Speaker 1: Also media, Oh Lord, that the Coming has begun.
Speaker 2: The Coming has begun. This is it could happen here.
Speaker 2: Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the
Speaker 2: White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.
Speaker 2: I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout,
Speaker 2: and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: Yes, and as James Stout just noted, the Coming has begun,
Speaker 3: so we're going to also begin.
Speaker 2: This episode we are covering the week of March twelve
Speaker 2: to March nineteen. Obviously, the most important piece of news
Speaker 2: right now is that Minnesota Republican state Senator Justin aich Lord,
Speaker 2: who just last week sponsored or co sponsored a bill
Speaker 2: that that legally recognizes Trump Derangement syndrome as a mental
Speaker 2: illness which disqualifies you from possessing firearms, was literally that
Speaker 2: same day rested in a sting operation for trying to
Speaker 2: meet up with and have sex with.
Speaker 3: A like like literally he was like, had to have
Speaker 3: been texting this. He thought what he thought was a kid,
Speaker 3: but what was really a federal agent. While he was
Speaker 3: finalizing the language.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's truly phenomenal. Pedal Club theory never fails. Anyway,
Speaker 2: let's move on to the actual important stress, which is
Speaker 2: mostly bad. This has been a pretty rough week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a pretty rough week.
Speaker 3: It sucked.
Speaker 2: Yes, So I guess I'll turn to James Stout.
Speaker 1: Mehi, everyone, Well the day you're listening, it's it's Neuro's
Speaker 1: Nero's piros babe. Yeah, yeah, British listeners. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk today about rendition. This has been reported his deportation. Like,
Speaker 1: I guess it technically falls within deportation. But what's happening
Speaker 1: here is that the Trump administration has begun renditioning people
Speaker 1: who it accuses of being members of trender Ragua, which
Speaker 1: is a Venezuelan gang, and the La Mara Saba, the
Speaker 1: MS thirteen as they known here right. It has done
Speaker 1: this based on something called the Alien Enemies Act. The
Speaker 1: way it's able to use the Alien Enemies Act is
Speaker 1: that it has designated these gangs as foreign terrorist organizations
Speaker 1: rather than as like international crime organizations, and it's usually
Speaker 1: Alien Enemies Act to expedite their removal. We spoke about
Speaker 1: the Alien Enemies Act in a podcast that I made
Speaker 1: last November with Robin Sophe about parts of the lord
Speaker 1: that Trump administration might use for its mass deportation agenda.
Speaker 1: They're now using this one, and very briefly, it's a
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty six year old piece of legislation
Speaker 1: that hasn't been used since World War Two, when it
Speaker 1: was used to justifying tournament camps, which were a bad thing.
Speaker 1: These people aren't being deported back to Venezuela, right, The
Speaker 1: US doesn't have relations with the Moduro regime, although it
Speaker 1: has to port people back to Venezuela on an airline
Speaker 1: that was previously sanctioned, which could now land in the
Speaker 1: US for the express purpose of deportations, which is great. Instead,
Speaker 1: they're being sent to Al Salvador, sent there with no
Speaker 1: trial or hearing or seemingly right to appeal. When they
Speaker 1: get to El Salvador, they've been parade in front of
Speaker 1: video cameras. Very degrading treatment. Right. Their hair is being shaved,
Speaker 1: sort of being walked with their heads forced down. They're
Speaker 1: being filmed on their knees while all their hair and
Speaker 1: facial hair is removed, and then they're being sent to
Speaker 1: second If you're not familiar with this, it was the
Speaker 1: subject of State Department Human Rights reports very recently and
Speaker 1: now we are sending people there. It's a mega prison
Speaker 1: in El Salvador. It roughly translates terrorism confinement or terrorism
Speaker 1: detention center. I guess it's been very recently built by Bukel,
Speaker 1: who's the president of El Salvador, and it's part of
Speaker 1: his Supermanodoro like Iron Fist. Super Iron Fist would be
Speaker 1: the way you were translated. I guess. It is routinely
Speaker 1: criticized by human rights organizations for the disgusting conditions of
Speaker 1: people are kept in right, the United States government intended
Speaker 1: to send three hundred people there and in return it
Speaker 1: paid six million dollars to El Salvador for the cost
Speaker 1: of their detention. At the time that I wrote this,
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty eight people who were accused of
Speaker 1: being part of trend our Work was sent there, and
Speaker 1: then twenty three who accused of being part of MS thirty.
Speaker 1: They were removed on flights the Trump administrations, claiming they
Speaker 1: were removed before a district court judge in DC blocked
Speaker 1: the removals. But there are a series of timelines that
Speaker 1: you can see online, some of which will be linked
Speaker 1: in the source of this episode would suggest that they
Speaker 1: were in the air when he blocked their removals. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: the judge very explicitly said, I'm quoting here. Any plane
Speaker 1: containing these folks that is going to take off or
Speaker 1: is in the air needs to be returned to the
Speaker 1: United States. This is something that you need to make
Speaker 1: sure is complied with immediately. This did not happen. The
Speaker 1: planes continued traveling to Olsalvadoid, stopped in Honduras, and then
Speaker 1: these people were paraded before the cameras, right, and they're
Speaker 1: now presumably being detained in this prison, which doesn't mean
Speaker 1: basic sender of human rights. The government has given various
Speaker 1: reasons for ignoring this ruling from the judge. Press Sexuary
Speaker 1: Caroline leave It claimed that there was quote no lawful
Speaker 1: basis for it. Obviously, that the process here is, if
Speaker 1: you don't believe then judicial ruling is correct, you stop
Speaker 1: doing the thing and appeal it. You don't just keep
Speaker 1: doing the thing and say like, oh, well, I don't
Speaker 1: believe you. It's not true. Obviously, this only matters in
Speaker 1: so far as the judge can enforce his decision. They
Speaker 1: also claimed in court that the verbal order that the judge
Speaker 1: gave is not the same as a written one, and
Speaker 1: they claim that because the flights were ever international waters,
Speaker 1: this was a foreign policy matter, and that the judge
Speaker 1: could intervene in a foreign policy matter. That's a power
Speaker 1: of this reserve to the executive.
Speaker 2: I mean, like all of these justifications are really like
Speaker 2: freaky in terms of constitutional power and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is there are fringes on the flag, so
Speaker 1: admiralty court apply is kind of done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But specifically that last one being like it doesn't
Speaker 2: count because we're over international waters is like, yeah, super
Speaker 2: frightening in terms of like human rights abuses.
Speaker 3: That's not the way anything works, especially since it was
Speaker 3: like a US airline.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and in terms of yeah, you basically don't
Speaker 1: have human rights because really, look, it's they're forcing a
Speaker 1: loophole that doesn't exist in the same way that George W.
Speaker 1: Bush did in the in the early two thousands with
Speaker 1: Guantanamo Bay. He was never stopped from doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, well, I I honestly, I think I think
Speaker 4: the thing that this is closer to is the other things.
Speaker 4: So I think Guantanamo Bay is the one that gets remembered.
Speaker 4: But the other part of the CIA torture program was
Speaker 4: the US would just ship people off to places like Syria.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Syria, Egypt, Syria and the Egypt biggest.
Speaker 5: Yeah maybe yeah yeah, we did ANASA.
Speaker 3: To Syria's torture program had largely been cobbled together by
Speaker 3: a former SS guy. It's all. It's very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also want to read a line from the legal
Speaker 4: argument that Trump's lawyers made before this judge, because it
Speaker 4: is fucking horrifying. Quote, enemy Allians are not entitled to
Speaker 4: seek any relief or protection in the country that has
Speaker 4: designated them enemies, absent dispensation by the President c Citizens
Speaker 4: Protection League. And then in parentheses noting common law ruling
Speaker 4: that alien enemies have no rights, no privileges, unless by
Speaker 4: the King's special favor. So every single part that is horrifying.
Speaker 4: Also horrifying is the fact that if you actually look
Speaker 4: up the common lawal citation, the next words after King's
Speaker 4: special favor is in a time of war.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the idea here, right, that we're a
Speaker 1: war with these foreign terrorist organizations and these people are
Speaker 1: like essentially like spies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is this is this thing We're like, well, no,
Speaker 4: obviously we're not like that. We don't have there's no
Speaker 4: state of war, Like, no state of wars have ever
Speaker 4: been declared. But because of the way the War on
Speaker 4: Terror sort of functioned, they're they're they're trying to claim
Speaker 4: these things. And then again like the fact that they're
Speaker 4: saying that anyone they declare an alien has literally no
Speaker 4: protections at all in the country, no rights at all
Speaker 4: can be anything can be done to them. It's unless
Speaker 4: specifically the president decides that they have rights. Is unbelievably hideous.
Speaker 4: It is pure, pure state of exception, total fascism. Shit,
Speaker 4: it's fucking horrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's entirely unconstitutional, right, Like you have to
Speaker 1: be a radically left person to believe that humans have rights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to really briefly, like one of the criteria
Speaker 1: that was used here so so ice criteria. So they
Speaker 1: have to have two identifying signs to be classified as
Speaker 1: a gang member. One of them that has been used
Speaker 1: very heavily here is tattoos. We know from court filings
Speaker 1: that one man, Barrios, he has a football tattoo, right,
Speaker 1: like a tattoo of a football with a crown on
Speaker 1: it is this diocelic god underneath. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: be I guess similar like a play on the logo
Speaker 1: of Al Madrid. But they've used this to claim that
Speaker 1: its evidence he's a member of a gang. Gangs like
Speaker 1: tender Agua don't have like gang signed tattoos, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're smarter than that, Like they've seen what's happened to
Speaker 1: gangs like MS thirteen, because who do Like Madras, Central
Speaker 1: American gangs have have had these things like as part
Speaker 1: of their tradition for a while, and they've been used
Speaker 1: heavily by law enforcement. I remember Christmas Eve twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I was in the desert with my friends and a
Speaker 1: large number of my joints Across that day, I remember
Speaker 1: meeting a Venezuela man who was like covered in tattoos.
Speaker 1: They head to toe, very heavy tattooed. And that dude
Speaker 1: spent the entire day building a shelter for someone else's
Speaker 1: sick kid and then slept by himself in the freezing
Speaker 1: cold outside. And like, I don't know, I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about that guy a lot because under this ruling, right,
Speaker 1: like just his appearance of having tattoos would have him
Speaker 1: classified as a terrorist. And like when thousands of Americans
Speaker 1: living within an hour of that place did nothing, and
Speaker 1: that little girl who was sick had nowhere to sleep,
Speaker 1: Like this guy took it upon himself to help, even
Speaker 1: when he himself was in a difficult place. And it
Speaker 1: just really makes me kind of sick. I think that
Speaker 1: this is where we're at now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean it's it's it's a damning indictment
Speaker 3: of the character of people who are the voter base
Speaker 3: in this country. And it's a damning indictment of like
Speaker 3: what particularly liberals in the left failed to stop because
Speaker 3: this was this was a train that we could see
Speaker 3: coming for a while, like the propaganda campaign against these folks, yeah,
Speaker 3: and a necessary ingredient, and the Republicans getting their way
Speaker 3: on this was democratic politicians and you know, to be
Speaker 3: entirely fair, quite a few prominent thought leaders on the
Speaker 3: left absolutely folding and not just not just failing to
Speaker 3: like counterpoint this stuff, but like diving in on it
Speaker 3: because they they either had prejudice of their own or
Speaker 3: they saw it as like an opportunity. But like, you know,
Speaker 3: the whole nativist deal is is just disgusting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know what else to say. I can't just
Speaker 3: keep yelling about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not all a slippery slope. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that they're both as bad as each other, because
Speaker 1: what's happening now is much worse than anything that happened previously.
Speaker 1: But like, yes, when we could detain people, including little
Speaker 1: chill outside and we could leave them there in the snow,
Speaker 1: and like little babies could be shivering, and I could
Speaker 1: be giving away my own coat almost every day I
Speaker 1: was out there because I was worried someone's baby was
Speaker 1: going to die of hypothermia, we kind of conceded that
Speaker 1: these people didn't have rights, right and the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: let that happen, and people on the left let that happen.
Speaker 1: And that is a stepping stone on the pathway to
Speaker 1: where we're at now.
Speaker 3: Yep, just as like with all the shit that's that's
Speaker 3: happening right now, like in terms of like the disappearing
Speaker 3: of political opponents and whatnot, Like you can draw a
Speaker 3: line from that from like the Patriot Act, you know,
Speaker 3: from Obama targeting a US citizen in think Afghanistan, Like
Speaker 3: there's all of these are Like obviously things were not
Speaker 3: nearly as bad as they are right now in those administrations,
Speaker 3: but like they're not unrelated. You know, this kind of
Speaker 3: unitary executive theory is a through line through the last
Speaker 3: several administrations, and if anyone had pushed back prior to
Speaker 3: this point, Trump wouldn't be able to do a lot
Speaker 3: of what he's doing.
Speaker 1: Yep. Now what we are doing is pivoting to ads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: We're back and we're talking Ukraine Ukraine. I'm sorry that
Speaker 3: I shouldn't Ukraine if you want to, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: know why I did anyway. So, if you've been kind
Speaker 3: of paying attention over the last month or so, we've
Speaker 3: had a little odyssey in terms of US Russia Ukraine relations,
Speaker 3: and the gist of it is that everybody claims to
Speaker 3: want an end to the fighting. You know, at least
Speaker 3: off and On. Putin has kind of like made some
Speaker 3: motions to that has absolutely not acted as if this
Speaker 3: is something he particularly cares about. Trump clearly does want
Speaker 3: a ceasefire because he wants to be able to take
Speaker 3: credit for it, and Zelensky also clearly once a ceasefire.
Speaker 3: But there's been some kind of some pretty significant like
Speaker 3: hold ups. One of them has been around Ukrainian minerals,
Speaker 3: and you know, in February, you had the administration talking
Speaker 3: a lot about how the US was going to gain
Speaker 3: control of Ukraine's minerals in order to pay us back
Speaker 3: for our support of their war effort, and Zelensky drew
Speaker 3: a very firm line, as he often does, like no,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to You're not just going to get
Speaker 3: all of this, all of our country's minerals. And I
Speaker 3: should note here that like this is a fairly significant
Speaker 3: issue in global terms. It's estimated that Ukraine has about
Speaker 3: five percent of the planet's critical raw materials, including massive
Speaker 3: reserves of graphite. They're somewhere in like the top five
Speaker 3: countries in terms of proven graphite reserves, which among other things,
Speaker 3: is a critical ingredient for batteries in electric vehicles. They
Speaker 3: supply about seven percent of Europe's titanium. They're home to
Speaker 3: a third of European lithium deposits. This is not an
Speaker 3: exhaustive list, that's just kind of, you know, to start
Speaker 3: things off. And initially, when there was this kind of
Speaker 3: pushback from Zelenski saying like no, you're not just going
Speaker 3: to get all that, putin came in and was like, well, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, we've occupied a bunch of Ukrainian land that
Speaker 3: has raw minerals on it, will give those to you, right,
Speaker 3: And so this went back and forth, and eventually Zolensky
Speaker 3: and Trump's people put together like a deal that they
Speaker 3: were supposed to sign earlier this month that was like
Speaker 3: at actual like bilateral agreement on the use of Ukrainian minerals.
Speaker 3: And essentially what it would have done is the deal
Speaker 3: did call for Ukraine to use its mineral resources to
Speaker 3: repay the United States to the tune of about half
Speaker 3: a trillion dollars, but not in a manner like where
Speaker 3: they were just handing us their minerals. Essentially, Ukraine would
Speaker 3: contribute fifty percent of revenues earned from the future monetizationation
Speaker 3: of government owned mineral resources and other natural resources. But
Speaker 3: these were critically revenues earned from those resources like future modernization, right,
Speaker 3: So new mines, new oil and gas plants not included
Speaker 3: in this were like current reserves like actively being exploited
Speaker 3: for profit. So kind of the key to this is that,
Speaker 3: like mining is not something that you can turn around
Speaker 3: on a dime. Generally, once you have actually proven you
Speaker 3: know that you have sort of the reserves in an
Speaker 3: area it takes about twenty years to actually get like
Speaker 3: mines up and running, and you know, this is an
Speaker 3: extremely expensive process. So one of the reasons why Ukraine
Speaker 3: considered this a good deal for them is that we're
Speaker 3: essentially putting a lot of those revenues in the hands
Speaker 3: of the US. But it was revenues from minerals that
Speaker 3: Ukraine was not currently exploiting and that the US would
Speaker 3: help and provide funding to exploit. It was not just
Speaker 3: paying back the US. It was something that would allow
Speaker 3: the rebuilding of the Ukrainian economy post war. There were
Speaker 3: some issues with this, including the fact that mining is
Speaker 3: an extremely energy intensive task in Ukraine is in the
Speaker 3: middle of an energy crisis at the minute. But among
Speaker 3: other things, it would have brought the US in and
Speaker 3: given them a financial stake and continued peace in the region,
Speaker 3: which was seen as positive. That all blew up at
Speaker 3: a White House meeting a couple of weeks ago, where,
Speaker 3: if you remember, JD. Vance and Trump basically had a
Speaker 3: little wwees SmackDown with Zelensky. It was a pretty ugly meeting,
Speaker 3: and after that kind of talk of the bilateral mineral
Speaker 3: deal faded significantly. Now, what's interesting is that just today
Speaker 3: it's come out that Zelensky and Trump have had further
Speaker 3: conversations and there's a new deal apparently on the table,
Speaker 3: or at least the White House claimed that there was
Speaker 3: a new deal on the table. Both the White House
Speaker 3: and Zelensky's office said that it was a very positive,
Speaker 3: productive meeting. There's some evidence that Zelensky, after that big
Speaker 3: blow up, has been kind of doing the thing you've
Speaker 3: got to do with Trump, which is like massage him
Speaker 3: and say nice things to him so that he'll like
Speaker 3: you more, and that Trump has gotten kind of frustrated
Speaker 3: with the fact that Russia clearly has not been overly
Speaker 3: motivated to move towards the ceasefire. But then, in the
Speaker 3: middle of this meeting that everyone seems to agree went
Speaker 3: really well, the White House comes out and says, and
Speaker 3: we're working on an agreement where the US will control
Speaker 3: all of Ukraine's nuclear reactors, and Ukraine came out and said, no,
Speaker 3: we're not. Absolutely we did not say that that was
Speaker 3: a deal. So I don't know what's actually going to
Speaker 3: happen here. Ukraine is a massive like nuclear energy state,
Speaker 3: in fact, the only European country that competes with them
Speaker 3: or that is like on the same level as they
Speaker 3: are in Europe in terms of nuclear industry is France,
Speaker 3: they've got four nuclear power plants with fifteen reactors in total.
Speaker 3: Now obviously like the Zapharizia plant is still under Russian control,
Speaker 3: which is a significant chunk. It's like six of the
Speaker 3: fifteen reactors in the country, and Ukraine is in the
Speaker 3: process of building more. They've actively added capacity since the
Speaker 3: end of the Soviet Union, and so one of the
Speaker 3: promises for sort of future Ukrainian economic stability is that
Speaker 3: they will be able to export nuclear energy to the
Speaker 3: rest of Europe, which is also going through an energy crisis.
Speaker 3: So it's unclear what's going to happen. There's definitely evidence
Speaker 3: again that Zelensky has kind of figured out how to
Speaker 3: massage Trump a little bit. There's a quote from an
Speaker 3: article in The Conversation that I found very interesting here.
Speaker 3: While Trump still leans towards putin, his relationship with Zelensky
Speaker 3: seems to have improved. Ukrainian president appears to have learned
Speaker 3: that Trump doesn't have a long memory and that flattery
Speaker 3: goes a long way with the US president. Trump meanwhile,
Speaker 3: is no longer calling Zelenski a dictator, and yet there
Speaker 3: is no mention of halting US military aid or intelligence
Speaker 3: to Ukraine. There's the opposite, in fact, as the US
Speaker 3: has said it will assist in finding more patriot missile
Speaker 3: defense systems after Zelenski mentioned they were sorely needed. By
Speaker 3: giving Trump credit for the ceasefire initiative, Zelensky is putting
Speaker 3: the ball in Russia's court, and his apparent receptiveness to
Speaker 3: Trump's idea about the US taking over Ukraine's nuclear power
Speaker 3: plants will appeal to Trump's transactional instincts in addition to
Speaker 3: offering Trump business deals. And I don't fully know what
Speaker 3: the conversation is saying here because Ukraine or Zelenski's office
Speaker 3: has stated like we're not considering handing the US control.
Speaker 3: I think this may be something like what happened with
Speaker 3: the energy deal, where essentially what they talked about was
Speaker 3: the US having a financial interest in the rebuilding an
Speaker 3: expansion of the Ukrainian nuclear power grid, which would be
Speaker 3: an extension of existing programs because Ukraine's nuclear power grid
Speaker 3: is already very reliant on a US nuclear energy company, Westinghouse,
Speaker 3: that provides both the raw fuel for nuclear reactors to
Speaker 3: Ukraine and also provides a lot of like actual technology
Speaker 3: for different kind of systems in the reactors. So I
Speaker 3: kind of think that what's happening here is that basically
Speaker 3: it was floated like, well, we can extend and expand
Speaker 3: this deal, so the US will have a financial interest
Speaker 3: in this potentially very large Ukrainian industry, and then Trump
Speaker 3: and his people kind of took that and said to
Speaker 3: everyone else, Yeah, the US is going to be in
Speaker 3: charge of Ukraine's nuclear power. That's my best guess for
Speaker 3: what happened here.
Speaker 4: It really seems like we're relearning one of the last
Speaker 4: lessons in the administration, which is if you can be
Speaker 4: the last person in the room with Trump, you can
Speaker 4: put what he does.
Speaker 2: Hey, yeah, I Mia, do you want to do a
Speaker 2: tariff talk?
Speaker 3: Wait? Wait, did you say tariffs, Garrison or did you
Speaker 3: say rocking, rocking jaspot Sorry, locking jas locking jaspot Ah.
Speaker 3: God feels good every time. Okay, miya, sorry, you can
Speaker 3: talk about the actual news. Now, let's do this.
Speaker 4: So the news we have today is that effectively every
Speaker 4: single thing I have talked about on tariff talk before
Speaker 4: this is just the fucking prelude you know, and though
Speaker 4: those have been very very extreme tariffs, but these are
Speaker 4: effectively going to be looked back on as the opening
Speaker 4: series of skirmishes and sort of probing defenses. On April seconds,
Speaker 4: Trump is going to crash the entire world economy. He
Speaker 4: is calling this Liberation Day. On April second, he is
Speaker 4: planning to impose reciprocal tariffs on every single country on Earth.
Speaker 3: Finally, you know what, I'm completely on board. As long
Speaker 3: as we're finally sticking it to those snotty fucks in Oman,
Speaker 3: you know, then everything's good. It's about goddamn time.
Speaker 4: Now I'm gonna take a fucking victory lap here because
Speaker 4: I have been talking about this for a very very
Speaker 4: long time. I talked about this last year. I talked
Speaker 4: about this the beginning of last year, talked about this
Speaker 4: the end of last year. The entire media seems to
Speaker 4: have short of forgotten about this until they all suddenly
Speaker 4: remembered this week that Trump had promised to do reciprocal tariffs.
Speaker 4: So what reciprocal tariffs are in theory is, if there's
Speaker 4: a tariff on something and I from another country, the
Speaker 4: US matches it. So the way the Trump administration thinks
Speaker 4: about tariffs is deeply weird. So they're including things like
Speaker 4: value added taxes on goods in countries.
Speaker 1: Wow, which is like a sales yeah, packs in the US.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, But also like subsidies and also and this
Speaker 4: is the part that has gotten less things, but quote
Speaker 4: unquote currency manipulation. Now, how the fuck do you do
Speaker 4: you calculate that for literally every single country on Earth?
Speaker 4: Who knows Business Insider has some reporting on this where
Speaker 4: where they talked to some insiders and okay, so literally
Speaker 4: there are not enough people working on tariffs to like
Speaker 4: calculate out individual teriffras for every single country on Earth.
Speaker 4: It looks like the plan right now when this is
Speaker 4: also just to change because again this is Trump administration,
Speaker 4: and who the fuck knows what they're gonna be saying
Speaker 4: or doing in two weeks. But what we know right
Speaker 4: now is it looks like they're going to separate every
Speaker 4: country on Earth into three tiers of tariffs. So it's
Speaker 4: going to be like a low tier, a mid tier,
Speaker 4: and a high tier, and it's unclear exactly what levels
Speaker 4: they're going to be. These are going to be on
Speaker 4: top of all of the additional tariffs that they've already imposed.
Speaker 4: So say, for example, trying gets put into high tier one,
Speaker 4: they put like a fifty percent tariff on it. That
Speaker 4: means a terifra it is going to be seventy percent
Speaker 4: because there's already twenty percent tariffs on their business. Insider
Speaker 4: seem to think twenty percent is like the low one.
Speaker 4: I don't know about that. I think they're going to
Speaker 4: be pretty high. We have no idea. And again, so
Speaker 4: what's happening here is Trump is declaring this Liberation Day
Speaker 4: because he has convinced himself. I think I finally understand
Speaker 4: what's going on in his brain, which is that he
Speaker 4: has convinced himself that like, if you have a trade
Speaker 4: deficit with a country, that means the country's robbing you.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, yes, again. Trump's firm, lifelong belief is that
Speaker 3: if you are selling something, you've won, and if you're
Speaker 3: buying something, you have lost.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now, this is not how international trade works at all
Speaker 4: for the US. Like the entire US Empire, absolutely, the
Speaker 4: entire US Empire is based on outsourcing a bunch of
Speaker 4: political violence to other countries so you can buy goods
Speaker 4: at cheap rates, right, Like, that's that's that's that's what
Speaker 4: the empire is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we love buying things. It's the entire basis of
Speaker 3: our civilization.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, The reason Jeffrey Bezos was that the inaugration
Speaker 1: is because we like to be buying.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, and so is something I mentioned, you know,
Speaker 4: back back when I was talking about this in the
Speaker 4: Terriff episode right after the election, is that the thing
Speaker 4: about reciprocal tariffs, right, is that it means that if
Speaker 4: if anyone attempts to to fight a trade war with
Speaker 4: the US, so another country imposes twenty percent tariffs, the
Speaker 4: US will also impost twenty percent terriffs, and this just
Speaker 4: spirals out of control into a version of a trade
Speaker 4: war so unhinged, like none of us have ever seen
Speaker 4: anything like in our lifetimes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, brother, yeah, that's coming.
Speaker 4: We have We now have April second as the day
Speaker 4: everything explodes. I also want to want to put like
Speaker 4: another note here. The hope has always been from a
Speaker 4: lot of countries and a lot of the financial markets
Speaker 4: and bunch companies that these tariffs are going to have
Speaker 4: more exemptions, because there were some exemptions on stuff in
Speaker 4: the initial tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
Speaker 3: Well, and he kept going back and forth right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but now we're getting into terroifts with which you
Speaker 4: have no exceptions. The steel and aluminum tariffs have had
Speaker 4: no exemptions at all. What we've been hearing, so one
Speaker 4: of the things I've been noting is that Canada and
Speaker 4: EU have been basically mobilizing in the trade war and
Speaker 4: imposing reciprocal terroists in the US. China has two, Mexico
Speaker 4: has not. Apparently Mexico still thinks that they can negotiate
Speaker 4: to be in like the lowest tier of tariffs. This
Speaker 4: won't completely destroy their economy. Fuck if I know why
Speaker 4: they think that, but who knows. Yeah, but that's the fact.
Speaker 4: That's effectively the tariff news we have Right now, we
Speaker 4: have again April second, quote unquote Liberation Day, the day
Speaker 4: that this all goes into effect. I bet they wanted
Speaker 4: to do April first and realize that they couldn't.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, I didn't think that.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Trump.
Speaker 2: Trump announced this during his Joint Congressional address, and he
Speaker 2: openly said that he originally wanted to do it on
Speaker 2: April first, at the start of the month, but decided
Speaker 2: not to because he is too superstitious as a person. So, yes,
Speaker 2: originally they were going to be on April first, and
Speaker 2: then they pushed him back to April second because they
Speaker 2: didn't want it to be on April Fool's Day.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's a good way.
Speaker 2: So that's a great, great extra insight into the mind
Speaker 2: of the US God King.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: Anyway, let's go on ad break and then come back
Speaker 2: to discuss all of the other bad things that are
Speaker 2: happening in the country.
Speaker 5: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 2: The first thing I want to kind of open to
Speaker 2: a group discussion on is that On Tuesday, March eighteenth,
Speaker 2: the federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump's ban
Speaker 2: on trans people serving in the military, ruling that the
Speaker 2: blanket ban likely violates constitutional right of Steven Miller responded
Speaker 2: to the ruling by writing, District court judges have now
Speaker 2: decided that they are in command of the armed forces?
Speaker 2: Is there no end to this madness?
Speaker 3: God?
Speaker 1: Fuck?
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: I know this is a topic that we've discussed a lot.
Speaker 2: As you know, we're not all big US military defenders.
Speaker 3: No, but it's mostly done bad stuff in my lifetime.
Speaker 2: But we still take like almost like an ontological issue
Speaker 2: with this band because it essentially creates just a secondary
Speaker 2: class of citizen with fundamentally different rights from the rest
Speaker 2: of everyone else, and that is never a good thing.
Speaker 3: It's like, so right now, one of the semi positive
Speaker 3: news stories is that Trump's ATF is going to be
Speaker 3: for the first time restoring people's Second Amendment rights who
Speaker 3: had them taken away because they were involuntarily institutionalized. And
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of liberals being like, oh, they're
Speaker 3: just gonna let more crazy people have guns. This is bad,
Speaker 3: and like, I have to disagree whether or not you
Speaker 3: like it. The Second Amendment is a fundamental right under
Speaker 3: the Constitution, and it's bad to say that this class
Speaker 3: of people forever lose a fundamental right because they're involuntarily institutionalized.
Speaker 3: That's bad. And likewise, even if you hate the US
Speaker 3: military's role in US imperialism, which fine enough, the right
Speaker 3: to serve in an integrated military has been a major
Speaker 3: underpinning of most of the civil rights movements, like a
Speaker 3: foundational depending of most civil rights movements in this country's history,
Speaker 3: going back to the Civil War, you know, Black civil rights,
Speaker 3: including LGBTQ rights, and including women's rights. Right, It's like
Speaker 3: it is significant, and so the fact that the GOP
Speaker 3: is attempting to peel this back and essentially reverse integration
Speaker 3: of the military is bad for two reasons. One, it represents,
Speaker 3: as you've said, creating separate classes of people and peeling
Speaker 3: fundamental what are considered under the law in this country,
Speaker 3: fundamental rights away from groups of people. And it's also
Speaker 3: just dangerous for them to remake the military into an
Speaker 3: all white organization, right, like all white male organization. There's
Speaker 3: a reason why that's also dangerous to you. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think people should care about this, even if they're
Speaker 3: you know, leftists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like, especially in this country, the military represents
Speaker 1: one of the few social mobility tools that exist. Right.
Speaker 1: People don't just join the military because they, country, to
Speaker 1: what you might have seen on Twitter dot com, want
Speaker 1: to go to Middle East and kill people. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: do it because they want to get a chance to
Speaker 1: go to education. Sometimes they want to do it so
Speaker 1: they get a chance to have healthcare. Yep. And like
Speaker 1: trans people serve at a higher rate. Then it says
Speaker 1: people that may not be the case for very much longer.
Speaker 1: By it like that has been the case, and they
Speaker 1: have rights to use however they want. They don't just
Speaker 1: have rights to use how you will II or anyone
Speaker 1: else would like them to use well.
Speaker 3: And that's also a broad truth. For the US military,
Speaker 3: members of my marginalized groups have always served at a
Speaker 3: higher rate than basically anyone else. This includes like Native
Speaker 3: Americans serve at a higher proportion of like their population
Speaker 3: within the country than most other groups, in part because traditionally,
Speaker 3: serving in the military was a way in which to
Speaker 3: gain acceptance and entrance into American society.
Speaker 2: It's also just like another world, like you can field
Speaker 2: in some ways, like insulated from like yes, the hoarders
Speaker 2: you might experience in like regular suburban life oddly enough, Yeah.
Speaker 1: To weigh out of the isolation that so many people
Speaker 1: experience in the world.
Speaker 5: And like, is it extremely bad that the way that
Speaker 5: you enter your into American society is by being a
Speaker 5: part of the imperial war machine? Yes?
Speaker 4: Yes, But also the war machine is going to be
Speaker 4: there whether you are in it or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the actual fundamental important thing here is again what
Speaker 4: we've been saying is that like the fundamental basis of
Speaker 4: liberal democracy, going back to the American Revolution, going back
Speaker 4: to the French Revolution, going back to like the original
Speaker 4: liberal revolutions, the fundamental principle of is that everyone is
Speaker 4: equal before the law, and the moment that ceases to
Speaker 4: be true, and it has not been true in this
Speaker 4: country ever, but you know, we're seeing increasing numbers of
Speaker 4: people who are not considered equal before the law. We
Speaker 4: just spent this entire fucking like first part of this
Speaker 4: episode talking about what happens when people are considered to
Speaker 4: have no protections under the law, which at the state
Speaker 4: can just fucking black bag you and send you to
Speaker 4: a gulag.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like that is bad.
Speaker 4: Now, that's what's that fundamentally at stake here, not like
Speaker 4: whether you think the army is good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and imagine for those people, Like when they people
Speaker 1: could have served nineteen years, right, they could have been
Speaker 1: just about to get their twenty years and get their
Speaker 1: retirement and will now not get that. Like they they
Speaker 1: signed up expecting a thing, right, Like there was a
Speaker 1: quid pro quote there that they would give twenty years
Speaker 1: of their life and possibly a lot of their health
Speaker 1: to the United States government and in return they will get
Speaker 1: health care and a pentrum for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: And people are now going to lose that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In some related news, the VA just announced that
Speaker 2: quote effective immediately. The VA will not offer cross sex
Speaker 2: hormone therapy to veterans who have a current diagnosis or
Speaker 2: history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria unless
Speaker 2: such veterans are already receiving such care from the VA,
Speaker 2: or such veterans we're receiving such care from the military
Speaker 2: as a part of and upon their separation from the
Speaker 2: military service, and are eligible for VA healthcare. So basically
Speaker 2: they will not be emitting like new patients to receive
Speaker 2: gender affirming healthcare.
Speaker 1: Well, unless there's sist gender it seems like oh yes, correct, yes,
Speaker 1: if it's just basically assists, men can still receive gender
Speaker 1: affirming hormones.
Speaker 2: Sure, be Like I kind of get annoyed when people
Speaker 2: do that, like comparisons, like that's never like we're falling
Speaker 2: into this artro trap off, like we're actually using words
Speaker 2: to mean what they mean and like they're not using
Speaker 2: words like that, you know, like whenever people like laugh
Speaker 2: about haha, they banned pronouns at school. Now now you
Speaker 2: can't say the word and you're like no, like come out,
Speaker 2: like what like that's not what they mean? Like you
Speaker 2: have to understand, like the dog whistles that they're using.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It. I find it interesting though that they seemingly
Speaker 1: like you've tried to even get around like that like
Speaker 1: linguistic thing in the statement.
Speaker 2: Sure me like it if it's what you mean by
Speaker 2: gender dysphoria, right, Like you could theoretically you could have
Speaker 2: gender ysphoria because your assists male and you want to
Speaker 2: become more masculine, right, Like all all of these diagnoses
Speaker 2: have like a very fuzzy ontological underpinning. Right, these are
Speaker 2: just categories that we're projecting. Yes, but this is you know,
Speaker 2: probably not great. It's probably isn't a good thing. Like,
Speaker 2: for instance, if you already have VIA healthcare, you're not
Speaker 2: in the military anymore, and now you decide that you
Speaker 2: would like to receive gender affirming healthcare, now you can't
Speaker 2: at least through the VA.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So as a as a related thing, let's see, I
Speaker 2: think we should kind of close with or like bookend
Speaker 2: our discussion on like like the immigration stuff and the
Speaker 2: black baggings and deportations which have been happening. A German
Speaker 2: immigrant named Fabian Schmidt, who has lived in the States.
Speaker 3: With the green card the German name Beautiful.
Speaker 2: Since two thousand and eight, so like he's lived here
Speaker 2: quite a while. He immigrated with his mom. He was
Speaker 2: detained and tortured at the Boston Logan Airport upon returning
Speaker 2: from a visit to Europe. The man's mother says that
Speaker 2: he was quote unquote violently interrogated at the Logan airport
Speaker 2: for hours and was stripped naked, put in a cold
Speaker 2: shower by two officials, and pushed back into an interrogation chair.
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from w GBH quote. She said.
Speaker 2: Schmid told her immigration agents pressured him to give up
Speaker 2: his green card. She said he was placed on a
Speaker 2: mat in a bright room with other people at the
Speaker 2: airport with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and
Speaker 2: was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
Speaker 2: He hardly got anything to drink, and then he wasn't
Speaker 2: feeling very well and he collapsed, said a senior, which
Speaker 2: is his mom. He was transported by ambulance to mass
Speaker 2: General Hospital. He didn't know it at the time, but
Speaker 2: he also had the flu unquote. Now, Schmid has since
Speaker 2: been transferred to multiple ice facilities. He had a misdemeanor
Speaker 2: charge for marijuana possession in California back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: but that charge was dismissed the following year due to
Speaker 2: changes in state law. But I think that this incident
Speaker 2: may have flagged Schmidt on the customs and border protections
Speaker 2: like database and Hillary Beckham, CBP's Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs,
Speaker 2: gave a short statement reading, quote, when an individual is
Speaker 2: found with drug related charges and tries to re enter
Speaker 2: the country, officers will take proper action unquote. But essentially
Speaker 2: they like tortured, black bagged this person who's had a
Speaker 2: green card for like almost two decades for a dismissed
Speaker 2: marijuana charge like ten years ago. This is like you know,
Speaker 2: like a very white man like Fabian Schmidt. Yeah, like
Speaker 2: this is this is super freaky stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should say that a lot of that stuff
Speaker 1: is not particularly unusual and nice attention lights being all
Speaker 1: the time not being given bettying, but like being shaved
Speaker 1: into a that.
Speaker 2: Was at the airport, they say, like like being being
Speaker 2: interrogated at like.
Speaker 1: At the airport this is a new one.
Speaker 2: And like being forced to like forcibly like give up
Speaker 2: your green card during this like interrogation session at that
Speaker 2: very same airport, Like I think just maybe like a
Speaker 2: day or so later. A Lebanese doctor and professor at
Speaker 2: Brown University, Russia, Alweya, was deported this weekend after traveling
Speaker 2: to Beirut to visit family and attend the public funeral
Speaker 2: of Hassan Nashraala. Upon a return to the United States,
Speaker 2: she was detained at the Boston Airport, had her H
Speaker 2: one B visa revoked, and was deported on a plane
Speaker 2: to France on Friday, March fourteenth, before she could attend
Speaker 2: her in person hearing that following Monday. According to court documents,
Speaker 2: her deportation was prompted by deleted pictures on her phone
Speaker 2: of like Shia Muslim figures like Neshraala and the Ayatola,
Speaker 2: another very very frightening incident. In those documents, it's unclear
Speaker 2: how Customs and Border Protection was viewing deleted photos on
Speaker 2: her phone or like like like like open of her
Speaker 2: phone right because like if you recently deleted a photo,
Speaker 2: it is still contained in your recently deleted folder, assuming
Speaker 2: you have like an iPhone or equivalent. But it's unknown
Speaker 2: how they got into her phone, if she like let
Speaker 2: them look through it, or if they used one of
Speaker 2: like a many like.
Speaker 1: Phone breakaway, see or whatever. Yeah, but I.
Speaker 2: Think it is interesting that this is at the same
Speaker 2: airport to you know, slightly related incidents.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we've seen that a lot with like in
Speaker 1: the similar cases people crossing the land border's Santy seedro both.
Speaker 1: I think a Canadian and German citizen were both detained,
Speaker 1: which is a San Diego county. It's not familiar. It
Speaker 1: seems like there's some kind of policy at certain border
Speaker 1: crossings or maybe, like the person in chides, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was saying, do this, you know, detain people of this
Speaker 1: anything on their record at all.
Speaker 4: Well so so, and there's another case of this that's similar,
Speaker 4: where a French researcher who to best of mine is
Speaker 4: unnamed so far, was randomly pulled aside for a stop
Speaker 4: at George Bush International Airport in Houston, which is sort
Speaker 4: of fitting for all of this. George Bush has gotta
Speaker 4: be fucking creaming his pants thinking about all this black
Speaker 4: bag and shit. But yeah, I was randomly pulled over
Speaker 4: and they found anti Trump text on his phone and
Speaker 4: immediately deported him. This is a guy who was visiting
Speaker 4: the US, like I think they go to a conference
Speaker 4: and the border patrol is arguing that anti Trump texts
Speaker 4: are considered terrorism, which is great, or the text that
Speaker 4: they found are like could be like the anti Trump
Speaker 4: ness of it can be considered terroristic, so that's bad.
Speaker 4: There was yet another case, which is a slightly different one,
Speaker 4: which is Buttercon Surrey, who is a postoc at Georgetown
Speaker 4: who was detained and sent to an immigration facility, who's
Speaker 4: here teaching. He's a postdoc at Georgetown on a student
Speaker 4: visa who has been sent to an immigration facility based
Speaker 4: on basically a right wing panic about his wife, his
Speaker 4: wife's father being Hamas. And because of this, he's been
Speaker 4: black bagged in a way very similar to Mak mckhalil. Yeah,
Speaker 4: now Georgetown is backing him on this, but this is
Speaker 4: you know this, this this is another one of these
Speaker 4: fucking blackpaggings that they're just doing now with someone who
Speaker 4: is here on a student visa who has committed no crime,
Speaker 4: who Georgetown was like, has committed no crime. And again
Speaker 4: also even if he've committed a crime, this is fucking horseship.
Speaker 4: But yeah, all of these things are just continuing to
Speaker 4: ramp up, and they're getting Boulder and Boulder.
Speaker 2: Thanks Robert, do you wanna Do you want to read
Speaker 2: a select paragraph or two from a from Khalil's first
Speaker 2: like public statement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he he put out a letter a couple
Speaker 3: of days before we recorded this, and you should really
Speaker 3: read the whole thing if you just google Mahmood Khalil letter.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the exact title is my name
Speaker 3: is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner, which
Speaker 3: is the first sentence of the letter. But I want
Speaker 3: to read this little bit of him talking about his arrest.
Speaker 3: On March eighth, I was taken by DHS agents who
Speaker 3: refused to provide a warrant and accosted my wife and
Speaker 3: me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage
Speaker 3: of that night has been made public. Before I knew
Speaker 3: it was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an
Speaker 3: unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for
Speaker 3: Newer's safety. I had no idea if she would be
Speaker 3: taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her
Speaker 3: for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me
Speaker 3: anything for hours. I did not know the cause of
Speaker 3: my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At
Speaker 3: twenty six Federal Plaza. I slept on the cold floor
Speaker 3: in the early morning hours. Agents transported me to another
Speaker 3: facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the
Speaker 3: ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. My
Speaker 3: arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to
Speaker 3: free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and
Speaker 3: an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in
Speaker 3: full force Monday night. With January ceasefire now broken, parents
Speaker 3: in Gaza are once again cradling two small shrouds, and
Speaker 3: families are forced to waste starvation and displacement against bombs.
Speaker 3: Is moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their
Speaker 3: complete freedom. And again I really recommend reading the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It's it's very good.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I get so particularly upset that Trump's admin
Speaker 2: uses like this, like vague anti semitism justification for for
Speaker 2: for some of these actions, at least because the head
Speaker 2: of Trump's Anti Semitism task Force just last week retweeted
Speaker 2: Patrick Casey, who is from the American Identity Movement, a
Speaker 2: leading alt right figure who was at Charlottesville, to quote
Speaker 2: Shane Burley. This tweet that was reposted by the head
Speaker 2: of this anti semitism task force claimed that quote Trump
Speaker 2: has the ability to revoke someone's Jew card.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely horrible.
Speaker 3: Are are we serious here?
Speaker 2: It's like unbelievable, unbelievable amounts of anti semitism spread by
Speaker 2: the person who leads the federal task force to calm
Speaker 2: back to anti semitism.
Speaker 4: Great, yeah, And going back to Columbia for a second.
Speaker 4: One of the other things that's been happening is that
Speaker 4: Trump threatened Columbia with the loss of four hundred million
Speaker 4: dollars in government contracts unless they give in to a
Speaker 4: bunch of Trump's demands. So Trump wants them to ban
Speaker 4: masks on campuses, allow campus cops to do more violence
Speaker 4: against student protesters, and expel like protesters who occupy buildings.
Speaker 4: The president is supposed to get control of all discipline
Speaker 4: and can expel and suspend students, and they want to
Speaker 4: crack down student groups they want and this is also
Speaker 4: a tie into the other thing. They want the IHR
Speaker 4: definition of anti semitism and like specifically, the Trump's like
Speaker 4: letter to them specifically says like classifying anti Zionism as
Speaker 4: anti Semitism, And they want to put the Middle East,
Speaker 4: South Asian, and African studies departments in academic receivership, which
Speaker 4: means stripping away power from the faculty and giving it
Speaker 4: to someone outside these Yeah, Columbia is about to give
Speaker 4: into these demands. It seems like they want to try
Speaker 4: to find another word other than academic receivership, but they're
Speaker 4: just going to fucking do it. So and Trump have
Speaker 4: legal authority to do this, No, obviously not, But you know,
Speaker 4: does he have the moral authority? There's no, obviously not
Speaker 4: like this guy is.
Speaker 3: But none of those are important. He has guys with guns. No,
Speaker 3: That's what it always comes down to. And then any
Speaker 3: one who forgets that is only hurting themselves.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, and so he's also doing this thing of
Speaker 4: like attempting basically to dismantle a bunch of the higher
Speaker 4: education institutions in this country unless they become just pure
Speaker 4: right wing sort of laboratories. And another example of this
Speaker 4: is as the news stories about Columbia, we're coming out
Speaker 4: like Columbia trying to take the deal. We're coming out
Speaker 4: The University of Pennsylvania is good about to lose one
Speaker 4: hundred and seventy five million dollars of funding for allowing
Speaker 4: Leah Thomas, a trans swimmer, to swim for their college.
Speaker 4: So this is just going to be a giant sort
Speaker 4: of battering ram that Trump is going to use to
Speaker 4: just basically obliterate the education system and like impose whatever
Speaker 4: unhinged right wing thing that he wants to impose.
Speaker 2: And we will talk more about his efforts to destroy
Speaker 2: the education system next week on our next episode of
Speaker 2: ED As says he is continuing to prep an executive
Speaker 2: order to abolish the Department of Education. And there's plenty
Speaker 2: of other news, including the federal judge confrontations, that we
Speaker 2: will also report on next week. But before we leave today,
Speaker 2: Mia has a brief note on the bird flu. With Flitch,
Speaker 2: I'm sure will be fine. Frankly, I'm still eating eggs,
Speaker 2: but Mia.
Speaker 5: Yes, so as as people there with the boyd flu.
Speaker 2: So the thing.
Speaker 4: The thing about chickens is that they're dying from bird
Speaker 4: flu right now. This has killed an enormous number of chickens.
Speaker 4: This is part of why egg prices are so high.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: This is a problem that a lot of countries have
Speaker 4: dealt with. China has dealt with this by just fucking
Speaker 4: vaccinating their chickens. The Biden administration refused to vaccinate chickens
Speaker 4: because it would cost money and because it might make
Speaker 4: it harder for us to export their.
Speaker 5: Chickens, So that was bad.
Speaker 4: RFK Junior literally just wants to let the bird flu
Speaker 4: rip and kill all the birds and thinks that the
Speaker 4: healthy birds will survive. And those healthy birds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's immunity.
Speaker 4: He has a heard immediity guy for COVID because he's
Speaker 4: a human eugenics. He's also a chicken eye genesist. Now
Speaker 4: I'm specifically doing this because I read multiple virologists reading
Speaker 4: about this or writing about this. I talked to virologists,
Speaker 4: and the virologists all basically said, if you were trying
Speaker 4: to design a way to make the bird flu like
Speaker 4: move like a mutate in such a way that it
Speaker 4: moves from birds to humans, this is what you would do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great, so and again cool. The death rate of
Speaker 3: this thing is in a completely different category from fucking COVID.
Speaker 3: It makes COVID look like having a mild case of allergies,
Speaker 3: like staggeringly lethal and like it cannot overstate how disastrous
Speaker 3: this would be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and COVID code more than a million Americans, like
Speaker 1: fifteen case people have memory.
Speaker 3: Hold that yeah right now, current rates when it has
Speaker 3: reached humans as about a fifty percent fatality rate. They
Speaker 3: thought initially that they were missing a lot of cases
Speaker 3: and that it was much lower, but like the current
Speaker 3: research points to suggests that that is not the case,
Speaker 3: that it is actually somewhere in that range of lethality.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm still eating my chicken, tartar. I don't know
Speaker 2: why everyone's so worried about it.
Speaker 3: And again we don't know that like the version that
Speaker 3: actually is able to jump from human to human after
Speaker 3: jumping from bird to human would be that lethal because
Speaker 3: that doesn't exist quite yet.
Speaker 2: Probably, Yeah, but this is how we find out, but.
Speaker 3: We really don't want to find out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I look, if you don't want to find out,
Speaker 4: we have to find a way to get our k
Speaker 4: junior out of that fucking office.
Speaker 3: Like again, I think if we we really need to
Speaker 3: have a lot of different farmers set up photo ops
Speaker 3: with him where he is just covered in birds. We
Speaker 3: need to have that man in constant physical contact with chicken.
Speaker 3: It would do it and the problem will eventually solve it.
Speaker 5: We could convince him to eat raw chicken. We could
Speaker 5: definitely do it.
Speaker 3: Sure, yes, absolutely raw, eat them, cuddle them, sleep with
Speaker 3: them at night eight just kind of stand on a
Speaker 3: pile of their corpses.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, if you are a chicken, or
Speaker 1: you know a chicken, or you have anything else you
Speaker 1: would like to share with us, you can do so well,
Speaker 1: not anything else. You should be related to the news
Speaker 1: and things that we can report on. You can send
Speaker 1: it to cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 2: And that's only encrypted if you also use encryption to
Speaker 2: send the message end to end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a proton manaddress. That means, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to send from encrypted to encrypted. It still doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's perfectly safe. It just means it's encrypted. So send
Speaker 1: what do you think you can send over an email?
Speaker 1: That is that way we reported the news. We reported
Speaker 1: the news.
Speaker 6: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 6: coolzonemedia dot com or check us out from the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: couple podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 5: Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 6: You can now find sources for it Could Happen here
Speaker 6: listed directly in episode descriptions, Thanks for listening,