Speaker 1: Then the question would be, how do we get a
Speaker 1: hair sample from Justin Trudeau? And we probably could. We
Speaker 1: recruit somebody who works in a hotel, get one of
Speaker 1: his hairs, capture his pea toilet tap.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, I never knew about that. I never thought
Speaker 2: about getting the pee. That's so cool, stealing people's pee
Speaker 2: and poop. Yeah, oh yeah, Well, of course.
Speaker 3: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she. I served in
Speaker 3: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
Speaker 3: all around the.
Speaker 1: World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
Speaker 1: I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 3: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 3: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 3: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 1: Welcome to this week's Mission Employed. Back again with us
Speaker 1: is Adam Davidson.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, what have you been up to?
Speaker 1: Adam?
Speaker 4: I think you know I'm always up to different projects
Speaker 4: and a big project for me these days is working
Speaker 4: with Vermont artistical cheesemakers, and I'm trying to turn this
Speaker 4: podcast more in that direction.
Speaker 1: And you can tell us about who cut the cheese.
Speaker 4: Well, that's actually a good question, because cutting the cheese
Speaker 4: is a key decision that any cheesemaker needs to make.
Speaker 4: And actually, this is an interesting thing I learned, like
Speaker 4: artistical cheese, not like factory made cheese, but like real
Speaker 4: fancy cheese. It's very temperamental. Every day is different because
Speaker 4: the cows if it was a rainy day or if
Speaker 4: it was a particularly hot day though they're in bad
Speaker 4: mood or something, or if they're in a bad mood,
Speaker 4: the microflora will be different. And so a big thing
Speaker 4: you have to do is decide it's cut ability, because
Speaker 4: when you buy cheese in the store that's pre wrapped
Speaker 4: to a specific size, the cheese has to have certain
Speaker 4: like tight structure.
Speaker 5: But then if you go, guys, I'm sorry to break in.
Speaker 5: This is your producer, John Stern. I usually don't get
Speaker 5: involved in this part in the intro of these episodes,
Speaker 5: but I want to remind you it's called the podcast
Speaker 5: business there, and the podcast business a key component is
Speaker 5: cooking in the audience early on, as opposed to the
Speaker 5: exact opposite.
Speaker 4: So you're saying, expand beyond chat or get into Alpine
Speaker 4: Cheese's wash Strine cheese.
Speaker 3: Is I have an idea because there are various foods,
Speaker 3: but cheese as well that look like certain people. And
Speaker 3: so our episode today we're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: is Justin Trudeau related to Fidel Castro phenomenal. Today we
Speaker 3: have a special guest, a real podcast legend, John love It.
Speaker 3: John's a well known screenwriter, comedian, podcaster, and the founder
Speaker 3: of Crooked Media. You probably know him from pod Save
Speaker 3: America and Love It or Leave It. And John was
Speaker 3: a speechwriter for Hillary Clinton and President Obama, among other things.
Speaker 3: So go ahead to have you here today.
Speaker 2: John, great to be here, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: So we want to talk about some conspiracies. The one
Speaker 3: that you know, we sort of want to tee up
Speaker 3: is the conspira that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is
Speaker 3: the son of Cuban dictator Fidel Kestro.
Speaker 2: I just want to start by saying I have two
Speaker 2: points I want to make before I walk you through
Speaker 2: the details. One is that I believe every person, for
Speaker 2: the sake of the suppleness of their own mind, should
Speaker 2: believe in at least one true conspiracy theory. If your
Speaker 2: heart isn't big enough in this confusing, messy, complicated world
Speaker 2: to find space for one story that the world says
Speaker 2: is false, but one part of Reddit says is true,
Speaker 2: your heart isn't open enough. The second point I want
Speaker 2: to make is I don't know that this is true.
Speaker 2: My point is not that it is true. My point
Speaker 2: is I want to live in a world where the
Speaker 2: word debunket means something. And my only claim that i
Speaker 2: will defend is not that the story I'm about to
Speaker 2: tell you is true. It is that it is not debunked.
Speaker 2: That's all I want to claim. Okay, so here's the
Speaker 2: conspiracy there. And I first got wind of it when
Speaker 2: they remember there were those Canadian truckers protesting.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, and Ottawa, Yeah yeah, the free folk of
Speaker 6: the North, that's right, And they were protesting Trudeau and
Speaker 6: they claimed that Fidel Castro is the father of Canadian
Speaker 6: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 2: This immediately started getting the kind of Snopes treatment. The
Speaker 2: AP round a story that said, no, Fidel Castro is
Speaker 2: not Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's father. The Time said misinformation
Speaker 2: has been a key weapon wielded by Canada's protest movement,
Speaker 2: and critics of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have returned to
Speaker 2: one simmering falsehood that mister Trudeau is the love child
Speaker 2: of the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Snopes calls it
Speaker 2: false and here's here's why they call it false. The
Speaker 2: Times reported that mister Trudeau's mother, Margaret, famously traveled to
Speaker 2: Cuba and met mister Castro at the beginning of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, but the visit was more than four years
Speaker 2: after mister Trudeau was born on December twenty fifth, nineteen
Speaker 2: in seventy one. Given her high profile, it would have
Speaker 2: been highly unlikely for Missus Trudeau to have slipped into
Speaker 2: Cuba undetected. Castro and Margaret Trudeau would have had to
Speaker 2: have conceived their secret love child between March sixteenth and
Speaker 2: April twenty second, nineteen seventy one, and because after their
Speaker 2: brief honeymoon through Trudeau's went to Canada, Snopes go as
Speaker 2: far as to say claims that Fidel Castro and Margaret
Speaker 2: Trudeau had an affair that produced the current Canadian Prime
Speaker 2: minister are impossible on both biological and historical grounds. That
Speaker 2: seems to be definitive, right, Like you kind of look
Speaker 2: at the facts there, right, it's interesting, right, they've met, Right,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like the messy thing that's enough to
Speaker 2: make people ask the question.
Speaker 1: And not like being Fidel Castro's love child is.
Speaker 2: A bad thing, right, I mean, no judgments.
Speaker 1: It could be crazier. It could be like the president
Speaker 1: of the United States was born in like another country
Speaker 1: and secretly moved to Hawaii for a burstart.
Speaker 2: To the right. But that's off the top of your head,
Speaker 2: off the top of your head. So this is Snope's
Speaker 2: basically saying. The most plausible explanation remains that Pierre and
Speaker 2: Margaret Trudeau had sex and created a child and that
Speaker 2: child became Justin Trudeau. But there is a big problem
Speaker 2: with this theory. And again I am relying on Reddit,
Speaker 2: and what we also know is that Maggie and Pete Trudeau,
Speaker 2: as I call them, they did enjoy having sex, maybe
Speaker 2: with each other, but definitely others, and that's their life
Speaker 2: and they had fun and that was the time and began.
Speaker 2: No judgment, So what is the evidence that runs counter
Speaker 2: to this. First, you have to look at a picture
Speaker 2: of Fidel Castro and Justin Trudeau side by side. Just
Speaker 2: look at it, all right, draw your own fucking conclusions.
Speaker 2: Look at a picture of them side by side, and
Speaker 2: just admit that there's a resemblance. But the ap the Times,
Speaker 2: and Snopes do not address this is what I will
Speaker 2: call the second honeymoon theory. This originates on Reddit. But
Speaker 2: the people claiming this is debunk do not address this fact,
Speaker 2: which is that, according to the Ottawao Journal, which ran
Speaker 2: a piece on the thirteenth of April in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: one headline Trudeau's privacy respective Bridgetown, Barbados, Prime Minister Trudeau
Speaker 2: and his wife left here Monday by chartered plane on
Speaker 2: a quick side trip to an unidentified nearby island. They
Speaker 2: arrived here Thursday on a brief second honeymoon and have
Speaker 2: reportedly been staying at a private residence on the island's
Speaker 2: posh west coast. That trip lines up an unidentified island.
Speaker 2: Perhaps a rendezvous took place, perhaps some swinging occurred.
Speaker 3: You said that the articles you're reading said that it
Speaker 3: was biologically debunked. How was it possibly biologically debunk where's
Speaker 3: the like they have blood samples.
Speaker 2: Well, I think what they're saying is if you don't
Speaker 2: account for that second honeymoon, it is not possible. And
Speaker 2: all I'm saying is there's just some more debunking to
Speaker 2: be done. I need that, I.
Speaker 3: Need biological debunking. That's just that's circumstantial time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, circumstances, timeline debunking. So all that leads me to
Speaker 2: the conclusion, which is not that Justin Trudeau is the
Speaker 2: son of Fidel Castro, merely that there is more debunking
Speaker 2: to be done before we can declare this bunk debunked this.
Speaker 1: And I've looked into this the Internet, dark conspiracies on
Speaker 1: mostly on Margaret Trudeau. Apparently she met Pierre, her husband,
Speaker 1: in Tahiti, how lovely, when she was barely eighteen and
Speaker 1: he was frigging forty seven. So she's a waif and
Speaker 1: she doesn't know lots of people they marry and this
Speaker 1: is you know, there's three kinds of people in this world,
Speaker 1: those that can do math and those that can't. So
Speaker 1: they were married on four March nineteen seventy one, and
Speaker 1: Justin Trudeau was born on twenty five December seventy one,
Speaker 1: so that's eight months, two weeks and a couple of days.
Speaker 1: So it is conceivable that he was conceived out of wedlock.
Speaker 1: So Castro or whoever the father would have to be.
Speaker 1: He would have to have either been along on the honeymoon,
Speaker 1: which you've said, or have gotten in just like before
Speaker 1: the honeymoon. You got to basically say that a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old girl who doesn't know anybody is going to
Speaker 1: have to meet the dictator, be swept away by him,
Speaker 1: betted by him.
Speaker 2: Famously charming man, famously charming.
Speaker 1: And he had a lot of paramours.
Speaker 2: I will also say too that part of what I
Speaker 2: think the Canadian Trucker's glombed onto this is that maybe
Speaker 2: that communism is like genetically inherited, which I also don't think.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like like not, you know, justin Drudeau
Speaker 2: is not, you know, he's it's he's communism runs in
Speaker 2: his veins.
Speaker 3: We got to take a break now and we'll be
Speaker 3: back in just a minute.
Speaker 1: Glad to have everybody back. Let's go back down.
Speaker 3: The rabbit hole. But I mean she was running around
Speaker 3: with people like the Rolling Stones and Jack Nicholson and
Speaker 3: other so even if it's not Fidel Castro, there could
Speaker 3: be some other things we could explore here, right, But
Speaker 3: there's a story in one of those articles that said
Speaker 3: the conspiracy started when Castro's oldest son committed suicide and
Speaker 3: left behind a note claiming that Trudeau was his brother.
Speaker 1: I don't know about Justin, but certainly her other kids
Speaker 1: or even conceidedly so the list of paramores goes with
Speaker 1: Mick Jaggers, Nichols, Ted Kennedy, Ronnie Wilson.
Speaker 2: Ted Kennedy, and Ryan O'Neill.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, could she have met any of
Speaker 1: those guys?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because even the dates of the trip that people
Speaker 3: are coming on could be his younger He's got two
Speaker 3: younger brothers too, so it's possible that the younger brothers
Speaker 3: is that Castro.
Speaker 1: That there is a deeper question and the human psych
Speaker 1: is why DNA is so important in politics. Politics and
Speaker 1: paternity seem to go together in conspiracy theories because Chris
Speaker 1: paternity up until recently could never have been proved. If
Speaker 1: you want to do a side by side, take a
Speaker 1: picture of Prince Harry and put it next to James Hewitt.
Speaker 1: If you're going to fool around with somebody. Don't fool
Speaker 1: around with a redhead. And you put the two of
Speaker 1: them together, the horse whisper, and they did have an affair.
Speaker 1: She had an affair with a redheaded guy, but that's
Speaker 1: never been proven.
Speaker 2: I do think there's a little there is misogyny in it,
Speaker 2: to be honest too, about like why people really care
Speaker 2: about this. I think people love speculating about the royals,
Speaker 2: and I think that there's something about line of succession
Speaker 2: that alights in people, you know, Elizabeth the fst running
Speaker 2: around and having no heirs and all that, and like
Speaker 2: kind of the tracing the lineage back.
Speaker 1: At a deeper level. What this kind of means both
Speaker 1: the Obama birth and this is basically what people are
Speaker 1: saying is he's not one of us, He's not in
Speaker 1: our tribe. It's a way to try to sort of
Speaker 1: exclude him and anybody who supports him, and.
Speaker 2: That the elites are all interconnected and have these secrets
Speaker 2: that we don't get to know, that they preach one
Speaker 2: way of living and actually live another way because the
Speaker 2: rules don't apply to them.
Speaker 3: And the people who pick this up. You mentioned that
Speaker 3: the truckers. There's definitely a right wing thing about the
Speaker 3: truckers and also other podcast legend Joe Rogan, who have
Speaker 3: never listened to is also one of these people who's
Speaker 3: spread this tends to be the right wing people pick
Speaker 3: up on these things to use him as smeartech.
Speaker 2: Like, no one's telling you the truth. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of secrets that actually you have to You can't
Speaker 2: trust what you read, you can't trust what you see.
Speaker 2: There's a deeper, truer story that you can only find
Speaker 2: by going to alternate, unconventional, less reliable sources that like,
Speaker 2: they'll tell you one thing about the vaccine, but actually
Speaker 2: the truth is more complicated, or there's a secret web
Speaker 2: of powerful people in the nineteen seventies fucking in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: So let us take you into our former world as
Speaker 1: agency officers wanting to know about people's their physical makeup,
Speaker 1: their DNA. It wouldn't be beyond the realm of the
Speaker 1: possible for the agency to want to collect. Say if
Speaker 1: I had a way of getting Vladimir Putin's p that
Speaker 1: would be valuable, right, I mean, what medicines is he on?
Speaker 1: And you know who is kids are, and you know
Speaker 1: can you detect these? Right? If John and I back
Speaker 1: in the day, Director Cia says, you to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this, we need you know, the President
Speaker 1: wants to know definitively. Then the question would be, how
Speaker 1: do we get a hair sample from Justin Trudeau? And
Speaker 1: we probably could same with Prince Harry. We recruit somebody
Speaker 1: works in a hotel, get one of his hairs, capture his.
Speaker 2: Pee, toilet tap, toilet tap. Oh shit, I never knew
Speaker 2: about that. I never thought about getting the pee. That's
Speaker 2: so cool, stealing people's pee and poop. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: well of course, and some of these.
Speaker 3: Guys they know that it's done, so they probably make
Speaker 3: sure that there's false pea and poop push down and right.
Speaker 1: Wow, you got to make sure you don't get counter p.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta get a number of specimens from different
Speaker 3: places counter intel P.
Speaker 1: It's this is James Bond stuff.
Speaker 2: Man, it's precisely not James Bond stuff. Like it's exactly not.
Speaker 3: But they're collecting other body, you know.
Speaker 2: You know that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: If we could steal Justin Trudeau's comb or we got
Speaker 1: one of his pubes, we could just solve the mystery
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: When a head of state visits the White House, right,
Speaker 2: like does't Drudaux has been to the White House and
Speaker 2: he's probably had a salad. You're basically there.
Speaker 3: And then the next time he comes that we could
Speaker 3: say we know your fidels and we're going to hold
Speaker 3: that over you for the rest of your time.
Speaker 2: I presume somewhere in the in Langley, in some basement
Speaker 2: vaults there's various Fidel Castro samples.
Speaker 1: Why do you think we want all these guys to
Speaker 1: come to the UN right? All the world leaders? Hum
Speaker 1: turf And he famously came. When he came to New
Speaker 1: York the first time for the UN he went to
Speaker 1: Harlem and stayed in like a slum, just to make
Speaker 1: a statement. This kind of thing in history, it does
Speaker 1: become serious. John's the Russian expert. But in the seventeen
Speaker 1: eighties there was the Pugachov Rebellion in Russia and millions
Speaker 1: of people died and half of Russia was conquered. And
Speaker 1: the whole point of it was this peasant Pugachov claimed
Speaker 1: that he was the Czar Paul the third and Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great was just a German war, and people followed
Speaker 1: h His conspiracy theory was obviously not true, but people
Speaker 1: so didn't want the political leadership they had Catherine the Great,
Speaker 1: a German, they were willing to buy into this conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: and the country was ripped apart and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: died in battle and millions died in famine. That came
Speaker 1: from that, all based off of like who's your daddy?
Speaker 1: So the peasants in Russia, it was clear they were
Speaker 1: desperate for a narrative that said that the current political
Speaker 1: elite was illegitimate and wrong, and they were willing to
Speaker 1: again and their thousands die against this. So let's switch
Speaker 1: forward to today's think there are an unlimited supply of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. But why do some catch Why would the
Speaker 1: Birtherism thing with for Barack Obama? Why would that resonate?
Speaker 1: What does that say about us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it catches because just like you said, they want
Speaker 3: to say he's the other you know, it's ugly politics.
Speaker 3: I mean, John knows this stuff better than any of us.
Speaker 2: Right, We've had Trump kind of with two lies like this,
Speaker 2: Well we've many lies, but two that stand out obviously
Speaker 2: is he put himself on the national stage as a
Speaker 2: political figure through the birther conspiracy theory, and now he
Speaker 2: spreads a conspiracy theory, a lie about the election. They both,
Speaker 2: in various ways, play on people's fears of the other,
Speaker 2: of racism, the assumption that Barack Obama can't be from here,
Speaker 2: given what he looks like and how he thinks. And
Speaker 2: with the conspiracy theory around the election, Trump ties it
Speaker 2: back to Shenanigan's going on in cities. Right. Oh, you
Speaker 2: got to look at what happened in Philadelphia, you got
Speaker 2: to look at what happened in Detroit, you got to
Speaker 2: look at what happened in Atlanta, which is his way
Speaker 2: of saying black people are getting one over on us,
Speaker 2: us the white Republicans. You know, Trump spread the Birther
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory. You can't really point, i think, to a
Speaker 2: way in which that redounded to any kind of like
Speaker 2: political advantage. But I'm sure the polling on how many
Speaker 2: people believe that ebbs and flows it is and I'm
Speaker 2: sure quite dispiriting how many Republicans believed in it. I
Speaker 2: think the big lie has been one he's kind of
Speaker 2: stuck with longer, used more, has gotten more purchase, in
Speaker 2: part because it doesn't just confirm fears about the Americans
Speaker 2: that they don't like. It also confirms a kind of
Speaker 2: pride about like, I know my country, this country wouldn't
Speaker 2: vote for someone like that. The people I know voted
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump. Of course, has got to be another
Speaker 2: stool we couldn't have lost. So there's a way in
Speaker 2: which I think the big lie validates people in a
Speaker 2: way that the Birther lie doesn't, which I think is
Speaker 2: why it has a little bit more purchase, because it
Speaker 2: affirms not just a negative idea of the other, but
Speaker 2: a positive view of themselves.
Speaker 3: I think that's even a more generous way to look
Speaker 3: at I do think the birther thing had an impact
Speaker 3: on election in the sense that what Cambridge Analytica did
Speaker 3: and what the Russians did in the lead up twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen is there was a portion of an American electric
Speaker 3: that never ever voted on the right, and I think,
Speaker 3: based on the Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica had, there
Speaker 3: was an effort to make those people so worked up
Speaker 3: and so angry that people who never voted on the
Speaker 3: right came out and voted. And the Birther thing could
Speaker 3: play a role in that, is trying to find sort
Speaker 3: of the really really radical people who just have never
Speaker 3: played in our political system and get them to be voters.
Speaker 2: I think that's totally right. I don't disagree with that
Speaker 2: at all. I think the birther story is part of
Speaker 2: a story of they're taking your country from you. But
Speaker 2: it was just like a tile and a nightmare mosaic
Speaker 2: that they were making, you know, as opposed to as
Speaker 2: most of the big lie now, which is central right.
Speaker 2: It is a central plank of Donald Trump's campaign, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, appeals to a lot of Republicans but
Speaker 2: alienates a ton of other normies out there.
Speaker 1: I think the power in the birth Rhythm thing is
Speaker 1: it allowed him to break norms, like I can say
Speaker 1: this and I can still get away with it, whereas
Speaker 1: you couldn't before. And the second thing is if you
Speaker 1: buy into it, sort of like a religion or a cult.
Speaker 1: Once you start buying into it, you're in right. You're
Speaker 1: part of the team now. Like my next door neighbor
Speaker 1: is a Detroit Lions fan. You know, in ten years
Speaker 1: ago he was like, the Lions are the greatest. Knew
Speaker 1: they weren't, but you got to buy into the fib
Speaker 1: to be on the team. And so that's the price
Speaker 1: of admission and increasingly so selling your soul. You've got
Speaker 1: to buy into the absolute bullshit.
Speaker 2: Basically sent a message to millions of Republicans, which is
Speaker 2: that I don't give a fuck. I'll say whatever I
Speaker 2: want and they can't stop me. And I think one
Speaker 2: of Trump's great I think ways of sort of like
Speaker 2: feral genius is understanding that signal. Like now, saying you
Speaker 2: believe that Joe Biden is not legitimate is a way
Speaker 2: you prove your bona fides. It's a it's a vicious circle.
Speaker 3: So what kind of conspiracies can we see that are
Speaker 3: similar to the Trudeau thing that might be spun out
Speaker 3: In a lead up to the election.
Speaker 1: Trump has trotted out Nicki Haley, right, sort of birthruisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's doing the birth thruism a bit on
Speaker 2: Nicki Haley, sort of a racist attack on her. Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris is really pulling the strings?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Sort of a has a similar sort of geometry to
Speaker 2: it as a story. You know, it's like here's the
Speaker 2: real power, Here's what's who's here's who's really in charge.
Speaker 2: That's why they said brock Obama had studied anti colonialism.
Speaker 2: That was sort of a buzzword for a while, and
Speaker 2: it's like, your leaders aren't who they say they are,
Speaker 2: and they don't believe what they claim to believe.
Speaker 1: Let's take a breather and back in a moment, and
Speaker 1: where back. I think it's time that we addressed the
Speaker 1: eutlephant in the room. Something that yeah that we and
Speaker 1: our audience, you know, we're all thinking it, but I'll
Speaker 1: just say it. Grover Cleveland, Right, Yeah, So Grover Cleveland,
Speaker 1: he was running for president and a woman comes out
Speaker 1: and says, I have a ten year old illegitimate son,
Speaker 1: and the son belongs to Grover Cleveland. And the entire
Speaker 1: country is looking at two pictures of the kid and
Speaker 1: of Grover Cleveland. Could it be his? Or couldn't it?
Speaker 1: And in fact, the whole push of the opposition political party,
Speaker 1: their motto was ma, Ma, Where's my Pa? This was
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And Grover Cleveland was able to put
Speaker 1: a stop to this push to delegitimize his candidcy by
Speaker 1: basically saying the kid could be mine. I'm not really sure,
Speaker 1: but I'll claim him. And he won, and then the
Speaker 1: slogan Mama, Where's my Pa? Then became as everybody knows
Speaker 1: gone to the White House? Ha ha ha, like fuck
Speaker 1: you we.
Speaker 2: Won really good? That's it? Hey, that's cool? Is there
Speaker 2: the scoreboard? Chant?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It got weird with Grover Cleveland because he said later
Speaker 1: in his papers that, as everyone knows, he said that
Speaker 1: the kid isn't actually his. It actually belongs to his
Speaker 1: business partner who was older than him. But his business
Speaker 1: partner was married and he was a bachelor, so he said,
Speaker 1: I didn't think it would be said bad if I
Speaker 1: did it, because it would destroy my business partner's marriage.
Speaker 1: And then it turns out that Grover Cleveland, when he
Speaker 1: did get married in the White House, he married his
Speaker 1: business partner's daughter.
Speaker 3: Fucking Grover Cleveland.
Speaker 2: Worth remembering too, right? Paternity conspiracies or just a subset
Speaker 2: of centuries, thousands of years of attacks around infidelity which
Speaker 2: are hypocritical and will never end.
Speaker 3: So, John, why do you think people would want to
Speaker 3: believe that Justin Trudeau is Fidel castro Son? What is
Speaker 3: the what's the impetus behind this?
Speaker 2: First of all, it's just fun. It's like a prime
Speaker 2: minister and they're traveling. It's another era. It's the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: There's a dictator from Cuba involved the enemy of the West.
Speaker 2: It has a kind of like spy movie vibe, which
Speaker 2: I think is just fun. And then I do think
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of like the idea that like
Speaker 2: genes can be responsible for overturning Batista.
Speaker 3: Are there any conspiracies, other conspiracies that you sort of
Speaker 3: are interested in it? Because we respect you so much
Speaker 3: for coming on, we will also believe that.
Speaker 2: Let me think, what is a conspiracy theory? I actually
Speaker 2: believe here's one. It's not exactly a conspiracy theory, but
Speaker 2: I do think it's an unanswered question, which is, do
Speaker 2: you remember when former Clinton administration official Sandy Berger was
Speaker 2: caught with documents in his socks. He passed away. We
Speaker 2: never found out what was going on, and the explanation
Speaker 2: was something along the lines of, oh, these were drafts
Speaker 2: of documents that were still preserved, that nothing was truly lost,
Speaker 2: something to that effect. But it was deeply strange and
Speaker 2: remains unanswered. I don't know if i'd call it a
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory, but I don't believe we have the whole truth.
Speaker 3: Well, John's great having you on. It's such a such
Speaker 3: a pleasure for us, and so.
Speaker 1: So do you know how to tell male chromosomes from
Speaker 1: female chromosomes?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, how God, how.
Speaker 1: You pull their genes down?
Speaker 2: Ugh?
Speaker 1: I got kids.
Speaker 2: I got kids as a blast. Hey, I had so
Speaker 2: much fun.
Speaker 3: Adam Davidson, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you guys.
Speaker 3: So, Adam, what do you think about that discussion we
Speaker 3: just had about Justin Trudeau Fidel Castro? And if you
Speaker 3: can merge us with the discussion of cheese, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: And so you live up by the Canadian border.
Speaker 3: You're in Vermont, right, I am in Vermont.
Speaker 4: As I've told you like four hundred times.
Speaker 1: What are you picking up on that particular conspiracy from
Speaker 1: your side of the Canadian border?
Speaker 4: Well, I would say that in Vermont that would just
Speaker 4: be a positive people. Would you know that that would
Speaker 4: be seen as a really good characteristic of any politician.
Speaker 4: I'd say if Bernie Sanders, I mean, he already gets
Speaker 4: like two thirds of the vote, but if he spread
Speaker 4: the rumor that he's also Fidel Castro's son.
Speaker 3: And you know how the Canadians sleep around much more
Speaker 3: than the people in Vermont do. So this is not
Speaker 3: really a surprise.
Speaker 4: As far as I can tell now Vermont is we
Speaker 4: We are like the biggest compliment. That's what we say
Speaker 4: at a party. Oh you look like Fidel Castro's son.
Speaker 4: Oh hi, you look like this this delicious Vermont made
Speaker 4: artisanal cheese's son. You know, we're Bernie Country. We love
Speaker 4: our Fidel Castro. We are a weirdly functional state. By
Speaker 4: the way, this is just a side note. Two thirds
Speaker 4: of the state votes for Bernie Sanders for a Senate
Speaker 4: and two thirds of the state vote for our very
Speaker 4: moderate Republican governor. And we have a weird thing where
Speaker 4: we have like a sensible bipartisan legislature that actually works
Speaker 4: across the aisle to achieve outcome. I will say with
Speaker 4: Fidel Castro, just talking about northern states. I did some
Speaker 4: reporting when Fidel Castro was still alive on agriculture policy
Speaker 4: in the US, and one pocket of enormous support for
Speaker 4: Fidel Castro in the US is bean farmers, especially northern
Speaker 4: Midwest like the North Dakota's Minnesota. If you meet someone
Speaker 4: who farms soybeans or other beans for human consumption, like
Speaker 4: a guy in their eighties or seventies who probably votes
Speaker 4: for Trump, probably has never voted for a Democrat. I
Speaker 4: would say there's a not unreasonable chance they have met
Speaker 4: Fidel Castro, because all along we have had trade delegations
Speaker 4: to Cuba for basic food stuffs, and it's been a
Speaker 4: part of particularly beans of US export policy. It's like
Speaker 4: nobody knows about it, but it's been really funny. I
Speaker 4: was sitting in a combine in North Dakota with a
Speaker 4: Republican farmer who was telling me about them many many
Speaker 4: times he had had dinner with Fidel Castro, and how
Speaker 4: fun it was, how he was up until two in
Speaker 4: the morning.
Speaker 3: Maybe if our relationship approves, we can send them meat
Speaker 3: and other vegetables.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a weird thing where there's a very
Speaker 4: small number of people who it's really important for, and
Speaker 4: they don't really want the word out, you know, because
Speaker 4: they feel like if it gets too loud, it'll all
Speaker 4: get shut down. All right, I'm pulling up a photo
Speaker 4: of young Fidel Castro next to Justin Trudeau, who, let's
Speaker 4: be honest, it always looks young, you guys, see it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2: It is striking, is it not?
Speaker 1: It is not. I'm not seeing it on this two
Speaker 1: eyes and nose in a mouth, But I'm not buying it.
Speaker 4: You know, as I look more like at the eyes,
Speaker 4: at the nose, at the ear, it a little bit
Speaker 4: falls apart, but there is a go all, like an
Speaker 4: overall just lo.
Speaker 3: I hate agreeing with Jerry, but like, I see the
Speaker 3: same thing. You could almost put any two people together
Speaker 3: unless they're crazily different looking, and say, oh yeah, look
Speaker 3: you see they look the same. So like if I
Speaker 3: saw those two pictures together and didn't know about any
Speaker 3: of this, I wouldn't say to myself, oh my god.
Speaker 4: It is not enough to build a conspiracy around. Although
Speaker 4: that guy who they say is JFK. Junior, the fact
Speaker 4: that he looks literally nothing like JFK. Junior is almost proof.
Speaker 1: What you're discussing here is pari dola, which is the
Speaker 1: seeing faces and inanimate objects like the man in the
Speaker 1: moon or Elvis's face and mold on a on a refrigerator.
Speaker 1: There's an actual word for that.
Speaker 4: There's a word for something you would absolutely know at
Speaker 4: Perry Dolans.
Speaker 1: Everybody should know that one. But yeah, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: put Justin Trudeau and you put him next to Robert
Speaker 1: Mugabi say, I would say, yeah, okay, probably not. This
Speaker 1: is closer but I'm maybe it's the beard. You've got
Speaker 1: a beard, ad him.
Speaker 4: I get David Cross all the time, like I have.
Speaker 4: I have people nervously come up to me and be like,
Speaker 4: I'm such a fan of your work, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh my goodness, thank you. And I loved Alvin and
Speaker 4: the Chipmunks.
Speaker 1: I'm just not clear on whether Cubans believe the conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory that Fidel Castro is Justin Trudeau's father.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting point.
Speaker 1: Well, didn't Trump say that Ted Cruz's father was involved
Speaker 1: with Oswald and Cuba and trying to assassinate Kennedy.
Speaker 4: I have some bad news for you, Jerry, because I
Speaker 4: obviously believe that myself as well. But it turns out
Speaker 4: in the Trump hush money case, David Pecker revealed that
Speaker 4: that was actually made up, that they locked that up.
Speaker 1: Something was made up in the National Inquiry.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, God, and Ted Cruz has got to be livid, livid.
Speaker 2: Oh livid.
Speaker 4: He's so livid that he only triple extra endoors Trump
Speaker 4: for president.
Speaker 1: What was made up that Ted Cruz has a father,
Speaker 1: that Ted Cruz is a human being?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: I want to thank John and Adam for this episode
Speaker 1: in our special sponsor the Cuban Government.
Speaker 3: I thought it was going to be a cheesemaker mission.
Speaker 5: Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Sterner.
Speaker 2: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 1: This has been a
Speaker 5: Production of Abominable Pictures, an honorable mention for iHeart Podcasts.