Speaker 1: Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone to electile dysfunction.
Speaker 3: Electile. That's a new one.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, the podcast about Why President Bad, also
Speaker 2: Why World Bad, also Why America Bad. I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 2: Introducer Extraordinaire with Me Today. Garrison, Davis, Mio, Wong, James Stout.
Speaker 3: Eventually special segment from James Stout later in the episode.
Speaker 2: Yes, later, he is being held in custody by the FTC.
Speaker 3: That's not true. You cannot say that because that is
Speaker 3: something that actually could happen over time. So unfortunately he
Speaker 3: is not. That's why I made it be the FTC. Garrison.
Speaker 4: People will believe us. I don't. People will believe you
Speaker 4: can get arrested by the FTC any day now.
Speaker 2: We could get arrested for the FTC any day now,
Speaker 2: thanks to the ads that I've been reading for British petroleum,
Speaker 2: even though exclusively use American petroleum.
Speaker 3: This episode recovering the week of August seven to August thirteen. Yep,
Speaker 3: for no, Yes, it's just so we were. I think
Speaker 3: it's important to keep up because, yeah, if people refer
Speaker 3: back to these episodes, it's good to know what week
Speaker 3: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't usually remember what day it is? So yeah,
Speaker 2: good to do that, good to remember what day it is?
Speaker 2: Meya you want to start us off?
Speaker 4: Yeah, need I need to issue a correction about Sesame Street.
Speaker 4: I was wrong about Sesame C's structure. Where got a
Speaker 4: very street message from someone who works on the show
Speaker 4: about the way I talked about it being stripped for parts.
Speaker 4: Sesame Street was never actually like ran by PBS. It
Speaker 4: was ran by its own independent nonprofit entity, Sesame Workshop,
Speaker 4: I believe. Yeah, yes it is not. Yeah, all called
Speaker 4: Sesme Workshop. And so the episodes that were being streamed
Speaker 4: on HBO Max and I think they're now they've now
Speaker 4: moved to like Netflix. Those episodes all did still air
Speaker 4: on PBS. However, Comma they only aired nine months later.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I want to be clear about that. And
Speaker 4: then Garrison, do you want to talk about PBS kind
Speaker 4: of not existing anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, PBS may still find a way to exist, but
Speaker 3: specifically the Corporation for her Public Broadcasting, which helps facilitate
Speaker 3: the you know, the funding and the structure and the
Speaker 3: operation of things like PBS and your local MPR, after
Speaker 3: being defunded by the Trump administration, is now going to
Speaker 3: shut down completely.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and that's and that's a lot of the
Speaker 4: how a lot of the funding for rural networks particularly
Speaker 4: was able to function. If your PBS network is like
Speaker 4: mostly not funded by that or they can find other
Speaker 4: funding sources, it can survive. But real bad.
Speaker 3: It's pretty disastrous for public media.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: And like NPR specifically and all of its local affiliates
Speaker 3: are some of the best like local news journalism across
Speaker 3: the country, and this is going to be a big
Speaker 3: hurdle to get over with the loss of like a
Speaker 3: giant in the not just like the like national media space,
Speaker 3: but like forournalism and as well as children's educational content.
Speaker 4: And it's you know, and it's worth messing to you,
Speaker 4: like this is one of the last as sort of
Speaker 4: local media and local radio and local newspapers have been
Speaker 4: carved out and got out of business and destroyed the adventure
Speaker 4: capital firms. NPR was like one of the last local
Speaker 4: journalism outlets left in a lot of places, especially in
Speaker 4: rural areas, and that's just getting worse. So we hate that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this has been the Sesame Street correction. I deeply apologize
Speaker 4: to the cast and crew and production staff of Sesame Street.
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry, particularly to Grover. Not sorry to Elmo. No
Speaker 2: apologies down, we saw what Almo was tweeting. I'm on
Speaker 2: Larry David's side of that beat.
Speaker 3: For our first main story this week, Let's Talk DC.
Speaker 3: On Monday, Trump declared it was a liberation day for
Speaker 3: the District of Columbia to quote unquote take our capital back,
Speaker 3: and officially invoked Section seven four zero of the District
Speaker 3: of Columbia Home Rule Act to place the DC Metropolitan
Speaker 3: Police Department under direct federal control and order the Secretary
Speaker 3: of Defense to mobilize the DC National Guard to quote
Speaker 3: address the epidemic of crime in our nation's capital. Along
Speaker 3: with this announcement, Trump pleased a presidential memorandum reading, in part, quote,
Speaker 3: the local government of the District of Columbia has lost
Speaker 3: control of public order and safety in the city. The
Speaker 3: mobilization and duration of duty shall remain in effect until
Speaker 3: I determine that conditions of law and order have been
Speaker 3: restored in the District of Columbia. Robert who in the
Speaker 3: past have you heard talk about federalizing the police?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I mean just a Coppola. Guys. There's this dude, Hitler,
Speaker 2: who you know, worked with a guy named Hermann Gering
Speaker 2: and Heinrich Himmler to do that back in the past.
Speaker 2: But that was in Germany, you know, a country totally
Speaker 2: different from the United States, almost three four countries away
Speaker 2: from US, so not really not really relevant at all
Speaker 2: to anything happening here.
Speaker 4: And we can all rest assured it can't happen here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not Germans. We have a lot of Germans,
Speaker 3: but we're not Germans. This is part of Jarvin's writing
Speaker 3: on how to take over the government, centralizing the police
Speaker 3: as one of the key steps nationalizing local law enforcement,
Speaker 3: putting hum under federal control. And here is another version
Speaker 3: of enacting such a policy, mainly citing this crime epidemic
Speaker 3: in DC, though according to DC Metropolitan Police and their
Speaker 3: own crime figures, violent offenses, which peaked in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: fell to their lowest in twenty twenty four, lowest time
Speaker 3: in over thirty years, and now in twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: continue to fall even lower than that. Though Trump claims
Speaker 3: that these stats, just like uh, just like the Bureau
Speaker 3: of Labor stats are all made up. We're all fake.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that.
Speaker 3: These aren't These aren't real stats. And they're they're they're
Speaker 3: assuming that there's there's been fake, fake statisticians who have
Speaker 3: been covering up the real, the real crime wave happening
Speaker 3: across DC and even across the country. Trump cited three
Speaker 3: incidents leading to the federalization of DC police won the
Speaker 3: assassination of two Israeli MC staffers in May, a fatal
Speaker 3: shooting of a Congressional intern in June, and most recently,
Speaker 3: an alleged violent car jacking of the DOGE staffer known
Speaker 3: as Big Balls, and a possible future recipient of the
Speaker 3: Presidential Medal of Honor Or or Freedom one of the
Speaker 3: Metal Honorary. Yeah, well, you know, big Balls. Frankly, it
Speaker 3: might have some military credentials based on how he survived
Speaker 3: this latest uh, this this latest violent encounter.
Speaker 2: Who's to say, this assault from a platoon of Romanians.
Speaker 4: Yeah, quite quite. Frankly, I feel like we're only about
Speaker 4: six to eight months out from him getting like commissioned
Speaker 4: as a lieutenant and then them giving him the actual
Speaker 4: Medal of Honor, saying there.
Speaker 2: I go for his courageous service getting beaten up by
Speaker 2: two fifteen year olds.
Speaker 3: So this latest incident with mister Balls, I think is
Speaker 3: his official title at DOUGH. We're now the Social Security Administration.
Speaker 4: Not related to Ed Bolls.
Speaker 3: Different balls, but the very different guys. This latest incident
Speaker 3: with mister Balls seemed to tip Trump over, though this
Speaker 3: is something that he has lofted for months and months
Speaker 3: he's been wanting to do this. On Tuesday night, forty
Speaker 3: three arrests were made in DC in relation to the
Speaker 3: federal seizure of police. Four and fifty officers were part
Speaker 3: of this operation, half from DC Metro Police, which are
Speaker 3: now federalized. So far, only thirty National Guard troops have
Speaker 3: been deployed, but around eight hundred are on the way.
Speaker 3: On Wednesday, Trump discussed extending his control of DC police
Speaker 3: past the thirty day limit.
Speaker 1: Thank you, mister President.
Speaker 5: Your federalization of the police has a thirty day limit
Speaker 5: unless Congress acts to extend it. Are you talking to
Speaker 5: Congress about extending it or do you believe thirty days
Speaker 5: is sufficient?
Speaker 6: Well, if it's a national emergency, we can do it
Speaker 6: without Congress, but we expect to be to Congress before
Speaker 6: Congress very quickly. And again, we think the Democrats will
Speaker 6: not do anything to stop.
Speaker 1: Crime, but we think the Republicans will do it. Almost unanimously.
Speaker 6: So we're going to need a crime bill that we're
Speaker 6: going to be putting in and it's going to pertain
Speaker 6: initially to DC.
Speaker 1: It's almost we're going to use.
Speaker 6: It as a very positive example, and we're going to
Speaker 6: be asking for extensions on that, long term extensions, because
Speaker 6: you can't have thirty days. Thirty days is that's by
Speaker 6: the time you do it. We're going to have this
Speaker 6: in good shape. And don't forget in the border. Everyone
Speaker 6: said it would take years and you'd have to go
Speaker 6: back to Congress. I never went to Congress for anything.
Speaker 6: I just said close the border, and he closed the
Speaker 6: border and that was the end of it. I didn't
Speaker 6: go back to Congress. We're going to do this very quickly,
Speaker 6: but we're going to want extensions. I don't want to
Speaker 6: call a national emergency. If I have to, I will,
Speaker 6: but I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this
Speaker 6: pretty much unanimously.
Speaker 4: Don't like that.
Speaker 3: No, it's pretty dictatorial on like a y base level quote.
Speaker 3: If it's a national emergency, we can do it without Congress.
Speaker 4: It's very Palpatine emergency powers coded.
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure if if Lucas was pulling on
Speaker 3: any real world examples for Star Wars the prequels, or
Speaker 3: if he was just pulling all that shit out of
Speaker 3: his ass, who knows, it seems pretty fanciful. Defense Secretary
Speaker 3: Pete heg Seth told his former co workers on Fox
Speaker 3: News that it's unknown how long DC will be under
Speaker 3: this militarized occupation.
Speaker 5: He's got the guts to say, I'm to federalize the
Speaker 5: police that are that don't work. I'm going to bring
Speaker 5: in the National Guard, I'm going to bring in federal marshals.
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring in the park police. How almost What.
Speaker 5: Is the cost money?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 7: It cost money?
Speaker 3: And the question is are you there for a year?
Speaker 3: Are you there for six months? And when the troops
Speaker 3: pull out, what happened?
Speaker 4: I would call this conditions based.
Speaker 5: I would say it's a situation where we're here to
Speaker 5: support law enforcement. Uh and the more we can free
Speaker 5: them up to do their job, the more effective.
Speaker 4: They can be, the more we can work.
Speaker 5: I mean, this isn't my realm, but the justice system
Speaker 5: to make sure people who are arrested are actually locked up.
Speaker 5: That's why the President's talking about cash list, bear bail,
Speaker 5: and sanctuary cities. If you're illegal here in DC, that's
Speaker 5: going to be a problem. So all of these things
Speaker 5: that apply to law and order are are front and
Speaker 5: center for us. And I don't know, weeks, months, what
Speaker 5: will it take. That's the President's call, but we're going
Speaker 5: to be there for him to execute as swiftly.
Speaker 3: As possible, conditions based.
Speaker 4: It's real, Like Warren Rock vibes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of the these days. Yeah, got a
Speaker 2: mission accomplished coming out of the Trump administration too, because
Speaker 2: they've learned that, like there's no consequence in just saying like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we close the border and we won the borders won
Speaker 2: You know, it's done. No one's going to get to
Speaker 2: their base with a counter opinion that matters.
Speaker 3: As bad as things are in DC right now, this
Speaker 3: is just the start of what they want to do.
Speaker 3: Trump seeks to make a quote a quick example of DC,
Speaker 3: but soon wants to go further and attempt this in
Speaker 3: other cities, first naming places like Chicago and Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: and then later New York, Baltimore and Oakland.
Speaker 1: We have other cities that are very bad.
Speaker 6: New York has a problem, and then you have of
Speaker 6: course Baltimore and Oakland.
Speaker 1: We don't even mentioned that anymore.
Speaker 6: There's so they're so far gone, We're not gonna let
Speaker 6: it happen. We're not gonna lose our cities over this,
Speaker 6: and this will go further.
Speaker 1: We're starting very strongly with DC and we're going to
Speaker 1: clean it up really pretty quickly. As they say.
Speaker 3: We're not going to lose our cities over this, that
Speaker 3: gets into like the core part of their framing this,
Speaker 3: this idea that homeless people and criminals cough cough black
Speaker 3: people are making us lose, like lose our cities. They're
Speaker 3: so far gone and this is necessary for such reasons,
Speaker 3: and like you can look at that pretty clearly. And
Speaker 3: he's naming like Oakland, Baltimore, Chicago, New York like it's
Speaker 3: it's it's not it's not very masked here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I talked with DC resident bridget Todd this morning. We
Speaker 3: should have an episode with her perspective coming out early
Speaker 3: next week. I think Sunday night.
Speaker 2: I wrote an episode early this year laying out, you know,
Speaker 2: some of my predictions for the year, and this along
Speaker 2: with weird terrorism, we're two of like my big ones,
Speaker 2: right that that DC in particular, he would be attempting
Speaker 2: to fill with soldiers and probably invoke the Insurrection Act. Now,
Speaker 2: one thing that I have been surprised on is that
Speaker 2: they really do seem kind of hesitant to go full
Speaker 2: in on the Insurrection Act. And obviously I didn't expect
Speaker 2: LA to get troops deployed in it before DC, but
Speaker 2: just based on what they were saying, like after the election,
Speaker 2: kind of as he was preparing to take office, it
Speaker 2: was very clear that they were looking at DC as
Speaker 2: a focus, in part because they had, you know, during
Speaker 2: his last term as well. Right, this is not entirely unprecedented,
Speaker 2: but his desire to specifically not just take away any
Speaker 2: sort of autonomy that the city has and put it
Speaker 2: under direct federal control. But to see troops in the
Speaker 2: streets and federal agents in the streets is not surprising.
Speaker 2: It's something that like, it's not even should be I
Speaker 2: honestly shouldn't even call it a prediction. It's just something
Speaker 2: he's been repeatedly saying he's going to do. So the
Speaker 2: fact that it's happening now, you know, the only thing
Speaker 2: that's surprising to me is that it happened in LA first, right,
Speaker 2: and that they really do seem to have and who knows.
Speaker 2: You know, this could change by the time the episode airs,
Speaker 2: but they do seem to have something of a I
Speaker 2: don't know if a block is the right way to
Speaker 2: phrase it, but they don't seem yet willing to go
Speaker 2: for the Insurrection Act. That still seems to be a
Speaker 2: bridge too far for some reason. I'm not one hundred
Speaker 2: percent sure why.
Speaker 4: I think. I think they're worried about like massive backlash
Speaker 4: to it, like they're really unpopular, and.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, they also just don't need to Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's a fair point. Gar they have this like
Speaker 3: section seven forty to call on, and if Trump's going
Speaker 3: to try to get Congress to pass a new crime
Speaker 3: bill that can allow them to do this kind of
Speaker 3: stuff without having to use the Insurrection Act. So I
Speaker 3: think it's more of like a matter of necessity, Yeah,
Speaker 3: just maybe just a risk they don't think they need
Speaker 3: to take. Yeah, and like who knows what type of
Speaker 3: weird shit they would try to push into a crime bill,
Speaker 3: including like exceptions for almost any city to have their
Speaker 3: police force be federalized.
Speaker 4: I think the interesting part of this to me is
Speaker 4: also so that like it feels like a lot of
Speaker 4: what their politics is is like the spectacle of making
Speaker 4: it look like there's power there versus like actually doing
Speaker 4: the thing, because like you can't actually hold DC with
Speaker 4: eight hundred National guardsmen, and like, you know, if if
Speaker 4: you look at what happened in LA, they kind of
Speaker 4: like declared victory, but then the actual thing they came
Speaker 4: there to do, which was like do this like unpresented
Speaker 4: mass deportation with they did some of it, and then
Speaker 4: they got right out of the city. And so I think,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I think I think there's a kind
Speaker 4: of apocalyptic framing of this where it's like, Okay, well
Speaker 4: it's over, they can just do this. But also it
Speaker 4: has not been going well for them. And like was
Speaker 4: it from DC that the video of the guy of
Speaker 4: the guy just like throwing a sandwich at the National
Speaker 4: Guard throwing a subway sandwich? Yes, yeah, right, Like actual
Speaker 4: regular people really don't like them. And I think I
Speaker 4: think we're just going to see escalating resistance as more
Speaker 4: than like fucking eighty guys get deployed there. And I
Speaker 4: don't know, it's unclear to me whether they can actually
Speaker 4: just like maintain this or if they're just gonna say,
Speaker 4: like we did it. Joe in like thirty days and
Speaker 4: pull out, right.
Speaker 3: That's kind of what some of the rhetoric looks like,
Speaker 3: is that they're going to try to arrest as many
Speaker 3: homeless people as they can, put them in jails, lock
Speaker 3: them up into hospitals, like the executive order that we
Speaker 3: mentioned a few weeks ago. Yeah, and like scare teenagers,
Speaker 3: and that's most of what they want out of this,
Speaker 3: and they're going to make a big show of it.
Speaker 3: And then they'll yeah, declare that the city is now safe,
Speaker 3: and then they'll use the legitimate crime stats showing crime
Speaker 3: falling and be like, look, we proved it, so that
Speaker 3: I think that is probably what it will what it
Speaker 3: will turn out to be. But if they try to
Speaker 3: push forward to a new crime bill like Trump is mentioning,
Speaker 3: or call it a national emergency to help strengthen his
Speaker 3: own powers, I think that's indications that this could have
Speaker 3: some longer lasting results. Let's go on and ad break
Speaker 3: and return to talk terrif I suppose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that and we're back.
Speaker 2: And obviously the big tariff news this week, as we'll
Speaker 2: get to, well, one of the pieces of big tariff
Speaker 2: news is that Trump has ordered another extension of the
Speaker 2: kind of delay before enacting tariffs against China. You might
Speaker 2: say Trump looked at his tariffs against China and decided
Speaker 2: tariff He no like it.
Speaker 8: Lie jazz lighty jazz sorry lot, lie jazz bin lie
Speaker 8: jazz bline.
Speaker 3: Okay, that was min true talk tariffs honestly.
Speaker 4: Okay, So this is kind of a light tariff news week.
Speaker 4: There isn't that much. Also, because if you want to
Speaker 4: hear me talking about tarriffs for like forty five minutes,
Speaker 4: go listen to the episode on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: You just did a tariff episode. I just really wanted
Speaker 2: to lead into the tariff thing that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, there is actually a very important piece of tariff
Speaker 3: news today. Arizona iced tea is considering raising prices for
Speaker 3: the first time in over thirty years due to Trump's
Speaker 3: fifty percent aluminum tariffs.
Speaker 2: All right, everyone get off the call right now. It
Speaker 2: is time to riot, find it building, burn it down. No,
Speaker 2: this is this is not a drill.
Speaker 3: Not acceptable. Arizona iced tea has been the shining beacon
Speaker 3: resisting inflation for decades. The proof proof that inflation is
Speaker 3: fake is on every Arizona iced tea can and if
Speaker 3: Trump's gonna take it away from us, burn the whole
Speaker 3: system down. Yeah, that's it. I want CEO handing out
Speaker 3: cans to throw at your at your local government building
Speaker 3: of choice, to defend the ninety nine cent can. It's
Speaker 3: one of the important aspects of American culture.
Speaker 2: It's the only thing left of the American dream. It's
Speaker 2: the one last piece of the American dream is a
Speaker 2: ninety nine cent can of Arizona iced tea.
Speaker 3: That's all we have left. Fifty percent aluminium tariffs will
Speaker 3: not take this away from US aluminium. Yeah, just just
Speaker 3: move past it. Maya, forget it. It's it's Canadian.
Speaker 4: Where are it going on? Okay? This is actually a
Speaker 4: good way to pivot into the just complete mess at
Speaker 4: the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So one of the things
Speaker 4: that Trump has been really harping on is so the
Speaker 4: Buera of Laboratistics published a jobs report and it was bad.
Speaker 4: And Trump has been absolutely furious about this ever since.
Speaker 4: And we will actually come back to I think we
Speaker 4: will literally come back to the Arizona cans after this,
Speaker 4: thank God. But however, good Lord, the people they are
Speaker 4: trying to put an office right now, I so long
Speaker 4: ago in the galaxy far far away, I made an
Speaker 4: argue that Trump regime is built on peer stupidity, that
Speaker 4: there is no plan at all. There is only, you know,
Speaker 4: a raviting mall of the oblivion of reason that obliterates
Speaker 4: all attempts to comprehend it and leaves only the words, yes,
Speaker 4: they really are that stupid. And this argument was about
Speaker 4: a guy named Stefan Miron who was Trump's share of
Speaker 4: the Council of Economic Advisors and his plan to like
Speaker 4: make other countries pay taxes on holding US bonds, a
Speaker 4: thing that is just unequivocally good for the United States.
Speaker 4: And you know, this is a plan. You can go
Speaker 4: back and listen to that episode from a few months ago.
Speaker 4: This is a plan so monumentally stupid that the only
Speaker 4: way I can think of describing it was like yelling
Speaker 4: at the moon to stop the tides. Anyways, Trump is
Speaker 4: trying to get that guy appointed to be one of
Speaker 4: the board members of the Federal Reserve. And the staggering
Speaker 4: thing about that isn't just that he's doing this. It's
Speaker 4: not like this is not the guy who's in the
Speaker 4: news right now for being unbelievably stupid and getting apointed
Speaker 4: to an extremely important ructural agency of the American economy
Speaker 4: because they are trying to appoint senior economists at the
Speaker 4: Heritage Foundation EJ and Tony as the head of the
Speaker 4: Bureau of Labor Statistics after they fired the last head
Speaker 4: for like releasing the job support. Right, this guy, Okay,
Speaker 4: I make fun of economists for being dumb as shit
Speaker 4: all the time. He might legitimately be the stupidest economist
Speaker 4: I have ever seen. Just on Blue Sky, like the
Speaker 4: day this was announced, right, I saw someone dunking on
Speaker 4: him for drawing a chart where he doesn't seem to
Speaker 4: understand that people retire and that when they retire they're
Speaker 4: not in the labor force anymore. Where he was doing
Speaker 4: this trend line that was based on the assumption that
Speaker 4: like people wouldn't retire. There are so many just incredibly
Speaker 4: basic economics since he doesn't understand. There's a post that
Speaker 4: I saw. This is the first one. That was the
Speaker 4: second one that I saw, the first one that I saw,
Speaker 4: And it's really funny because this is like in the
Speaker 4: New York Times now, but I just like saw this
Speaker 4: on Blue Sky. Was this post by this econs name
Speaker 4: Joey Paulitano, who said, quote an economists so dumb. I
Speaker 4: had to explain to him how the price index works.
Speaker 4: Will now lead the BLS kill me good. So he
Speaker 4: was doing his thing where he was like posting the
Speaker 4: price index and being like, prices aren't going up. But
Speaker 4: the thing about the import price index is that it
Speaker 4: calculates price is pre tariffs. Okay, so of course they
Speaker 4: wouldn't go up because they're not calculating the tariffs. And
Speaker 4: he was posting this as like, no, see, the terrorists
Speaker 4: don't do inflation. Ugh, he is he's being chosen for
Speaker 4: this position because he is just like a rigid ideologue
Speaker 4: of the Trump administration, right, but he's also he's so
Speaker 4: fucking stupid that things are happening. I have never seen
Speaker 4: with right wing economisy before, where other right wing economists
Speaker 4: are going like, this guy can't be allowed to take office.
Speaker 4: He's going to fuck everything up because he's too dumb.
Speaker 4: Like I am watching economists at the Manhattan Institute, which
Speaker 4: is an organization that was literally founded by Reagan's Director
Speaker 4: of the CIA, William Casey, right like that the Manhattan
Speaker 4: Institute is a right wing institute, right, Like again, this
Speaker 4: is this is this is an organization founded by Ronald
Speaker 4: fucking Reagan's CIA director. And I am watching those people go,
Speaker 4: this guy is too stupid to be put in office.
Speaker 4: Please don't put him there. This is unprecedented. I've never
Speaker 4: seen right wing economists break rank on the sort of
Speaker 4: like affirmative action program they all have for like really
Speaker 4: really underachieving right wing shithead economists. It's astonishing and so
Speaker 4: and the reason he's being brought in and this is
Speaker 4: also the reason he was like the chief economist of
Speaker 4: the Herritor's Foundation, is that he has been calling for
Speaker 4: getting rid of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and also
Speaker 4: thinks that again like like Trump does it, they've been
Speaker 4: like cooking the books to make Democrats look good and
Speaker 4: Republicans look bad. And so if he gets appointed and
Speaker 4: this is also like goes to the Senate, but him
Speaker 4: being appointed here effectively signals the end of independent economic
Speaker 4: data from the federal governments, hooray, which is a just
Speaker 4: catastrophic Like every single part of the government's, every policy organization,
Speaker 4: every like, every every single element, every corporation, every element
Speaker 4: of the entire US economic system relies on this data
Speaker 4: being nonpartisan and accurate, and it's obviously like yeah, all,
Speaker 4: like all data is political, but like it being like
Speaker 4: reasonably accurate is like the defining thing about the US
Speaker 4: economy is that this data is there and functions and
Speaker 4: this is what everyone based their decisions off of. And
Speaker 4: he very much looks like he wants to just end that,
Speaker 4: and I want to close by noting that're like one
Speaker 4: of you know, at the very end of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 4: right one of the things that was taken as like
Speaker 4: the giant signal that things were going to shit there
Speaker 4: was that like their leadership by like the like the
Speaker 4: mid late eighties was deploying satellites specifically so they could
Speaker 4: use satellite imagery to check the output of their own
Speaker 4: factories because they're they're their control of the economic statistics
Speaker 4: had become so like just annihilate right by just like
Speaker 4: mass falsification, their loss of control over the standards that
Speaker 4: they're measuring. Regime was seen. It's like, this is the
Speaker 4: regime falling apart, and we are like eight months out
Speaker 4: from Google doing that shit, right, Like we are not
Speaker 4: very far out from companies doing a thing you have
Speaker 4: to do with like remote provinces in China, where the
Speaker 4: fault were, like there's data falsification of like okay, we're
Speaker 4: like using satellite data to like measure freight loads and
Speaker 4: like measure electrical consumption and like figuring out what factories
Speaker 4: are open at night to figure out how much that's
Speaker 4: You know that that is something that is very much
Speaker 4: in our future. I'm only kind of joking about the
Speaker 4: satellite shit. I think we probably will live to see that,
Speaker 4: assuming this thing goes through, assuming they remember how to
Speaker 4: launch satellites. Well it won't. It won't be them, It'll
Speaker 4: be it'll be like corporations doing this. Oh sure, sure, yeah,
Speaker 4: like you using their own satellite grads.
Speaker 3: And I mean I can, I can. I can see
Speaker 3: the uh yeah, the Blue Origin satellites launching to keep
Speaker 3: track on it, to keep track of Amazon's efficiency.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, oh good lord. Yeah. I want to close
Speaker 4: on like one final brief note, which I've said this before,
Speaker 4: but I want to say it again. This is the
Speaker 4: exact thing that but like one is. One of the
Speaker 4: big things that brought down the military katorship in Brazil
Speaker 4: was that they were lying about inflation data. You know,
Speaker 4: the thing about inflation is that you can just see
Speaker 4: the price of the Arizona can go up.
Speaker 2: Just like you can see Huey Dewey and how we
Speaker 2: expand and our favorite inflation fetish pornography.
Speaker 4: They don't give me Hazard pay for this. They really
Speaker 4: should Hazard.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is a bonus.
Speaker 4: Oh, I guess this is also mentioned. Part of the
Speaker 4: reason they're trying to put this like absolute clown on
Speaker 4: the board of the Federal Reserve is that they want
Speaker 4: to replace the Chairman of the Federal Reserve so that
Speaker 4: Trump can just directly set interest rates. That's a looming
Speaker 4: crisis that is coming.
Speaker 3: Trump is threatening to sue the head of the Federal
Speaker 3: Reserve right now.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 2: He is yep, he sharees, which is a fasc's gonna
Speaker 2: be amazing precedent. I am excited.
Speaker 4: Oh it's it's astonishing. I don't know. It's been very
Speaker 4: funny because a lot of the kind of internal publications
Speaker 4: from like the banks about this have been like, ah,
Speaker 4: if you're a Boostero and Powell, it's not that big
Speaker 4: of a deal. Like the banks can like autonomously said
Speaker 4: interest race technically without the Chairman of the Veederal Reserve
Speaker 4: and it's like, Okay, I don't think you understand how
Speaker 4: bad this is going to get. So we're we're still
Speaker 4: in cope. I don't know what we'll report to you
Speaker 4: back on the show when all of that enormous clusterfug
Speaker 4: blows up.
Speaker 3: Yay, before we go and break again, I'd like to
Speaker 3: have an update for one of the stories we talked
Speaker 3: about last week, the Texas Democrats fleeing to Illinois and
Speaker 3: then later to California to brick orm to stop or
Speaker 3: delay a redistricting vote in Texas. And now Texas Democrats
Speaker 3: are set to come back home, possibly as soon as
Speaker 3: this weekend. Yes, after govern Greg Abbot ended the special
Speaker 3: session to redraw the congressional map, which would add five
Speaker 3: new Republican House seats. With some Democrats expected to return
Speaker 3: very soon, nothing stops Abbot from just calling another special
Speaker 3: session once the Democrats return. In fact, he has said
Speaker 3: that that's exactly what he's gonna do. He's definitely going
Speaker 3: to do that, yes, and add in new legislation to
Speaker 3: convince some of them to stay. So we will see
Speaker 3: that they can just leave the state again if they
Speaker 3: want to m hm, unclear, if unclear, if they will.
Speaker 3: I mean, other states are threatening retaliatory redistricting, specifically the
Speaker 3: governors of New York and California. This is going to
Speaker 3: be a really annoying mess with different with different states
Speaker 3: all redrawing their maps just to create some kind of
Speaker 3: congressional balance. Of Florida also threatening to do the same.
Speaker 3: So we will we will see how this develops over time.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Texas Dems may be home sooner than expected.
Speaker 4: It's so cool that on the one hand, you have
Speaker 4: the Republicans creating the image of tyranny and then expanding
Speaker 4: their actual power, and then you have the Democrats doing
Speaker 4: the image of resistance and then giving in.
Speaker 3: I mean they're not really giving in yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 3: But they are going home because this session is ended.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What still remains to be seen is if they will
Speaker 3: flee the state a second time, like a week later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which who knows. I have little faith in that,
Speaker 4: but we'll see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure at this point. Yeah, but I
Speaker 3: thought we should include that small update there, and now
Speaker 3: we should include a secondary ad break. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 3: In other news. Last week, on Friday, a mass shooting
Speaker 3: was targeted against the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. The
Speaker 3: thirty year old shooter broken to his father's safe to retreat.
Speaker 3: Five firearms were then used in the attack. The shooting
Speaker 3: started at a CVS across from the CDC main entrance.
Speaker 3: Shooter then fired upon six buildings on the CDC campus,
Speaker 3: with the total five hundred rounds being fired during the incident,
Speaker 3: with two hundred shots hitting CDC buildings. One Decab County
Speaker 3: police officer was killed. The shooter later shot and killed himself.
Speaker 3: Police were contacted several weeks before the shooting by unknown
Speaker 3: individuals due to quote recently verbalized thoughts of suicide. According
Speaker 3: to the GBI director Chris Hosey, this was about the
Speaker 3: soon to become shooter. Police found written documents from the
Speaker 3: shooter expressing distrust in the COVID nineteen vaccine. Georgia Bureau
Speaker 3: of Investigation Director Josey said the shooter quote wanted to
Speaker 3: make the public aware of his discontent with and distrust
Speaker 3: of the vaccine, with sources who knew him telling ABC
Speaker 3: News he blamed the vaccine for making him sick and depressed.
Speaker 3: The CDC director sent a letter to its ten thousand
Speaker 3: employees earlier this week, saying, quote the dangers of misinformation
Speaker 3: and its promulgation has now led to deadly consequences unquote.
Speaker 3: The Monday after shooting, RFK Junior oh No, who recently
Speaker 3: defunded mRNA Vaccines, visited the CDC campus to express condolences
Speaker 3: for the family of the officer killed, as well as
Speaker 3: to quote offers support to all of the CDC employees
Speaker 3: who are a part of a shining star health agency
Speaker 3: around the world. To quote from an interview he gave
Speaker 3: with Scripts News, when Kennedy was asked what would be
Speaker 3: done to stop the spread of vaccine misinformation to prevent
Speaker 3: future incidents like this shooting, Kennedy said, quote people can
Speaker 3: ask questions without being penalized, and quote we don't know
Speaker 3: enough about what the motive was of this individual.
Speaker 4: Quote hate that.
Speaker 3: That's all pretty pretty disgusting seeing narratives that RFK Junior
Speaker 3: has promoted for his own profit for years yep being
Speaker 3: used to justify as shooting targeting the CDC headquarters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you know, it's kind of unclear exactly
Speaker 2: what because it seems like he was shooting at the buildings.
Speaker 2: He fired at least two hundred rounds, roughly two hundred
Speaker 2: rounds into the buildings, about five hundred rounds fighter total.
Speaker 2: But I've seen people say that means he was like
Speaker 2: shot five hundred He did not that a lot of
Speaker 2: those rounds are the police.
Speaker 3: No, that's the host of them or the police.
Speaker 2: You know, two or three hundred rounds would not at
Speaker 2: all be odd for how many police would fire in
Speaker 2: response to a guy like this who is just bag dumping,
Speaker 2: you know, into a building. It's unclear to me did
Speaker 2: he see people through the windows and was he trying
Speaker 2: to hit them or was he just shooting at the
Speaker 2: buildings to make a statement. The fact that he did
Speaker 2: shoot and kill a police officer, presumably with intent, makes
Speaker 2: it more likely that maybe he he was trying to
Speaker 2: hit people inside the building. I don't know how much
Speaker 2: it's worth splitting hairs here, but I am like, it
Speaker 2: is kind of unclear to me. Was his goal more
Speaker 2: to make a statement or was he hoping to like
Speaker 2: rack up a body count of CDC employees and this
Speaker 2: was just as close as he could get. I don't
Speaker 2: think we really know, Maybe we probably never will.
Speaker 3: It seems he had trouble accessing or getting close to
Speaker 3: some buildings on the CDC campus. This was mostly done
Speaker 3: from the CVS, which he at a certain point, according
Speaker 3: to police reports, he could not get out of. He
Speaker 3: was locked inside the CVS what and tried to exit
Speaker 3: by shooting like the windows and doors, and was unable
Speaker 3: to and then killed himself inside.
Speaker 4: Huh jeez.
Speaker 3: So it is a kind of odd situation. We don't
Speaker 3: have a clear idea yet because this just happened a
Speaker 3: few days ago. We don't have a clear idea yet
Speaker 3: of like the exact on the ground situation, just these
Speaker 3: kind of general facts about which buildings were hit and
Speaker 3: how many shots were fire and then the anti vaxic
Speaker 3: opinions and writing found allegedly in his home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we'll say more will come out about this
Speaker 2: in time, but I mean the basics are pretty clear,
Speaker 2: which is that this is the natural extension of decades
Speaker 2: of anti vaccine rhetoric and specifically the last several years
Speaker 2: of OURFK relentlessly attacking the CDC.
Speaker 3: Now the piece of news this week that I should mention,
Speaker 3: though frankly, we don't have much to stay on this
Speaker 3: because it's unclear this will actually turn into anything real
Speaker 3: or not. But later this falls, the Supreme Court will
Speaker 3: consider whether to take a case that could overturn the
Speaker 3: national ruling on gay marriage. This specific case that they
Speaker 3: would be considering has not done very well in all
Speaker 3: lower federal courts, which is why it's been appealed to
Speaker 3: this level. The legal justifications used for the First Amendment
Speaker 3: have not made much progress in federal appeals courts so far.
Speaker 3: If the case does get chosen, it would be primarily
Speaker 3: for like ideological reasons based on specific new Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 3: But it is still unclear if this will get accepted,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking not super likely. I don't think this
Speaker 3: is something that we need to have tons of panic
Speaker 3: about at the moment.
Speaker 4: So something that I mean, I don't know if panic's
Speaker 4: the right word, but did actually happen and is very bad?
Speaker 4: Is that? So Trump issued an executive order a while
Speaker 4: back about like getting rid of collective bargaining rights for
Speaker 4: a bunch of different kinds of government employees, like nominally
Speaker 4: under the auspices of national security. There'd been a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of court cases kind of winding the way through
Speaker 4: the courts. But last week, the VA became the first
Speaker 4: government agency to actually do it. They just straight up
Speaker 4: got rid of the union contracts for three hundred and
Speaker 4: seventy seven thousand workers. Like, three hundred and seventy seven
Speaker 4: thousand workers is an astonishing number of workers to just
Speaker 4: straight up the union doesn't exist the next day, Yeah right,
Speaker 4: because they just their contracts aren't being recognized. This in
Speaker 4: and of its self is really stunning, and also the
Speaker 4: lack of response by the union movement, especially considering the
Speaker 4: number of people involved. It's just been like strongly worded
Speaker 4: statements and encouragements for the Democrats to pass a bill
Speaker 4: through Congress to like recognize collective bargaining rights, which speaks
Speaker 4: really really ill of the broader labor movement that like again,
Speaker 4: they just they just took away the unions of almost
Speaker 4: four hundred thousand people, and Organized Laborer's collective response was
Speaker 4: just to kind of shrug. So that's really fucking bleak.
Speaker 4: It's probably going to be spreading to more agencies as
Speaker 4: this plays out. Yeah, it's really I don't know. And
Speaker 4: even the language unions of using it talk about it,
Speaker 4: they're like, oh, this is union busting for speaking out
Speaker 4: against anti worker policies, and it's like no, it's union
Speaker 4: busting because they literally got rid of the unions of
Speaker 4: three hundred and seventy seven thousand people. What are we
Speaker 4: doing here? I don't know. I'm gonna have more on
Speaker 4: this as I get more word from union sources. There's
Speaker 4: a staggering lack of information about this, and people are
Speaker 4: being slow to respond, but I want to mention it
Speaker 4: here because it's devastating and hideous and yeah, it's real
Speaker 4: fucking bad.
Speaker 3: Before we close this episode, James Stout has a special
Speaker 3: report on immigration and information about a fundraiser.
Speaker 7: James, all right, So, immigration report. With the change of
Speaker 7: the month, children across the country are returning to schools.
Speaker 7: This means that ICE agents are also returning to enforcement
Speaker 7: at schools. Not just ICE agents as we know at
Speaker 7: the Federal Agents Board, Patrol ATFDA, etc. Are all taking
Speaker 7: part in immigration enforcement now they're no longer restrained by
Speaker 7: the Sensitive Places doctrine, which previously stopped them from doing
Speaker 7: enforcement at schools and churches and other places where it's
Speaker 7: generally considered not worth it because doing so obviously provides
Speaker 7: a massive disincentive for families to take their children to school.
Speaker 7: In this instance, in Chula Vista, second largest city in
Speaker 7: the county San Diego. I detained a parent a block
Speaker 7: away from a school, leaving two young children in the car.
Speaker 7: Like most schools in the area, to Ula Vista Elementary
Speaker 7: School District will not allow ice on campus without a
Speaker 7: warrant unless there's an active emergency. Just to explain that
Speaker 7: active emergency thing a bit, I guess, for instance, in Uvalde,
Speaker 7: because all the local cops were coward and stood outside,
Speaker 7: it was actually a border patrol team or attack specifically
Speaker 7: who killed the shooter there, So that would be an
Speaker 7: example of when immigration agents might enter a campus during
Speaker 7: an active emergency. In Los Angeles, a fifteen year old
Speaker 7: boy with disabilities was pulled from a car, handcuffed, and
Speaker 7: detained by federal agents at gunpoint. He was accompanying a
Speaker 7: relative who was registering at the school, and he was
Speaker 7: in the car with his grandmother. The agents, who appeared
Speaker 7: to be border patrol from videos i've seen, release the
Speaker 7: boy after intervention by school staff and left live ammunition
Speaker 7: on the sidewalk. For some reason, these looked like five
Speaker 7: five six rounds from the pictures I've seen, I'm guessing
Speaker 7: it's just all weapons handling procedures.
Speaker 3: Here, it appears that this.
Speaker 7: Boy was not the person they were looking for, but
Speaker 7: nonetheless they've obviously horrifically traumatized this young man for no
Speaker 7: good reason. In response, LA Unified School District is ramping
Speaker 7: up safety patrols. These include volunteers, teachers, and school cops. Apparently, obviously,
Speaker 7: school cops cannot directly prevent immigration enforcement officers from doing
Speaker 7: immigration enforcement, but they can notify people of their presence,
Speaker 7: and they're trying to have safe zones around school so
Speaker 7: that people can safely walk to school or safety drop
Speaker 7: their kids off. They're also changing their bus programs. Buses
Speaker 7: are part of the school district's property right, So, just
Speaker 7: as ice could not enter a school without a warrant,
Speaker 7: nor could they enter that bus without a warrant, and
Speaker 7: it would be within the training of the bus driver
Speaker 7: to deny them access if they did not have a
Speaker 7: warrant right. So the bus would potentially be a much
Speaker 7: safer way for people to get to school than having
Speaker 7: their parents drive them. And sola USD is doing is
Speaker 7: expanding their bus programs in LA. I've seen a lot
Speaker 7: of information on this in the resource guide that was
Speaker 7: published by the LA Office of Immigration Affairs. So now
Speaker 7: is a good time to remind everyone that San Diego
Speaker 7: Mayor Todd Gloria defunded the San Diego Office of Immigrant
Speaker 7: Affairs because he refuses to stop giving the cops a
Speaker 7: fire hose of our money. This has left migrants in
Speaker 7: one of America's largest border cities even more vulnerable. We're
Speaker 7: also doing a fundraiser this week. We're going to fund
Speaker 7: raised for Bouquet again. I'm going to go see her
Speaker 7: later this week. I know she has hearings coming up. Bouquette,
Speaker 7: for those who do not remember, is an a Levy
Speaker 7: Kurdish woman. Because of her ethnicity and religion, she wasn't
Speaker 7: safe in Turkey and she came to the USA to
Speaker 7: ask for refuge. She's been in San Diego for six
Speaker 7: months right now, and she is trying to raise money
Speaker 7: for her asylum case. She can't work because she doesn't
Speaker 7: have work permit, and she has cancer, which is obviously
Speaker 7: something which is very difficult for her to manage alongside
Speaker 7: the massive stress of immigration enforcement. Right now, she needs
Speaker 7: to raise seven thousand dollars to pay her lawyer. I'm
Speaker 7: looking at the GoFundMe as I record this and it
Speaker 7: is at one thousand, nine hundred and forty one dollars.
Speaker 7: If you would like to help, you can go to
Speaker 7: www dot GoFundMe dot com, slash f slash urgent, hyphen help,
Speaker 7: hyphen four, hyphen bouquette, b uk e t s, hyphen asylum,
Speaker 7: hyphen case, or you can just go down as a
Speaker 7: show notes and click the link. We really appreciate the
Speaker 7: support you guys have given.
Speaker 3: Thank you to James for that. Well, I guess that's
Speaker 3: our week. We reported the news, We reported the news.
Speaker 3: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 3: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.