Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis and
Speaker 2: joined with Robert Evans and Sophie Lichterman or Day one
Speaker 2: of the official RNC, the Republican National Convention. Robert, Sophie,
Speaker 2: how's your day? Ben?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm tired.
Speaker 2: It was a long day.
Speaker 3: It was very red, Yeah, a lot of red. It
Speaker 3: was very loud. The drinks were very expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got Sony free drinks yesterday and not today.
Speaker 3: No, not once you're in the convention center. I don't know.
Speaker 3: We were trapped in a room with a lot of
Speaker 3: people who had were either used car salesman or spiritually
Speaker 3: were used car salesman.
Speaker 2: Also a lot of people who want to kill me specifically.
Speaker 3: Yes, we'll talk about this that more later. Yeah, today,
Speaker 3: just structurally, what happened is, you know, it was a
Speaker 3: series of speeches. So you had first off, the big
Speaker 3: floor boat, right, So we got to watch all of
Speaker 3: the different had their delegates and they have to form
Speaker 3: even though everyone knows what's happening, they have to like
Speaker 3: formally follow Robert's rules of order or whatever and confirm
Speaker 3: that Trump is the nominee. And then they announce and
Speaker 3: confirm the VP, who you all know by now is
Speaker 3: jd Vance. We'll talk I might as well talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about him now. Jd Vance is a guy
Speaker 3: who in the wake of Trump's initial victory. He's a
Speaker 3: dude who came from Appalachia sort of part time, went
Speaker 3: to an Ivy League school, did some time in the Marines,
Speaker 3: and then made a bunch of money in business. And
Speaker 3: then when twenty sixteen happened and a lot of liberals
Speaker 3: were like, wow, how could Trump have won election? He
Speaker 3: capitalized by writing a book trying to explain the Appalation experience,
Speaker 3: even though again he only kind of lived there part
Speaker 3: time and mostly yeah, had abandoned those people, and that part,
Speaker 3: like the book is about him abandoning that part of
Speaker 3: his life as soon as he possibly can. Not a
Speaker 3: great book by my opinion, as someone who grew up
Speaker 3: in a really fucking poor town in the Deep South.
Speaker 1: But see, technically a millennial, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3: The first millennial who might become vice president.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of why I think he was picked.
Speaker 3: Agreed, Yeah, that's a big part of why.
Speaker 1: So it was time for them to announce jd Vance.
Speaker 1: They officially approved him. Delegates officially approved him, which happened
Speaker 1: very quickly, and he came out to Chance in Ohio,
Speaker 1: where he's from, was very stoked to have him there.
Speaker 1: Lots of chance of JD JD.
Speaker 3: You're right, he had a hype man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he advanced his way out there with his
Speaker 1: wife and looked emotional and yeah. All I know is
Speaker 1: that he really fucking hates lb gt QIA people and
Speaker 1: I really fucking ate him.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, Yeah, I mean he said that he kind
Speaker 3: of like turned the corner finally on what side, because
Speaker 3: he had said some anti Trump stuff once in the day,
Speaker 3: but he turned the corner.
Speaker 1: Who has his.
Speaker 3: Movie got really bad reviews? So if we wind up
Speaker 3: going into full fledged fascist dictatorship, we can blame Ron
Speaker 3: for some of that. And to be honest, we always
Speaker 3: knew that was going to be the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, valid, Yeah.
Speaker 3: After that, Yeah, Marjorie Taylor Green gave a speech, a
Speaker 3: couple other people, Tim Scott had a speech.
Speaker 1: So there was a break between sessions. We came back
Speaker 1: for the second session. The second session opens up with
Speaker 1: what I could only describe as I was like, Christopher Nolan,
Speaker 1: are you here?
Speaker 2: It was like a reception.
Speaker 1: Sounding music like, Wow, traumatized. Thank you for that dramatized
Speaker 1: video of like in a world, yeah, like showing crime
Speaker 1: and people losing money and women and babies crying.
Speaker 3: And then there's like literally bad clip art of money
Speaker 3: on fire, bad.
Speaker 1: Clip art of money on fire, and it's about It
Speaker 1: was like three to five minutes long, very long. Because
Speaker 1: I took a video of it.
Speaker 2: It felt like a really bad, like action thriller trailer
Speaker 2: could have been partly AI. There was sort of some
Speaker 2: stege animation towards the end because they were they had
Speaker 2: this camera that was sweeping through this fake city. It
Speaker 2: was all cg and it landed on this this this
Speaker 2: floodlight on top of a room, this broken flickering in
Speaker 2: the floodlight. Gears are turning, the music is ramping up,
Speaker 2: and finally it lightens and we see Trump, the Trump
Speaker 2: signal shining in the cloudy sky, calling calling the hero
Speaker 2: the mass Avenger as.
Speaker 1: If it was the bat signal from Batman.
Speaker 3: It was shameful.
Speaker 2: And then and then people loved it.
Speaker 3: They yeah, I got a great reaction. There's also a
Speaker 3: video of all the scenes. If you if you've ever
Speaker 3: seen clips from rallies, you've probably seen little clips of Trump,
Speaker 3: like fake dancing.
Speaker 2: Doing doing that weird dancer.
Speaker 3: He does his hand, he doesn't dance, he's excited, he's
Speaker 3: in a good mood.
Speaker 2: You know the dance.
Speaker 1: It's what we would describe as a little wiggle. Anyways,
Speaker 1: it was a very long.
Speaker 3: Wiggle video and people loved it.
Speaker 2: No, it looked like this is the type of video
Speaker 2: that liberals would post to make fun of Trump, and
Speaker 2: the fact that it was used as a hype video
Speaker 2: shows how useless that style of like political property end
Speaker 2: is like, No, you can't make fun of Trump for
Speaker 2: doing that little dance. That doesn't That doesn't do anything.
Speaker 3: You can't make There's no use in making fun of Trump.
Speaker 3: There is no value in satirizing him. There is no
Speaker 3: value in laughing at him. Like if it helps you personally,
Speaker 3: that's great, if you need that to get by, we
Speaker 3: all do it sometimes, but it is no, it does
Speaker 3: no damage to them, like the not to shit on
Speaker 3: John Oliver. But the Trump stuff was a wild and
Speaker 3: spectacular failure. None of it accomplished anything, and everybody who
Speaker 3: ever thought that you could make fun of Trump and
Speaker 3: have any positive impact was wrong, And you should feel
Speaker 3: a little bad I do.
Speaker 2: Because and because they used it as a hype video.
Speaker 2: They used it to stitch between their different musical acts,
Speaker 2: different segments, and oh boy, the music so that the
Speaker 2: music was better than the music at the at the
Speaker 2: welcome party that we talked about in our last episode.
Speaker 2: But that bar is not very high. It's all. It's
Speaker 2: also it's all country music, right, there's country music cover bands.
Speaker 3: It was not all country. No, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of like nineties stuff.
Speaker 2: There was a fucking it's played in the style of country.
Speaker 1: But there was some bye bye by your boat guy.
Speaker 3: There was the talk about they had a they had
Speaker 3: a Fleetwood Mac song someone did you was?
Speaker 1: There was like a essentially like the the run of
Speaker 1: the evening.
Speaker 2: And and country music. My apologies, it was dad rock
Speaker 2: and country music.
Speaker 1: You know what I have to tell you. We do
Speaker 1: not care enough to argue about this anyways. The music
Speaker 1: was fucking mid It was like the way because I
Speaker 1: of course, like a bunch of people have Texas today
Speaker 1: and been like, how is it? And the only way
Speaker 1: that we can describe it is if a normal person
Speaker 1: went to their favorite concert and and had great seeds, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh you were very happy. Is the same exact
Speaker 1: or you went to a Game seven of the NBA Finals.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the the reaction that the people in the
Speaker 1: crowd were having.
Speaker 2: It's a mix of like a sports event, a concert,
Speaker 2: and like a mega church. There was if there was
Speaker 2: some kind of concert that a whole bunch of boomers
Speaker 2: really enjoyed. That was the general vibe of the convention today,
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 3: Not all that different from how Trump rallies feel totally.
Speaker 3: It had it had that vibe, and it felt more
Speaker 3: more like a concert than the twenty sixteen RNC diad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there was also there was so much
Speaker 2: music in so few speeches. The speeches were only like
Speaker 2: two minutes long each and there would be like extended,
Speaker 2: like ten twenty minute musical performances in between each speech.
Speaker 2: Like mostly it's just it's just people playing songs on stage.
Speaker 2: That was most of the R and C today.
Speaker 1: There was there was several different speeches that came after
Speaker 1: those strange videos, and we'll get into that, but first
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to an ad break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're gonna play live us from the RNC.
Speaker 3: Well it was live when we recorded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as what I'm saying live us we were alive
Speaker 1: back then and now questionable talking about what we were
Speaker 1: experiencing in the moment.
Speaker 2: But first ads, Okay, we are back, and now we
Speaker 2: will tune in to our recording we made on the
Speaker 2: convention floor.
Speaker 1: Doun dun dun.
Speaker 2: Okay, we are well recording live, broadcasting a little bit later,
Speaker 2: but recording live on the ground at the Republican National Convention.
Speaker 2: We've had a very a very busy morning. It's now
Speaker 2: mid afternoon. We're in between sessions. The first session just
Speaker 2: wrapped up, and we thought we were we should record
Speaker 2: some of our immediate thoughts before our little debrief tonight.
Speaker 4: I guess let's start with Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, first off, my main overwhelming kind of takeaway
Speaker 3: is that the tone and tempo of this is a
Speaker 3: lot milder than I expected. And I think it's because
Speaker 3: the over majority of people here are extremely conservative, the
Speaker 3: most dedicated and active members of the party. But it's
Speaker 3: not like the Proud Boy Crew over Definitely some of
Speaker 3: those people here, but.
Speaker 2: These are electoralists.
Speaker 3: These are electoralists. Most of them are a lot older,
Speaker 3: you know. I would say the average age is somewhere
Speaker 3: between the late forties to the sixties of like people
Speaker 3: you encounter here, And it is interesting to me that
Speaker 3: I have not, you know, as soon as we, like
Speaker 3: we said yesterday, as soon as we landed, we saw
Speaker 3: a guy with a Trump after he got shot, sticking
Speaker 3: his fist in the airshirt. I haven't seen a ton
Speaker 3: of that on the ground here since. I've not seen
Speaker 3: a ton of it, nor have I seen a ton
Speaker 3: of direct references to it.
Speaker 1: I guess the sophie here, I think that guess the
Speaker 1: main reference that I've seen is when they did the delegate.
Speaker 4: Official photo, that would be the big one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they all turned around and raised their fist in
Speaker 1: the way that Donald Trump did after the attempted assassination,
Speaker 1: which was fascinating to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, especially given the lack of otherwise direct emphasis
Speaker 3: on what happened. And maybe that's coming up. I kind
Speaker 3: of do. The way I'm interpreting it now is because
Speaker 3: the thing that just dropped a few minutes ago is
Speaker 3: the FBI got into the shooter's phone. So far, preliminary
Speaker 3: findings nothing in there that makes it clear why he
Speaker 3: did it, So I kind of think they may just
Speaker 3: be sort of confused as to why one of their
Speaker 3: own seemingly carried out the shooting. Not really clear what
Speaker 3: the rhetoric on the shooters should be, but very clear
Speaker 3: on how they should respond to the Trump photo, Which
Speaker 3: is the primary takeaway from that is the photo is
Speaker 3: the pose, is him cementing his image as this indestructible,
Speaker 3: you know, man who's constantly under attack, right, And so
Speaker 3: it makes sense to me that they've adopted that hand sign,
Speaker 3: and I expect we'll see more of it, And boy, howdy,
Speaker 3: does it just look exactly like that the hand sign
Speaker 3: from the far right that everyone's familiar with.
Speaker 2: So as we were kind of in between speakers, they
Speaker 2: had this little band playing, and we happened to be
Speaker 2: sitting next to one of the younger people that I've
Speaker 2: seen attending the convention, but like still still like an adult,
Speaker 2: like a very young adult, maybe twenty one, maybe twenty
Speaker 2: at most.
Speaker 3: He couldn't have been older than twenty one, because he
Speaker 3: said this is his first election. He'll be able to
Speaker 3: vote in yes presidential election, so probably a little bit
Speaker 3: younger than me.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because yesterday we talked with some, you know,
Speaker 2: very old people, and today we talked with some very
Speaker 2: young people to yet and it's it is a it
Speaker 2: is an interesting contrast. So, yeah, this young conservative from
Speaker 2: from California but now lives in South Dakota and I
Speaker 2: don't know. We were asking him about, like what what
Speaker 2: focus he has in politics. He seemed really concerned about
Speaker 2: the economy. That was that was kind of his main
Speaker 2: his main.
Speaker 3: Issue, almost the only thing he wanted to talk about
Speaker 3: was the economy. He was one thing, I'll say, very
Speaker 3: good natured, like not in the I am doing the
Speaker 3: pr thing, I am trying to put on an image,
Speaker 3: but just in the not at all aggressive, did not
Speaker 3: react kind of negatively to the fact that we were media,
Speaker 3: which you get a lot of that at events like these.
Speaker 3: He expressed that the only places he gets his news
Speaker 3: is Fox and News Nation on TV. He is not
Speaker 3: on social media, which I found interesting and statistics suggest
Speaker 3: obviously that's not the norm, but it is a growing
Speaker 3: number of gen Z and Jen Alpha kids who avoid
Speaker 3: a lot of the internet.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's especially among conservatives. I mean, there is
Speaker 2: a lot of young conservatives who do get their news
Speaker 2: on TikTok, who do get their news. Podcasts are one
Speaker 2: of the biggest, biggest ways that young people to the
Speaker 2: right get their news obviously, like the Daily Wire is
Speaker 2: very dominant in the podcasting scene. But no, I find
Speaker 2: that very interesting, And I assuen that's probably like, you know,
Speaker 2: influenced by his family. You know, whatever is on, whatever's
Speaker 2: on the family TV.
Speaker 3: His uncle is about to be the mayor of Huntington Beach, California,
Speaker 3: and is the sheriff. Huntington Beach is the most conservative
Speaker 3: city in California, probably a pretty wide margin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, he expressed a lot of frustration that we
Speaker 2: were giving lots of money to Ukraine, that he felt
Speaker 2: that Zelenski was suspending on himself instead of on the military.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean he seemed like a good old
Speaker 2: Christian boy. He was very very in to the praying
Speaker 2: section of the night. I asked him and ed ed
Speaker 2: at some point when when JD. Vance was coming out
Speaker 2: on stage to be announcedly the official vice president, like
Speaker 2: if he thinks that they're gonna win this year, Like
Speaker 2: do you think that the Republicans are gonna win?
Speaker 4: And he said yes, if it's fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the same. That was the first thing
Speaker 3: I asked him, And that was the same answer he
Speaker 3: gave me. And you know, speaking of Vance, because Vance
Speaker 3: is my first thought and a lot of people's first thought,
Speaker 3: and I think this is probably the accurate thing to
Speaker 3: say about Vance. He does not provide a lot to Trump, right,
Speaker 3: He's not a guy who won by a wide margin.
Speaker 3: I'm not even confident he on his own does anything
Speaker 3: to deliver his state Ohio. But what this kid brought
Speaker 3: up and what I suspect Trump season him, because when
Speaker 3: I asked, what do you think about JD. Vance, he
Speaker 3: repeatedly said, I think he's loyal. I think he really
Speaker 3: likes Trump. I think he's loyal. And I did bring
Speaker 3: up the fact that Vance has said bad things about
Speaker 3: Trump in the past, and then he went on this
Speaker 3: thing where he was like, I think that DeSantis and
Speaker 3: Trump really like each other. It's all politics. And I
Speaker 3: wanted to say, how deranged, but then he was like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like Kamala and Joe. She was really
Speaker 3: mean to him during the debate and now she's his
Speaker 3: vice president. I was like, well, that's actually a pretty
Speaker 3: reasonable way to look at the situation. I don't know
Speaker 3: that I think it's actually accurate, but I see the
Speaker 3: logical through line there, and I was kind of you know,
Speaker 3: I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting when they were bringing out JD.
Speaker 1: Vance and he was dancing vamping. I'm going to call
Speaker 1: it dancing vancing advancing that. You know, they were quick
Speaker 1: to call out that he he was a marine, quick
Speaker 1: to call him a patriot, quick to call him a
Speaker 1: family man.
Speaker 4: And I think that's what he brings to the table.
Speaker 1: He brings those three things as well as his age,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that's what the GOP is focusing on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, other than that, there was a really weird
Speaker 1: prayer thing Gare.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That was after Vance came up. They did the benediction.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was what I could only express is a little
Speaker 2: bit like spiritually disturbing. All of like the led screens
Speaker 2: behind behind, like the speakers all flashed like very like
Speaker 2: Facebook esque like images of like you know, the Bible
Speaker 2: of like families praying, like kids glowing like glowing like
Speaker 2: like the heavenly glowing light, like the the the whole
Speaker 2: environment change from like you know, it's usually very like
Speaker 2: sports debate, you know, Red versus Blue. It's you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's very traditional like Americana, And it was a
Speaker 2: very it was a very intense shift to like to
Speaker 2: like this to this like a like strong like facebook
Speaker 2: Christianity almost. That's that's the best way I can I
Speaker 2: can describe it with words. And I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it was a typical Christian dominionist moment where you have
Speaker 2: you know, the the one of the largest of two
Speaker 2: political parties, just fully fully embracing the UH and fully
Speaker 2: you know, putting out that you know, this is this
Speaker 2: is a this is a religious party almost more than
Speaker 2: anything else. The religion is so important to the ceremony,
Speaker 2: and specifically not just any religions of course, just Christianity.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, they spent like almost like the
Speaker 2: last half of the prayer talking about Israel and you know,
Speaker 2: specifically saying the children of Abraham and the Holy City
Speaker 2: of Jerusalem and you know, all all of that kind of.
Speaker 3: Language prayer for the hostages.
Speaker 2: Talking about how the hostages are being kept against their will.
Speaker 2: But no, all the language reminds me a lot of
Speaker 2: like my childhood and the rhetoric around Israel as this
Speaker 2: place to secure so that so that you know.
Speaker 4: The prophecies can come true for Jesus'.
Speaker 2: Second coming, and like that that is that is the
Speaker 2: entire the entire bit.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to recall if there was a big benediction
Speaker 3: at the end after the twenty sixteen RNC when Pennce
Speaker 3: was nominated, and I'm sure there was, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: it doesn't stick out in my mind the way this
Speaker 3: one did.
Speaker 2: No, this will certainly stick stick out in my mind.
Speaker 2: Like everyone knows Republicans are, you know, the more Christian party,
Speaker 2: but just the the shar like a consensus about it here,
Speaker 2: just like everybody is, like even if they aren't themselves Christian,
Speaker 2: most people are, but like everyone in on this thing happening,
Speaker 2: it was. It was just a it was just an
Speaker 2: interesting moment contrasted to the overall, you know, like a
Speaker 2: concert kind of sports vibe that the rest of the
Speaker 2: convention kind of carries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the only other thing that I pointed
Speaker 1: out at one point, I went to get water and
Speaker 1: I came back and I mentioned right before we started
Speaker 1: to record, to both Gar and Robert, I was like,
Speaker 1: cops keep touching me and like putting their hand on
Speaker 1: my shoulder, and you know is one cop just wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to me about my day, and I was
Speaker 1: like trying to get water and going back into the convention.
Speaker 1: And then I mentioned that to Garon Robert and they
Speaker 1: both said that they've been touched quite a lot too,
Speaker 1: And I just think that's interesting to note. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't particularly like to be touched by strangers, especially cops.
Speaker 3: Mine has been on the shoulder by like a couple
Speaker 3: of different what I would describe them as, like uncle codd,
Speaker 3: guys who I don't know and was not talking to,
Speaker 3: just like walking past me and putting a hand on
Speaker 3: my shoulder, like like someone who is a family member
Speaker 3: would do casually, like a family event, you know, when
Speaker 3: you're on the way to do something else. But I've
Speaker 3: never met these people. We did not talk. That was odd.
Speaker 3: It hasn't happened to me before. Maybe everyone's just in
Speaker 3: a very good mood because they're that sure they're going
Speaker 3: to win. Maybe we just ran into a lot of
Speaker 3: creepy uncle types unclear.
Speaker 2: It'll be interesting to contrast with the DNC, But no,
Speaker 2: it certainly has been a pattern. There's a lot more
Speaker 2: like just casual touching here. And yeah, I think that
Speaker 2: is most of our thoughts right now. I guess that
Speaker 2: the last thing I guess I'll add is the young
Speaker 2: kid that we were talking to who was was very
Speaker 2: excited about about this, about this whole deal. As Vance
Speaker 2: was coming out and you know, the crowd was going
Speaker 2: crazy and everything, he very quietly remarked that he was
Speaker 2: like gonna start crying because it was just like so
Speaker 2: like an impactfully, I think it was. I think it
Speaker 2: was mostly to himself. He was just like acknowledging that
Speaker 2: verbally and then said he wants to become a cop
Speaker 2: and that just you know, that is that is the
Speaker 2: entire base. And then he was then immediately went into
Speaker 2: a very a very intense prayer posture during the prayer.
Speaker 4: And that's just a good portion of the country, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was interesting. We were talking about Ukraine for a
Speaker 3: while because his stance on it was he's fine with
Speaker 3: them getting weapons, but he's sure they're getting a lot
Speaker 3: of money that Zelensky is doing something shady with and
Speaker 3: generally felt like Zelensky wasn't fighting, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 3: It is kind of it makes sense to me if
Speaker 3: you've skimmed the way the right reports on Ukraine a lot,
Speaker 3: that would be his attitude. But He also said he
Speaker 3: wasn't supportive of yielding to Putin on any of Putin's demands.
Speaker 3: And then when I talked about because I chatted with
Speaker 3: him about some of my experiences in Ukraine, and when
Speaker 3: he found out that I had done more reporting, his
Speaker 3: first question was, have you ever been to Israel?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: That was interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, interesting, just immediately asked that. Oh, one other note,
Speaker 3: we did run into a fan of the show who
Speaker 3: was working, who was wearing a USS Liberty hat. Liberty
Speaker 3: was like a US Navy ship that was struck by Israel,
Speaker 3: and it's, you know, under very shady circumstances, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of like one of the better ways you could
Speaker 3: be publicly critical of the Israeli military, at least at
Speaker 3: the RNC, without most people knowing what you're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2: The very last thing I'll say is that right as
Speaker 2: we exited the first session, we ran into friend of
Speaker 2: the pod Ramaswami, who was who was a little shorter
Speaker 2: than I expected, a tall man, not a tall man.
Speaker 2: And I did ask the kid that were sitting next
Speaker 2: to you know, I'm curious about his thoughts on the
Speaker 2: future of the party and I asked him specifically about
Speaker 2: the VEK, and he said he likes for VEK because
Speaker 2: the BEC is a businessman, just like Trump, and he
Speaker 2: wants someone to run the country like a business.
Speaker 3: I should also note that the VEK was followed by
Speaker 3: a swarm of like I'm guessing, his entourage. All of them,
Speaker 3: nearly all of them, were very young men who I
Speaker 3: would describe as nick fuintes coded Yes, like like they
Speaker 3: really had that physiognomy to them. Groper types, Yeah, groper types,
Speaker 3: which JD vance. It's one of the things coming out
Speaker 3: right now is that he's in a group chat with
Speaker 3: a bunch of sixteen year old groper So I am
Speaker 3: excited for some of those, more of those chats to
Speaker 3: come out.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, back to future us talking about the
Speaker 2: rest of the Republican National Convention Day one.
Speaker 3: Wow, that sure was great. We had such a fun time.
Speaker 3: You know what else is fun? Here's some more ads.
Speaker 3: We're back to conclude. We got a couple of things
Speaker 3: to talk about. One of them is, you know, obviously
Speaker 3: we're at a convention. We don't have a car, We're
Speaker 3: taking ubers everywhere, we're eating at restaurants.
Speaker 2: And this has taken over almost all of the central
Speaker 2: area of Milwaukee, and there were.
Speaker 3: Because of a lot of fuck ups. For one thing,
Speaker 3: a lot of places that in downtown we're supposed to
Speaker 3: be booked are not booked. Businesses are not getting the
Speaker 3: kind of business they had expected to get during this
Speaker 3: because of some of those fuck ups. Yeah, and kind
Speaker 3: of most interesting to us so coming into this. One
Speaker 3: of the things the Republicans even put at billboards in
Speaker 3: Milwaukee over this, and this is a big thing that
Speaker 3: Trump is campaigning on to try to get service worker
Speaker 3: type people to vote for him, is no tax on tips,
Speaker 3: And to make a long story short, it works out
Speaker 3: to be much worse for service workers. Kind of the
Speaker 3: compromise here is that they can continue to pay far
Speaker 3: below minimum wage and there will be no attempts to
Speaker 3: raise that at all. And of course the kind of
Speaker 3: people who vote for Republicans don't tip by and large
Speaker 3: the workers. We have been talking to every Uber driver
Speaker 3: at all of the waiters waitresses that we've had, and
Speaker 3: pretty overwhelmingly nearly one hundred percent of them say like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're just not getting to.
Speaker 2: No one's tipping. The extreme negative views not just because
Speaker 2: of like the politics right, just.
Speaker 3: Because about more than half of them don't really care.
Speaker 2: To absolutely not, They're just doing business and like they're
Speaker 2: just they're these these are just bad patrons. These are
Speaker 2: simply people that are They're not nice to be around,
Speaker 2: interact like these types of events like the RNC the
Speaker 2: dn't see these are like cities campaign for this under
Speaker 2: the notion that this will like you know, boost local business. Right,
Speaker 2: We'll bring a whunch of people from out of town.
Speaker 2: People will get a lot of money to all these
Speaker 2: local businesses. And because of how the security set up
Speaker 2: this year in the in Milwaukee, so many businesses just
Speaker 2: can get no business because they're completely inside this like
Speaker 2: fence perimeter and UH and the rest are are not
Speaker 2: are not seeing very good business from what from from
Speaker 2: what it sounds like, and even even like hotels downtown
Speaker 2: are large largely vacant because of weird, weird scheduling area.
Speaker 1: We we went to dinner earlier tonight with some friends
Speaker 1: and we asked one of the restaurant workers like how
Speaker 1: it was going, and obviously she said the same thing
Speaker 1: that we've heard so many times, which is not great,
Speaker 1: not good, not making a lot of tips. But what
Speaker 1: was interesting is she said, you know, and they really
Speaker 1: tried to throw in our faces that this was going
Speaker 1: to be a good thing for all of us and
Speaker 1: we were all going to make a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: and it's happening. It's just not happening.
Speaker 3: And chatted to Timothy Faust, who was a writer, great writer,
Speaker 3: great guy, and a local here. We had dinner with him,
Speaker 3: and he pointed out that Milwaukee has been and was
Speaker 3: on the verge of bankruptcy still having a lot of
Speaker 3: problems with that, and a big part of why they
Speaker 3: took the RNC was because Republicans in the state legislature
Speaker 3: that was basically the bargaining point, so that they would
Speaker 3: allow a sales tax, which was kind of necessary in
Speaker 3: order to There's more to it than that, but a
Speaker 3: big part of like how the negotiations broke down was
Speaker 3: the Republicans wanted this in order to make it possible
Speaker 3: for the city of Milwaukee to not collapse because it
Speaker 3: was on the verge of bankruptcy. And hearing that made
Speaker 3: a lot of sense, made a lot of things click
Speaker 3: into place, because it does everyone we have talked to
Speaker 3: who is a local and who is working in any
Speaker 3: job that interfaces with the convention and convention goers talks
Speaker 3: like they've been scammed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just one more thing before we get into
Speaker 1: the rest of you know what we experienced speech wise
Speaker 1: and other is the difference in security today versus the outdoor.
Speaker 1: But we went to yesterday for the welcome party. Very surprising,
Speaker 1: very surprising. So just just the one to one example
Speaker 1: I'll give you listeners is yesterday they took every single
Speaker 1: item out of my bag that I had after putting
Speaker 1: through a scanner and unzipped everything. Today they zipped it
Speaker 1: up because they didn't want anything to fall out and
Speaker 1: didn't open it, didn't touch a single thing, went through
Speaker 1: a scanner. I was through security in like four seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it was. It was super weird, way more
Speaker 2: lax getting into the actual convention center than it was
Speaker 2: to get into the outdoor welcome party, which is just
Speaker 2: a It came off as a little little surprising to us.
Speaker 1: They had they made such a big deal about what
Speaker 1: you can and can't bring in and had specific measurements
Speaker 1: for like bags and stuff. But we saw people with
Speaker 1: some of the large, very very large backround, some bags
Speaker 1: that were bigger than me, and yeah, you know that's
Speaker 1: just interesting to note.
Speaker 2: One less thing on the service worker thing. On our
Speaker 2: ride home from the RNC or back to the hotel,
Speaker 2: we sat in anu Berg with a very nice man
Speaker 2: who I would describe as the average Wisconsin voter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he had he had a Teamsters shirt and you know
Speaker 2: of a variety of like of both liberal and kind
Speaker 2: of conservative opinions. You know, it's I think he kind
Speaker 2: of leaned more liberal, but he certainly had, you know,
Speaker 2: of of a variety of opinions. And he was both
Speaker 2: expressing the same thing in regards to tips, but also
Speaker 2: a men's frustration at the way police were treating locals.
Speaker 2: The way police were treating local drivers. Just the sheer
Speaker 2: influx of cops just to have have made have made
Speaker 2: functioning in this city just so challenging to any of
Speaker 2: these locals. And yeah, that was a very fascinating conversation
Speaker 2: that we might discuss that at a late time. Well,
Speaker 2: we will talk about now are Catholics those those little fiends?
Speaker 2: So after the very like evangelical Children of Abraham prayer
Speaker 2: that that we talked about in our in our archival audio,
Speaker 2: as soon as we came back for the second session,
Speaker 2: there was an opening prayer led by the Archbishop of Milwaukee,
Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting because a lot of the
Speaker 2: intendees here are very evangelical, these are not Catholics, and
Speaker 2: there you could definitely see there is you know, a
Speaker 2: little a little bit of groans amongst amongst some of
Speaker 2: these people.
Speaker 4: And I found a very.
Speaker 3: Interesting move to somebody who talked shit on the Catholics earlier.
Speaker 3: The l the old lady that we or at least
Speaker 3: that I was talking to last night at the party,
Speaker 3: made a couple of comments about Catholics because she doesn't
Speaker 3: believe they really worship Jesus because pop Catholics. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: well it's not even the papstries because Catholics. This is
Speaker 3: a thing that Born Again have an issue with Catholicism
Speaker 3: is don't believe you have to accept Christ to go
Speaker 3: to heaven. Like if you do good thing things, Catholics
Speaker 3: think you can go to heaven. Sure, And that is
Speaker 3: deeply offensive to a sizable chunk of the Christian community
Speaker 3: in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I found that very interesting. Wasn't really expecting
Speaker 2: to see an opening Catholic prayer and that that was
Speaker 2: I want to talk to some more more people tomorrow
Speaker 2: about that is Chance's Catholic. That that that makes it.
Speaker 2: That's probably why is a Catholic.
Speaker 3: Convert, just like the Red Scare Girl. He is a
Speaker 3: Catholic convert millennial who has taken a bunch of money
Speaker 3: from Peter.
Speaker 2: Teel many such cases. So one of the first people
Speaker 2: to speak after this archbishop was famed Republican figure Marjorie
Speaker 2: Taylor Green, who we could have a lot to say,
Speaker 2: but I think the first thing that I want to
Speaker 2: mention is that she feels more representative of most of
Speaker 2: the RNC attendees and anyone else who we've seen speak
Speaker 2: like she She has the same energy and vibe as
Speaker 2: most of the attendees like that, that is why they
Speaker 2: love her so much, because she is one of them,
Speaker 2: to the point where she she was like a Republican
Speaker 2: fan who just happened to get into office, and now
Speaker 2: she's this major figure.
Speaker 1: She was the.
Speaker 3: Mascot exactly and was a lot more popular than dance.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, in terms of floor reaction.
Speaker 2: No, she is. She is beloved among this crowd. She
Speaker 2: she's she is them right. The audience members can see her,
Speaker 2: and they can they can see themselves in her and
Speaker 2: she got the biggest reaction out of out of the crowd,
Speaker 2: probably saved for Trump making a short appearance, but her
Speaker 2: speech had the biggest reaction, and we will we will
Speaker 2: get to that now. One of the first things she
Speaker 2: said is you're talking about the assassination attempt and stuff.
Speaker 2: Is that Trump? She referred to him as the founding
Speaker 2: father of the America First Movement, which is a lot
Speaker 2: of interesting loaded language there. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: words there, a very extremely loaded language for the founding
Speaker 2: father of the America First Movement. She then spoke about
Speaker 2: the wonderful family man whose life was unfortunately cut short
Speaker 2: from getting shot in the attempted assassination attempt of Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: uh saying that that Corey embodied the America First spirit.
Speaker 2: But no, she she she had all of all of
Speaker 2: the typical lines that you would say about someone who
Speaker 2: was who was killed in an incident like this, And
Speaker 2: and then she talked about the thing that got the
Speaker 2: loudest applause out of anything else today, which is which
Speaker 2: is the whole gender ideology issue. She talked about how
Speaker 2: how President Biden turned Easter into Transvisibility Day, which is
Speaker 2: factually because Easter changes holidays, transvisibility days on the same day,
Speaker 2: you know, but Easter changes the actual day it's on.
Speaker 2: But that got a massive boo and there was people
Speaker 2: sitting next to us who were just shouting evil, just
Speaker 2: super loud sh shouting evil. And this is this is
Speaker 2: the most hyped up I've ever seen the crowd. You know,
Speaker 2: all the other mentions there were, there's a few other
Speaker 2: mentions about you know, men and women's sports, that kind
Speaker 2: of thing that got you know, the big, biggest, the
Speaker 2: biggest booze and the biggest cheers, like respectively. You know,
Speaker 2: people saying there are only two genders. We're brave enough
Speaker 2: to say it, We're gonna keep saying it. That hyped
Speaker 2: up the crowd just just more than anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, life be clear here, there are only
Speaker 1: two genders, and the crowd went just nuts bananas.
Speaker 3: She right after that made a statement about needing to
Speaker 3: stop sending money to Ukraine, that Zelensky was going to
Speaker 3: embezzle or something about half the volume, not not.
Speaker 2: Not a tiny compared to the rest of the cheering
Speaker 2: of a pretty loud reaction.
Speaker 3: Like not a bad reaction, but it was clearly about
Speaker 3: half the volume with the anti transfer and mind.
Speaker 2: You listeners, she spoke for like what it was like
Speaker 2: three minutes top.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would be surprised if the whole speech typed
Speaker 3: out was more than about a page.
Speaker 2: No, it was wild.
Speaker 1: She's basically a bullet point list of like hate speech.
Speaker 3: If I kind of want to go back through video
Speaker 3: of the I remember the speeches at the twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: R and C being longer, but that's a million years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, she had, you know, the the usual comments
Speaker 2: about you know, how we have to stop the globalists,
Speaker 2: the wealthy and the powerful few, which is just which
Speaker 2: is just an interesting thing to speak to an RNC
Speaker 2: crowd because it's one of the most powerful thing, the wealthy,
Speaker 2: powerful few. You are talking to them and her the
Speaker 2: line that came right before this was talking about how
Speaker 2: how we have to stand up against the establishment who
Speaker 2: promise unity but promote division. And I'm like, this is
Speaker 2: this is this is the most We're all trying to
Speaker 2: find the guy who did this moment ever, right You're
Speaker 2: you're talking about how there's there's these these powerful establishment
Speaker 2: figures who talk about unity but actually just promote division,
Speaker 2: and like you were, you were talking about yourself and
Speaker 2: all the times that these like these like people who
Speaker 2: work in Washington start bashing like the establishment and stuff
Speaker 2: like you you are the establishment, that is you, that
Speaker 2: that is your job, but that those are very very
Speaker 2: common talking points and stuff like that. I'm sure many
Speaker 2: listeners are familiar with this, with this sort of like
Speaker 2: double speak. And yeah, that was her speech. Definitely the
Speaker 2: biggest reaction we saw the crowd have Trump and his
Speaker 2: family made a very brief appearance, kind of kind of
Speaker 2: a surprise appearance, but to some people's surprise, he didn't
Speaker 2: He didn't actually give a speech. He instead, i think,
Speaker 2: took which was the smarter play, show up with a
Speaker 2: very large bandage on his ear and instead sit down
Speaker 2: and listen, just become part of the audience. It's an
Speaker 2: interesting movely. He didn't immediately like take over the convention. No,
Speaker 2: he's kind of playing this more like statesman role.
Speaker 1: He almost looked like he was tearing up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was sitting in the crowd.
Speaker 3: Quiet, subdued. Even Yep, he looked worried at point.
Speaker 2: Worried, anxious or somber.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised if it was
Speaker 3: a natural reaction to being in your first crowd after
Speaker 3: being shot and nearly died.
Speaker 2: Yeact the last time you were in a crowd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like he is a person, right, That's just how
Speaker 3: people react, just oftentimes when that kind of thing happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. He was sitting next to Carlson, JD.
Speaker 2: Vans and Michael and and Mike Johnson with his kids
Speaker 2: sitting behind him.
Speaker 3: Look, when you have a near death experience, you know,
Speaker 3: when somebody somebody shoots at you and damn near hits,
Speaker 3: it crystallizes a lot. You know what's really important, and
Speaker 3: you also know what you don't want to waste your
Speaker 3: time with anymore. And that's that's why the Trump kids
Speaker 3: were in the back of that crowd. He doesn't want
Speaker 3: them anywhere near him. Life is short.
Speaker 1: I just want to point out what they showed Trump
Speaker 1: on the screen with with Mike Tucker and who is
Speaker 1: the fourth person.
Speaker 2: Oh, Jenniebants.
Speaker 1: I've already forgot. His face curiously goes nightmare blood rotation,
Speaker 1: and they are correct.
Speaker 2: And that that that was day one of the convention.
Speaker 3: That I do want to get into one other thing
Speaker 3: because this again we had our big don't panic episode
Speaker 3: a day or two before that, you wild heard one
Speaker 3: episode in between those two and posting stuff today, posting
Speaker 3: comments on like how extreme the rhetoric is. I see
Speaker 3: people getting scared again, you should like you should be
Speaker 3: very concerned to hear is not an unreasonable reaction to
Speaker 3: seeing all this happen. But this is also something that
Speaker 3: I think will contextualize the scale of the actual number
Speaker 3: of people that we're talking about here. When we were sitting,
Speaker 3: we found a quiet place to record the middle bit
Speaker 3: that you heard. So we were in kind of an
Speaker 3: empty area, and I would say close to half of
Speaker 3: the or about right about half, maybe even a little
Speaker 3: more of the actual stadium was empty, uh, And most
Speaker 3: of them were clustered in the area that had And
Speaker 3: so there were a lot of areas where there's just
Speaker 3: absolutely nobody. And several times, what was it, three or
Speaker 3: four times, so if you probably we had different people
Speaker 3: who were I either worked for the RNC or worked
Speaker 3: for the venue come by, but I'm guessing the rn
Speaker 3: C just because of their general vibe, yeah, and because
Speaker 3: the lanyards, yeah, to try to get us too. Because
Speaker 3: even the areas that were full had a lot of
Speaker 3: patches in them. They weren't all that full, so they
Speaker 3: wanted to get us to get up from the empty
Speaker 3: areas and move to fill in the areas that were
Speaker 3: going to be on camera, so it looked like it
Speaker 3: was fuller, and they did that because it was not
Speaker 3: very full. Now, as someone, it's not very full because
Speaker 3: this is a political convention. It is not open to
Speaker 3: the masses. I don't know that it would have filled up.
Speaker 3: It was open to the masses, but there's an inherently
Speaker 3: limited guest list. But it did seem to be less
Speaker 3: people than I recall from the twenty sixteen RNC, and
Speaker 3: more to the point, everything that you see and everything
Speaker 3: we're talking about, and all of the extremity and the
Speaker 3: weirdness of these in a lot of cases freaks, assholes,
Speaker 3: creeps that we see. This is a couple of thousand
Speaker 3: of the most dedicated Republicans in the country. This is
Speaker 3: the elite of the party. These are the people who
Speaker 3: have a lot of the money, if not most of it,
Speaker 3: and a lot do a lot of the nuts and
Speaker 3: bolts of making the Republican Party run. These are not
Speaker 3: representative of most of the people who live around you,
Speaker 3: unless you live in a place that is real hardcore
Speaker 3: Trump country, in which case a lot of these folks
Speaker 3: are familiar. But they but they got a lot more
Speaker 3: money than your neighbors, I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, And it is worth pointing on that they
Speaker 2: were trying to make an effort to move people around
Speaker 2: to make the seats look more full, because also everything
Speaker 2: that we're also seeing is theater. There's all these rituals
Speaker 2: that they're doing to confirm the confirm the nomination. It's
Speaker 2: like it's it's a very it's very ritualized, a very
Speaker 2: theatrical experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There is one point where Robert and Gear were
Speaker 1: walking around and I was sitting in our intersection by myself,
Speaker 1: and I had three separate twenty something males come up
Speaker 1: to me to try to give me Trump signs, and uh,
Speaker 1: all three, in a very unsettling way, pointed out that
Speaker 1: I was sitting alone and it made me feel very unsafe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome to the Republican Party, so correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as they pointed out earlier, definitely a lot
Speaker 1: of unwanted touching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he you know, welcome to the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: And you know what, it's a lot of unwanted touching.
Speaker 3: Unwanted touching is essentially part of the main party platform.
Speaker 1: It literally and it is only day one.
Speaker 2: It is day one, four, well, three more to go
Speaker 2: and we will be covering it a night.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with morey. Any final thoughts anyone?
Speaker 2: Nope, nope, Tip your service workers.
Speaker 1: And wash your hands. It could Happen here as a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.