the
Speaker 3: hepatitis B stuff. Yeah, let's do this.
Speaker 14: So I'll give a little background for your listeners who
Speaker 14: don't know me. I am a gastroentrologist and hepatologist. That's liver,
Speaker 14: not herpetologist, which is a study of snakes, which sometimes
Speaker 14: people think online. I am a doctor that looks at
Speaker 14: the liver, and hepatitis B has an important place in
Speaker 14: my heart. It's a disease that can be incredibly devastating.
Speaker 14: It's incredibly common, it has so many complications, It has
Speaker 14: such long term ramifications on someone's life if they have it,
Speaker 14: so many things they have to consider, do follow up,
Speaker 14: so many possible things that can happen with it. And
Speaker 14: the thing about it is we have a vaccine for
Speaker 14: it that is very safe and super efficacious, works really well,
Speaker 14: and when we use it, it works amazing. In Trump
Speaker 14: during this conference through that a couple of passing shots
Speaker 14: as he was doing this this whole rant about tile
Speaker 14: mall et cetera, and those passing shots can have a
Speaker 14: huge impact on uptake in this country. I think it
Speaker 14: really needs to be discussed. So I'll stop there. I'll
Speaker 14: let you see what questions do you have for me
Speaker 14: of hepatities because I could talk about hepatitis B for
Speaker 14: a long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, let's let's let's go back to like the
Speaker 3: very basic How would you explain hepatitis be to our
Speaker 3: dear listener who knows many things, but what hepatitis B
Speaker 3: is is not one of them.
Speaker 14: Yes, so hepatitis just means inflammation of the liver. Anything
Speaker 14: with itis means inflammation. And there are different ways of
Speaker 14: getting hepatitis or inflammation of the liver. They range from alcohol, medications,
Speaker 14: autoimmune problems to viral things. And there are viral things
Speaker 14: that can cause bad hepatitis affect the liver, primarily hepatitis A, B, C.
Speaker 14: You've heard of some of these hepatides, and hepatitis B
Speaker 14: is a very common one in the world. It's about
Speaker 14: two billion people in the world have either had it
Speaker 14: or presently have it. About eight hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 14: people in the US alone have chronic hepatitis B, but
Speaker 14: if you actually look at studies that include more immigrant populations,
Speaker 14: that number can go up to about two point two million.
Speaker 14: It is something that can when you get it at
Speaker 14: an early age, when you're young and you're a baby
Speaker 14: or an infant, you're young and your immune system is
Speaker 14: not super robust yet. It's very likely about ninety percent
Speaker 14: or more that if you are exposed to it. You'll
Speaker 14: get chronic infection from it. If you get it when
Speaker 14: you're older, it's a little different. You can have a
Speaker 14: pretty strong reaction to it. You'll get really sick, potentially
Speaker 14: sometimes to the point where the liver fails, but most
Speaker 14: people are when they're older able to clear it. They're
Speaker 14: going to eventually get rid of the virus point where
Speaker 14: the liver is fine and it manages, but it lives
Speaker 14: in the liver indefinitely. Once you get the hepatitis B,
Speaker 14: it's a very good chance you will have it forever.
Speaker 14: Whether or not it's causing you problems is another thing.
Speaker 14: A lot of people can live with it not have
Speaker 14: any problems, but a lot of people will get it
Speaker 14: and they will be very sick in the beginning. And
Speaker 14: when you get it as an infant, you have a
Speaker 14: very good chance of having it for the rest of
Speaker 14: your life. And that can be a major problem because
Speaker 14: like all viruses that go into the liver like this,
Speaker 14: all these viral hepatities, what can happen is it can
Speaker 14: cause scarring, which you might have heard of when it's
Speaker 14: really bad, called cirrhosis. When that happens, the liver can
Speaker 14: stop working. You can get cancer of the liver. You
Speaker 14: can get big blood vessels in your esophagus called esophageal varices,
Speaker 14: and vomited blood.
Speaker 3: You can get a lot of bad things that happen.
Speaker 14: Now, what makes heptities be particularly insidious, It makes it
Speaker 14: a little bit even my opinion, more dangerous than a
Speaker 14: lot of other viral hepatides is that you don't always
Speaker 14: have to go through these phases to get to the
Speaker 14: really bad part. Like when you have hepatitis C, for example,
Speaker 14: you get bad scarring over a long time that can
Speaker 14: cause that cirrhosis, and that cirrrosis can lead to cancer.
Speaker 14: But since hepatitis B is a DNA virus, that DNA
Speaker 14: can get into the DNA of your liver cells and
Speaker 14: it can cause cancer without even having to go through
Speaker 14: those steps of cirrhosis. That obviously terrible, and that can
Speaker 14: happen to young people, and I've seen it and it's awful.
Speaker 14: So I'm saying all these terrible things about hepatitis B
Speaker 14: because it's one of these things that does not need
Speaker 14: to be I didn't mean to say that like that, No,
Speaker 14: I didn't mean to make a play on words there.
Speaker 14: But it doesn't need to happen because we have this
Speaker 14: great vaccine that can manage this and when we use
Speaker 14: this vaccine, it works. In fact, in the US, they
Speaker 14: looked at it between nineteen ninety it was introduced in
Speaker 14: this country, like for infants in nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 14: when they looked from nineteen ninety to two thousand and four,
Speaker 14: they saw a ninety four percent decrease in kids in
Speaker 14: adolescents who have hepatitis being incredible, I mean, that's amazing.
Speaker 14: That's really good. Like this is a great success story.
Speaker 14: And part of the reason people like Trump don't recognize
Speaker 14: that this is an issue because it's done well, because
Speaker 14: this vaccine works and it does a good job. Now,
Speaker 14: the other thing to discuss is how it is transmitted,
Speaker 14: because that's a big part of what Trump was saying
Speaker 14: during this press conference. Yeah, and he said it's sexually transmitted,
Speaker 14: which is true. That is one of the ways that
Speaker 14: you get it, but you also get.
Speaker 3: It from the mother.
Speaker 14: The mother when you're having a pregnancy and a delivery,
Speaker 14: it's a messy, bloody process and that is a huge
Speaker 14: risk factor for the infant getting hepatized b from the mother.
Speaker 14: There's also household things that can happen. You know, people
Speaker 14: share razors, that's a risk factor. Toothbrushes, small things, bites
Speaker 14: at daycare centers. All these things are small risks. They're
Speaker 14: not as common as sex or the childbirth ways of transmission,
Speaker 14: but there are other modes of transmission for getting hepatitis B,
Speaker 14: not just sex like Trump was saying. So, I think
Speaker 14: that's super important to be clear that. I think that
Speaker 14: is one of the major things he said that was wrong.
Speaker 14: He said a lot of things are wrong, but that's
Speaker 14: probably the biggest easiest one to point out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it also was interesting because that
Speaker 3: was one of the things that got followed up on
Speaker 3: by reporters. But the reporter was like, well, you can
Speaker 3: also get it from like reusing needles, which like yeah,
Speaker 3: but like not mentioning the whole. You can get it
Speaker 3: for being born, a thing that everyone has to do. Statistically,
Speaker 3: this is the statistics bear that out.
Speaker 4: That is true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but a percent rate of being born in order to.
Speaker 14: Exist, that's exactly that's exactly right. You know why I
Speaker 14: realized why Trump says this. This is the realization I
Speaker 14: came to. He doesn't even think about this as a
Speaker 14: possible mode of transmission. If you've ever seen a delivery,
Speaker 14: I don't know if you have mia, but if you've
Speaker 14: ever seen someone give birth, whether it's natural, vaginal or
Speaker 14: cesarean or whatever, whatever method, there is a lot of fluids, blood, mucus.
Speaker 14: There's a lot of fluids happening during this time exchange
Speaker 14: between mother and baby. And if you saw that, I
Speaker 14: think you'd be like, oh, well, yeah, that makes sense
Speaker 14: that you would get it that way. If you do
Speaker 14: get it through sex, why couldn't you get it through that?
Speaker 14: You know, if you could get it by putting a
Speaker 14: penis into a vagina, for example, why couldn't you get
Speaker 14: it from being birth from one? So you would you
Speaker 14: would see that, and you would it would make sense
Speaker 14: to you inherently and automatically. My guess is that Trump
Speaker 14: has not seen any of his kids delivered that that
Speaker 14: would not surprise me. I mean, if he was in
Speaker 14: a nearby room, I would be impressed in edwa cast
Speaker 14: aspersions on our president.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 14: Maybe he was there, you know, cutting the umbilical corridor.
Speaker 14: I don't know, but I get the sense he was not,
Speaker 14: And I feel like that's why in his mind he
Speaker 14: doesn't even register it.
Speaker 3: And then then the other thing that makes that's weird
Speaker 3: about this is he's like, Oh, it's just me.
Speaker 14: I say that they get the shot at the age
Speaker 14: of twelve because it's sexually transmitted, and that makes me wonder.
Speaker 14: I'm surprised no one's brought this up. Why does he
Speaker 14: think that's okay? Then does he think that kids are
Speaker 14: having sex at the age of twelve and that's okay?
Speaker 14: Why did why did twelve become the number for him?
Speaker 3: It's so weird and I don't know that's truly one
Speaker 3: of the There is something just deeply evil going on
Speaker 3: in his mind, but I have no idea what it is,
Speaker 3: and I can't follow the path of logic because I'm
Speaker 3: not like a billionaire who was born in like the
Speaker 3: fifties or whatever. I don't know that that guy has
Speaker 3: seen That guy has gotten brainword from things that like
Speaker 3: don't exist anymore. No, he was born in the forties. Sorry,
Speaker 3: my apologies for thinking he was born a full decade
Speaker 3: later than he actually was. Good lord, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I think the results are still the same. Yeah, But
Speaker 3: I mean it's like, you know, there's just like there's
Speaker 3: prejudices and weird stuff that he picked up rattling around
Speaker 3: there that like who knows where they came from. And
Speaker 3: I think also, you know, one of the other ankles
Speaker 3: about this that's sort of really distressing is this like
Speaker 3: what feels like the sort of stigmatizing aspect of it
Speaker 3: of just being like, oh, well, there's something you can
Speaker 3: only get like sexually transmitted, like why are we giving
Speaker 3: this to kids? And it's like, well, yeah, but like
Speaker 3: there's just like a bunch of other ways that you
Speaker 3: can get it, and like only talking about that one
Speaker 3: and then having it as an excuse to raise the
Speaker 3: vaccination age for no reason, and that.
Speaker 14: You know, again goes back to the MMR thing, because
Speaker 14: you know, when we talk about giving these doses, the
Speaker 14: who the CDC, they recommend the birth vaccine within twenty
Speaker 14: four hours or the first at least. Then the current
Speaker 14: schedule is you get at birth and follow up set
Speaker 14: one to two months, and then again at six to
Speaker 14: fifteen months. And part of the thing of stretching that out,
Speaker 14: pushing that out further again same thing as the MMR,
Speaker 14: which is the more likely you are to not do
Speaker 14: it at all and to have decreased uptake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is the real reason why that's a concern. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's this sort of decreased uptake is their goal, right,
Speaker 3: Like that's what they want. Like that's why RFKI Junior,
Speaker 3: for example, is making it increasingly difficult to get the
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine and the flu vaccine and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And it's you know, they're doing this sort of like
Speaker 3: double pronged approach of both establishing it from the top
Speaker 3: down through the medical bureaucracy of taking control of and
Speaker 3: also just like spreading it among their supporters and among
Speaker 3: people who are like, oh that the President wouldn't just
Speaker 3: like lie to me about medical stuff, right, that's unreasonable.
Speaker 3: And I mean if you didn't know, if you didn't
Speaker 3: know that there was another means of transmission, what he
Speaker 3: said is reasonable. You know, why would you give an
Speaker 3: infant a vaccine for something they could only get through sex.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you bet sure that makes sense, but
Speaker 3: it's just wrong. Yeah, it's kind of pointless to ask
Speaker 3: the question does he know he's lying on this one?
Speaker 3: But I don't think he is. I honestly don't think
Speaker 3: he understands.
Speaker 14: I think he probably did hear that there are some
Speaker 14: other modes of transmission, and in his mind, it requires
Speaker 14: some sort of blood contact or some sort of mucosal
Speaker 14: contact in his mind, and that's how he interpreted it.
Speaker 14: And I think he just doesn't equate that with childbirth.
Speaker 14: I think he assumes it like because the child he
Speaker 14: sees comes out like perfectly wrapped and cleaned and you know,
Speaker 14: looks like a little baby in like a blanket when
Speaker 14: he sees it. Yeah, So I think I think that's
Speaker 14: the thing. I think he believes this.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's lying on purpose on this one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes sense, And I think I don't know. I
Speaker 3: think it's an interesting aspect of this is that this
Speaker 3: is like it was kind of just a Trump thing, right,
Speaker 3: Like this is like one of the parts of it
Speaker 3: that like RFK Junior and Martin McCarry didn't really talk about.
Speaker 3: It was just Trump kind of just like started talking
Speaker 3: about it for reasons that are deeply unclear. Yeah.
Speaker 14: I mean, Martin McCarry is an interesting guy, and I
Speaker 14: think he did some good things in the past and
Speaker 14: done some not so great things. Some bad things, Yeah,
Speaker 14: would not be serve this administration. This may shock you, Mia,
Speaker 14: but Trump picked somebody for a high level position that
Speaker 14: might be a little problematic.
Speaker 3: Well, especially this version of the administration too, where it's
Speaker 3: like in Trump won it was possible for them for
Speaker 3: him to appoint someone random and it kind of be
Speaker 3: like Department of Energy, right right, They put Rick Perry,
Speaker 3: who famously would call to a well forgot that it
Speaker 3: was the thing that he wanted to abolish. But then
Speaker 3: he got in charge of it, and the Department of
Speaker 3: Energy of people like explained to him this is where
Speaker 3: the nuke stuff is. And then he was like, sure, whatever,
Speaker 3: fucking go run this. I'll just stay out of everyone's way.
Speaker 3: And that kind of works fine. That he's not happening
Speaker 3: this administration. You are not kidding, You're actual Rick Perry
Speaker 3: going to like a make workshop, letting the bureaucrats run
Speaker 3: the actual stuff. How wild it is that we long
Speaker 3: for the days of Rick Perry. Yeah, the days when
Speaker 3: someone could explain to you, hey, this is the department
Speaker 3: that does the nukes, and they'd be and they would
Speaker 3: change their opinion about it. Staggering incredible. So let me
Speaker 3: tell you a little bit more about this McCrary character.
Speaker 3: So he is a surgeon. I don't think he practice
Speaker 3: as a surgeon, anymore. But he's sort of a health
Speaker 3: policy expertly self fashioned as one, and he's the person
Speaker 3: that was tapped by Donald Trump to leave the FDA.
Speaker 3: You've seen him on Fox News a lot, and he's
Speaker 3: been very outspoken about pandemic policies in the past. He
Speaker 3: was noted as one of the greatest perpetrators of COVID
Speaker 3: misinformation during those times when the people fact checked him
Speaker 3: again and again found that he was wrong. But the
Speaker 3: thing about him that you may or may not know
Speaker 3: how I first learned of him and how he popped
Speaker 3: up on my radar a while back, was he is
Speaker 3: the person that's responsible for this claim that medical error
Speaker 3: is the third.
Speaker 14: Leading cause of death in the United States. Sometimes that's
Speaker 14: cited as second. Yes, that's him, he's the person, oh boy, right,
Speaker 14: Which there's a lot of issues with this claim. It
Speaker 14: is at best controversial. It's based on extrapolated data. There
Speaker 14: was no formal methodology that went into him doing this.
Speaker 14: It totally misrepresents the complexity of healthcare and healthcare outcomes.
Speaker 14: But it's like the herpees of medical misinformation because it
Speaker 14: always comes back no matter how many times it gets
Speaker 14: disproven or people talk about it. It always comes back,
Speaker 14: and it's always used as this. It's an inherent part
Speaker 14: of the belief structure of these anti vaxxers. It is
Speaker 14: taken as gospel now. But back in twenty sixteen, basically
Speaker 14: he wrote this BMJ paper that estimated something like two
Speaker 14: hundred and fifty thousand deaths per year in US hospitals
Speaker 14: were due to medical errors. But again, was not a
Speaker 14: formal study. It presented no new data, and it didn't
Speaker 14: have any sort of real rigorous statistical method behind it.
Speaker 14: It kind of averaged figures from different sources. It doesn't
Speaker 14: actually even work because death certificates don't capture medical error,
Speaker 14: so it's hard to really study that even if you
Speaker 14: wanted to. But anyways, long story short, no matter how
Speaker 14: many times people disprove this or make arguments that work
Speaker 14: against it, it never goes away.
Speaker 3: So that's him. That's McCary, Oh boy, oh boy. And
Speaker 3: he's not running the FDA, which is oh yeah, which
Speaker 3: is great.
Speaker 14: We put the war people in charge of quite possibly
Speaker 14: the most important part of our country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just the Health and Human Service is
Speaker 3: run by RFK Junior. Is just when he first took
Speaker 3: off as my line on it was millions will die,
Speaker 3: and we are so incredibly on track for millions to
Speaker 3: die from just this guy and his people being put
Speaker 3: in charge.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I should say one more thing about
Speaker 14: maccarury before we move on from him that claim. You know,
Speaker 14: I wouldn't say that medical error isn't an issue. I
Speaker 14: think it is a very serious issue. Even if there's
Speaker 14: one or two cases in the whole country, it's a
Speaker 14: serious issue and that should be addressed. But what he's
Speaker 14: doing is I think harmful. I don't think that is
Speaker 14: helping in any way. I think it's only made things
Speaker 14: worse by contributing to where we're at today with our
Speaker 14: anti vax stance, our whole anti intellectual approach to medicine.
Speaker 3: And that's that's a thing that they do. This is
Speaker 3: the thing they take a little kernel of truth. If
Speaker 3: there is any lack of knowledge, that there's any slight
Speaker 3: vacuum in understanding, it gets filled with these bad actors,
Speaker 3: these people, and he is, in my opinion, one of them,
Speaker 3: but still somehow not the worst, you know, not the worst.
Speaker 3: Is one of those bars in the Trump administration where
Speaker 3: it's not even the bar solo. It's on the ground.
Speaker 3: The bar is so low that like you have to
Speaker 3: go digging to get under the bar. And it's not
Speaker 3: like a little bit of digging, it's a lot of
Speaker 3: digging because the bar truly is below hell. There's like
Speaker 3: a second hell down there to find this bar for
Speaker 3: where these people are. Oh god, it's second hell. Every
Speaker 3: time I look into any of these people, just yeah, no, no,
Speaker 3: you're never going to be surprised. Has get hit or
Speaker 3: mariad with an axe? Like this guy's just the secretary
Speaker 3: of Defense now he's like, he's the guy going in
Speaker 3: yelling at the generals. This is the guy who was
Speaker 3: on Fox News and he threw he just throwing an
Speaker 3: axe and he threw it over the target and it
Speaker 3: hit a bunch of marines. Like what are we doing here?
Speaker 14: Well, whom amongst us hasn't done that? Maybe he is
Speaker 14: the real Antifa.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's true. True. I have never hit a marine
Speaker 3: with an axe. Yeah. So now well there you go.
Speaker 3: Huh tragic, Tavia, Do you have anything else that you
Speaker 3: want to tell our dear listeners about this whole debacle?
Speaker 14: Get your vaccines? Yeah, you know, get your vaccines. Get vaccinated.
Speaker 14: Now's the time to start doing it for flu and COVID.
Speaker 14: If you can talk to your doctor. If you're having
Speaker 14: difficulty getting your vaccine from your local places, your regular places,
Speaker 14: talk to your doctor about getting it.
Speaker 3: You should still be able to in most cases, So
Speaker 3: do it while you can.
Speaker 14: And if you want to hear more about this stuff,
Speaker 14: make sure to check out my podcast, The House of Pod.
Speaker 14: We're going to talk about the stuff a lot more.
Speaker 14: We'll talk about other stuff too, but you'll hear more
Speaker 14: on this along the way as well. And you know,
Speaker 14: I like that people are questioning some of these things.
Speaker 14: I don't think it's unreasonable. Some of these topics are
Speaker 14: not unreasonable to have. You know, we as I discussed
Speaker 14: earlier on another podcast on this channel, Channels that we
Speaker 14: say on this network, I should say the title and
Speaker 14: all autism question is not like a totally wacky crazy one.
Speaker 14: It was a decent question to ask. There was some correlation,
Speaker 14: but the evidence when you look at it, shows that
Speaker 14: it is very likely not a causal relationship when you
Speaker 14: look at the evidence. And I think it's okay to
Speaker 14: have some of these conversations, and sometimes it takes a
Speaker 14: little nuance when you look at them, but I encourage
Speaker 14: people to continue to do so, and to keep reading
Speaker 14: and to find trusted sources and look at those and
Speaker 14: learn about them yourself. I think if nothing else good
Speaker 14: comes from all this, it's that people are starting to
Speaker 14: have an understanding of antibodies and the science behind vaccines.
Speaker 14: And I think that's not a bad thing. So, I mean,
Speaker 14: things are terrible. Things are terrible. There's so many bad
Speaker 14: things in the world. But I will say this, I
Speaker 14: see bright spots constantly. I see more and more people
Speaker 14: who care about science. I see more and more people
Speaker 14: than I ever have before care about important topics across
Speaker 14: the world. They're not scientific, like gaza, for example. I've
Speaker 14: seen more people care about things that I've ever seen
Speaker 14: before in my long life, and I feel like that's
Speaker 14: a good thing. There are bright spots out there and
Speaker 14: that's what I cling to. And I see more people
Speaker 14: interested in this. People want to talk to me about
Speaker 14: hepatitis B and what it is and how to avoid it.
Speaker 14: And I think that's great. So there's some good coming
Speaker 14: from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, and this is I think the
Speaker 3: fundamental thing that both the media apparatus and the regime
Speaker 3: are trying to conceal which is that there are more
Speaker 3: of us than there are of them. There always have been,
Speaker 3: and especially right now, there are way more of us.
Speaker 3: And you know, their ability to shape the world is disastrous,
Speaker 3: but their ability to shape the world as fundamentally a
Speaker 3: minoritarian force in this country right with like thirty to
Speaker 3: forty percent of the population, is always going to be
Speaker 3: limited and always is always going to be in danger
Speaker 3: of simply being reversed. And we can be that reversal,
Speaker 3: one person at a time. Yeah, I love that. Well, Kaye,
Speaker 3: thank you for being on the show, and go listen
Speaker 3: to House of Pod is great. It's all thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're okay. You could do worse.
Speaker 2: You know, quite frankly, if you ever do anything on
Speaker 2: accident that leads to a police officer falling over, even
Speaker 2: if you had nothing to do with them falling over,
Speaker 2: it's time to leave. It's time to go, even if
Speaker 2: all you did was make a joke.
Speaker 3: This is it could happen here.
Speaker 6: Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the
Speaker 6: White House, the crumbling of our world, and what it
Speaker 6: means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today I'm joined by
Speaker 6: James Stout, Miya Wong, and Robert Evans. This episode recovering
Speaker 6: the week of October first to October eighth.
Speaker 8: That's right, baby, Brian, big deal day as Yeah, October
Speaker 8: seven eighth in history, the first week of October, you know,
Speaker 8: October Gloctober.
Speaker 2: I mean, who doesn't love a good glock? Not in California, California.
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Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, band them. Bretta fans don't love glocks.
Speaker 2: Still sore about that, Big guys, the surviving sick guys.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, it's rough being a SIG guy out there
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 8: It's got to be tough. Yeah, well, that's why we're
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Speaker 6: You've quickly put on my ceramic boxer.
Speaker 2: So that I can carry a fucking h eighteen. Thank you.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, stay hot by Cool Zone dropping next week. You
Speaker 8: can find them by tagging Robert on social media at
Speaker 8: why Sophie, Why We're finishing our twenty part series.
Speaker 2: People have asked for episodes on how to be a
Speaker 2: gun owner, and so we're putting together a twenty part
Speaker 2: series on how not to shoot your own penis off.
Speaker 2: So law enforcement officers in the audience, you'll want to
Speaker 2: check that one out.
Speaker 8: I just got a notification that Sophie had canceled ed.
Speaker 8: Which are things from responds to what we're doing right now.
Speaker 6: Let's start because there's a lot of news this week
Speaker 6: by talking about, frankly, the most important news story in
Speaker 6: the whole nation right now. On Thursday October second, right
Speaker 6: wing influencer Nick Sorder, along with two other people.
Speaker 16: I know.
Speaker 2: It's stupid, Oh, it's really stupid.
Speaker 6: Along with two other people were arrested by the Portland
Speaker 6: Police Bureau in connection with a fight outside of the
Speaker 6: Ice Building during a protest. Sorder was provoking reactions from
Speaker 6: protesters when he was then chased down the street by
Speaker 6: a woman in a bird cost bird costume quote swinging
Speaker 6: a large stick covered.
Speaker 3: With feathers resulted by Big Bird.
Speaker 6: According to court documents, The three people were arrested at
Speaker 6: all charged with disorderly conduct, though charges have since been dropped.
Speaker 6: Sordi's arrest ignited a right wing firestorm the likes of
Speaker 6: which I have not seen since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
Speaker 2: I'm glad people are finally waking up to the antifa
Speaker 2: police department that rules Portland with an iron fist.
Speaker 3: For a long time.
Speaker 6: Tim Poole posted on x the Everything app, I'm calling
Speaker 6: on the Trump administration to launch a legal challenge against
Speaker 6: Oregon following the arrest of Nick Sorter and if necessary,
Speaker 6: deployed National Guard Organs failed to uphold federal and state
Speaker 6: law and we should not tolerate it.
Speaker 2: Oh and like, yeah, there was like a fight and
Speaker 2: they detained people, and then the DA didn't press charges
Speaker 2: against Sorter, and it's it's just it couldn't be more
Speaker 2: of a nothing burger as an actual story.
Speaker 6: Nothing than nothing burger. Yeah, but oh boy, but not
Speaker 6: according to the AG's office, who quickly responded on it
Speaker 6: to Tim Poole's request, and by Friday morning, the White House,
Speaker 6: the Attorney General, and the Justice Department announced a quote
Speaker 6: unquote full investigation into the arrest and the conduct of
Speaker 6: the Portland Police bureau. Finally, conservative influencer Benny Johnson, who's
Speaker 6: been embedded with ICE this past week, posted on x
Speaker 6: Everything app quote important news. I spoke with DHS Secretary Christinome.
Speaker 6: She's been briefed on the attack and arrest of journalist
Speaker 6: Nick Sorder. Secretary Nome tells me DHS will surge ICE
Speaker 6: resources in Portland. Quote Antifa is a terrorist group and
Speaker 6: will not control our streets unquote. Thank you, Secretary Nome.
Speaker 6: Benny Johnson later shared video captioned breaking. DHS Secretary Christinome
Speaker 6: has announced the Department of War will deploy to Portland
Speaker 6: and Chicago within twenty four hours to crush left wing
Speaker 6: violence unquote. And here is the video with Christinome talking
Speaker 6: about the quote unquote Antifa affiliated anti ICE protests.
Speaker 17: Well, you've got a presence in Portland as that is
Speaker 17: Antifa ali and so that is a situation where you
Speaker 17: have known professionals targeted violence that want to tear down
Speaker 17: America and will apparently attack anyone, even journalists.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to report the truth of what's happening
Speaker 1: on the streets.
Speaker 17: So we're not just going to be rolling out of
Speaker 17: Chicago here, but we're sending in the Department of War
Speaker 17: at the request that I made to Secretary Headset, They're
Speaker 17: going to be rolling in here within the next twenty
Speaker 17: four hours.
Speaker 1: They'll be coming to Chicago too.
Speaker 17: I put a request in today for them to come
Speaker 17: to Chicago, and we're going to not only have our
Speaker 17: officers that are out there with HSI and Space, but
Speaker 17: we're also going to have backup from our military, because
Speaker 17: everybody deserves that. And so what we saw happened to
Speaker 17: that journalist last night will not happen again.
Speaker 8: Okay, Yeah, Benny Johnson showing a very professional journalism there
Speaker 8: by just saying wow a lot.
Speaker 6: It's a pretty wild scene having like troops walk behind
Speaker 6: Christy Nome as this podcast or Grills Grills are on it,
Speaker 6: sending the military to cities, Yeah, in front of a backcat.
Speaker 6: The reactions from the after Nick Sorder's arrest were pretty wild,
Speaker 6: with journalists going on Fox News claiming that the Portland
Speaker 6: Police are affiliated with Antifa, and popular right wing influencers
Speaker 6: on x like Amuse saying, quote, the Portland police are
Speaker 6: now colluding with Antifa to prosecute federal officers protecting the
Speaker 6: ICE facility.
Speaker 2: When has that happened.
Speaker 6: Each time federal officers engage with Antifa. Portland Police Liaison's
Speaker 6: clutch statements and videos from Antifa to facilitate state criminal
Speaker 6: charges against DHS. So somehow, in the year of Our
Speaker 6: Lord twenty twenty five, the Portland Police Bureau is now Antifa,
Speaker 6: which is a truly miraculous state of affairs. After his
Speaker 6: release Friday morning, next Order posted on x quote You've
Speaker 6: proved what we've all been saying for years. You're corrupt
Speaker 6: and controlled by violent Antifa thugs who terrorize the streets.
Speaker 6: Referring to the Portland Police, I have been in direct
Speaker 6: contact with top officials at DHS. What's coming in Portland
Speaker 6: is unprecedented, all thanks to Portland police exposing themselves by
Speaker 6: arresting journalists. Great work, Portland unquote. A day later, on
Speaker 6: October fourth, a Trump appointed federal judge granted the state
Speaker 6: of Oregon and the City of Portland a temporary restraining
Speaker 6: order blocking trumpenheag sess federalization and deployment of two hundred
Speaker 6: organ National Guard against the wishes of Oregon Governor Tina Cotec.
Speaker 6: The judge found that existing local and federal law enforcement
Speaker 6: were sufficient to police protests, that the Trump admin had
Speaker 6: mischaracterized the reality of the current protests outside of the
Speaker 6: ICE facility, and that violence against ICE in other parts
Speaker 6: of the country is not sufficient justification for a local
Speaker 6: military deployment.
Speaker 2: It's worth noting this judge, Judge Immerget number one, not
Speaker 2: a woke judge, was literally if you go back and
Speaker 2: you watched the Monica Lewinsky hearings or the I mean,
Speaker 2: this is the Clinton sex scandal hearings, but this is
Speaker 2: the part of it in which Lewinsky was being grilled.
Speaker 2: Immigrant was the female lawyer that they brought out to
Speaker 2: be incredibly cruel to Monica Lewinsky because it wouldn't look
Speaker 2: as often putting and wound up.
Speaker 6: She wound up.
Speaker 2: Part of why Monica Lewinsky became so is she immigrant
Speaker 2: looked fucking nuts and immigrant is the person who is
Speaker 2: looking at it, who is going through all of the
Speaker 2: claims made by the administration and going there's literally not
Speaker 2: only is there no justification for the deployment of troops
Speaker 2: in Portland, but everyone calling the shots at FPS and
Speaker 2: ICE is like everything's under control, we have no need
Speaker 2: for additional people. Yeah, there's no real danger here, Like
Speaker 2: this is not a leftist judge. This is not a
Speaker 2: judge with a political act to grind. This is a judge.
Speaker 2: But thirty years ago you would have called a far
Speaker 2: right extremist kah.
Speaker 6: I will quote a little bit from her ruling here
Speaker 6: quote to accept the defendants arguments, that's the federal's government
Speaker 6: would see to render meaningless the extraordinary requirements of ten USC.
Speaker 6: One two four six by allowing the president to federalize
Speaker 6: one state's national guard based on the events in a
Speaker 6: different state or mere speculation about future events. In other words,
Speaker 6: violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here, and concern about
Speaker 6: hypothetical future conduct does not demonstrate a present inability to
Speaker 6: execute the laws using non military federal law enforcement unquote.
Speaker 6: On the Trump Admin's argument that the presidents authorized to
Speaker 6: federalize state national guard in the case of rebellion or invasion,
Speaker 6: the judge concluded that the legal definition of rebellion requires quote, First,
Speaker 6: a rebellion must not only be violent, but also armed. Second,
Speaker 6: a rebellion must be organized. Third, a rebellion must be
Speaker 6: open and avowed. Fourth, rebellion must be against the government
Speaker 6: as a whole, often with the aim of overthrowing the government,
Speaker 6: rather than in opposition to a single law or issue. Here,
Speaker 6: the protest in Portland were not a rebellion and did
Speaker 6: not pose a danger of rebellion, especially in the days
Speaker 6: leading up to the federalization unquote. The judge found that
Speaker 6: the president's federalization of the Organ National Guard without proper
Speaker 6: statutory authority under ten USC. One two four h six,
Speaker 6: exceeded the president's constitutional authority, undermined Organ's sovereignty, and violated
Speaker 6: the Tenth Amendment by infringing on Organ's constitutional power to
Speaker 6: control its own national Guard, writing that the Trump admin
Speaker 6: quote interfered with the constitutional balance of power between the
Speaker 6: federal and state governments.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 8: Yeah, is that the one where she she said their
Speaker 8: argument was untethered from the facts.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think that was a pretty good, uh good
Speaker 8: summary of what's going on here.
Speaker 6: Later that day, Stephen Miller went on News Nation to
Speaker 6: talk about the quote unquote insurrectionists interesting word in Portland
Speaker 6: and the new National Security presidential memorandum to investigate dismantle
Speaker 6: so called left wing terrorist networks.
Speaker 18: We're the federal government. We are not going to tolerate
Speaker 18: a lawless insurrection. We are not going to tolerate domestic terrorism.
Speaker 18: And we are going after the Antifa, rioters, the insurrectionists,
Speaker 18: the violent assaulters, and we are not only going after them,
Speaker 18: we are going after their network. We are going after
Speaker 18: their funders. Every time we make an arrest, we are
Speaker 18: initiating an investigation into the entire domestic terrorist network. The
Speaker 18: President issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum in NSPN making
Speaker 18: clear that it is the national security priority of United
Speaker 18: States law enforcement to dismantle, disrupt, defeat, and destroy these
Speaker 18: domestic terror networks. And that is exactly what is taking place.
Speaker 18: It is what we are doing, it is what will happen.
Speaker 6: His use of the word insurrection there is important.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 6: A day later, President Trump also used the term insurrectionists
Speaker 6: to describe protests in Portland and complain about the federal
Speaker 6: judge who blocked the deployment of National Guard, saying, quote,
Speaker 6: Portland is burning to the ground. You have agitators, insurrectionists.
Speaker 6: All you got to do is look at the television.
Speaker 6: It's burning to the ground. The governor, the mayor, the
Speaker 6: politicians are petrified for their lives. That judge ought to
Speaker 6: be ashamed.
Speaker 2: And again nothing's been burnt down. Nothing was burnt down
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. Most of the big nights that I
Speaker 2: slately have been maybe two hundred people. You know, You've
Speaker 2: had some more on a few occasions, but like it's
Speaker 2: usually a lot less. It's probably just unnecessary for me
Speaker 2: to correct all this, but I guess I can't fight
Speaker 2: the urge to be like, none of this is accurate
Speaker 2: to what's happening.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, the simulation is more important than the reality.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Miller has done this before, right, Like he kind
Speaker 8: of likes to use these words that exist in legislation
Speaker 8: and sort of point to the direction he wants things
Speaker 8: to go. I guess, yeah, Like he did this by
Speaker 8: calling anti for an enterprise. We sort as to an
Speaker 8: extent with Title forty two and his reference to migrants
Speaker 8: to the public health threat. This is kind of a
Speaker 8: trademark move for him.
Speaker 6: Almost no hours after the federal judge blocked the federalism
Speaker 6: of Oregon National Guard, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered
Speaker 6: three hundred California National Guard to be deployed to Portland.
Speaker 6: In the next day, Texas Governor Greg Abbott authorized four
Speaker 6: hundred Texas National Guard to be sent to Orgon and
Speaker 6: Illinois in coordination with the Department of War. On Sunday night,
Speaker 6: the federal judge that previously blocked the organ National Guard
Speaker 6: federalization made another ruling blocking the deployment of troops from
Speaker 6: California and Texas, finding that it was quote, in direct
Speaker 6: contravention of her earlier tro This secondary toro halted any
Speaker 6: Federalization relocation or deployment of any Guard members to organ
Speaker 6: from any state. The Trump administration has appealed these rulings
Speaker 6: and oral arguments will be heard on Thursday, October ninth
Speaker 6: in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Stephen Miller called
Speaker 6: this ruling quote one of the most egregious and thunderous
Speaker 6: violations of constitutional order we have ever seen, and is
Speaker 6: yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the
Speaker 6: twenty twenty fourth election by fiacht. By Monday, Miller told reporters,
Speaker 6: without going to specifics, that the president quote has a
Speaker 6: very broad range and set of authorities when it comes
Speaker 6: to deploying federal assets.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 6: That same day, Monday, Trump discussed the possibility of invoking
Speaker 6: the Insurrection Act in a White House press conference.
Speaker 16: The Insurrection Act.
Speaker 14: Sir, what the Insurrection Act under what conditions or terms
Speaker 14: would you?
Speaker 16: Well, I do it if it was necessary. So far
Speaker 16: it hasn't been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act
Speaker 16: for a reason. If I had to enacted, I'd do
Speaker 16: that if people were being killed and courts were holding
Speaker 16: us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.
Speaker 1: Sure I do that.
Speaker 16: I mean, I want to make sure that people aren't killed.
Speaker 16: We have to make sure that our cities are safe.
Speaker 16: And it's turning out, and we started with DC it's
Speaker 16: been so successful. You look at what's happened with Portland
Speaker 16: over the years. It's a burning hell hall. And then
Speaker 16: you have a judge that lost a way, that tries
Speaker 16: to pretend that there's no problem. Actually she's not even
Speaker 16: saying that there's a huge problem. Important. I'll tell you
Speaker 16: what the problem is.
Speaker 3: Crime.
Speaker 16: Okay, crime. There's a huge problem in Chicago. It's called crime.
Speaker 16: And we want to put out the crime, and they
Speaker 16: want to inflame the crime.
Speaker 3: Oooo.
Speaker 6: Sure, that's the clearest statement we've gotten from the President
Speaker 6: on the conditions in which he would invoke the Insurrection Act.
Speaker 6: I think, specifically pointing towards governors, mayors or courts that
Speaker 6: prevent ice from completing immigration actions in those cities and counties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the thing that we've gotten for him.
Speaker 3: That's the most specific indication of things that are happening
Speaker 3: right now that could cause him to do it. We
Speaker 3: still don't have a direct I'm going to do it,
Speaker 3: but I think it's pretty clear from this that he
Speaker 3: wants to these people in circles. I'm talking about wanting
Speaker 3: to do it for a long time, and I think
Speaker 3: this is in some ways the closest we've gotten to it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's why you have people like Miller and
Speaker 6: Trump himself using the word insurrection when describing what's happening,
Speaker 6: to establish a pretext to actually follow through on that
Speaker 6: and declare the Insurrection Act when it suits them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think it's worth noting Mellos doing Miller is often
Speaker 8: the originator of many of these kind of legal theories.
Speaker 8: This one has made its way to Trump.
Speaker 6: I'm going to declare an ad break and then we
Speaker 6: will return to finish our reporting on war ravage Portland. Okay,
Speaker 6: we are back. DHS Secretary Christy Nome has made some
Speaker 6: pretty fantastic claims about the nature of these protests and
Speaker 6: the threats facing ICE agents both in Chicago and Portland.
Speaker 6: And I'm just going to play her clip from Fox
Speaker 6: News here talking about the threats to ICE.
Speaker 17: Our intelligence indicates that these people are organized. They're getting
Speaker 17: more and more people on their team as far as
Speaker 17: attacking officers, and they're making plans to ambush them and
Speaker 17: to kill them. We have specific officers and agents that
Speaker 17: have bounties that have been put out on their heads.
Speaker 17: It's been two thousand dollars to kidnap them, ten thousand
Speaker 17: dollars to kill them. They've released their pictures, they've sent
Speaker 17: them between their networks, and it's an extremely dangerous situation
Speaker 17: and unprecedented. So we've put protective detail around those individuals,
Speaker 17: change some of our operations to keep our officers safe.
Speaker 17: But make no mistake, this isn't just about protesting free
Speaker 17: speech or that they don't like that people out here
Speaker 17: are upholding the law of our country. They're actually going
Speaker 17: out there and saying, kill these people, and we'll give
Speaker 17: you this much money to do it.
Speaker 8: It's quite a specific claim.
Speaker 6: Miss What she's doing there is conflating alleged cartel bounties
Speaker 6: on ICE agents with protests happening outside of ICE facilities,
Speaker 6: making it sound like the protesters are putting ten thousand
Speaker 6: dollars kill bounties on ICE officers.
Speaker 2: Man, let me tell you, nobody who's out at ICE
Speaker 2: right now has collectively ten grand to put towards a bounty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are we doing here?
Speaker 6: On Tuesday, October seventh, Christinome arrived in Portland, Oregon, along
Speaker 6: with her conservative podcaster sidekick Benny Johnson, who has been
Speaker 6: live streaming ICE operations in Chicago with Nome. Benny posted
Speaker 6: on x Everything app breaking DH Secretary Christinomes stares down
Speaker 6: army of Antifa and a guy in a chicken suit
Speaker 6: from the rooftop of the ice facility here in Portland.
Speaker 2: Finally someone took that chicken guy down to size.
Speaker 6: I want to play the video that I think one
Speaker 6: of us should like set this stage for what we're seeing.
Speaker 3: Secretary, do you have a message to the protesters, especially
Speaker 3: the man in the chicken outfit?
Speaker 1: Man in the chicken outfit, I.
Speaker 3: Just see him now.
Speaker 17: Goodness, you can do better. Our goal is that people
Speaker 17: would peacefully protest, but that we would still be allowed
Speaker 17: to en first law in this country.
Speaker 1: So it's too bad.
Speaker 17: They're uneducated and elanformed.
Speaker 6: If you look at this protest, there's about what twenty
Speaker 6: people on the street corner adjacent to the ice facility,
Speaker 6: nearly as many journalists and photographers as there are protesters.
Speaker 6: And this is what Bennie Johnson is describing as an
Speaker 6: army of Antifa, is these twenty people holding signs across
Speaker 6: from like a police line on the edge of the
Speaker 6: ice facility. At a later point, Benny zooms into another
Speaker 6: street corner which similarly has about a dozen people over
Speaker 6: a one block away from the ice. This is the
Speaker 6: army of Antifa that Benny Johnson is referring to as he,
Speaker 6: along with Nick Sorder, stand with Christinome on the roof
Speaker 6: of the ice facility, surveying the area. Which is just
Speaker 6: a fantastical sequence of events. We time traveled and told
Speaker 6: me that five years ago that Christy Nome and Betty
Speaker 6: Johnson are going to be on the roof of the
Speaker 6: ice facility calling a man in a chicken outfit an
Speaker 6: army of Antifa. I guess I could believe you, but
Speaker 6: it would still I guess it would still be upsetting it.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be happy, but I wouldn't like, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: like argue with you. I'd be like, yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: that sounds like a natural extension of where things are
Speaker 2: at this point in time.
Speaker 6: On Tuesday night, Nome went on Fox News to talk
Speaker 6: about a meeting she had with local law enforcement and
Speaker 6: the mayor where she threatened to send four times as
Speaker 6: many federal forces into Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: Sure Man, I told them what we wanted.
Speaker 17: We wanted more security here at the building, a bigger
Speaker 17: buffer zone to keep our officers safe. We wanted to
Speaker 17: have their streets opened up again and not let the
Speaker 17: anarchists run this city anymore. That we would ask them
Speaker 17: to continue to back us up like we've been asking for,
Speaker 17: instead of what they've been doing the last several months,
Speaker 17: which is just leaving our officers hang.
Speaker 1: Out to dry.
Speaker 17: The chief asked if I wanted to meet with the mayor,
Speaker 17: and I said absolutely. Came back and just met with
Speaker 17: a mayor, and I'm so extremely disappointed he's continuing to
Speaker 17: play politics. Did not commit to any of those promises
Speaker 17: and said that he'd give me an answer by tomorrow,
Speaker 17: and I'm hopeful that he will. What I told him
Speaker 17: is that if he did not follow through on some
Speaker 17: of these security measures for our officers. We were going
Speaker 17: to cover him up with more federal resources, and that
Speaker 17: we were going to send four times the amount of
Speaker 17: federal officers here so that the people of Portland could
Speaker 17: have some safety.
Speaker 2: Again, almost no one's even there. I can't exaggerate the
Speaker 2: degree to which this is not a major factor in
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of people's day to day because number one,
Speaker 2: where the ice facility is is cordoned off from the
Speaker 2: rest of the city like pretty isolated chunk. It's isolated,
Speaker 2: you might say. And number two, just like most people
Speaker 2: that I know who were out in twenty twenty don't
Speaker 2: really have a clear idea of what they should be
Speaker 2: doing right now or what the most useful thing to
Speaker 2: do is right now, and have spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time in front of federal riot lines and aren't right now.
Speaker 2: And like it's this complete disconnect between what's actually going
Speaker 2: on in the city and like what's what's being reported,
Speaker 2: which doesn't matter really, Like it doesn't impact anything. That
Speaker 2: everything they're saying is a lie, yeah, because their people
Speaker 2: believe it.
Speaker 6: It's just kind of frustrating now and this information is
Speaker 6: all into tro document that blocked the deployment of National
Speaker 6: Guard quote. Plaintiffs provided all of the PPB call logs
Speaker 6: in the month of September, which showed that Portland Place
Speaker 6: Bureau worked in close coordination with Federal Protective Service supervisors
Speaker 6: and regularly checked the status of the ICE facility as
Speaker 6: detailed above. They also showed that protest activity in September
Speaker 6: generally did not involve the violence against federal property or
Speaker 6: personnel unquote. Where the police Bureau have been working in
Speaker 6: coordination to manage the protests outside the ICE building, They've
Speaker 6: not abandoned ICE officers. That's not actually what's happening. A
Speaker 6: federal judge is deemed that local law enforcement are more
Speaker 6: than sufficient to handle the protests outside of the ICE facility.
Speaker 6: The Trump government just really wants to send the military
Speaker 6: into cities, as they've already done with d C, as
Speaker 6: they were wanting to do with Memphis, Chicago, Portland eventually
Speaker 6: like New Orleans. This is just something that they really
Speaker 6: want to do. On Tuesday, October seventh, Texas National Guard
Speaker 6: arrived in Illinois and are currently stationed at an Army
Speaker 6: reserve center in a suburb south of Chicago. Sunday night,
Speaker 6: Governor Pritzker made a statement reading, quote, this evening, President
Speaker 6: Trump is ordering four hundred members of the Texas National
Speaker 6: Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within
Speaker 6: the United States. We must now start calling this what
Speaker 6: it is, Trump's invasion. It started with federal agents, will
Speaker 6: soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard
Speaker 6: against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in
Speaker 6: another state's military troops. There is no reason a president
Speaker 6: should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent,
Speaker 6: or cooperation.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 6: The state of Illinois announced that they would be seeking
Speaker 6: their own tro against Trump's military deployment. The Illinois Attorney
Speaker 6: General said in a statement quote, the American people, regardless
Speaker 6: of where they reside, should not live under the threat
Speaker 6: of occupation by the United States military, particularly for the
Speaker 6: reason that their city or state leadership has fallen out
Speaker 6: of a president's favor. And on Monday, Chicago Mayor Brandon
Speaker 6: Johnson signed an executive order establishing city property and unwilling
Speaker 6: private businesses as ice free zones and discuss the deployment
Speaker 6: of troops from out of state by warning quote the
Speaker 6: right wing in this country wants a rematch of the
Speaker 6: Civil War unquote. Yeah, and so we have a kind
Speaker 6: of news update, which is so this is being recorded
Speaker 6: on Wednesday, October eighth. It's possible this will again change
Speaker 6: by the time this comes out. The most recent information
Speaker 6: we have is and this is supported by CBS per
Speaker 6: a statement from US Northern Command, which is part of
Speaker 6: the Defense Department's War Department. But yes, they're sitting five
Speaker 6: hundred troops. I'm just going to read the direct quote Illinois,
Speaker 6: approximately two hundred soldiers from various units of the Texas
Speaker 6: National Guard and approximately three hundred soldiers from various units
Speaker 6: of the Illinois National Guard were activated into a Title
Speaker 6: ten status and have arrived in the Greater Chicago area.
Speaker 6: National Guard re mobilized for an initial period of sixty days,
Speaker 6: will be under the command and control of the commander
Speaker 6: of US Northern Command. So that's where we are right now. Yeah,
Speaker 6: there is out of state Guard deployed into Illinois, like
Speaker 6: they are in this borders of the state right now.
Speaker 6: When Haiggs has tried to deployed California National Guard to Oregon,
Speaker 6: it's unclear how many of them actually arrived in Oregon,
Speaker 6: but we do have confirmation and photos of Texas Guard
Speaker 6: in the borders of Illinois.
Speaker 3: YEP.
Speaker 6: This morning, Donald Trump truthed on truth Social that quote,
Speaker 6: Chicago mayor should be in jail for failing to protect
Speaker 6: ICE officers. Governor Pritzker also unquote, is that the President
Speaker 6: of the United States calling for the jailing of a
Speaker 6: mayor and governor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also more recently calling for the jailing of
Speaker 2: everyone who burns American flags and a anim of a
Speaker 2: year in prison. Again, the legality here is deeply unclear.
Speaker 2: There's not a legal underpinning for that, other than he's
Speaker 2: instructed the DOJ to start going after those folks.
Speaker 3: But yeah, this is just words that he's saying.
Speaker 6: But I think the words that he's saying are sometimes
Speaker 6: not always, but sometimes important.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I want to turn from here to the
Speaker 3: other occupation of Chicago, the one that has been doing
Speaker 3: significant damage already in the city as we have been covering,
Speaker 3: which is the Ice and Border Patrol deployment in Chicago.
Speaker 3: There's been more escalations that we are going to spend
Speaker 3: a small amount of time talking about. ICE has begun
Speaker 3: detaining unhoused people. We have reports of eleven total people
Speaker 3: they've detained so far. Most of them have been released.
Speaker 3: But the most prominent, and this is something that Brandon
Speaker 3: Johnson specifically mentioned in his speech, was for people who
Speaker 3: were taken in Chicago neighborhood called Broadview, who were outside
Speaker 3: a shelter. According to the Chicago Reader, we don't know
Speaker 3: where they are Jesus as if when say they're just gone,
Speaker 3: no one, no one has been able to trace them down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this seems to be part of a broader trend
Speaker 3: of ICE agents taking action against people who I mean
Speaker 3: appeared to be US citizens. We saw this a couple
Speaker 3: like last week with and this is another thing that
Speaker 3: Brandon Johnson specifically mentioned with him with ICE agents just
Speaker 3: choking a black man out on the street. The major
Speaker 3: story is that there has been a second shooting by
Speaker 3: ICE in Chicago on What we know for sure about
Speaker 3: this shooting is that on Saturday morning, an ICE agent
Speaker 3: shot a woman named Merrimar Martinez, who appeared to have
Speaker 3: been part of a group that was following ICE vehicles
Speaker 3: around the city. Martinez was shot and drove herself to
Speaker 3: a nearby auto repair shop, where a medics and police
Speaker 3: showed up. I'm going to read the Sun Times' account
Speaker 3: from the shop managers who they spoke to of what
Speaker 3: happened when she got to the body shop. Quote, the
Speaker 3: shop manager spoke with a nine to one one operator
Speaker 3: and said, send somebody quickly because this lady is bleeding profusely.
Speaker 3: I mean it was instant puddles. Police and paramedic showed
Speaker 3: up a few minutes later, he said. As paramedics place
Speaker 3: a turnquit on Martinez's leg and arm, a bullet fell
Speaker 3: out of her arm and onto the shop floor. The
Speaker 3: manager said, Martinez thankfully does not seem to have been
Speaker 3: really really severely injured. She is like she is enabled
Speaker 3: medical condition. Now, EHS put out a press release almost
Speaker 3: immediately claiming that their agents who were quote ambushed by
Speaker 3: domestic terrorists that rammed federal agents with their vehicles and
Speaker 3: that quote Nortinez, woman they shot was quote aren't with
Speaker 3: a semiongmatic weapon and has a history of docsing federal agents. Now,
Speaker 3: it is worth noting that best practice when looking at
Speaker 3: Department of Homeland Security statements, especially under Trump administration, is
Speaker 3: too simply assume that they are not telling the truth
Speaker 3: until any details they have mentioned are corroborated. What the
Speaker 3: exact situation was before the shooting is very unclear. Both
Speaker 3: Department of Homeland Security and federal prosecutors have claimed that
Speaker 3: a group of cars basically boxed in an ice vehicle,
Speaker 3: and their repeated claims that they were ramming the ice
Speaker 3: vehicle and then that's why the ice agent opened fire.
Speaker 3: That's the DHS's claims. Yeah, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 3: the DHS's claims, and these are the claims that are
Speaker 3: made in court documents. I want to read from the
Speaker 3: Sun Times also Martinez's lawyer's description of what's going on,
Speaker 3: because it is significantly different from the government's account. And
Speaker 3: it's also it's also worth mentioning that there's already been
Speaker 3: some deviation between the court documents and the DHS statement.
Speaker 3: For example, the court the DHS statement mentions a semi
Speaker 3: automatic weapon, and there's just simply no mention of that
Speaker 3: in like in any of the sort of charging documents.
Speaker 3: The deadly weapon that she's being accused of doing an
Speaker 3: assault with, which is what she's been charged with, is
Speaker 3: the car. Yeah. So here's here's from the Sun Times.
Speaker 3: So PARENTI, who is her attorney. Parenti also offered to
Speaker 3: play an agent's body cam video that shows the shooting,
Speaker 3: noting prosecutors did not show the video that he claims
Speaker 3: disputes the government's version of the shooting. Parente said the
Speaker 3: video shows an agent turning a federal vehicle left into
Speaker 3: her Tina's vehicle, after which the agent says, quote, do something, bitch.
Speaker 3: The agent then exits the vehicle and shoots Martinez. The
Speaker 3: attorney said Martinez had quote seven holes in her from
Speaker 3: the shooting, and that agents were in such a hurry
Speaker 3: to take her into custody at the hospital that they
Speaker 3: had to return later when Martinez began bleeding from her wounds. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so this is a significantly different portrayal of the shooting.
Speaker 3: We do not have access to this bodycam footage yet
Speaker 3: it has not been released to the public. There is
Speaker 3: a video that we do have that does not show
Speaker 3: the shooting, that shows some of the stuff leading up
Speaker 3: to the shooting, from that sort of audi repair shop
Speaker 3: that she went to. It is still very unclear what
Speaker 3: exactly happened here other than the fact that I shot
Speaker 3: this woman. That's the only thing that we one percent know.
Speaker 6: She does have a concealed terry license and had a
Speaker 6: handgun in the car with her. Yeah, the lawyers have
Speaker 6: claimed she never brandished the weapon and it was in
Speaker 6: the passenger seat.
Speaker 2: And there's no evidence that she did brandish the No, no, no.
Speaker 6: Nor is Ice even claiming that, like like, Ice isn't
Speaker 6: even claiming that she brandished weapon. Ice isn't claiming that
Speaker 6: she fired a weapon.
Speaker 2: No ice specific claim is that when she was arrested later,
Speaker 2: she had the weapon on her, which could refer to
Speaker 2: the vehicle or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and I will say so. The initial Department
Speaker 3: of Homeland Security press statement said that she was armed with. Correct,
Speaker 3: Semiana had weapon. I think a lot of people took
Speaker 3: that to mean, you know, because DHS was implying stuff
Speaker 3: by saying that she was armed with even though she
Speaker 3: was not.
Speaker 6: They're inhabiting the ambiguity of the right, Like yeah, right.
Speaker 6: They also said that they fired defensively, which makes you
Speaker 6: infer that this person may have fired at Ice. Yeah,
Speaker 6: even though DTS has never actually claimed that, they are
Speaker 6: trying to selectively use words to make people infer things
Speaker 6: that they're not even actually explicitly claiming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and we're going to have to get more
Speaker 3: details when we're going to have wait to see exactly
Speaker 3: what happened. But what the evidence supports right now is
Speaker 3: that ICE shot someone who was doing rapid response work
Speaker 3: and it is frankly a miracle that she wasn't severely
Speaker 3: injured or killed. And this is again the second time
Speaker 3: they have done this since ICE's deployment in the city.
Speaker 3: The first time they did just straight up kill a man.
Speaker 3: So we'll be following the story as as it develops,
Speaker 3: and we'll be following the continued actions of ICE in
Speaker 3: Chicago and other places. Yeah, and we will continue to
Speaker 3: talk about stuff after these ads.
Speaker 8: All right, and we are back MEI was talking about
Speaker 8: rapid responders here, and I want to talk a little
Speaker 8: bit about one of the tools that they were using,
Speaker 8: which was called People Over Papers. There are many of
Speaker 8: these apps that have sprung up since the January of
Speaker 8: this year, rate since we saw much more visible immigration
Speaker 8: enforcement on the streets. Padlet, which was the I guess
Speaker 8: bulletin board type service that was People over Papers relied on,
Speaker 8: has removed People over Papers right say it violated their
Speaker 8: terms of service. The removal comes just a few days
Speaker 8: after a Laura Luma tweet, which tag the CEO claimed
Speaker 8: that People over Papers was violating the terms of service
Speaker 8: by quote harassment, stalking, privacy violations, inciting violence, and other
Speaker 8: unlawful activity. Luma, there is noting things in the terms
Speaker 8: of service she perceives people to be doing with People
Speaker 8: over Papers right. This has happened after another of these apps,
Speaker 8: ice Block, was removed from app stores last week, also
Speaker 8: involved some LUMA posting to Blee. Tricia McLachlin, the DHS
Speaker 8: Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, has claimed and this is
Speaker 8: in contravention of what's widely held to be caught precedent
Speaker 8: and the Lord. She has claimed that videotaping ice agents
Speaker 8: is doxing them, and separately, Christie nom has claimed that
Speaker 8: doxing is an act of violence. We can join the
Speaker 8: two dots there in videotaping ice agents is an act
Speaker 8: of violence seems to be what's being suggested here. We
Speaker 8: can see the consequences of this argument in the deportation
Speaker 8: of Atlanta area report to Mario. Mario was held for
Speaker 8: more than one hundred days in detention. He was arrested
Speaker 8: a No Kings Day protest. If you can remember back
Speaker 8: when people were doing those things, but the charges against
Speaker 8: him were dropped. However, since then the government has argued
Speaker 8: that his filming of law enforcement constitutes a threat to
Speaker 8: public safety. Mara has now been deported back to El Salvador.
Speaker 8: He's an Atlanta reporter and like I guess to editorialize,
Speaker 8: it would be really nice to see a fraction of
Speaker 8: the advocacy we saw for Jimmy Kimmel as someone who's
Speaker 8: actually doing reporting right, not just trying to be funny.
Speaker 2: He's not as big as Jimmy Kimmel. There's never as
Speaker 2: any followers.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, but he's also been sent to El Salvador,
Speaker 8: whereas Jimmy Kimmel was sent back to his mansion in
Speaker 8: Hollie What eggs, Yeah, exactly for like less than a week.
Speaker 8: So I'm going to link in the show notes both
Speaker 8: to an abvacy campaign and the freem of the Press
Speaker 8: Foundation piece about Mario, and you guys can can check
Speaker 8: that out if you'd like to. Second character for this
Speaker 8: week is Tom Hohman. You guys will remember Tom Horman Bordizar,
Speaker 8: a guy who famously, well relatively recently, has become famous
Speaker 8: for scenically accepting a bag with fifty thousand dollars of
Speaker 8: cash in it in an FBI sting operation. Let's play
Speaker 8: this clip of Pam Bondy, who is answering questions in
Speaker 8: front of Congress here about what happened to the literal
Speaker 8: bag of cash?
Speaker 3: What became of the.
Speaker 4: Fifty thousand dollars in cash that the FBI paid to
Speaker 4: mister Homan in a paper bag? Evidently, Oh my.
Speaker 3: God, Tom and Jerry asked shit.
Speaker 8: She's looking through her notes right now, she's selected the.
Speaker 1: Page, Senator.
Speaker 7: As Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently stated, the investigation
Speaker 7: of mister Homan was subjected to a full review by
Speaker 7: the FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors. They found no credible
Speaker 7: evidence of any wrongdoing, and.
Speaker 4: That was not my question. My question was what became
Speaker 4: of the fifty thousand dollars in cash that the FBI delivered,
Speaker 4: evidently in a paper bag to mister Homan.
Speaker 1: Senator, I look at your facts.
Speaker 4: Are you saying that they did not deliver fifty thousand
Speaker 4: dollars in cash to mister Home?
Speaker 7: Senitor as recently stated, the investigation of mister Homan was
Speaker 7: subjected to a full.
Speaker 1: Question by the FBI agent that's by.
Speaker 7: Department of Justice prosecutors. They found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Speaker 4: That's a different question. What became of the fifty thousand dollars?
Speaker 4: Did the FBI get it back?
Speaker 7: Mister white House? Excuse me, Senator white House, You're welcome
Speaker 7: to talk to the.
Speaker 3: FBI the report to you.
Speaker 4: Can't you answer this question?
Speaker 6: First of all, this guy's name is mister Whitehouse. Senator
Speaker 6: white House, Charrison. That surely is a little confuser.
Speaker 8: Yeah, maybe against some emails for a wrong person. Sheldon
Speaker 8: Whitehouse apparentes.
Speaker 2: Theoretically, if he had a job for the administration, his
Speaker 2: email will be white House at white House dot gov.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that's going to happen,
Speaker 8: given the line of questioning that he pursued here. But yeah,
Speaker 8: you can hear Ritchie. She seems to be unwilling to answer.
Speaker 8: Where the paper bag of cash money? Yeah, has gone
Speaker 8: incredible stuff.
Speaker 2: But it's easier to lose that than you'd think you.
Speaker 8: One would assume that FBI would have some kind of
Speaker 8: tracking capability when giving someone fifty thousand dollars in a
Speaker 8: paper bag, But here we are.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a no country for all mint kind of situation.
Speaker 2: Whoever found it was smart enough to dune transponder first,
Speaker 2: we will probably never know if they're smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, building on that, what Pro Publicer is now reporting
Speaker 8: is that Homan went into business with a Pennsylvania consultant
Speaker 8: named Child Soul, and that Soul has been offering cons
Speaker 8: on how to obtain contracts a Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 8: So Homan consulted for Soul's firm during the buyer the administration,
Speaker 8: and during that same period, Soul became the chair of
Speaker 8: Homan's Border nine to one one Foundation. According to their reporting,
Speaker 8: Pro Publica has called into questioning the extent to which
Speaker 8: Homan has actually recused himself from contracts, saying that he
Speaker 8: participated in meetings with executives about government contracting plans. So
Speaker 8: normally a government official would be bound to steer clear
Speaker 8: of their former business associates for at least a year
Speaker 8: when they enter office. Right, I can't like consult for
Speaker 8: Garrison Inc. And then become procurement for DHS and immediately
Speaker 8: buy one thousand of whatever Garrison Inc. Is selling you.
Speaker 8: You can tag Garrison on a blue sky where they
Speaker 8: will read what you think they're selling.
Speaker 6: If this will result in me getting fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 6: in a paper bag, then you know, maybe.
Speaker 8: Yeah, in this instance, I would be the one getting
Speaker 8: the fifty thousand dollars from Garrison Ink came return for
Speaker 8: buying whatever it is that you are selling orbs.
Speaker 6: Maybe yeah, that's not a great deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah did Yeah, I did.
Speaker 16: Well.
Speaker 6: Seems like it was a great deal in this instance
Speaker 6: for a Tom Holman.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well.
Speaker 8: Their reporting suggests that Herman went from a relatively modest
Speaker 8: income in twenty seventeen to being a multimillionaire by the
Speaker 8: time he filed his twenty twenty five disclosure documents. When
Speaker 8: you assume federal office that you have to file these
Speaker 8: disclosure documents disclose your assets, I guess the famous one
Speaker 8: is Jimmy Carter's peanut farm. But it seems that during
Speaker 8: that time his personal network increased significantly, right, he did
Speaker 8: a lot of consulting. He became like a talking head
Speaker 8: on Fox News in the Biden administration, it's difficult to
Speaker 8: summarize the intricacies of history. I encourage you to read it.
Speaker 8: For instance, of the third person called Mark Hall, who
Speaker 8: appears to be doing some work on behalf of Homan,
Speaker 8: but also retaining relationship with Soul's clients. It looks a
Speaker 8: lot like what's happening is that the people who Homan
Speaker 8: had been doing consulting with and now trying to make
Speaker 8: money saying that they have act special access to DHF
Speaker 8: based off that consulting. This kind of builds on some
Speaker 8: of the stuff that we'd already seen and spoken about
Speaker 8: last week. Right finally, on the immigration beat, I want
Speaker 8: to talk about a case where the petitioner's attorney has
Speaker 8: stated that the petitioner I'm not going to name the person,
Speaker 8: I don't think it's necessary, was taken to hospital by
Speaker 8: CBP after they severely injured his leg on a raid
Speaker 8: in a car wash in Carson, California. He was booked
Speaker 8: into the hospital under a pseudonym and kept there under
Speaker 8: armed guard from August to twenty seventh until October fourth.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So this person, they weren't coming up in the
Speaker 8: detainee locator, right, They hadn't apparently been allocated in a number,
Speaker 8: which is what you'd normally used to look someone up
Speaker 8: on the ice detainee locator. And I guess the argument
Speaker 8: there was that they weren't booked in until they left
Speaker 8: the hospital, so this person basically disappeared for more than
Speaker 8: a month. The judges granted that petitioner an attentive restraining
Speaker 8: order in that instance. Right, But I think this I
Speaker 8: have been receiving a lot of messages about a Chicago
Speaker 8: older person who was detained by ICE at a hospital,
Speaker 8: and I have seen a number of reports that suggest
Speaker 8: that that's because Ice were detaining people in the hospital.
Speaker 8: To my knowledge, the only person they detained in the
Speaker 8: hospital was the older person. They were not detaining patients
Speaker 8: at the hospital. They were there because they had bought
Speaker 8: somebody to the hospital in order for that person to
Speaker 8: be a patient, because that person was in their detention,
Speaker 8: in their care and needed medical assistance. I have seen
Speaker 8: outlets I don't should I name them, like Democracy Now
Speaker 8: got this wrong, and so that they were arresting people,
Speaker 8: so like Democracy Now is one example, right. I have
Speaker 8: seen outlets reporting this as Ice were in the hospital
Speaker 8: detaining people. Nothing I have seen leads me to believe that,
Speaker 8: and lots of things I have seen leave me not
Speaker 8: to believe that. It doesn't mean it's great for the
Speaker 8: people who are bored in hospital by ICE, and sure
Speaker 8: it fucking sucks. I'm sure it has a chilling effect
Speaker 8: on other people going to hospital to know that they
Speaker 8: are there, But so does reporting that suggests that you
Speaker 8: can be picked up in hospital if you're an impatient
Speaker 8: or if you're in the emergency room. That stops people
Speaker 8: accessing medical care, that actively puts people in danger. We
Speaker 8: need to be really, really fucking careful when sharing this shit.
Speaker 8: That includes people who are journalists or claiming to be journalists.
Speaker 2: People are so upset, rightly so, with what ICE is
Speaker 2: doing that there can be this attitude and I've encountered
Speaker 2: before of like, well, by undercautioning people, that's the biggest risk.
Speaker 2: And it's like now when we're talking about whether or
Speaker 2: not people go to the hospital for life serving care, Like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, it's just not like these are not equivalent risks.
Speaker 2: More people are going to be in a position where
Speaker 2: they would be scared off from going to the hospital
Speaker 2: and not in any danger from ICE going to it,
Speaker 2: then might possibly be in danger going to the hospital.
Speaker 2: Like you're just endangering people by trying to get them
Speaker 2: to believe it is not safe for them to go
Speaker 2: receive life saving emergency medical care at this stage. Now,
Speaker 2: is it possible that's going to change?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 2: God, I'm certainly not going to say no, right, I'm
Speaker 2: certainly not going to say no.
Speaker 8: One hundred percent.
Speaker 2: But that's not where we are right now. Just overcautioning
Speaker 2: people is not a net good in this instance. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: sometimes it is, but not here because again, if people
Speaker 2: don't go to the hospital on time, they die.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I'm aware of cases where people with genuinely
Speaker 8: life threatening medical emergencies have been had to be persuaded
Speaker 8: to go to the hospital by people right because they
Speaker 8: had seen this. Because these rooms don't just spread via
Speaker 8: social media built by WhatsApp groups and things, and it
Speaker 8: can be very scary for people.
Speaker 2: Well, and people largely construct their beliefs on reality by
Speaker 2: like what the weight of the people that they know
Speaker 2: directly or follow are saying is true. And when you
Speaker 2: see fifty people, some of them you kind of know,
Speaker 2: some of whom you've at least followed to an extent online,
Speaker 2: all say this is unsafe, then there's a tendency to
Speaker 2: get angry when people are like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it doesn't it actually, yeah.
Speaker 8: Like I mean, like I care about the safety of
Speaker 8: migrantes in this country. I think anyone who looked at
Speaker 8: a totality of my work would would believe that right,
Speaker 8: like it's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. That means I want
Speaker 8: them to go to hospital when they're fucking sick, and
Speaker 8: that means that people who are saying things that are
Speaker 8: not true. I understand why, right it lines up with
Speaker 8: the other things that we know to be true. ICE
Speaker 8: is doing terrible shit. Shit is terrible, but it is
Speaker 8: still an area where we need to exercise extreme caution
Speaker 8: when reporting on things until we know that it is
Speaker 8: true that I saw coming in to hospital and taking
Speaker 8: people out of the beds, which again, not a thing
Speaker 8: that I think is happening. Let's pivot a little bit
Speaker 8: to public lands. Some think that I think about a lot,
Speaker 8: but we don't always report on here, but that I
Speaker 8: think is very important. I want to talk about the
Speaker 8: Roadless Rule today. So September saw the end of the
Speaker 8: comment period. It was a very short comment period on
Speaker 8: the Trump administration's proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule. The
Speaker 8: Roadless Rule, if you're not familiar, protects over fifty eight
Speaker 8: point eight million acres of national forest land from roadbuilding, logging,
Speaker 8: and other industrial activity. According to the Center for Western Priorities,
Speaker 8: ninety nine percent of the comments submitted, of which there
Speaker 8: were more than one hundred and eighty thousand, were opposed
Speaker 8: to rescinding the rule. The roadless rule has previously had
Speaker 8: broad bipartisan support. It was not a particularly controversial thing.
Speaker 8: Agriculture sexuary Brook Roylins announced a proposal earlier in the summer,
Speaker 8: saying it would increase logging and decrease wildfire risk. Research
Speaker 8: suggests that the opposite is true. Cutting roads into forests
Speaker 8: provides more ignition opportunities rate By allowing people to go
Speaker 8: into those forests, you allow those people to do things
Speaker 8: which lead to fires happening, right, get cars overheat, they
Speaker 8: smoke cigarettes, they fucking shoot steel targets. In the middle
Speaker 8: of the summer, we.
Speaker 2: Just had a guy brought in for the Palisade fires,
Speaker 2: and he was like a twenty nine year old uber
Speaker 2: driver who was having clearly a bad mental health day,
Speaker 2: called in after he set a fire, but kind of
Speaker 2: made weird denials about it and like fled to Florida.
Speaker 2: And it kind of just looks like he was listening
Speaker 2: to a song where there were people lighting fires and
Speaker 2: decided to light a fire and it got way out
Speaker 2: of control, way too quickly. Yeah, and it wasn't even
Speaker 2: the same night, Like it took like a week because
Speaker 2: like they put out the initial fire, but it kept
Speaker 2: burning through thick underbrush which eventually got recot. That's my
Speaker 2: understanding based on the articles that I've read. But like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's I mean, in that case, it's just a guy
Speaker 2: who's not super well.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 8: And like the other thing the cutting grows will do
Speaker 8: is it will change the fotiage. Right, You'll cut down
Speaker 8: the big trees and you'll have smaller shrubs, and that
Speaker 8: those are easier to burn the big trees.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: The Wilderness Society has some date on this. I think
Speaker 8: they found that forestwich roads were four times more likely
Speaker 8: to have fires. I will link to that Wilderness Society data.
Speaker 8: The roads rule was passed under the Clinton admin and
Speaker 8: it's being rescinded as part of a March executive order
Speaker 8: which which sought to increase US timber production. I want
Speaker 8: to note that there will not be guys with chainsaws
Speaker 8: rolling into your favorite national forest like next week or
Speaker 8: next month. Right, Like building these roads would have to
Speaker 8: be financed by the United States Forest Service, which is
Speaker 8: of course currently well, if you go on the forest website,
Speaker 8: forest Service website will tell you that radical left Democrats
Speaker 8: have shut down the federal government right now in a
Speaker 8: pop up but we did it, guys. Yeah, so the
Speaker 8: Forest Service finally coming out against the work left. But yeah,
Speaker 8: the Forest Service would have to finance these, and it's
Speaker 8: currently understaffed because of the voluntary and DOGE based layoffs.
Speaker 8: It's not particularly well funded. I don't see the Forest
Speaker 8: Service going in for a lot of road construction, but
Speaker 8: it might be wrong, right Trump Kelly seems to see
Speaker 8: not importing timber as a major issue. I'm not quite
Speaker 8: sure why. Like, I guess there's this. This was an
Speaker 8: issue in Britain when they had to respond to the
Speaker 8: Spanish Armada cut down a lot of trees back then.
Speaker 8: Not familiar with very similar Yeah, national security issue. I
Speaker 8: think we can agree right to Spanish.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm just excited that now I can finally
Speaker 6: drive my ATV through these you know, environmentally protected area
Speaker 6: damn right garrison without getting harassed by the park ser Yeah,
Speaker 6: woke Left.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be the drunkest guy on an ATV
Speaker 2: and Joshua tree. I'm going to drive straight for the
Speaker 2: biggest tree I can find. Anything over a thousand years
Speaker 2: old is fair game for my bumper. Baby, it's hit
Speaker 2: close to home. I'm sorry, James, Jesus is seething right now.
Speaker 2: Jessu is going to fucking cut me.
Speaker 8: If I see anyone stealing or destroying a Joshua tree,
Speaker 8: I will I.
Speaker 2: Would never harm a Joshua tree. I would never harm
Speaker 2: a Joshua tree. There's one kind of tree I will
Speaker 2: harm in discriminately and in the tree of paradise. But
Speaker 2: that's good for the environment. But those trees kill them
Speaker 2: wherever you find them.
Speaker 8: I think the only Joshua te it's okay to hate
Speaker 8: it is the album by you too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's also burn every copy of the album josh Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm okay with destroy raise it from the run over
Speaker 2: those within ATV. Yeah, I wouldn't mind if that became extinct.
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: May you want to talk about tariffs. We're talking about timber,
Speaker 8: and of course there has been recently a tariff on
Speaker 8: Canadian lumber woke trees coming in from our neighbors to
Speaker 8: the north. So sorry, perhaps that's why we need to
Speaker 8: destroy our national forests.
Speaker 2: I mean, Canada kinda is destroying theirs and they still
Speaker 2: have trees the export.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I do. I guess one thing I haven't said
Speaker 8: about public land that you should always say when you're
Speaker 8: talking about public land is that it's all native land, actually,
Speaker 8: and the framing of public land is a place for
Speaker 8: white folks to recreate. It's not the correct framing. It's
Speaker 8: not how we win this fight.
Speaker 2: And no, and you should also if you care about
Speaker 2: not just the damage that fires do, but conservation in general,
Speaker 2: and you ever hit the opportunity to go through like
Speaker 2: up here in the Pacific Northwest, you can go through
Speaker 2: chunks of the forest that are managed by the state
Speaker 2: and that are managed by the Bureau of Management, and
Speaker 2: then you can go through chunks of forests that are
Speaker 2: managed by the indigenous communities. And the way in which
Speaker 2: forests are managed is very different. Yeah, and different in
Speaker 2: a way that one is the right way to do
Speaker 2: it and the other two arts yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: This is land that was all stolen from its indigenous
Speaker 8: stewards by means of genocide, and we should give it back.
Speaker 2: And it's not just a matter of that's the the
Speaker 2: right thing to say, but also that is the right
Speaker 2: way to preserve those lands.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the people who've been in stewardship of those lands
Speaker 8: so much only than in America has been a country anyway.
Speaker 2: Watch the I think nineteen ninety one movie clear Cut,
Speaker 2: which is set in Canada. But a fucking banger, real
Speaker 2: good movie.
Speaker 3: Check it out.
Speaker 8: I don't know if those two things are compatible, what
Speaker 8: Canada and a banga.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good. It's it's it's a it's about an
Speaker 2: indigenous activist and a white lawyer.
Speaker 3: Who you don't like cronin What's wrong with Histor?
Speaker 2: He's fighting the log movies. It's it's really good. It's
Speaker 2: about this, Like, Okay, I want liberal white lawyer who's
Speaker 2: fighting like a logging company and this indigenous activist who
Speaker 2: takes him and kidnaps the head of the logging company
Speaker 2: and takes them into the forest. And that's all I'll
Speaker 2: tell you about the movie. It is a fucking banger.
Speaker 6: I don't go on this podcast make fun of your
Speaker 6: own country, Garrison, David, you will all, by the way,
Speaker 6: like Clearcut, watch that fucking movie Tariff talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, movie Tariff flick at that for fucking segue. Yeah,
Speaker 2: locking jazz.
Speaker 3: Rocking jazz pot locking locking jazz, rocking jazz bo okay.
Speaker 3: In Lightning Round, we have huge We have two pivot
Speaker 3: points here. We're gonna go for the timber pivot instead
Speaker 3: of the movie pivot. So Lightning Round. Trump is imposing
Speaker 3: a ten percent tariff on softwood lumber, a twenty five
Speaker 3: percent tariff on upholstered furniture, and twenty five percent tariff
Speaker 3: on kitchen cabinets. In vanities, Ikea is the thing.
Speaker 8: Ikea is tyas Shay's long industry is collapsing in Canada
Speaker 8: as we speak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is this is going to be in
Speaker 3: effect October fourteenth, get him now. And then also these
Speaker 3: tariffs are scheduled to increase at the beginning of next year.
Speaker 3: The upholstered furniture tariffs are increasing to thirty percent, and
Speaker 3: the kitchen cabinet and vanity tariffs are increasing to fifty
Speaker 3: percent at the beginning of next year.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, the idea that there's a vanity tariff is
Speaker 8: very funny to me, like not as now, but just
Speaker 8: like as a concept.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people, these are nominally lumber industry tariffs. I think
Speaker 3: there's some kind of housing development brain inside of Trump's
Speaker 3: head rattling around as to why there's some only tariffs
Speaker 3: on vanities and upultered furniture. Who knows, baffling. The Canadian
Speaker 3: government has been attempting to lift the tariffs. It has
Speaker 3: not worked. Negotiations once again failed today, which is octper eighth. Okay,
Speaker 3: bouncing from that to something that's also very important, blashet
Speaker 3: Wete and I feeling more important. So one of the
Speaker 3: issues with the current government shutdown is the threat to
Speaker 3: the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, infants, and children,
Speaker 3: which is normally called WIC. The rec funding is extraordinarily
Speaker 3: important because it feeds several million people. And Okay, this
Speaker 3: story is very, very weird because we haven't gotten any
Speaker 3: direct thing about how this would work outside of the
Speaker 3: Press secretary saying it. But the Press secretary is saying
Speaker 3: that Trump is going to fund this program with the
Speaker 3: money from one of the tariff pro Yeah. Now, it
Speaker 3: is worth noting that this is just very unconstitutional. Exceptionally unconstitutional.
Speaker 3: Is a violation of the part of the Separation of
Speaker 3: powers where they say that Congress is the thing that
Speaker 3: that Levy's tax doesn't decide where the money goes. But
Speaker 3: it's also it's not clear if this is even happening
Speaker 3: or how it could even remotely happen, but it is
Speaker 3: being reported. WIC has been a program that Trump has
Speaker 3: been using to push his narrative about the government shut down.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think forty percent of children are on WICK
Speaker 8: right now. Like, this is an extremely important program. It's
Speaker 8: one of those things where like again, there was complete
Speaker 8: biparties and support apart aside from complete lunatics until very
Speaker 8: like you would never have heard like a fuck Wig statement.
Speaker 8: It's done a lot of good for a lot of
Speaker 8: people who need a lot of help. I did see
Speaker 8: a statement from the Wick Council that basically asserted that, like, look,
Speaker 8: we'd be excited if you would keep us keep Wick funded,
Speaker 8: but using tariff money if not a sustainable or like
Speaker 8: reliable approach to do this, just just fund it by
Speaker 8: playing for government program to the youth a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the other major tariff news that we have
Speaker 3: is basically, for the last couple of weeks, Trump has
Speaker 3: been threatening to impose one tariffs on pharmaceuticals. This was
Speaker 3: originally supposed to go into effect in October first, and
Speaker 3: then Trump started cutting a bunch of deals with drug
Speaker 3: manufacturers to exchange sort of lower price agreements. And also,
Speaker 3: and this is the major significant element, as we've seen
Speaker 3: with the whole bunch of companies that have made deals
Speaker 3: with Trump pledges of large scale investments in US manufacturing
Speaker 3: and production. These tariffs have sort of been staved off,
Speaker 3: and the administration is now saying that they won't do
Speaker 3: it because they don't need to, because they have resear
Speaker 3: greevments for drug companies. Pfizer was the first major company
Speaker 3: to sign a deal. This has been part of an
Speaker 3: initiative called trump RX, which is supposedly coming in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the plan is to have direct to consumer
Speaker 3: drug sales by forcing these companies to give the US
Speaker 3: Most Favored Nation status, which like basically the thrust of
Speaker 3: this is giving specifically this trump RX thing, the prices
Speaker 3: that these drug companies charge to undeveloped countries. However, and
Speaker 3: this is extremely important to not being reported very much.
Speaker 3: Trump Our Rex, assuming this comes program comes into being,
Speaker 3: you can't use insurance on it is only you can
Speaker 3: only buy drugs off there. You would only be able
Speaker 3: to buy drugs off there without insurance, So it probably
Speaker 3: doesn't lower your drug costs at all if you have
Speaker 3: really any kind of insurance.
Speaker 8: Certainly lowess it cost your insurance company has to pay, right,
Speaker 8: like if you're insured badly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you know, And so the actual good that
Speaker 3: this could even potentially do, I think is very very limited. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but that's sort of what's going on. This is the
Speaker 3: part of the initiative. If you see people talking about
Speaker 3: how he's lowering drug prices, it's specifically for this weird
Speaker 3: trump are X thing, which again you can't use insurance
Speaker 3: to use. So there's been a few other tariffs that
Speaker 3: he's talked about, and I kind of want to set
Speaker 3: a spectrum of how real a tariff is because there's
Speaker 3: there's a whole bunch of different kinds of terifts that
Speaker 3: Trump announces and then nothing happens on yeh. So, for example,
Speaker 3: you can have a kind of tariff where he announces
Speaker 3: on social media but there's no date, right, So one
Speaker 3: hundred percent tariff on foreign made movies. This is the
Speaker 3: second time he talked about it. There's never been a
Speaker 3: date attached to it. It seems to be something that
Speaker 3: he tweets about and then forgets about. It never happens.
Speaker 3: On the more real end, there are tariffs like the
Speaker 3: one that is currently being proposed as twenty five percent
Speaker 3: tariff on heavy trucks that's supposed to go into effect
Speaker 3: in November first, but there is no executive order, so
Speaker 3: that one we can't treat as real as for example,
Speaker 3: the lumber tariffs, which have an executive order, although so
Speaker 3: again you have to wait for these to actually go
Speaker 3: into effect, which which would be category sort of three
Speaker 3: and four are isert executive order and has the date
Speaker 3: of the executive order doing the thing passed. So we
Speaker 3: have a couple of floating tariffs. From there, we have
Speaker 3: those twenty five percent tariffs on heavy trucks which are
Speaker 3: supposed to go into Efectivember first, assuming it's an executive order.
Speaker 3: We have this film tariff, which is the was the
Speaker 3: scariest tariff by far one tariffs on foreign made films.
Speaker 2: What are they tariffing that have to hoist the black flag? Again,
Speaker 2: my friends don't know has any idea what that means?
Speaker 3: We have no, absolutely not. We have no clue how
Speaker 3: this is no detasfled.
Speaker 8: Okay, he just said what film. Okay, sick good. I'm
Speaker 8: glad that everyone's equally clear on that.
Speaker 2: Get back to torrenting Babel.
Speaker 3: I think I think the final thing we should talk
Speaker 3: about is so on November fifth, the Sutreame Court is
Speaker 3: going to start hearing the case against a bunch of
Speaker 3: the tariffs that Trump has been doing. We've talked about
Speaker 3: this before. The Trump administration has also stated that even
Speaker 3: if these terriffs are found on constitutional, they are going
Speaker 3: to continue to apply tariffs themselves using other laws.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 3: Even if they lose the Supreme Court case, that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that all the terriffs are suddenly just not going
Speaker 3: to happen anymore. He will probably try to reimpose a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of them under different terrorf authority, and we'll
Speaker 3: go through this whole process again. But yeah, this is
Speaker 3: this has been this has been terriff talk.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 8: Okay, So I have a fundraiser for you. We're doing
Speaker 8: Bouquette again. Buqutt Tan is an Alavi Kurdish woman. Because
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Speaker 8: is now living in southern California and she needs to
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Speaker 2: We reported someone's nos, We reported the news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey. We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.
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