Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here? Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 2: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 2: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis to name,
Speaker 2: joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and Robert Evans. This
Speaker 2: episode recovering the week February eleventh to February eighteenth. Some
Speaker 2: small news items up top. Last week, the FDA declined
Speaker 2: to review a new flu vaccine from Maderna. On February twelfth,
Speaker 2: Tom Hoeman announced that Operation Metro Surge has concluded and
Speaker 2: quote significant drawdown has already been underway this week and
Speaker 2: will continue through the next week.
Speaker 3: Un quote.
Speaker 2: Zarmamdani has ordered a new audit of city agencies to
Speaker 2: ensure compliance with sanctuary city laws in New York and
Speaker 2: Stephen Colbert says that CBS refused to air his interview
Speaker 2: with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Tallerico, citing the FCC's
Speaker 2: equal time rule. Despite this rule historically having an exception
Speaker 2: for late night talk show interviews. Last month, FCC Chairman
Speaker 2: Brendan Carr threatened to enforce the rule regardless of the
Speaker 2: well established President that excluded talk show interviews. And finally,
Speaker 2: the owner of a warehouse facility in Hutchins, Texas, so
Speaker 2: so that they won't sell or lease the building to
Speaker 2: the federal government as a detention facility. The city's mayor
Speaker 2: and council all opposed the project. Seizure by eminent domain
Speaker 2: is still possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I guess with that, there's been campaigns in
Speaker 4: a couple of other small, traditionally conservative rural areas to
Speaker 4: not lease facilities for ICE. And it's still a little unclear,
Speaker 4: and I suspect it's kind of column A columbee. How
Speaker 4: much of this is, you know, nimbiism and how much
Speaker 4: of this is resistance to ICE specifically.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we covered a little of that in the episode
Speaker 5: I did on Social Circle, which is in Georgia last week.
Speaker 6: But I think it's fair to say both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And obviously when I say nimbism, I don't mean
Speaker 4: it in a bad way.
Speaker 3: It's bad to have this in your bag.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, But like their issue was into moral one
Speaker 4: in some cases, Yeah.
Speaker 6: In some cases.
Speaker 5: I think in some cases it's their little columny, little
Speaker 5: column B.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard to tell.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think like It's worth noting, for instance,
Speaker 5: hearing in southern California right a town called Dulzura, pretty
Speaker 5: small town. Maybe you've heard of it from when the
Speaker 5: KKK did border patrols there back in the day. But
Speaker 5: the Border patrol are trying to build a big new
Speaker 5: facility there and have been for some time called New
Speaker 5: brown Field. There has been local opposition to that among
Speaker 5: people who are very like people who I have spoken
Speaker 5: to are otherwise conservative, and like, some of it is, yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't want this changing the character of the town.
Speaker 5: I don't want a giant detention center that would eclipse
Speaker 5: the population of this very small town. Some of it
Speaker 5: is also like I want them to be locking up
Speaker 5: people out here. We have a nice life out here,
Speaker 5: and you know, we have little lots of fields and
Speaker 5: horses and space, and it seems like it would be
Speaker 5: really fucked.
Speaker 6: Up to have people detained out here.
Speaker 5: Like I think like that that Nimby impulse can sometime
Speaker 5: like could still combine with even people who are not
Speaker 5: you know, abolitionists. They don't want to be confronted with
Speaker 5: the horrors directly next to them.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: And we'll talk a little bit more about the numbers
Speaker 4: like ICE's polling numbers, like how popular they are with Americans.
Speaker 4: But one of the things we've seen this year is
Speaker 4: that like they've been shedding support even from Republicans. So like,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever debate we have here, that's like certainly
Speaker 4: not a non factor.
Speaker 6: Definitely.
Speaker 4: I think it's now time for us to talk about
Speaker 4: the biggest news story this week, which is that Shilah
Speaker 4: buff was arrested in New Orleans during Marty Graw after
Speaker 4: getting into.
Speaker 3: A series of fights. Who he was in the movie Holes?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was also in a different production called Holes,
Speaker 4: but not based on a book.
Speaker 2: He was in Holes.
Speaker 3: I forgot, Yeah, it was in both holes.
Speaker 6: So I don't know who this person is.
Speaker 4: I've never Yeah, he's a he's a child actor who
Speaker 4: is a who was very popular during the early two
Speaker 4: thousands and has gone. He played the Indiana Jones's son
Speaker 4: in the reboot event or in the new in the
Speaker 4: fourth Indiana Jones movie God and then he has He
Speaker 4: has since kind of fallen into madness and disrepute. He's
Speaker 4: a spousal abuser. He's repeatedly assaulted people in public. He
Speaker 4: showed up on that webcam white supremacists were drinking milk
Speaker 4: on once for reasons that are still to this day
Speaker 4: somewhat unclear to me. And he got into a fight
Speaker 4: in Marty Gras, which is just just just a fun
Speaker 4: little bit of news. My favorite part of this is
Speaker 4: that he assaulted a guy. He was repeatedly restrained by
Speaker 4: members of a bar, and whenever they would let him
Speaker 4: go because they just wanted him to leave they didn't
Speaker 4: want to call the cops, he would then continue to
Speaker 4: attack the guy he was assaulting until they forced they
Speaker 4: were forced to call the police and have him arrested.
Speaker 4: And I've been in Marty Gras over the last few days,
Speaker 4: and let me tell you, getting arrested by the police
Speaker 4: during Marty Gras not easy. I don't have a lot
Speaker 4: to say about that other than I was surprised by
Speaker 4: the number of very political floats that I saw, particularly
Speaker 4: at least one that was entirely paper mache ice guy's
Speaker 4: in a very like, non flattering way. There were a
Speaker 4: lot of like costumes and a number of like references
Speaker 4: on floats. There's a couple of pretty hideous caricatures of
Speaker 4: Trump on floats, and they all got like a widely
Speaker 4: positive reaction and I find this interesting, and I'm bringing
Speaker 4: this up because the research that I've largely been doing
Speaker 4: for the EED this week is trying to get a
Speaker 4: handle on, like where Americans are polling right now and
Speaker 4: how popular or unpopular is the president and his agenda,
Speaker 4: because like we see articles every week about like Trump's
Speaker 4: polls hit a new low, or the most recent article
Speaker 4: that I think it's gallup is no longer going to
Speaker 4: be doing presidential like popularity polling. But I wanted to
Speaker 4: get a look at, like how the actual parties and
Speaker 4: their agendas are holding up. And it's a pretty shocking
Speaker 4: gap between I mean September October, like fall of last
Speaker 4: year and today. So in September of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: per Yugov, the Democratic Party had about a sixty four
Speaker 4: percent unfavorable So like sixty four percent of polled Americans
Speaker 4: didn't like the Democratic Party and a little less than
Speaker 4: thirty four percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party. And if you actually look at the
Speaker 4: graphs for those that you GOV presents, they're basically making
Speaker 4: like a wineglass shape, right, So what that means is
Speaker 4: unfavorability is moving up and favorability is moving down rapidly,
Speaker 4: like at the time at which those bulls were taken
Speaker 4: in September of last year. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, neither
Speaker 4: party was popular, but the Republican Party the wineglass shape
Speaker 4: was a lot more muted, more like a shot glass.
Speaker 4: Fifty five point four percent of Americans pulled by Yugov
Speaker 4: expressed a unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, at about
Speaker 4: forty two point three expressed a favorable opinion. You can
Speaker 4: compare this to October twenty twenty five polling by Pew Research,
Speaker 4: which showed something similar. Sixty four percent of Americans were
Speaker 4: frustrated with the Republican Party, Seventy five percent of Americans
Speaker 4: reported being frustrated with the Democratic Party. Forty nine percent
Speaker 4: of Americans poll replied that they were angry at the
Speaker 4: Republican Party, Fifty percent reported being angry at the Democratic Party. Similarly, Republicans,
Speaker 4: thirty six cent of Americans felt hopeful about the Republican Party,
Speaker 4: twenty eight percent of Americans felt hopeful about the Democratic Party,
Speaker 4: and then twenty seven percent of Americans were proud of
Speaker 4: the Republican Party sixteen percent Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: Those are pretty bleak numbers.
Speaker 4: For the Democrats coming in the fall of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Like that is kind of black pilling stuff, right. This
Speaker 4: was in the fall of last year, pretty rapid change
Speaker 4: fro where things had been about four years ago. For example,
Speaker 4: in September of twenty twenty one, about sixty four percent
Speaker 4: of Americans had expressed frustration with the Dimmerocratic Party as
Speaker 4: opposed to seventy five percent four years later.
Speaker 3: So that's all fall of last year.
Speaker 4: Now, between when the polls that I read to you
Speaker 4: came out and now we've had a cup several major
Speaker 4: things happen. One of the more significant was the long shutdown,
Speaker 4: which was disasters for Republican favorability and for Trump's own favorability.
Speaker 4: And we also had a significant I mean, obviously in
Speaker 4: LA and in Chicago. Ice had been doing very terrible
Speaker 4: and very like you know, I guess I should say,
Speaker 4: like documented crimes, like horrible things that were spread widely
Speaker 4: on social media. But that has also accelerated massively in
Speaker 4: the first couple of weeks of twenty twenty six. And
Speaker 4: what we're seeing now in more recent polls taken in
Speaker 4: late January and from anywhere from like kind of early
Speaker 4: January to late January and early February is a significant reversal.
Speaker 4: So NBC News's Decision desk collated a bunch of different
Speaker 4: polls like Daily Mail, Marquette, Wall Street, Journal, Yahoo, you
Speaker 4: go of Fox News, Emerson, and over the last month
Speaker 4: or so, you're looking at an average spread of all
Speaker 4: of these polls of about negative nineteen point nine percent
Speaker 4: favorability for the Republican Party and about negative twelve point
Speaker 4: eight percent favorability for the Democratic Party. So when you
Speaker 4: think back to those numbers from last fall, that's a
Speaker 4: pretty dramatic change, and it kind of correlates to a
Speaker 4: dramatic change in Trump's own favorability, which has gone down
Speaker 4: by about twelve percent per the average of those polls
Speaker 4: that kind of aggregated by NBC Newsdesk.
Speaker 3: Their article notes quote.
Speaker 4: Ipso's polling released in late January found fifty one percent
Speaker 4: of Americans say Trump's immigration policy is on the wrong track. Amazingly,
Speaker 4: just a year ago, American said Republicans have a better plan, policy,
Speaker 4: and approach than Democrats on immigration by a twenty two
Speaker 4: point margin. Now that advantage is down to five points.
Speaker 4: So while Trump is underwater with immigration his and the
Speaker 4: Republican Party. These policies towards immigration are still more popular
Speaker 4: than the Democratic Party's responses to immigration, but they have
Speaker 4: also collapsed in terms of like. The gap between those
Speaker 4: two things, again, twenty two point margin to a five
Speaker 4: point lead is a is a pretty dramatic narrowing. And
Speaker 4: one of the things that has come along with this
Speaker 4: is an increasing agreement among Americans that ICE has not
Speaker 4: only gone too far, but needs to be if not
Speaker 4: abolished entirely, then severely curtailed, and a lot of Americans
Speaker 4: a shocking amount currently support abolishing ICE entirely. A PBS
Speaker 4: News NPR Merist poll released recently found that a majority
Speaker 4: of Americans feel ICE is making the country less safe
Speaker 4: and has gone too far. Six in ten Americans disapprove
Speaker 4: of what ICE is doing, only about three in ten
Speaker 4: approve of it, So by a two to one margin,
Speaker 4: Americans disapprove ICE's operations to approve of their behavior. This
Speaker 4: is a very like political breakdown. About ninety one percent
Speaker 4: of Democrats disapprove of ICE, sixty cent of Independence disapprove
Speaker 4: of ICE. Meanwhile, seventy three percent of Republicans approve of ICE.
Speaker 4: But even that number has dropped fairly recently.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: In fact, the percentage of Americans that believe Ice hasn't
Speaker 4: gone far enough dropped from eighteen percent to twelve percent
Speaker 4: over the last year, and only about twenty two percent
Speaker 4: of Americans feel like Ice is doing a good job
Speaker 4: compared to twenty six percent of Americans a year ago.
Speaker 4: So we're seeing like pretty unequivocally Americans rejecting the Republican
Speaker 4: tactics on immigration, and they tend to be blaming Ice
Speaker 4: for it, right Like. That's one of the things that's
Speaker 4: most interesting to me is that both Ice and President
Speaker 4: Trump have seen the most dramatic collapses in public support,
Speaker 4: which suggests to me that, like, Americans are kind of
Speaker 4: tying these two things together. Currently, per Yugov, as of
Speaker 4: January twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, more Americans support abolishing
Speaker 4: ICE than oppose it. Now, this has not mean a
Speaker 4: majority of American support abolishing ICE. I've seen some people
Speaker 4: mistate that forty six percent of US adults, as pulled
Speaker 4: by Yugov, somewhat or strongly support abolishing Ice, twelve percent
Speaker 4: are not sure, forty one percent somewhat or strongly oppose
Speaker 4: abolishing ice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's still pretty striking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, say a plurality, right, Maybe now would be a
Speaker 5: good time to talk a little bit about like where Democrats,
Speaker 5: different Democrats are, different wings of the Democrat Party are
Speaker 5: on abolishing ice, because I think it's one of these
Speaker 5: areas where like the further up the party you go,
Speaker 5: the more detached from that public opinion you get. So
Speaker 5: maybe you will start the Keem Jeffries, Democrat leader in
Speaker 5: the House, hit him on the Joy Reid Show on
Speaker 5: the topic of abolishing ice.
Speaker 7: Why not lead and say abolish ice? Because what you're
Speaker 7: telling us is you want our taxpayer dollars to pay
Speaker 7: for a lawless, massed armed agency to continue terrorizing our cities.
Speaker 7: And I'm trying to figure out how you, as a
Speaker 7: leader can be telling Americans that their taxpayer dollars should
Speaker 7: be going twice, I don't.
Speaker 8: Understand anything that you just said when I've moved English, well,
Speaker 8: I don't understand anything that you've just said to me
Speaker 8: when I've made clear that taxpayer dollars should be used
Speaker 8: to make life more affordable for the American people, not
Speaker 8: brutaliz or kill them. That's the whole reason we're in
Speaker 8: this fight right now. That's the whole reason the DHS
Speaker 8: is getting ready to shut down.
Speaker 3: That's abolish abolish ice.
Speaker 8: That is a listen. I'm going to use the language
Speaker 8: that I want to use. You can use the language
Speaker 8: that you want to use.
Speaker 5: You can see Jeffries visibly kind of tense when the
Speaker 5: phrase abolish ice is used, right like, he's yeah, he
Speaker 5: wants nothing to do with it. The immediate responses is
Speaker 5: to go to affordability. I do want to note that
Speaker 5: when he was previously asked if he would use the
Speaker 5: appropriations process to rain in eyes, he did exactly the
Speaker 5: same thing.
Speaker 7: But why not use the appropriations as to rain in ice, leadergen.
Speaker 5: For an operation?
Speaker 9: No, what I'm what I'm focused on right now, Chad,
Speaker 9: is to make life better for the American people by
Speaker 9: extending the affordable care and tax credits, which, by the way,
Speaker 9: a lot of folks in this institution believe was not possible.
Speaker 9: But Democrats made clear before the government was shut down
Speaker 9: that we were in this fight until we win this
Speaker 9: fight on behalf of the American lower the cost, save
Speaker 9: health care.
Speaker 3: That's our objection.
Speaker 5: Why there, he does the same thing, right, he goes
Speaker 5: back to affordability, which is something that Democrats have done
Speaker 5: for the last year and a half right when asked
Speaker 5: to take a strong leadership stance and ice, far too
Speaker 5: much of their leadership has instead like tried to deflect
Speaker 5: to affordabilit I do want to note that, like they
Speaker 5: are now doing exactly what he was deflecting from there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that was only less than a month ago.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because it's like this cowardice on like specific
Speaker 2: terms and messaging. Yeah, even though they are using the
Speaker 2: provisions process to try to rain an ice like that
Speaker 2: is that, Yeah, that is what they are doing now.
Speaker 2: But it's like a complete complete cowardice or actually like yeah,
Speaker 2: trying to like use like public pressure to your advantage
Speaker 2: at the moment, Like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's doing the thing and almost like failing to
Speaker 5: It's not that he's doing the thing, you know, as
Speaker 5: many of us would wish he did, but like he's
Speaker 5: failing to take the easy win. Yeah, like because of
Speaker 5: like you say this like institutional cowardice or like these
Speaker 5: it's like there's some kind of red line rhetorically for
Speaker 5: jeffrees and other leadership Democrats that they will not cross.
Speaker 5: And I have to believe that some of that comes
Speaker 5: from what they see as like the long legacy of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Or like perceptions of the Democratic Party is like too
Speaker 2: far to the left, is too extreme or something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they that, like specifically the perception that they like
Speaker 5: attempted to abolish the institution of policing, which was not
Speaker 5: really anything that they had that was not in their
Speaker 5: policy platform. Right, they were not Democrat leaders saying We're
Speaker 5: going to do away with the cops. In fact, Biden
Speaker 5: was talking about how we need to fund the police,
Speaker 5: not defund the police in twenty twenty.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But nonetheless, like that, there seems to be this real,
Speaker 5: like it's very hard for them to break that rhetorical boundary.
Speaker 5: It's not entirely just jeffreyes on this. Seven Dems cross
Speaker 5: party lines in late January to vote for a DHS
Speaker 5: funding bill. So we got Representative Henry Quella of Texas.
Speaker 10: Worst the worst Democratic congressman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shit, fucking.
Speaker 5: Texas Deems hit different and like specifically like Rio Grande
Speaker 5: Valley Democrats are a different breed.
Speaker 10: God, it sucks so much.
Speaker 5: There's Jared Golden of Maine, Mary Glousen camp Perez Washington,
Speaker 5: Laura Gillen, Don Davis of North Carolina, Lauri Gillan is
Speaker 5: New York, Tom Swosey of New York, and Vicente Gonzales
Speaker 5: of Texas.
Speaker 6: This is not it.
Speaker 5: There's not a position that is unique to Jeffrey's right, Like,
Speaker 5: this's this idea that like, perhaps there needs to be
Speaker 5: some reform of ICE, but bit abolishing it would go
Speaker 5: far too far. Other Democrats have introduced an act which
Speaker 5: would essentially move funding from ICE to local law enforcement.
Speaker 5: So it would take that seventy five billion dollar budget
Speaker 5: allocation to ICE and move it to local cops.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: This is called the Providing Useful Budgets for Localities to
Speaker 5: invest in cops by substituting six appropriations from federal enforcement
Speaker 5: to yield results Act.
Speaker 11: Holy shit, Now, wonder these people's favorabilities like negative onondrillion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good word.
Speaker 5: It's what we call a backronym in that they have
Speaker 5: started with the word public safety and then made a
Speaker 5: really horrendous attempt turning that into an acronym. There is
Speaker 5: also like a wing of the Democratic Party right there
Speaker 5: on the left, which is more forthright about abolishing ICE.
Speaker 5: His clip of AOC talking about why I should be abolished.
Speaker 5: And this is at an event in Queen's Yeah.
Speaker 12: ICE is a very young agency relative to many others.
Speaker 12: Enforcements of people who committed crimes that were undocumented or
Speaker 12: had visas used to be under the Department of Justice.
Speaker 12: And in the Department of Justice, if someone wants to
Speaker 12: come to your house, you need a judge. You mean,
Speaker 12: you need an entire judicial process, You need a warrant
Speaker 12: to ensure that your constitutional liberties would take are respected.
Speaker 12: You need all of it. What they did was that
Speaker 12: they took ICE out, well, they took Immigration enforcement out
Speaker 12: of the DOJ, which had very tight rains on what
Speaker 12: you're allowed to do. They take that they put it
Speaker 12: into this new agency that they put at the time,
Speaker 12: which is a Department of Homeland Security. First of all,
Speaker 12: in what world does FEMA belong under the same umbrella
Speaker 12: as ICE. It makes no sense at all, no sense
Speaker 12: at all. And what happened is that once you take
Speaker 12: that enforcement piece out of that agency, they then start
Speaker 12: to answer to nobody. Even though I technically, statutorily their
Speaker 12: responsibility is just supposed to be on immigration enforcement. They
Speaker 12: are now expanding their data collection to US citizens, to
Speaker 12: everyone on this soil.
Speaker 2: They are waiving.
Speaker 12: These phones around and saying that they're implementing facial recognition
Speaker 12: technology to a centralized database. We have to fight this
Speaker 12: tooth and nail. We need to defund it. We need
Speaker 12: to not allow this to be collected by private companies.
Speaker 12: A lot of what we need to do is not
Speaker 12: just revisit Session seven oh two. We need to abolish ICE,
Speaker 12: and we need to have complemented.
Speaker 13: Changes block that up.
Speaker 2: One thing I do want to note about her statements
Speaker 2: is that during the appropriations process, she did give statements
Speaker 2: about how she was pushing to defund ICE as an agency,
Speaker 2: and this did cause a reaction from some i'll call
Speaker 2: them over the online leftists, claiming that it had changed
Speaker 2: positions from wanting to abolish to defund, that this is
Speaker 2: some sort of slide. And then she then had to
Speaker 2: follow up with saying, well, currently, the way to restrict
Speaker 2: ICE and lead to abolishing it is through defunding it.
Speaker 2: So that's what we're doing through the appropriations process. No,
Speaker 2: my position has not changed. I still think think the
Speaker 2: agency should be abolished.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a broad issue we had, which was that
Speaker 4: at the end of twenty twenty, as a result of
Speaker 4: all of the federal agents that were in American cities
Speaker 4: and had been video brutalizing citizens and places like Portland,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of anger about DHS.
Speaker 3: In particular.
Speaker 4: I wrote a column for Business Insider about like, look,
Speaker 4: this agency is going to remain under Biden, but if
Speaker 4: we don't cut the legs out from under the entire agency,
Speaker 4: it's basically set up to be the president's secret police.
Speaker 4: And broadly speaking, the Democrats didn't do anything to stop it.
Speaker 4: But I also, like, I guess where I am on
Speaker 4: this is. I think it's kind of counterproductive at this point.
Speaker 4: The failures of the Biden administration, I think are quite
Speaker 4: manifest in what the Trump administration is doing right now.
Speaker 4: And what I want to focus on is the fact
Speaker 4: that we've had, in the space of several months, Americans
Speaker 4: become more than twice as likely to support abolishing ICE,
Speaker 4: which is both a fragile coalition because the fact that
Speaker 4: the number has changed so rapidly means that it could
Speaker 4: potentially change back. Like, I don't feel solid in counting
Speaker 4: on that to be the permanent state of affairs, but
Speaker 4: it introduces an opportunity, and it's an opportunity to build
Speaker 4: support to destroy this agency. And I think it's probably
Speaker 4: too much to hope for DHS as a whole and
Speaker 4: anything close to the near term. But the fact that
Speaker 4: during the Biden administration so much got punted on, I
Speaker 4: don't know, like we're past that. We have the opportunity, now,
Speaker 4: we have the anger now I do I retain my worry,
Speaker 4: And I would say almost one of my biggest political
Speaker 4: fears is that twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight
Speaker 4: go well for Democrats. They do again what happened under
Speaker 4: the Biden administration.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and they leave all these things intact.
Speaker 4: But one of the big differences that we have, at
Speaker 4: least right now is that at no point was abolishing
Speaker 4: ICE polling the way it is right now during the
Speaker 4: Biden or the first Trump administration. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 4: we have to take advantage of that. There's momentum right now,
Speaker 4: like this is a.
Speaker 5: Crucial time, not just like we're talking here in terms
Speaker 5: of like abolishing ICE moves us back to the two
Speaker 5: thousand and three norm right, Like what it doesn't do
Speaker 5: is fixed the fundamental issue here, which is that there
Speaker 5: are not legal pathways for people to come to the
Speaker 5: US and there need to be and like I think
Speaker 5: like now is the time for people who are involved
Speaker 5: in democratic politics right to agitate for like a genuine
Speaker 5: reform package. I don't think we will ever see support
Speaker 5: like this again for legalization of undocumented people, for Dreamers right,
Speaker 5: or people who are impacted by deferred action for childhood arrivals,
Speaker 5: which is a policy that it came to place under Obama.
Speaker 6: Like, now is the time for substantial immigration reform.
Speaker 5: I say this knowing that this will not fix a problem.
Speaker 5: Like more than most people you know, I have seen
Speaker 5: the horrors of our immigration system firsthand, but like there
Speaker 5: is a moment right now that we could change things
Speaker 5: for the better. And I share roberts worry that if
Speaker 5: Democrats get like an easy win even in the midterms,
Speaker 5: that we might not get that. And like what we
Speaker 5: saw rounder Biden was a big pointer to what we're
Speaker 5: seeing under Trump that essentially the DHS was almost impossible
Speaker 5: for him to control. Yeah, in that he acquiesced to oads,
Speaker 5: he is still responsible for them, like the buckstops with him.
Speaker 6: He's president.
Speaker 5: I'm not certain that he planned it, but nonetheless it
Speaker 5: continued to happen for months and months and months out
Speaker 5: of his presidency, right, Like, it was very obvious the
Speaker 5: way this was going to go if we got another
Speaker 5: Trump presidency, and if they do that again, we're just
Speaker 5: setting the table for things to get worse again.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And I think James the task before is twofold, right,
Speaker 4: because on one hand, we have to reform the system
Speaker 4: by which people gain legal acceptance to live in this country,
Speaker 4: and that also includes I think there needs to be
Speaker 4: a push for some sort of federal law that will
Speaker 4: make it impossible or at least much harder, to reverse
Speaker 4: these acceptances and to do things like nullify or cancel
Speaker 4: green cards and permanent residency like the administration is doing
Speaker 4: right now. Like both, we need increased pathways and we
Speaker 4: need increased resilience to promise people that, hey, if you
Speaker 4: go through all of these hoops to become a legal
Speaker 4: resident or a citizen or whatever, it can't just get
Speaker 4: pulled away the next time a Republican wins office.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then on the other side of things, you have
Speaker 4: this vast, uncontrollable militant agency built as the armed wing
Speaker 4: of the presidency that has to be destroyed because it
Speaker 4: can't exist a democracy yeah, it's no compatible and then
Speaker 4: you have I mean I would extend that to DHS
Speaker 4: as a whole. But it's my same issue with like,
Speaker 4: if we can defund ICE right now, I'm always in
Speaker 4: favor of taking away some of their money.
Speaker 3: That's not the extent of what I think should happen
Speaker 3: to ICE.
Speaker 4: It's just like it's a salient, right, Like you have
Speaker 4: to look at it that way. Like it it would
Speaker 4: be as if you're you're like, well, it's not worth
Speaker 4: winning the Battle of Stalingrad because that doesn't give us
Speaker 4: Berlein It's well, but these are steps, you know, you
Speaker 4: try to damage and reduce the agency's power and ability
Speaker 4: to function. Yeah, while you're continuing. And I guess the
Speaker 4: worry about that too is that if you do defund ICE,
Speaker 4: if they because we've had some Trump has made a
Speaker 4: couple comments about worrying that, like we need to reduce
Speaker 4: kind of the tempo at which ICE is operating because
Speaker 4: it's bad for them.
Speaker 3: So that is kind of one of my concerns.
Speaker 4: That maybe if they, if they pull back on the
Speaker 4: throttle a little bit, the rage will decline enough that
Speaker 4: there's not this kind of motivation and behind abolishing but
Speaker 4: I feel like that's just a fear you kind of
Speaker 4: have to eat, as opposed to not trying to stop
Speaker 4: and reduce the harms the agency does in the immediate
Speaker 4: term while you're working long term for abolition.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Did want to talk a little about other numbers, because
Speaker 4: immigration is obviously a major issue for American voters. It's
Speaker 4: an issue people pick who they're going to vote for
Speaker 4: the presidency on. It's one of them, but it's not
Speaker 4: the main one. As a general rule, throughout most of
Speaker 4: modern political history, the kind of the top issue for
Speaker 4: Americans is the economy. And if the economy is bad,
Speaker 4: it is very hard for your party to stay in power.
Speaker 4: If the economy is good, it is a lot easier
Speaker 4: for your party to stay in power. Right, Like, these
Speaker 4: are fairly basic facts of political life in the United States,
Speaker 4: always with some caveats, but that it bears looking at
Speaker 4: how do Americans feel about the economy and who do
Speaker 4: they blame for the fact that they feel badly about
Speaker 4: the economy? And per Politico, which carried out a recent survey,
Speaker 4: about forty six percent of Americans say the cost of
Speaker 4: living is the worst they can remember it ever being
Speaker 4: This includes thirty seven percent of people who voted for
Speaker 4: Trump in twenty twenty four, and Americans pretty like significantly
Speaker 4: agree that this is a Trump problem. Inflation, the fact
Speaker 4: that they can't afford things is on him because he's
Speaker 4: the present. Again, forty six percent of Americans say it's
Speaker 4: Trump's economy and his administration is responsible for rising costs.
Speaker 4: And this is true both among Republicans and Democrats, which
Speaker 4: is very interesting to me. A percentage of Americans, based
Speaker 4: on the vote in the twenty four election, fifty three
Speaker 4: percent of Harris voters in twenty twenty four say the
Speaker 4: cost of living is the worst they've seen it, and again,
Speaker 4: thirty seven percent of Trump voters in twenty twenty four
Speaker 4: feel the same way. So that is it's an example
Speaker 4: of something that we've talked about and wondered about on
Speaker 4: this show a lot, which is like how much.
Speaker 3: Does reac break through the fever swamps? And this is
Speaker 3: suggesting that, like to a pretty solid degree, that actually
Speaker 3: Trump is I still think he's got a floor of
Speaker 3: somewhere around thirty percent of Americans who will follow him
Speaker 3: into the pits of hell, even if it means shoveling
Speaker 3: themselves into it, but that number used to be like
Speaker 3: forty percent, right, and it does seem to be declining.
Speaker 4: This is being treated as a five alarm fire among
Speaker 4: the Trump White House, which is interesting me for a
Speaker 4: couple of reasons. You know, anytime you talk with especially
Speaker 4: people them left about but also increasingly a lot of
Speaker 4: Democrats about the midterm elections in the twenty twenty eight elections,
Speaker 4: I think you have to deal with his people saying,
Speaker 4: but are there going to be elections?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And you know it's I don't dismiss those concerns out
Speaker 4: of hand, obviously in part because the administration is talking
Speaker 4: right now about having ice agents and polling places, right,
Speaker 4: you do have to acknowledge that as a concern. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, I think if you're looking at
Speaker 4: this rationally, you have to note that the Trump administration
Speaker 4: internally is acting as if there will be elections and
Speaker 4: that those will be competitive elections. They are worried about
Speaker 4: the economy, they are worried about their polling, and they
Speaker 4: are taking actions to try to mitigate the worries that
Speaker 4: they have, which they wouldn't be doing if they were
Speaker 4: already sure there's never going to be another election. Right,
Speaker 4: and that is important to remember. It doesn't mean there's
Speaker 4: not a danger, doesn't mean they won't try shit if
Speaker 4: they lose, but it does mean that they are treating
Speaker 4: these political issues as political issues that they have to
Speaker 4: deal with via messaging. There is an article in Fox
Speaker 4: News recently about Trump's team huddling to decide on midterm messaging.
Speaker 3: I'm going to quote from that now.
Speaker 4: The meeting, which was confirmed to Fox News by sources
Speaker 4: familiar with the gathering, was hosted by White House Chief
Speaker 4: of Staff Susie Wilds and Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair,
Speaker 4: who is steering Trump's political strategy. According to sources, the
Speaker 4: message during a slide presentation by chief polster and Chief
Speaker 4: Strategists and strategist Toorney Fabrizio was that the economy will
Speaker 4: be the top issue in the minds of voters, and
Speaker 4: the White House needs to spotlight its efforts on easy affordability.
Speaker 4: The meeting was held as the GOP ares to defend
Speaker 4: their control of the Senate and their razor thin House
Speaker 4: majority in November's midterm elections. Republicans are also dealing with
Speaker 4: the presidents continued underwater approval ratings and a slew of surveys,
Speaker 4: including the latest Fox and News pulling that indicates Americans
Speaker 4: are pessimistic about the economy, and publicly, the administration's claim
Speaker 4: is that Americans are happy with the economy. The economy
Speaker 4: is the best it's ever been. Look At how good
Speaker 4: the doo is. It's over fifty thousand, right, Yeah, But
Speaker 4: everything we're hearing internally, like all of the reports that
Speaker 4: from people inside the administration about like what's going on
Speaker 4: day to day, is that they're wide awake and worried
Speaker 4: over the fact that their economic numbers are completely fucking
Speaker 4: dog shit. Now, what does this mean for the midterm elections, Well,
Speaker 4: very few people that I have found who are like
Speaker 4: credible analysts don't expect the Democrats to retake the House, right.
Speaker 2: Meaning, most credible analysts do think the Dems are likely
Speaker 2: to retake the House.
Speaker 4: That said, there's a fairly few people who expect a
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen style Democratic blowout, among like the professional bull
Speaker 4: watchers and stuff, which is, if you remember the Democrats
Speaker 4: flipped about forty one seats. There's a couple of reasons
Speaker 4: for this, right, And I found a good article in
Speaker 4: The Hill that's kind of analyzing like why we shouldn't
Speaker 4: be expecting some of the exuberants that you're seeing on
Speaker 4: social media about like early elections and how bad Trump's
Speaker 4: numbers are, is maybe making people overly optimistic about like
Speaker 4: flipping all of Congress to Democratic control, which is not
Speaker 4: currently the likeliest outcome. And there's a couple of reasons
Speaker 4: for this. One of them is that, as unpopular as
Speaker 4: Trump is, and I've hit on that quite a lot,
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party's overall favorability is at about thirty three percent,
Speaker 4: which is nine points lower than the Republican Party's favorability
Speaker 4: and you know, depending on the poll, five to ten
Speaker 4: points lower than Trump's own favorability. This is based on
Speaker 4: a Marquette Law School pol Right, So Trump is very unpopular,
Speaker 4: so with the Republican Party, but people don't like the Democrats,
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party as a whole. People like individual Democrats,
Speaker 4: a lot of people like their Congress person, a lot
Speaker 4: of people like whoever it is they want to see
Speaker 4: as the presidential candidate. You know, you can look at
Speaker 4: you know, you've got folks who really like Mamdani or
Speaker 4: really like pritzkerp But as a whole, voters, including Democratic
Speaker 4: voters don't feel very positively towards the Democratic Party, in
Speaker 4: many cases more negatively still than they feel about the
Speaker 4: Republican Party that started to turn around. But if you're
Speaker 4: kind of hoping that there's going to be like a
Speaker 4: full on switch that makes it immediately possible to successfully
Speaker 4: impeach President Trump, that is extraordinarily unlikely to come in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six, right, which doesn't mean that it's unlikely
Speaker 4: to have a good result. Republicans losing control of Congress
Speaker 4: is a good result.
Speaker 3: Right. There's just a lot less. I mean, there's a
Speaker 3: lot less.
Speaker 4: Even if you're kind of taking the unfavorability of the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party out of it, there's a lot fewer seats
Speaker 4: up for grabs right now. In twenty eighteen, and when that,
Speaker 4: you know, the Democrats flipped forty one seats. There were
Speaker 4: seventy five competitive races this year. Heading into the midterms,
Speaker 4: there were only eighteen. Right, there's a lot less that
Speaker 4: can flip. And I don't think Republicans are likely to
Speaker 4: lose control of the Senate, right, And the polling shows
Speaker 4: things being pretty razor thin there. Democrats have about a
Speaker 4: four percent advantage according to Economist. You GOV polling right
Speaker 4: now in the congressional midterms, and there's a three point
Speaker 4: margin of error, so you're looking at like a lead,
Speaker 4: but not enough of one for a complete fucking blowout. Right,
Speaker 4: there has been some more positive data, like kind of
Speaker 4: right before we came on to record this, like I
Speaker 4: looked at some charts by Focal Data that was kind
Speaker 4: of breaking down midterm voting and tensioned by groups and
Speaker 4: looking at like likely voters, And this is always kind
Speaker 4: of a little bit like voodoo, right in terms of
Speaker 4: how you're trying to, like, well, how likely is a
Speaker 4: likely voter and how do we like factor in realistically
Speaker 4: are they going to show up anyway if you're kind
Speaker 4: of assuming that like people who self report as likely
Speaker 4: voters will only actually vote about a third of the time.
Speaker 4: Per this study, Democrats are ahead by about seven points
Speaker 4: in a generic house ballot. So you know, that's kind
Speaker 4: of where we are right now. I think we're looking
Speaker 4: at a midterm season that's going to go well for
Speaker 4: the Democrats, But I don't think we're looking at a
Speaker 4: midterm season that delivers us from the Republican Party being
Speaker 4: able to ram through legislation. I think our kind of
Speaker 4: best case scenario is one in which they have to
Speaker 4: give major concessions because the Democrats have you know, flipped
Speaker 4: the House at the very least like.
Speaker 3: And that's that's big. But I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't think Trump's going to get impeached starting January
Speaker 4: of next year.
Speaker 11: The one thing I will say about the polling data
Speaker 11: is that so obviously Democrats tend to perform better in
Speaker 11: special elections because to vote in a special election, you
Speaker 11: have to be a higher interest voter. And that also
Speaker 11: special election cycles get driven by immediate like anger over stuff,
Speaker 11: and there's a bunch of different factors that dry special
Speaker 11: election turn out. And also the Democrats have been absolutely
Speaker 11: obliterating the Republicans in all the special elections that have
Speaker 11: been happening recently, or even in the cases where they're lose,
Speaker 11: they're losing by very small margins in places where Trump
Speaker 11: was wining blowouts. Yeah, so I think if you want
Speaker 11: to be optimistic, I think that's the case for optimism.
Speaker 11: But also, yeah, like we're not going to have all
Speaker 11: of our problems magically solved by the mid terms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, to specify on that, what you were saying,
Speaker 4: there was a special election in Tennessee and Republican Matt
Speaker 4: Van Epps beat the Democrat often Bane by nine points,
Speaker 4: but Trump had won in twenty twenty five, were there
Speaker 4: by twenty two points.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and like like a few we talked about this
Speaker 11: on the show. But like last year there was there
Speaker 11: was an election in like a special election in western
Speaker 11: Iowa that Trump had won by double digits and the
Speaker 11: Democrats won by double digits.
Speaker 6: And that kind of thing shouldn't be happening.
Speaker 11: It sure shouldn't, No it is, And yeah, you know,
Speaker 11: so that's that's the optimistic case.
Speaker 4: And hey, like I've just come in saying like, hey,
Speaker 4: don't expect Congress to be completely flipped, but like, you know,
Speaker 4: it's the times are crazy. Who knows what else? Who
Speaker 4: knows how many more people Ice is going to murder?
Speaker 4: Who knows like what other like how bad the economy's
Speaker 4: going to get.
Speaker 6: We might have invaded Canada by then, Like who knows.
Speaker 4: Anything's on the table, anything's still on the table. We're
Speaker 4: just kind of looking at shit from February.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and some of this shit will depend on
Speaker 5: like what atrocities they commit in the weeks and days
Speaker 5: before the midterm election. Right then, I think we see
Speaker 5: so around certain the killing of Rene Good, the killing
Speaker 5: of Alex pretty right, we see those things shift public
Speaker 5: opinion dramatically. And the ongoing snatching of immigrants and deportations
Speaker 5: and sending people back to places where they be tortured
Speaker 5: and killed. Like that's kind of the background and it
Speaker 5: makes people angry, but like it's these these these specific
Speaker 5: actions which seem to shift public opinion dramatically. All right,
Speaker 5: So on that topic, I guess we should talk about
Speaker 5: the quote unquote shutdown, and specifically the shutdown of the
Speaker 5: Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I guess the first thing to clarify is this isn't
Speaker 5: a government shut down in the sense of the shutdown
Speaker 5: we saw last year, right that that lasted like forty
Speaker 5: plus days.
Speaker 3: Right, It's a partial shutdown.
Speaker 6: It's partial shutdown.
Speaker 5: What's happening right now is the Democrats are holding up
Speaker 5: further funding for DHS until the administration agrees to some
Speaker 5: concessions that they have asked for. This is unlikely to
Speaker 5: impact ICE and CBP a very great deal for a.
Speaker 6: Couple of reasons.
Speaker 5: Firstly, the Taxi Spending Cuts Bill right, twenty twenty five
Speaker 5: bill funded them to an absolutely unfathomable degree, I think
Speaker 5: sixty five and seventy million, respectively. More quickly, it will
Speaker 5: affect other agencies under DHS. Those includes Transport Security Administration,
Speaker 5: Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Secret Service, and the Coast Guard.
Speaker 5: Some TSA workers will be working that they will likely
Speaker 5: not be receiving pay. This is pretty common right that
Speaker 5: they're deemed does quite unquite essential workers, and that means
Speaker 5: that they will be expected you to work. What we
Speaker 5: saw last time was that as the shutdown dragged on,
Speaker 5: people were calling in sick or not coming into work
Speaker 5: because they were taking other jobs right because they had
Speaker 5: bills to pay. The reason this is happening is because
Speaker 5: Democrats successfully managed to get Trump to separate DHS funding
Speaker 5: from another spending bill, which passed through and funded the
Speaker 5: rest of the federal government.
Speaker 6: They are demanding an end to masking.
Speaker 5: I should clarify specifically like masking in the sense of
Speaker 5: law enforcement officers wearing gates over their faces, a return
Speaker 5: to opposites displaying their name, badge, and ID number, increased
Speaker 5: oversight of detention conditions, coordination with local law enforcement, and
Speaker 5: end to the detention of US citizens targeted enforcement and
Speaker 5: not roving patrols, and a unified use of force and
Speaker 5: uniform conduct policy for CBP and ICE, and then an
Speaker 5: end to raids using Form two point fifteen. I'm just
Speaker 5: going to note here them moving forwardre going to refer
Speaker 5: to that using its it's that name and not call
Speaker 5: it an administrative warrant, because an administrative warrant like kind
Speaker 5: of implies the action of a judge. But these are
Speaker 5: forms that are filled out right that it is not
Speaker 5: the same early aspected as a warrant, and that's a
Speaker 5: judicial warrant. The Republican counterproposals so far have shown pretty
Speaker 5: little common ground on this, aside from over body cameras
Speaker 5: where Gnome did implement body cameras. As I said, ICE
Speaker 5: and CBP will continue doing what they do right. I
Speaker 5: was at the border on Saturday and I saw tons
Speaker 5: of CBP patrols. They do not seem to have slowed
Speaker 5: down with their wall construction. That may overtime slow down.
Speaker 5: They won't be paying like the workers week by week
Speaker 5: on those contracts. They will be paying a contractor who
Speaker 5: might be paying a subcontractor, so that would take time
Speaker 5: to slow down. The things that will slow down. Are
Speaker 5: things like the oversight function to DHS, potentially administrative and
Speaker 5: hiring functions, things like that, right, But the actual like
Speaker 5: on the ground patrolling, most of those people are deemed
Speaker 5: as essential workers. So it seems unlikely that we will see,
Speaker 5: for instance, fewer CBP patrols at the border or fewer
Speaker 5: ero iscera agents like tasked with doing these ongoing raids.
Speaker 5: So yeah, talking about DHS, I want to talk a
Speaker 5: little bit more about the Coast Guard. I think it's
Speaker 5: likely that some people won't be aware that the Coast
Speaker 5: Guard is an element of the DHS. They're also a
Speaker 5: branch of the military, right they're the only branch of
Speaker 5: the military that's under the DHS. Yes, so they considered veterans,
Speaker 5: but they're not on the DoD or the DOW as
Speaker 5: you can now call it. The NBC has a piece
Speaker 5: suggesting that there is, I guess, a split in the
Speaker 5: Coast Guard between lower ranks and higher ranks, and specifically
Speaker 5: they're talking about feeling that Coast Guard is moving away
Speaker 5: from its court mission, which is search and rescue. They
Speaker 5: highlight one incident in February of last year when a
Speaker 5: Coast guardsmen went overboard and a Coast Guard see one
Speaker 5: thirty was detailed to participate in the search for that
Speaker 5: Coast guardsman.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: It had previously been detailed for a deportation flight that
Speaker 5: it was retasked to assist with the search. According to
Speaker 5: the piece, quote non verbally instructed the acting Commandant of
Speaker 5: the Coast Guard, Admiral Kevin Lunday, to pull the plane
Speaker 5: off the search and rescue mission so it would not
Speaker 5: miss the immigrant flight, a part of DHS's so called
Speaker 5: alien expulsion operations. According to two US officials and a
Speaker 5: Coastguard official, as a result, what happened is that local
Speaker 5: Coast Guard officials in San Diego scrambled to find two
Speaker 5: C twenty seven's that could fulfill that deportation flight. In
Speaker 5: doing so, that freed out the Sea one thirty to
Speaker 5: then go return to participate in the search. Right. They
Speaker 5: did continue searching, I believe, for one hundred and ninety hours,
Speaker 5: but they never found the missing Coast guardsmen.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: You cannot and will never be able to conclusively prove
Speaker 5: that all of this back and forth with this one
Speaker 5: thirty had any impact on that, But this incident has
Speaker 5: clearly had an impact on morale and it suggested general
Speaker 5: shift in priorities away from search and rescue.
Speaker 6: And towards doing more border enforcement.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: Under NOME seven hundred and fifty flights have been redirected
Speaker 5: from their regular work to instead deport migrants. This comes
Speaker 5: after she removed a high ranking Coast Guard official from
Speaker 5: her house so that Nope could live at the house.
Speaker 6: Wait what Yeah, yeah, she kicked the Coastguard person out.
Speaker 3: Of their house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this was last year. She moved with like very
Speaker 5: short notice. She moved onto a shit, Yeah, she moved
Speaker 5: onto a base.
Speaker 2: Yeah with Lewandowski, right, that might be the case, goes,
Speaker 2: there was like a few people in like the cabinet
Speaker 2: or orbit.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, I thought you meant like they were cohabiting.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, okay, yeah, okay, beautiful domestic life.
Speaker 5: Yeah okay, I was, I was. I don't want to
Speaker 5: doubt you. That would have been in news to me. Yes,
Speaker 5: a number of Trumps, like executive officials, are living on
Speaker 5: basis more than is usual. I think the Millers maybe
Speaker 5: do as well.
Speaker 6: But yeah.
Speaker 5: She also purchased two Gulf Stream jets to fly her around,
Speaker 5: unlike most government jets, which tend to be returned towards
Speaker 5: what's called a sterile state after use. That just means
Speaker 5: that they go back to being completely clean, like they're
Speaker 5: like a generic jet. They're not your jet. Nome prefers
Speaker 5: to keep some personal items aboard the Gulf streams, but
Speaker 5: one of these items, a heated blanket, was left behind
Speaker 5: after her jet broke down she had to switch planes.
Speaker 5: Coylewandowski reportedly sheltered at the Coastguard flight staff and demanded
Speaker 5: they turn around before attempting to fire the pilot, who
Speaker 5: fused to do so.
Speaker 2: Jesus right, I need my blanky.
Speaker 10: I need my blanky.
Speaker 3: Turn around.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think she'd she had a rough week. I
Speaker 5: guess one of the blankets.
Speaker 11: These are absolutely just like the softest fascist that have
Speaker 11: ever ruled the country. Like it, turn off flight around
Speaker 11: because I left my baby blanket like.
Speaker 6: Yeah right, like I oh god.
Speaker 5: Fortunately, I guess they de escalated that one and continued
Speaker 5: the flight. Blanket free, the fire the pike. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think it is interesting to look at Coast Guards morale. Right, Like,
Speaker 5: Coast guards traditional mission has been search and rescue and
Speaker 5: then the interdiction of like drug vessels, and they have
Speaker 5: been doing a great deal of order enforcement stuff and
Speaker 5: removal stuff. And it is obviously like people who have
Speaker 5: been at the Coast Guard for a long time, not
Speaker 5: what they joined the Coast Guard to do. I will
Speaker 5: just say that there are very few areas in which
Speaker 5: the United Kingdom has worked shit out, but the lifeboats
Speaker 5: are one of them. They are mentioned in Mutual Aid.
Speaker 5: The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has an article on for
Speaker 5: Popkin on their website.
Speaker 10: Incredible and it.
Speaker 5: Is one of the really genuinely good things about Britain.
Speaker 5: By contrasting that are not part of our government security apparatus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that makes no sense. The entire agency of
Speaker 2: DHS makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's just because.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there are better ways to do this.
Speaker 4: I mean it makes again, it makes a lot of
Speaker 4: sense as the president's private army.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For our final segment in this episode, some tragic news.
Speaker 2: On Monday afternoon, February sixteenth, two people were killed in
Speaker 2: a shooting at a hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: Before the shooter died by suicide. Three others were shot
Speaker 2: but survived their injuries. In the aftermath of the strategy,
Speaker 2: people across the right and the left have both used
Speaker 2: this shooting offensively and defensively in the culture war because
Speaker 2: of the shooter's general identity and far right conspiratorial politics,
Speaker 2: even though evidence points towards this being targeted domestic violence.
Speaker 2: The deceased or the shooter's X onefe and eldest son,
Speaker 2: and the deceased ex wife's parents were critically wounded but survived,
Speaker 2: as did a family friend. The shooter's other son was
Speaker 2: on the ice playing hockey while the shooting took place. Ordinarily,
Speaker 2: we would not talk about an instant like this in
Speaker 2: the news because there's a lot of domestic violence shootings
Speaker 2: that happened across the United States every week, and not
Speaker 2: all of them become national news stories. This is news
Speaker 2: because of its weaponization in the political culture war, but
Speaker 2: under most methodologies like this incident would not even be
Speaker 2: categorized as a mass shooting because less than four people died.
Speaker 2: It does qualify under the Gun Violence Archive criteria, which
Speaker 2: counts injuries not debts, in which this would be the
Speaker 2: forty first shooting in the US this year. But after
Speaker 2: the shooting took place, right wing accounts and influences started
Speaker 2: using this as a part of their trans mass shooter narrative.
Speaker 2: On Monday night, the Pawtucket Police that they believed the
Speaker 2: shooting stemmed from a family dispute. The shooter was fifty
Speaker 2: six years old with six kids. About ten years ago,
Speaker 2: the shooter started identifying as a transgender woman and used
Speaker 2: the name Roberta Esposito. The legal last name is Dorgan.
Speaker 2: They're not Hispanic, oh. The shooter was divorced about five
Speaker 2: to six years ago, and Dorgan's ex wife lists the
Speaker 2: grounds for divorce in the documents as quote, gender reassignment, surgery,
Speaker 2: narcissistic and personality disorder traits. Then she crossed that out
Speaker 2: and instead wrote quote irrevocable differences which caused the remediable
Speaker 2: breakdown of the marriage unquote. The shooter was extremely active
Speaker 2: on Twitter, made anti semitic and conspiratorial posts, and frequently
Speaker 2: interacted with a large assortment of mega influencers, as well
Speaker 2: as far right, neo Nazi, and conspiracy theory influencers like
Speaker 2: Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones. Dorgan also shared pictures of
Speaker 2: a massive like SS toteen CoV tattoo on their right
Speaker 2: arm and wrote on Twitter quote post off trans to
Speaker 2: the right of Hitler and quote you can be pro
Speaker 2: LGBT and pro Trump unquote. From looking through their Twitter
Speaker 2: it it mostly appears to be someone who is suffering
Speaker 2: from extreme mental distress. It's hard to, you know, chart
Speaker 2: how much of the political beliefs that can be to
Speaker 2: split on Twitter are like genuinely held versus how much
Speaker 2: they relate to long standing mental health issues this person
Speaker 2: suffered from, which I'll get into in a sec.
Speaker 6: I'm still a little hung up on the name.
Speaker 2: The name also, I think relates to just this person's
Speaker 2: very very not well.
Speaker 6: Okay, they're just trying to pay people off, flick with correct.
Speaker 2: I think everything about this person can be seen as
Speaker 2: an expression of like antisociality politics their presentation the name now.
Speaker 2: While right wing news agent Season influencers have used this
Speaker 2: horrifying instant of domestic violence for their trans mass shooter narrative,
Speaker 2: framing every transperson is at risk of randomly becoming a
Speaker 2: mass killer while ignoring this shooter's own extremist politics, people
Speaker 2: on the left have blamed this tragedy on the shooter
Speaker 2: being a quote unquote far right Trump supporter or a
Speaker 2: quote unquote Nazi groper. And this is in part a
Speaker 2: defensive reaction against the right zone like misleading and non
Speaker 2: source claims about a statistical epidemic of trans violence. But
Speaker 2: laying blame on Make America Great Again and the MAGA
Speaker 2: movement doesn't really get us much closer to understanding this violence.
Speaker 2: We're so used to defaulting to this heartizan culture war
Speaker 2: like ideological explanation for the cause of public violence, whether
Speaker 2: that's you know, for the right, trans ideology or neo Nazism,
Speaker 2: even though both in this case and the shooting in
Speaker 2: Canada last week, which I talked about a few days
Speaker 2: ago on the show, this was like anti social, unstable
Speaker 2: and self destructive individuals who kill family members and then
Speaker 2: created a deadly public situation leading them to kill themselves.
Speaker 2: Despite Nazi tattoos and Twitter posts, this hockey game shooting
Speaker 2: was not ideologically motivated violence. This was targeted interpersonal violence
Speaker 2: against family stemming from extreme mental health issues. This goes
Speaker 2: beyond like right left politics. This shooter just seemed to
Speaker 2: be drawn to anything seen as extreme or anything that
Speaker 2: produced anti social effects. The daughter of the shooter briefly
Speaker 2: spoke to local news on Monday, saying that the shooter
Speaker 2: was her father and that the shooter had quote unquote
Speaker 2: mental health issues and was quote unquote very sick. The
Speaker 2: Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence said in a statement
Speaker 2: Monday night, quote while details are still emerging, we know
Speaker 2: that violence within families and intimate relationships can have devastating
Speaker 2: and far reaching impacts. Domestic violence does not stay behind
Speaker 2: closed doors. It affects children, extended family members, and entire communities.
Speaker 10: Unquote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess if you want to do
Speaker 1: analysis of it, it's that like the thing that's actually
Speaker 1: a predictive for violence is domestic violence, and this is
Speaker 1: another really horrible to mastic violence incidents.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's it's pretty tragic.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, there was some news that came out today, which
Speaker 2: is Wednesday, that one of the other sons of this
Speaker 2: shooter was arrested a few years ago in North Providence
Speaker 2: for setting fires to a black church, which did appear
Speaker 2: to be ideologically motivated violence. Police found notebooks inside of
Speaker 2: this person's home filled with hateful writings quote, gutten down
Speaker 2: everyone that isn't white. If one is white, spread the gospel.
Speaker 2: Always give our bloodline a chance unquote. So this incident
Speaker 2: of a arson in a black church is definitely ideologically motivated.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's been a great, stremely normal country.
Speaker 2: And this person was sentenced to six years in prison.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 6: So the person that's the son of the person, the.
Speaker 2: Son of the shooter, one of the sons of the shooter.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they had several sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a pretty tragic series of incidents with this family.
Speaker 5: I do find it really disturbing that the thing that
Speaker 5: you mentioned where people just kind of drop into a
Speaker 5: channel when it comes to responding to a tragedy like this, like,
Speaker 5: and I find it really upsetting when I see it
Speaker 5: from like, yeah, left and progressive organizations that promote firearms
Speaker 5: training or like.
Speaker 6: I just find it really kind.
Speaker 5: Of disappointing, I guess, to see people dropping into these
Speaker 5: same kind of callous and dismissive responses.
Speaker 6: It's just something that's been weighing on me recently.
Speaker 5: I am a person who owns guns, but it's still
Speaker 5: I don't know, I'm disappointed.
Speaker 6: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, well we reported the news.
Speaker 10: Put a transcrol on your couch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And if you have some news that you think
Speaker 5: we should report, tips, you can do so by emailing
Speaker 5: Cool Zone Tips at proton dot me. If you have
Speaker 5: someone that you would like to be a guest on
Speaker 5: our show, or a topic that you think Roberts should
Speaker 5: cover from behind the bustards, we will make another email
Speaker 5: for that, but if you could just not email the
Speaker 5: tip line. If you're a publicist and you email, I
Speaker 5: will block you.
Speaker 3: We reported the new.
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